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Wednesday, November 26, 2014

Identifying as a sociopath

This is a thoughtful article about, inter alia, M.E. The most "relevant" portions below:
Nevertheless, it is an interesting topic so I went looking for a sociopath and found one. Sociopath World: Inside the Mind of a Sociopath is a blog written by an anonymous self-proclaimed sociopath. Though it’s possibly a work of fiction, I believe that the person writing it truly does identify with the sociopathic condition. The blog has been active since 2008 and there are hundreds of posts. I have only read a few articles but what I have read has been well written. I can’t really characterize the author but there is an uncanny intellectualism and rationality to his or her writing. I would definitely recommend the blog as the autoethnography of a sociopath.

The self-identified sociopath does raise a few questions.

First, I want to say that I do not believe in black or white conditions. If I were a psychiatrist, I would hand out labels very sparingly. Probably all people experience schizotypal symptoms in their life and many have schizotypal tendencies but it’s insufficient to label them schizophrenic. Likewise, I believe sociopathy must exist on a gradient spectrum. What shade of gray makes you a full-blown sociopath?

I am ultimately wondering what the consequences of self-identification are? Labels are a way of making sense of the world so I suppose self-identification helps one come to terms with their self. Interestingly the comments on Sociopath World sometimes read like a support group for sociopaths. The idea that sociopaths (feel as if they) suffer from their condition is somewhat counterintuitive.
***
Of course, one need not identify as a sociopath to be one. I am only curious as to what the benefits of self-identification are. That said, I believe many people possess varying degrees of innate potential to be a sociopath.

We see a remarkable ratio of people willing to commit atrocities in obedience to authority in both life and in experimentation. In accord with activity theory, I believe there is a threshold in doing where we internalize our actions. The Milgram experiment combined with the Stanford prison experiment only demonstrates that normal people can be pushed beyond that threshold. Social influence needs not be that dramatic. The author of Sociopath World makes an astute observation of his or her own condition, writing

“After spending time with my family recently, I am more convinced that nurture had a significant role to play in my development into a sociopath. When people ask me whether I had a bad childhood, I tell them that it was actually relatively unremarkable, however I can see how the antisocial behaviors and mental posturing that now define me were incentivized when I was growing up — how my independent emotional world was stifled and how understanding and respect for the emotional world of others died away. Still I don’t think I was “made” into a sociopath, nor was I born one. I feel like I was born with that predisposition, that I made a relatively conscious decision to rely on those skills instead of developing others, and that the decision was made in direct response to my environment and how I could best survive and even thrive in that environment.”

Wednesday, October 29, 2014

Everybody's different

This was an interesting story from an older Mormon prophet, Joseph Fielding Smith, about difference:

We need to appreciate and love people for themselves.

When I was a boy, we had a horse named Junie. She was one of the most intelligent animals I ever saw. She seemed almost human in her ability. I couldn’t keep her locked in the barn because she would continually undo the strap on the door of her stall. I used to put the strap connected to the half-door of the stall over the top of the post, but she would simply lift it off with her nose and teeth. Then she would go out in the yard.

There was a water tap in the yard used for filling the water trough for our animals. Junie would turn this on with her teeth and then leave the water running. My father would get after me because I couldn’t keep that horse in the barn. She never ran away; she just turned on the water and then walked around the yard or over the lawn or through the garden. In the middle of the night, I would hear the water running and then I would have to get up and shut it off and lock Junie up again.

My father suggested that the horse seemed smarter than I was. One day he decided that he would lock her in so that she couldn’t get out. He took the strap that usually looped over the top of the post and buckled it around the post and under a crossbar, and then he said, “Young lady, let’s see you get out of there now!” My father and I left the barn and started to walk back to the house; and before we reached it, Junie was at our side. She then went over and turned the water on again.

I suggested that now, perhaps, she was about as smart as either one of us. We just couldn’t keep Junie from getting out of her stall. But that doesn’t mean she was bad, because she wasn’t. Father wasn’t about to sell or trade her, because she had so many other good qualities that made up for this one little fault.

The horse was as reliable and dependable at pulling our buggy as she was adept at getting out of the stall. And this was important, because Mother was a licensed midwife. When she would get called to a confinement somewhere in the valley, usually in the middle of the night, I would have to get up, take a lantern out to the barn, and hitch Junie up to the buggy.

I was only about ten or eleven years old at the time; and that horse had to be gentle and yet strong enough to take me and Mother all over the valley, in all kinds of weather. One thing I never could understand, however, was why most of the babies had to be born at night and so many of them in winter.

Often I would wait in the buggy for Mother, and then it was nice to have the company of gentle old Junie. This experience with this horse was very good for me, because early in life I had to learn to love and appreciate her for herself. She was a wonderful horse with only a couple of bad habits. People are a lot the same way. None of us is perfect; yet each of us is trying to become perfect, even as our Father in heaven. We need to appreciate and love people for themselves.

Maybe you need to remember this when you evaluate your parents or teachers or ward and stake leaders or friends—or brothers and sisters. This lesson has always stayed with me—to see the good in people even though we are trying to help them overcome one or two bad habits. …

I learned early in life to love and not to judge others, trying always to overcome my own faults.

I think it's interesting the different reactions I have gotten from readers. Often they're positive, they agree that sociopaths are much maligned for just being a mental disorder that people don't choose to have and have very limited ability to change or even modify in themselves. And of course some people see sociopaths as subhumans that should be exterminated. Of course that will usually happen, a split of opinions on something, but the interesting thing is the reasoning. Often religion is used to justify both positions. Efficiency is used to justify both positions. Certain philosophies (e.g. utilitarianism) are used to justify both positions. What I learned in law school is that there are always two sides to every coin. The more you argue that certain people are worthless, the easier it is for those types of beliefs to become acceptable or even desirable as standing on good "moral" principles. The more those beliefs become acceptable, the more likely someone who is willing to act on those beliefs will come into power. The more people in power who are willing to act on those beliefs, the more risky it is for anyone to live in a way that is both different and authentic.

Why don't we just kill off all sociopaths? Maybe because like the horse Junie, the same traits that make them sometimes dangerous, obnoxious, disgusting, or reprehensible are also the traits that will promote survival and success for them and all those attached to them in certain dangerous, obnoxious, disgusting, or reprehensible situations.

Monday, October 13, 2014

Guilt vs Remorse - the Subjective Experience

From a reader:

Typical thing you'll read: "Psychopathic offenders do not feel any remorse for their crimes even if they admit guilt. That’s an important distinction."

This is a huge distinction for normal people. it explains why psychopathic offenders scare them so much.

How it happens: in the middle of a situation, I've got a choice to make. I can zig like everyone else or zag. Zigging will cost me, but it will be the socially appropriate thing. Most people will automatically zig.

I look at the situation and "do the math". I ought to zag. It is unsocial, but it will save me a lot of pain. Yes, there's uncertainty. If I get caught zagging, there'll be consequences. My future self will have to pay for them, and I can't know what they'll be - it won't just be compensatory damages, but a bunch of other stuff tacked on for having a bad conscience.

But on balance, zagging is the right thing to do. There's no doubt in my mind - zagging is "wrong" - as in, society defines it as "bad". But zagging, on balance, is the thing to do, because its expected value is so much higher, so I zag, doing it as best as I can.

This is me, in the clutch, doing the best job I can do. It also happens to be me doing something society calls "evil".

Immediately after, there might be some fear of getting caught. I'll think, "shit I just zagged. Catastrophe A, Catastrophe B or etc. might happen." I might feel some fear or even a little guilt - pangs of conscience. As in, I should have just zigged and saved myself the trouble."

Then I think, "wait a sec, pussy. You've got a decision to make. You zagged. That's in the past. RIGHT NOW, you've got a choice: stick with what you've done (and your future self deals with any consequences) or go confess and make amends. Are you going to make amends and pay up?"

The answer is generally, "no way." Not a chance in hell. It looks like I'm getting away with it, so there's no point to caving in now.

And confessing and making amends looks very risky, because I hurt someone else, and you never know how upset they'll get. If they are narcissistic, they may go out of the way to punish me. The overall liability is not just the damage done, but the risk to reputation caused by confessing, punitive damages for being immoral, etc.

A typical thought: as much as it sucks to be a victim of my zagging, it will suck for my future self to pay the price for zagging if I confess.

How do I feel about my past self - the one that did the act?

When I look back on the past, I might dislike myself a bit. But mostly I think, "at that time, I had the mind that I had. In that situation again, with that same mind, I'd make the same decision. I didn't choose my thoughts or impulses in that moment, nor did I choose to restrain or not restrain them. It just unfolded, like water going over a waterfall."

I look at others the same way. I don't see any free will. Go back far enough and I didn't choose to be born to my flawed parents, raised in such a way that I developed with shitty impulse control. But that's how it unfolded.

What's done is done. If the bill eventually comes due, my future self will have to deal with the consequences. Hopefully it will accept them with equanimity.

There's little to no remorse - but why should their be? I don't have "guilt" that the whites arrived in the New World and killed off the Indians. How else could it have possibly gone, given how the universe was back then? Similarly, I don't have guilt about my shitty actions; how else could it have gone?

Of course, having gone through an event like this, there's a lot of learning. The next time I'm in a situation where I have to choose between zigging or zagging, it is extremely likely I'll zag at the drop of a hat, and never look back. In fact, one will likely start to zag earlier and often, or with more flair. All the while, the guilt-like fear response gets more and more diminished. If one gets caught after a run of that, one gets no sympathy or compassion.

Thursday, August 28, 2014

Change and pure evil

A reader sent me this article in the Scientific Article about evil and about people who have a belief that some things are pure evil (70% responded as such in a recent study). All of it's worth reading, but let me include the essential part of the argument:

Evil has been defined as taking pleasure in the intentional inflicting of harm on innocent others, and ever since World War II social psychologists have been fascinated by the topic. Many of the formative thinkers in the field — Kurt Lewin, Stanley Milgram , Solomon Asch — were inspired by their experiences with, and observations of, what appeared to most people at the time to be the indisputable incarnation of pure evil. But what many saw as a clear demonstration of unredeemable and deep-seated malice, these researchers interpreted as more, in the words of Hannah Arendt, banal. From Milgram’s famous studies of obedience to Zimbardo’s prison study, psychologists have argued for the roots of evil actions in quite ordinary psychological causes. This grounding of evil in ordinary, as opposed to extraordinary, phenomena have led some to describe the notion of “pure evil” as a myth. A misguided understanding of human nature deriving both from specific socio-cultural traditions as well as a general tendency to understand others’ behavior as a product solely of their essence, their soul, as opposed to a more complicated combination of environmental and individual forces.

The issue of whether “pure evil” exists, however, is separate from what happens to our judgments and our behavior when we believe in its existence. It is this question to which several researchers have recently begun to turn. How can we measure people’s belief in pure evil (BPE) and what consequences does such a belief have on our responses to wrong-doers?

According to this research, one of the central features of BPE is evil’s perceived immutability. Evil people are born evil – they cannot change. Two judgments follow from this perspective: 1) evil people cannot be rehabilitated, and 2) the eradication of evil requires only the eradication of all the evil people. Following this logic, the researchers tested the hypothesis that there would be a relationship between BPE and the desire to aggress towards and punish wrong-doers.

Researchers have found support for this hypothesis across several papers containing multiple studies, and employing diverse methodologies. BPE predicts such effects as: harsher punishments for crimes (e.g. murder, assault, theft), stronger reported support for the death penalty, and decreased support for criminal rehabilitation. Follow-up studies corroborate these findings, showing that BPE also predicts the degree to which participants perceive the world to be dangerous and vile, the perceived need for preemptive military aggression to solve conflicts, and reported support for torture.

Regardless of whether the devil actually exists, belief in the power of human evil seems to have significant and important consequences for how we approach solving problems of real-world wrongdoing. When we see people’s antisocial behavior as the product of an enduring and powerful malice, we see few options beyond a comprehensive and immediate assault on the perpetrators. They cannot be helped, and any attempts to do so would be a waste of time and resources.

But if we accept the message from decades of social psychological research, that at least some instances of violence and malice are not the result of “pure evil” — that otherwise decent individuals can, under certain circumstances, be compelled to commit horrible acts, even atrocities — then the results of these studies serve as an important cautionary tale. The longer we cling to strong beliefs about the existence of pure evil, the more aggressive and antisocial we become.  And we may be aggressing towards individuals who are, in fact, “redeemable.”  Individuals who are not intrinsically and immutably motivated by the desire to intentionally cause harm to others. That may be the greatest trick the devil has ever pulled.

Until recently, most researchers believed that sociopathy is not treatable (see some of the articles on treatment at this site hosted by the Society for the Scientific Study of Psychopathy). In fact, when you read some of the articles or see interviews with particularly some of the earlier scientific researchers involved with sociopaths (Hare?), it seems pretty clear that some of them have a belief in pure evil, so it's easy to see how sociopaths got labeled "irredeemable" initially.

The possibility of treatment and change has been one that I've been thinking a lot about, now that I (through therapy and the process of writing and promoting the book) finally feel like I have come to terms with myself in a way that both acknowledges and accepts my sociopathic tendencies, while not allowing them to hamper or restrict the way that I want to live my life. Less and less does my identity center around being sociopathic. I may never be normal, but I am forming a sense of self and learning how to identify and experience my emotions in a way that I never thought would be possible even a year ago. Because I still feel like I am in transition, I've been hesitant to speak too much about it or about anything related to sociopathy. But it does sort of bother me that part of that hesitancy is the concern that people will not receive the news well -- that I will be thought of as a sell-out by other sociopathically minded individuals or that I will be further derided as delusional or a fraud for having ever understood the term "sociopath" to describe me. This is too bad. I wish it were possible for us to believe that someone might have been a validly diagnosed sociopath but still was able to make lasting changes, possibly to the point where she could no longer be diagnosed as such anymore. I have my own personal reasons/biases for wanting to believe that story, but I also think in general it's one that we should try to believe in because it is one of hope and redemption instead of hopeless submission either to the evil inside us or to the evil outside us. But I'm not sure that's where we're at right now, unfortunately. 

Thursday, August 7, 2014

Criminal psychopath and the PCL-R

It must be psychopath week at NPR, because a reader sent me yet another article on psychopaths. This time the focus is on the plight of a criminal who gets diagnosed a psychopath and then is denied parole on the basis of that diagnosis, as well as the legitimacy of a three hour test that basically determines your personality/predispositions/fate -- the PCL-R. The most personally interesting part was the simple explanation of the origins of the original PCL:
"Science cannot progress without reliable and accurate measurement of what it is you are trying to study," [Dr. Robert Hare] says. "The key is measurement, simple as that."

And so Hare decided to make a way to measure: a test for psychopaths.

Hare sat down with his research assistant and together they wrote down all the personality traits they'd consistently seen in the psychopaths they'd studied. Things like lack of empathy, lack of remorse, manipulation, egocentricity, impulsivity, superficial charm, psychological lying.

For each of these qualities, Hare wrote up a description so it would be clear what he meant by, say, lack of empathy.

Psychologists using the test were supposed to ask the prisoners a series of questions to determine whether the trait was present. If it was there, the prisoner got 2 points; if it wasn't, zero; if the psychologist couldn't tell, 1 point was awarded.

The test listed 20 traits to check, and so Hare called it the Psychopath Checklist. Scores were totaled at the end — 40 was the highest score, but anything over 30 certified the test taker as a psychopath.

Hare next tested his test to make sure that it was "scientifically reliable" — that two people using the test on the same person would reach the same conclusion about whether that person was a psychopath. In research settings, the PCL-R's reliability appeared astonishingly good.

Voila! The test was born.
No magic, no revelation from God, no genetic or brain scan research validating each personality trait either, and, as mentioned many times before, the PCL-R was based exclusively on his work with psychopaths that he had identified in prison using what he believed were psychopathic traits based on his work with psychopathic prisoners that he had identified using what he believed were psychopathic based on his work with psychopathic prisoners . . . In other words, circular. So although the test proved "astonishingly" reliable, whatever that means, it does not mean at all that it is valid.

The article really paints Dr. Robert Hare in a pretty good light, as a pioneer in shining more light on a highly misunderstood disorder. I don't mean to criticize him as a person, and I do believe that his work is remarkably insightful and accurate given that it still represents the very early stages of understanding psychopathy.

I do find it odd that he personally wields so much power with regard to the subject matter -- if you haven't studied with him, if you don't use his test, you're basically nobody in some people's eyes -- which gets back to my point about the cult of experts. Thankfully, NPR also linked to a few other experts weighing in on the PCL-R. Here are some selections (all direct quotes):
  • By foregrounding intrinsic evil, [the concept of] psychopathy marginalizes social problems and excuses institutional failures at rehabilitation. We need not understand a criminal's troubled past or environmental influences. We need not reach out a hand to help him along a pathway to redemption. The psychopath is irredeemable, a dangerous outsider who must be contained or banished. Circular in its reasoning, psychopathy is nonetheless alluring in its simplicity. . . . Although modern psychopathy is more nuanced than its 19th century ancestor, diagnosing it remains an essentially subjective task.
  • Thanks to tools like the PCL-R, instead of wasting limited resources on a few bad apples, the justice system can focus those resources on the majority of offenders -- those who can profit from a second chance and are, more often than not, motivated to change.
  • [E]xperts disagree the most on the personality component of the PCL-R, perhaps because scoring it involves much more subjective judgment than does the criminal history component. Moreover, existing research suggests it is the criminal history component of the PCL-R -- not the (less reliable) personality component -- that is most helpful in identifying those likeliest to commit future crimes.
Does the PCL-R just measure the tendency of someone to re-offend by (gasp) asking them their criminal history? Very forward thinking, very groundbreaking.

Sunday, July 6, 2014

Loving a sociopath child

From a reader:

I have just finished reading your book, Confessions of a Sociopath, and appreciate so much the wider view I have gained as a result.  Having read every published work on sociopathy previous to yours, I had become disheartened by the firmly held clinical theory that all sociopaths are “unredeemable” and therefore not worth the effort to help them to manage to live among “the rest of us” (whoever “we” are).  This is a position without hope for the sociopath or those who happen to love them. 

I spent all of my adult life trying to understand my childhood and how I was different (and therefore somehow less than) the other members of my family.  It was in my graduate education to become a Licensed Mental Health Counselor that I came to understand something that years of therapy had not shown me: that both of my parents and two of my siblings are sociopaths.  A genogram study of my family-of-origin, going back four generations from mine, looks much like that of an alcoholic family: mostly sociopaths with an “empath” or two thrown in for fun.  My antecessors and contemporaries were not the productive-but-easily-bored variety, however.

Fortunately, naming a thing can grant one dominion over it, and this was the effect of that understanding for me.  All the literature pointed to the fact that it was “them” and not “me”’ thus providing me with the permission to “feel” and also the label of “normalcy.”  I determined not to repeat the past.

Unfortunately, though, one of my own children, my only daughter, is also a sociopath.  Her birth 27 years ago provided the impetus for a different view of the “problem.”  How can one not be part of the “problem” while also producing a child, which by all accounts, is “damaged goods?”  Her lack of empathy, fear, and conscience, as well as her intelligence, manifested themselves at the age of 14 months in a single event that I captured in pictures because I was so baffled by it: When I left the kitchen for a brief minute, this child climbed from the floor to the top of a wire-shelved pantry, removed an unopened 5 lb. bag of flour from the top shelf, climbed back down, opened the bag with a sharp knife retrieved from a drawer with a toddler lock on it, and began loading the flour into the cat food dish on the floor to “make them stop crying, and you took too long.” She was angry and NOT worried about the cats.  She was angry with me for leaving the room.  She also moved to “fix” the problem of the crying cats by feeding them in a way she had identified as a means to her own sustenance.  I did not at that time know the significance of that cluster of behaviors. 
                
This child’s lack of fear and empathy caused me so much distress in her early years that her brothers are significantly younger than she is.  I knew I did not have the capacity, and I certainly lacked any sort of empathic filial support, to bring another child into the world until this one was pretty much self-sufficient.  She marched off to kindergarten about the time her first brother was born.  Her entry to school seemed like a much-needed break from the “watchful” parenting and constant lessons in application of the Golden Rule.  However, this was when the real problems began, as public schooling only served to exacerbate the difficulties she encountered in trying to “fit in” with their fungible “rules” and lack of training in any sort of excellence.  We tried private schooling, Christian education, and finally ended up homeschooling her (and her brothers) so that she might adopt a set of values not unlike the ones you described having in your book.  It also became necessary to terminate contact with unproductive and sadistic sociopathic relatives. 
                
All of this served to produce a woman who is beautiful, somewhat ruthless, intelligent, talented, and never governed by her emotions.  I think she cares for her brothers, and she is always checking in with me to make sure she handles relationship and communication issues with coworkers appropriately.  She never emotionally eats or drinks.  She moved to NYC about 3 years ago right under our noses with a man more than twice her age so that she could live the big city life.  She dumped him like a hot potato (on Valentine’s Day, no less!) when he decided that at 60, he might like her to join him in living a slower, more rural life in Iowa.  She went back to NYC and slept on the couches of “people in her network” (“friends” to us empaths), tolerating circumstances for months that more feelings-oriented folks would find intolerable for the sake of her own goals.  She is currently seducing her next “provider” because “it is simply unacceptable for me to live for long in a three-bedroom apartment in this city with two other people without demoralizing them or wanting to ruin them, Mom.”  I do not subsidize her lifestyle because that would be to invite the ruin of us both, and I often feel like the ethereal father of the sociopathic killer on the series “Dexter” working to help her to identify “the code” by which to live the most fulfilling life possible.  I don’t know whether she actually loves me, or not.  I love her deeply, and have thanked God every day that he should give me the daughter I had wanted as a young woman nurturing her precious life in my womb.  I focus on being the kind of mother I need to be, doing what is best for my adult child as I did when she was an infant.  I think she has taken the tools I have given her and put them to mostly good use.  She has taught me not to ask God for what I want, but to be thankful for what I get.
                
I appreciated your view that sociopaths are just different.  This is what makes the world go round, and my belief in an all-knowing and perfect Creator informs me that just as Judas was part of God’s plan for the redemption of mankind through Christ, my daughter has a purpose known to him, too.  I had questions of faith with respect to the definition of words like redemption, sin, forgiveness, remorse, and evil.  I have come to believe that sociopathy cannot be a mistake, but is, rather, an act of creation and for the benefit of mankind.  Sociopaths are fearless, and in difficult times, this is defined as “courage”.  Your book was very helpful to me in the challenge it provided intellectually, maternally, spiritually, morally, professionally, and personally.  I wanted you to know this.  Thank you for taking the time to read this letter. 

Tuesday, April 22, 2014

Problems and (no?) solutions

A certain type of reader of this blog would find this comment to be incomprehensible, stupid, disingenuous, short-sighted, illogical, immoral, deceitful, offensive, over-simplifying, and dozens of other terrible things:

We do not always have a choice as to whom is part if our life. If a close relative or a co-worker is a sociopath, we may need to make room for them in our life. My point is that if there was better awareness and acceptance of sociopathy, there could be better harmony and less pain, destruction, awkwardness, hiding and running away for both sociopaths and empaths. 

Our society has learned to accept, even embrace most genetic, behavioral, physical and mental differences - people deformed by polio, people of different races, creed and religion, homosexuals, bisexual, transexual, people with down syndrome, autism, amputees, blind people, deaf people, etc. Are the sociopaths so different that they should never be accepted? Is our society too rigid to make allowance for them? 

The trouble is that sociopaths intentionally hurt people, whereas all of these other types don't, right? Or is it that those other types might intentionally hurt people, but they don't do it for sport? Or is it that those other types might intentionally hurt people, but sociopaths are so much more effective at it? Or is it that those other types might intentionally hurt people, but the types of hurts that sociopaths do are worse? Or is it because those other types are not categorically defined by their propensity to hurt people, but sociopaths are?

It's kind of convenient to say that sociopaths do terrible things and aren't at all treatable (where is the proof?). It basically allows society to wash its hands of this particular subset of people while providing a palatable scapegoat for all of the nastiness that normal people get up to but can't quite face in each other (or themselves). The tricky part is that a lot of us live in civilized cultures where for most people with psychological issues like this we try to treat them or accommodate them. But maybe you argue that sociopaths don't need to be accommodated because they thrive, you say. But what happens when you identify them and then take away their ability to thrive? If they are outted are they thriving? If they are imprisoned, are they thriving? Once you take away their ability to thrive, then do you treat them? Accommodate them? Never, because they don't deserve better? They don't seem like victims to me. If anything they are always victimizers. But what happens if one or more of them truly become victims? Collateral damage in the service of a greater cause?

Maybe even if they eventually become victim they still deserve what they get because they decide to be that way? They decided to be born with the genetic predisposition and decided to be raised in a particular way to cause them to be a sociopath? But they would chosen to be that way if they were given the choice over again? Would you choose to be who you are if given choice? How about they didn't choose to be the way they are, but they do choose to do the things they do? As much as we all "decide" to "do" the things that we do? So they should be punished just like an empath would for the same crimes? More harshly? Less harshly?

I'm being sincere. Let's hear people's best solutions, not just the first step, but all the steps that follow until we've reached some sort of equilibrium. (Or ignore the real issues and start the personal attacks, as some of you like to handle these types of posts, even though there is nothing at all personal about this post).

[Also, we all agree that there should still be leper colonies, right? Kind of their fault getting leprosy in the first place, and if any of you got leprosy you would voluntarily ship yourself off to some dungeon to rot so as not to risk infecting anyone else? I think that's how Jesus would us to handle it?]

Thursday, March 6, 2014

Manipulation 105

How to turn a hater into a fan, Benjamin Franklin style, from David McRaney's "You Are Not So Smart: A Field Guide to the Brain's Guile". First he talks about how our flawed perception of the world provides ample opportunity for us to be fooled:

The last one hundred years of research suggest that you, and everyone else, still believe in a form of naïve realism. You still believe that although your inputs may not be perfect, once you get to thinking and feeling, those thoughts and feelings are reliable and predictable. We now know that there is no way you can ever know an “objective” reality, and we know that you can never know how much of subjective reality is a fabrication, because you never experience anything other than the output of your mind. Everything that’s ever happened to you has happened inside your skull.

Second, the Benjamin Franklin method of messing with another person's mind:

Franklin set out to turn his hater into a fan, but he wanted to do it without “paying any servile respect to him.” Franklin’s reputation as a book collector and library founder gave him a standing as a man of discerning literary tastes, so Franklin sent a letter to the hater asking if he could borrow a specific selection from his library, one that was a “very scarce and curious book.” The rival, flattered, sent it right away. Franklin sent it back a week later with a thank-you note. Mission accomplished. The next time the legislature met, the man approached Franklin and spoke to him in person for the first time. Franklin said the man “ever after manifested a readiness to serve me on all occasions, so that we became great friends, and our friendship continued to his death.”
***
When you feel anxiety over your actions, you will seek to lower the anxiety by creating a fantasy world in which your anxiety can’t exist, and then you come to believe the fantasy is reality, just as Benjamin Franklin’s rival did. He couldn’t possibly have lent a rare book to a guy he didn’t like, so he must actually like him. Problem solved.
***
The Benjamin Franklin effect is the result of your concept of self coming under attack. Every person develops a persona, and that persona persists because inconsistencies in your personal narrative get rewritten, redacted, and misinterpreted. If you are like most people, you have high self-esteem and tend to believe you are above average in just about every way. It keeps you going, keeps your head above water, so when the source of your own behavior is mysterious you will confabulate a story that paints you in a positive light. If you are on the other end of the self-esteem spectrum and tend to see yourself as undeserving and unworthy [and] will rewrite nebulous behavior as the result of attitudes consistent with the persona of an incompetent person, deviant, or whatever flavor of loser you believe yourself to be. Successes will make you uncomfortable, so you will dismiss them as flukes. If people are nice to you, you will assume they have ulterior motives or are mistaken. Whether you love or hate your persona, you protect the self with which you’ve become comfortable. When you observe your own behavior, or feel the gaze of an outsider, you manipulate the facts so they match your expectations.

This is why volunteering feels good and unpaid interns work so hard. Without an obvious outside reward you create an internal one. That’s the cycle of cognitive dissonance; a painful confusion about who you are gets resolved by seeing the world in a more satisfying way.

By the way, a while ago I posted something about Benjamin Franklin possibly being a sociopath, and people vehemently disagreed:

Like many people full of drive and intelligence born into a low station, Franklin developed strong people skills and social powers. All else denied, the analytical mind will pick apart behavior, and Franklin became adroit at human relations. From an early age, he was a talker and a schemer, a man capable of guile, cunning, and persuasive charm. He stockpiled a cache of secret weapons, one of which was the Benjamin Franklin effect, a tool as useful today as it was in the 1730s and still just as counterintuitive.

Maybe he was not a sociopath, but he certainly had many sociopathic traits. 

Saturday, March 1, 2014

Mental illness for children: Disney's Frozen

I have nieces that are obsessed with the Disney movie Frozen. I haven't actually seen it yet, but they have explained to me the entire plot and I have probably heard them belting out the Let it Go song a couple dozen times. The song is sung by Elsa, the older sister of Anna. Elsa was born different, had special powers that she didn't understand or know how to control. A primary plot point of the movie is watching how Elsa learns to how to become her best self.


Since I am Mormon, I've been also been exposed to the "controversy" of how this movie promotes the "gay agenda" by encouraging children to identify as being gay, which has been hilarious. But, as my sister said "I think it's actually about sociopaths," tongue in cheek. Not surprisingly, however, many people have made serious parallels to mental illness, particularly bipolar disorder:

Disney released a new movie called “Frozen” last month, and in doing so, has provided us all the chance to begin cultivating awareness. The movie showcases two main characters — sisters, Anna and Elsa. Anna is a warm, charismatic social butterfly; her sister Elsa, bourn of a darker nature, and though wildly charismatic too, grows up to be more cold and emotionally withdrawn. These two characters symbolize the conflicting dual-nature of my manic/depressive personality — manifesting the ongoing struggle always, to overcome the great force of inner darkness so that my inner warmth and goodness can shine on through.

Why is this such a big deal for children to have this sort of role model for mental health awareness?

For me, Elsa is an important character not just because she needs to learn to accept herself the way she is, but because the writers show through her just how devastating and terrifying it is to fear your own soul. There is no terror and sadness like that of thinking you are bad and you do not want to be. It leads to a type of self-sacrifice that actually makes you unable to heal. On accident, Elsa's parents taught her to be afraid of herself and the only way to protect others was to sacrifice herself. So she shut herself off from the world, becomes filled with fear, and she never knows love and belonging.

Many people can relate to this archetype, especially people who have been physically or emotionally abused who were told they deserved the abuse because they were "bad" and that if they were just a good person then they would not get hurt. I am glad we finally have a character in mainstream media that shows how trauma can effect you and that bad behavior does not mean you are a bad person. (Which is why I love Elphaba from Wicked and the Beast from Beauty and the Beast.) My son says the most important line in the movie is in the song "Fixer Upper" that the trolls sing where they say: "People make bad choices if they're mad or scared or stressed." For some people if they are scared enough, even their ability to make a choice is taken away from them. I feel like this scene from the movie best shows Elsa's fear and how much she wants to never hurt anyone.

And these types of stories are one of the best ways to introduce children to these sorts of concepts, to teach them that there is nothing evil or insurmountable about mental illness, in themselves or in others. From G. K. Chesterton:

Fairy tales, then, are not responsible for producing in children fear, or any of the shapes of fear; fairy tales do not give the child the idea of the evil or the ugly; that is in the child already, because it is in the world already. Fairy tales do not give the child his first idea of bogey. What fairy tales give the child is his first clear idea of the possible defeat of bogey. The baby has known the dragon intimately ever since he had an imagination. What the fairy tale provides for him is a St. George to kill the dragon. Exactly what the fairy tale does is this: it accustoms him for a series of clear pictures to the idea that these limitless terrors had a limit, that these shapeless enemies have enemies in the knights of God, that there is something in the universe more mystical than darkness, and stronger than strong fear.

Monday, February 24, 2014

The adaptable brain

If you believe that there is at least some genetic component to sociopathy, is it possible to find a workaround? This recent Oliver Sacks article from the New York Times discusses the incredible adaptability of the brain:
While some areas of the brain are hard-wired from birth or early childhood, other areas — especially in the cerebral cortex, which is central to higher cognitive powers like language and thought, as well as sensory and motor functions — can be, to a remarkable extent, rewired as we grow older. In fact, the brain has an astonishing ability to rebound from damage — even from something as devastating as the loss of sight or hearing. As a physician who treats patients with neurological conditions, I see this happen all the time.

For example, one patient of mine who had been deafened by scarlet fever at the age of 9, was so adept at lip-reading that it was easy to forget she was deaf. Once, without thinking, I turned away from her as I was speaking. “I can no longer hear you,” she said sharply.

“You mean you can no longer see me,” I said.

“You may call it seeing,” she answered, “but I experience it as hearing.”

Lip-reading, seeing mouth movements, was immediately transformed for this patient into “hearing” the sounds of speech in her mind. Her brain was converting one mode of sensation into another.

In a similar way, blind people often find ways of “seeing.” Some areas of the brain, if not stimulated, will atrophy and die. (“Use it or lose it,” neurologists often say.) But the visual areas of the brain, even in someone born blind, do not entirely disappear; instead, they are redeployed for other senses. We have all heard of blind people with unusually acute hearing, but other senses may be heightened, too.
***
The writer Ved Mehta, also blind since early childhood, navigates in large part by using “facial vision” — the ability to sense objects by the way they reflect sounds, or subtly shift the air currents that reach his face. Ben Underwood, a remarkable boy who lost his sight at 3 and died at 16 in 2009, developed an effective, dolphin-like strategy of emitting regular clicks with his mouth and reading the resulting echoes from nearby objects. He was so skilled at this that he could ride a bike and play sports and even video games.

People like Ben Underwood and Ved Mehta, who had some early visual experience but then lost their sight, seem to instantly convert the information they receive from touch or sound into a visual image — “seeing” the dots, for instance, as they read Braille with a finger. Researchers using functional brain imagery have confirmed that in such situations the blind person activates not only the parts of the cortex devoted to touch, but parts of the visual cortex as well.

One does not have to be blind or deaf to tap into the brain’s mysterious and extraordinary power to learn, adapt and grow. I have seen hundreds of patients with various deficits — strokes, Parkinson’s and even dementia — learn to do things in new ways, whether consciously or unconsciously, to work around those deficits.

That the brain is capable of such radical adaptation raises deep questions. To what extent are we shaped by, and to what degree do we shape, our own brains? And can the brain’s ability to change be harnessed to give us greater cognitive powers? The experiences of many people suggest that it can.
Can my brain adapt too?

Thursday, January 23, 2014

The worth of souls

I've been thinking recently about the different ways that people value human life. From LDS President Dieter Uchtdorf on how God values human life:

Think of the purest, most all-consuming love you can imagine. Now multiply that love by an infinite amount—that is the measure of God’s love for you.

God does not look on the outward appearance. I believe that He doesn’t care one bit if we live in a castle or a cottage, if we are handsome or homely, if we are famous or forgotten. Though we are incomplete, God loves us completely. Though we are imperfect, He loves us perfectly. Though we may feel lost and without compass, God’s love encompasses us completely.

He loves us because He is filled with an infinite measure of holy, pure, and indescribable love. We are important to God not because of our résumé but because we are His children. He loves every one of us, even those who are flawed, rejected, awkward, sorrowful, or broken. God’s love is so great that He loves even the proud, the selfish, the arrogant, and the wicked.

What this means is that, regardless of our current state, there is hope for us. No matter our distress, no matter our sorrow, no matter our mistakes, our infinitely compassionate Heavenly Father desires that we draw near to Him so that He can draw near to us.



Apart from being a reminder of the impossibly high standard that many religious people are meant to hold themselves to when tasked with loving their fellow man as God loves them (and the great chasm from that expectation to their actual performance), I think this represents an interesting alternative to valuing human life than what has become the fad of late: prestigious job, fancy house, and attractive significant other being the baseline indicators for success, with additional money, celebrity, talent, or power being the true distinguishing characteristics to lift one above the masses of mediocrity. I have been in all sorts of cultures, from where Porsches are considered wannabe striver cars to where owning a bike is the envy of the village, but no matter where you are or what criteria you are using people always manage to find some way to think that they're better than other people.

I'm not suggesting that people stop judging others -- that's for them to reconcile with their own personal beliefs. I just think it's telling to see the different standards the people use to judge themselves and others. I thought the video below was an interesting perspective that happens to be very counter the majoritarian view -- so much so that I imagine many people assume she feels this way just because she does not rate high on attractiveness herself (sour games?). Her view: "I never want to get into this place where I feel like what I look like is more important than what I do . . . . Being beautiful is not an accomplishment." I especially liked the part where she compared humans to how other animals look: "It's absurd when you waste too much time on it, when you look at the perspective of being part of this kind of silly looking species on this planet in this solar system in this universe that is huge and contains life forms we haven't even encountered yet and that are completely foreign to us."


But what is the sociopathic angle to all of this? Maybe that sociopaths also sometimes get judged according to standards that they feel are arbitrary or silly? And if you can see some absurdity to the way that many people value human life, maybe you can better understand how sociopaths feel about adhering to seemingly silly and arbitrary things like social norms? Maybe to let the people know who write to me to tell me, "get your life together and establish a legitimate career" or opining that what I have done with my life is "wholly insignificant" that my value system for the worth of a life is probably a little different from there's? And that's ok. I'm glad some people love their middle class lifestyles because they stabilize society and pay into the welfare coffers for the rest of us bottom feeders. Or maybe I am setting up a pity play -- trying to trigger an emotional response in people who read this in order to promote more tolerance as part of a desperate ploy to prevent further legally sanctioned prejudicial treatment of sociopaths?

Or maybe I've just been thinking about this because it seems like our transition from consumer culture to information culture has made us all connoisseurs and critics of "content," including the people that populate our lives. But I'm not sure that most people enjoy being the subject of other people's scrutiny. Nor could you really say that everybody is fair game, if fair is something you believe in. Because I don't remember asking to be born, much less born the way I am and I can't imagine that most people do/did either. And yet there is such a temptation to become an amateur critic of the humans we encounter. But what a dim view of humanity to believe that there is any morally sound and unbiased basis for sorting people out according to value, ranking something so unknowable as the human soul according to such superficial criteria as "our 'riches' and our 'chances for learning.'" Because out of all of the wonders of this world, humans are the most amazing to me. I guess that's why I like the Mormon doctrine on this point: "Remember the worth of souls is great in the sight of God".

Wednesday, January 15, 2014

Being told you're a sociopath (part 2)

(cont.)

As I asked myself these things, another realization came to me.

I was born with severe astigmatism. We know now, that I hadn’t been able to see much of anything for the first years of my life. But back then, nothing was out of the ordinary. I thought I was perfectly normal and so did the people around me. It wasn’t until I started reading, writing, and watching TV. My parents noticed how I would sit right up to the screen, and burry my nose in the paper to read or write. Still, I was completely oblivious. My world was the blur that it had always been. Then, one day, my mom picked me up early from school and said we were going to the doctors. On the way, she asked me if I could see. I told her that of course I could. She stopped by a red octagonal sign and asked me to read what it said. I told her it didn’t have any words on it.

I got glasses a week later and I’ve been wearing them ever since.

The point was that I didn’t know what my mother meant when she asked me if I could see before I got to wear glasses and truly see the world for the first time. I didn’t think that the world could be anything other than what my eyes had always told me it was. Nothing could have suggested otherwise because I had no idea what the word “see” really meant.

Which is what I think happened with the word “sociopath.” How could I have connected the dots and seen such a thing in me if the word had no meaning for me? Only now, years later, do I look back and laugh at all the times I would get into social pitfalls and awkward situations because I had no clue what was wrong with the people around me. I see now it was me. I would focus, like you, on all those little moments when I had convinced myself I was normal. Back then it was the world that was different and full of crazies.  

Reading your book was like a revelation. That mask of normalcy you speak of, only now do I realize how hard, how draining it had been to keep up pretenses for so long! But because I had never really considered it a mask at all, having it fall now became this boulder crashing off my shoulders. Every smile, every forced emotion, was like I was trying to pick up that boulder and toss it back on me.

Granted, I’ve been slowly getting my game face back on. It’s been getting easier to regress into the comfortable routine I had so mindlessly gone through for years, but I know I can never be the same. Just like seeing the world through glasses for the first time, clear and definite, I have now seen behind the curtain of my own self-deception.

Whether an actual doctor will diagnose me as a sociopath I don’t think I will ever know. I have no intention of going to a therapist or talking to someone about this and, even if I am ever forced to, I’ll lie my way out of it with a clean bill of health.

The only person that will probably ever hear this story, or know what I have gone through for the last few months, is you. I had to tell someone, and you were the only one I knew I could tell. I don’t need confirmation from you about what I am, although your opinion would be much valued. Like I said in the first paragraph, just a reply would be nice so I know you are real and not just a book and a website.

It's interesting how similar this story is to my own story and others that I have heard. The first time I really thought about what the word sociopath meant, I was in my early twenties. I was doing a summer internship with someone who became a fast friend. It was very similar to the class about Evil -- she was very interested in theology and Mormonism, so I told her all of my opinions on morality and she told me I really should consider the likelihood that I was a sociopath. When I looked up what the word meant, I immediately recognized certain aspects about me, but there were other things that didn't seem to quite fit. I didn't really identify with the label right away, or at least I had my doubts. In the five years or so after that informal diagnosis and before my official diagnosis, however, I became better able to assess not just my own behavior, but to better understand the behavior and motivations of empaths. There were many things I shared in common with empaths, particularly superficial similarities. But I slowly started to realize that even though I often had similar behaviors to empaths, my motives were very sociopathic. And seeing things in that way was very similar to having my vision of myself and others suddenly coming into focus. 

Does anyone else have a similar story?

Saturday, November 23, 2013

More on the appeal of blood lust

I've been thinking about the blood lust post and all the comments it generated. When I published the first blood lust post, I didn't feel like I had anything to say. I didn't really feel like I had any predilection for violence for the sake of violence. -- some violent impulses, maybe, but not necessarily for the sake of violence. But I was thinking about everyone's description of blood lust and how good it felt. I have been daydreaming about it since, just to sort of imagine myself in that position.

The other night I was walking along a bicycle path around a university. It wasn't my city, I was there for business. The anonymity of being in a different place at night was intoxicating. I was an unknown, at most a shadow to anyone out that late. I was following this girl, who looked like a student. It was dark, but she was smoking, so she was easy to follow, and she was going in the direction I needed to go anyway.

I started thinking about how vulnerable she was. I didn't think she noticed me behind her at first, so I walked a little faster so I was closer to her. I wanted her to slowly become aware of me. I wanted her to wonder who I was but not want to turn around and look, not want to betray the fear and apprehension she felt at having some unknown entity behind her. I could tell that she was starting to feel nervous by the way her pace sped up ever so slightly. I thought for a moment what it would be like to come up behind her, softly softly with a knife, poke around in the front of her neck until I felt some slight resistance indicating one of those fat veins, and pull it forward, just enough tension to sever the soft tissue.

I was a little surprised how much pleasure I was getting from the little fantasy. I was surprised at how susceptible I was to the allure of violence, even though I had never really felt that way before.

It reminded me of the how I trained myself to be sexually attracted to the same sex. I was always open to it, always was attracted to certain people for their strength or for their unique worldview, was always an equal opportunity seducer when it came to gender. However, I wasn't really sexually attracted to members of my own sex -- not at first. But I realized that there was such pleasure to be had in expanding my horizons, so to speak, and certainly no point in making fine distinctions based on the equipment people were born with. So I started incorporating members of the same sex into my fantasies. At first I would do everything normal, would think of someone of the opposite sex, like I was accustomed to do, but just before I reached a climax in my auto-arousal, I would substitute someone of the same sex instead. As I got more used to that, I would try to replace the heterosexual companion earlier and earlier in the session, until finally I could have a completely same sex, successful experience. Now same sex attraction is second nature to me.

Similarly, I think I could really learn to love the sensation of blood lust. Or bestiality or pedophilia or any other fetish that people are into these days, really. The ease with which I can train my brain to find new things pleasurable is both empowering and disturbing. It's like molding putty when I'm doing it, but sometimes I worry about doing the undoable. You read about these people who start out small, with little indulgences, then slightly bigger indulgences, then more and more frequently until they really can't stop themselves from destroying themselves and others. To me, the pleasures I could get from blood lust in the moment would not be worth that risk, but now I can see the appeal.

Saturday, November 16, 2013

Empath hypocrisy

I'm not saying all empaths are stupid and illogical, although some of them are. Similarly, there are some sociopaths that are stupid, horrible, evil, or whatever else. But let's focus on illogical empaths for a second. This is from a recent comment:

I'm an empath.
I believe that all humans are born with free will.
I believe that every human life is intrinsically valuable.
I believe that good and evil exist as absolutes, even if at times it is difficult to distinguish between them.
I believe that sociopaths are evil. 
If I could find an effective way to screen for you guys without too many false positives, then I would kill you as children. Of course, given that you are master manipulators I can already see you arguing your way out of a corner, convincing the other empaths that I am the evil one for suggesting the killing of children, suggesting that there is some error in my detection system. 
How many times do you have to burn your fingers before you realize that fire is hot? In love, you get back 100 times what you give. 
In war you fight to win.
I know I'm right. 

Now, I am not great at understanding sarcasm, so it's possible this was said with tongue firmly planted in cheek. But I have heard enough very similar statements from other people that I believe this person was being sincere. This person believes that every human life is intrinsically valuable but would kill sociopathic children? Really? Kill small children in a genocide? Just as long as the test wouldn't lead to "too many" innocent deaths due to "too many false positives"? Wow. Ok. An "empath" who seems not at all capable of understanding (must less empathizing with) someone sociopathic. Also, this person absolutely certain he is right. Good to know. 

Thursday, September 26, 2013

Pushback (part 2)

The reader responds:

Thank you for your response, but I think your missing the gist of what I was saying. First off, who says being sexually attracted to the same sex is wrong? That's merely a matter of opinion, so there is no factuality involved in that idea. Secondly, if you read carefully what I wrote you'd see that I never said that thoughts are more important than actions. I said that the only thing that really matters/matters most of all in the end is INTENT and even alleged sociopaths who claim to be devoid of conscience and ignorant of others' feelings have that. Thoughts are the mid-way between actions and intent. One acquires intent, then thinks about how to manifest it and follows through with acting on thoughts bred of intent. What you think or do is subservient to what you are actually trying or intending to think or do. It's a person's intent that shows them for what they really are. Actions fail, thoughts deviate, intent remains from begining till end and is therefore, most relevant and important. Intend-think-act...intentions come first and are the basis for all else. They can be hidden from others, falsely projected as something they are not or used as a justification for any lame thing done but a person knows what they mean to do, even a sociopath. In regards to Mormonism, I'm no expert at all but I have grasped the basic beliefs of the religion. As I said, I was raised in the church, but I am no longer an active member nor do I suscribe to their basic belief system or even consider myself an actual Mormon. While I feel they are good people with all good intentions (the most important thing) I think they are a bit jaded on the workings of the hereafter and I have a big problem with their denying women the privilege of holding the priesthood, something which I believe women are naturally better suited for anyway. And what about the fact that not until the 70's could african american men hold the priesthood? These issues (among numerous others) don't jive with me but that is a whole other subject for a different time. You are the one who claims to be an upstanding Mormon who "even teaches Sunday school" (your words). My question/issue is how can a real sociopath be a truly good Sunday school teacher? That's a bit scary to me. Sociopaths are the epitome of selfishness so why would a sociopath desire to be a teacher of any sort? It's not particularly prestigious and is one of the most selfless positions anyone could wish to hold. Neither of these jive with sociopathy. Why are you a Sunday school teacher if you have no regard or thought of other people's feelings? This again, comes down to intent. What are your motivations/ ultimate intentions for doing good works (like teaching Sunday school)? Are they selfish or selfless? Is it about control? Is it to be a God someday?....because as I said, if that's all it is Good Luck! You're supposed to do something like teach Sunday school in order to help children to be the best that they can be, which is for you, apparently, God. You don't teach it so that YOU can become a God, rather you teach it in order to help THEM become Gods. A pretty basic premise which may have  eluded you. Going through the motions of being a "good person" doesn't mean anyhting if your intentions and motivations are selfish (i.e to be a God). Good works should be born of selflessness, otherwise they're not as good as they should be. On the other hand, if you're a Sunday school teacher for the correct reasons (to help those kids be the best they can and reach God-stage) then I guess you wouldn't really be a sociopath as you would clearly be excersisng a conscience and be caring for the well-being of others. Then what would you have? Your identity would be lost (as it seems to be largely, or wholly, based upon your alleged sociopathy) and you'd be saddled with the responsibility of caring about how you make others feel and selfless actions in order to be a halfway decent person. If cognitive empathy is possible, and it is, perhaps you should try. Your life would be much fuller and you claim intelligence. It sounds like your sociopathy wasn't something you were born with, but rather a coping mechanism that you adopted as a child because you didn't get the kinds of emotional responses and attention from those closest to you (parents) in order for you to feel genuinely cared for, appreciated and loved (and in turn be able to care about and love others). Kids learn mostly through example, so if your mom was the distant detached individual that you paint her as every time things became emotional with the person closest to her (your father) well then, it makes sense that you learned to mimic such behavior and took it to the extreme, as you sound like a pretty thorough person. Everyone needs specific types of attention as a child in order to become the best that we can be (which entails selflessness, not selfishishness). Very few of us get it.You just deal as best you can, which is always possible to do without hurting others. Kids do crazy things in order to get attention (as you did) and even negative attention is attention. When those efforts fail, well, we all deal differently. But, your supposed to look at your parents and figure out exactly what you DON'T want to be, not take on their worst qualities or turn into them. Caring for others is a learned behavior in a big way. It's harder for some than others, but for those with half a brain it's always possible. I have a smart kid who is on the autism spectrum and he's figuring it out. I can see that he's the type of person who, if he never got the correct types of attention from those closest to him, may very well grow up as someone like you. But he won't. He'll definitely easily succeed at whatever he chooses to do, as you claim to have done, but he's going to be happy inside (and have to hurt too) because he can feel other people. Maybe you're using the label of sociopath as an excuse to not have to feel (it hurts) or take responsibility for lame stuff you do/did. You've also created an entire identity through it and a life that, to a big extent, seems to revolve around it. In your case, your parents clearly didn't give you what you needed (emotionally), but get over it. It's done.You're not stupid and claiming to be a sociopath is most likely a cop-out. Yea, there are alot of sociopaths out there, but all of the real ones are weak, ignorant and stupid. All of those conniving and calculating people who are labeled sociopaths are simply people who didn't get everything they needed when they were young and/or were hurt horribly which resulted in them feeling horribly hurt. There vicious and vile actions are responses to the pain that was inflicted on them, their spite. But you  can't feel hurt without a conscience and these people did/do and it's the reason for all of their vile deeds. Real sociopaths aren't created (those are simply kids who've been fucked up by those closest to them) they are born that way (stupid and mentally and consciously lacking). In regards to your motivation for being a Sunday school teacher, if it's to be a God then your acting in an utter opposite manner of godliness. Believe me, I'd love to make it to God status too but I'm pretty sure that it's gonna take alot more than correct actions and a selfish desire. I think you need to care about people too...and those Mormon Sunday School kids are going to be needing someone who really and truly DOES sincerely care in order to end up with healthy heads because the whole Mormon thing is a mind-fuck for a thinking kid.

My second and last response:

Ah, I see. I guess then that what we largely disagree about is that what "really matters/matters most of all in the end" is intent. As you said regarding whether same sex attraction is wrong, it seems to me to be largely a matter of opinion and not of fact.

I teach Sunday School because they asked me to and I think they asked me to because I'm good at it. I like to perform and teaching is like performing. I like to get people to think about different things or see things in different ways (like I do in the book and the blog). I think I have learned to care for others. I'm not sure what having a conscience has to do with caring for others. As I see it, a conscience is largely built on feelings of guilt, which I don't really have. But I can want to do "good" things for other reasons than just to avoid feelings of guilt. Why not just because I like to? Because it makes me feel good to be liked or to do something well?

I take responsibility for what I do. That's what writing the blog and book is all about, understanding what exactly was the nature of the things that I have done and who I am. I don't necessarily care about the label sociopath. It wouldn't make me sad to not be a sociopath. Spending all of this time writing and thinking about it has been interesting, particularly since I have mainly focused on myself and how the diagnosis does or does not map onto my own perceptions and behavior, however my life has never revolved around the label or diagnosis. The book and the blog are basically just 20% of my life. I have feelings. I feel happy, disappointed, stressed, angry. I just have a hard time giving them meaning or context. I don't feel upset with my parents. I like them, particularly my mother. I don't hold grudges. I like being around my family and friends. I have a normal and happy life. I'm not sure what you think I am trying to avoid in life (cop-out) by identifying with the term sociopath. Do you think it's possible that I am not completely self-deceived?

I'll tell you a quick story. When I scheduled an appointment to get diagnosed, I was very busy at the time. The psychologist sent me several tests ahead of time called self-report tests where you just fill in bubbles that apply to you. There were hundreds of questions and I didn't feel like I had enough time to fill them out before I had to meet with him, so I sent them to my closest friend to fill out for me, who filled them out knowing me as well as she does. It turned out that I did have enough time to fill them out myself, but I was still curious about whether my answers differed from hers so I compared them. Her responses were different from mine in only a handful of the hundreds of responses. I think I was a little surprised at how consistent our responses were with each other. I sent the responses off to the psychologist and ended up scoring in the 99th percentile for psychopath on those tests, even when compared against both genders and all age groups. If I lied and manipulated those tests to score high on sociopathy, I also must have lied and manipulated in the exact same way consistently around my friend for the past decade and more. I must have lied and manipulated before I even knew what the word sociopath meant, since I was a child and all through my adult life. It's possible that the test scores don't accurately reflect my true personality. I probably am smart enough to manipulate the tests to a certain extent, but why would I? And some of the tests I took I was not at all familiar with, so I wouldn't have known what the "sociopath" answer was "supposed" to be. I just answered as I understood myself to be. And according to those tests performed by an expert in the field, my results were consistent with sociopathy. And I teach Sunday School. These things that I've said about myself happen to actually be true. And they can seem like a contradiction, but so do a lot of things (I am both an easy-going and aggressive driver and maybe you are a strict but loving mother).

I disagree with you that the "real ones are weak, ignorant and stupid" and I think a lot of prominent psychologists would disagree with you as well. If not, if you're right, if I have to be weak, ignorant and stupid to be a sociopath then I guess I am not actually a sociopath.

Anyway, I don't know if this has cleared anything up for you. I think I understand what you're saying, I just disagree about a lot of your underlying assumptions, I think. Which is fine. Maybe you're right and I'm wrong.

In any case, best of luck with your son. 

Saturday, September 21, 2013

Not feeling bad about not feeling bad

I thought this story from a reader was very interesting, particularly the parallels with my own life. I especially find her thoughts about religion to be very familiar:

I just recently started doing research on sociopaths.  Years ago a girl that knew me well said she thought I might be a sociopath but I brushed it off thinking that I’m nothing like the monsters sociopaths are portrayed as.  That’s why I find your website so refreshing.  Its not claiming all sociopaths are the same, nor are they always people that should be avoided at all cost.  Last week again I had someone close to me say they think I have sociopathic tendencies.  I started reading from your website and I do see a lot of similarities.  I’ve always felt different from everyone else.  I have an very emotional mother and growing up I could never understand her reactions to things.  Most of the time when I see anyone get emotional or upset by something it’s not like I don’t care, I just don’t feel it. I want to understand it like a puzzle.  I’ve always struggled with the concept of guilt.  I grew up in a very religious family and feeling remorse and repentance for your mistakes is considered to be key for forgiveness of sins.  I’ve always really struggled with what guilt is exactly because when I’ve done things I know I shouldn’t have, I don’t get an emotional response.  Me knowing it’s wrong is always based on logic and knowing what’s expected of me.  When I have done something wrong I do regret it but it’s usually because I see it as a failure on my part to live up to an expectation that either I or others have placed on me and I hate feeling like I don’t have control over myself or I have failed in anyway.  I know I have been cruel to people before and have messed with and manipulated people’s emotions.  When I was young I did it because watching how easily people could believe something or be manipulated was entertaining.  Now it’s usually only when I feel wronged or slighted and I never feel bad about it because it does seem justified.

I have a great job, a few close friends and overall I think I’m a very stable person but I do feel different.  I was disconnected from my family entirely for a year and I never felt an emotional sense of missing them.  My parents are normal people, never abused me, always supportive so when I hadn’t seen or talked to them for a long time I was hoping I would feel something but I mostly just felt indignant and irritated when I asked for help with different things and they ignored me.  On the reverse side while I usually get bored with guys very quickly there was this one guy that was almost impossible for me to let go of.  He has a PhD in psychiatry and he’s always fascinated me.  Whenever I saw him do something to intentionally irritate or passive-aggressively insult a friend simply because they told him something he didn’t want to hear I became more drawn to him.  Everything about our time together was intense but I would feel this gaping sense of loss any time he had to go or I didn’t see him for a while.  Even now I compare other guys to him and I can’t be bothered.  I don’t know why with one guy I could miss him so intensely but with my own family I feel so indifferent.  I don’t want to be a difficult person to be around but whenever I want something and I see a way of getting it I instinctively start shifting and manipulating the people around me to get it.  I think what I want usually benefits other people as well so I don’t feel bad about it and when a close friend who knows how I am calls me out and tells me she feels played I can’t help but feel she’s missing the bigger picture. I have also done a lot for the people close to me. I’ve gotten them jobs, found them nice places to live and helped them out of bad relationships.  I don’t think I’m a bad person or ‘evil’ and yet I am so disconnected from the people around me.  I mentioned I’m religious.  I do believe in God but recently I’ve had people in my religion ask me ‘heartfelt’ questions.  They’re the only questions I’ve ever struggled with.  I found myself trying to take apart the meaning of the questions, remember if I had heard other people express their answers before and guess what they wanted to hear because inside I didn’t understand, there was nothing indicating how I felt about it.  Explain why I want to be part of the organization, how guilt and repentance have motivated me to correct my actions; deep down I still don’t really think anything I’ve done has been all that bad.  Knowledge of the consequences and not wanting to see myself as a failure have taught me not to make the same choices.  I do want to make God happy but I don’t see why my actions or way of thinking would make him unhappy.

I read an excerpt from your book online just now and just in the small portion I read I see a lot of similarities.  When I was a teenager I had this girl I couldn't stand and I used to break into her house and rearrange little things around her room and memorize snippets from her diary to work casually and discretely into regular conversation to mess with her.  I even get the staring thing, I constantly have people think I'm glaring at them or trying to seduce them because I don't look away like most people. I just read a couple paragraphs but I think I'll have to buy a copy soon and take a read. It's interesting some of the things I recognise in myself. Even putting myself in life threatening situations... almost bleeding out on a camping trip because I didn't want to call attention to my injuries, look weak or have people try to assist me when I figured I could deal with it on my own.

I’m emailing I guess for curiosity and understanding.  I know this is the way I am and I don’t think it’s ‘bad’, just different.  I struggle with having to control myself, I want to have fun, I want to take chances and I enjoy seeing how one action can lead to a ripple effect in my favour but I don’t think I’m dangerous or need to be fixed I just want to know if that’s how sociopaths sometimes feel.  Like I said, I just started looking into this and I’m not saying I am a sociopath or think it’s terrible if I am. I just want to know more.

In my religion, there are a lot of people who think that emotions are the way that God speaks to you or a sign of true repentance (godly sorrow). But that's not necessary. As LDS Elder Richard G. Scott taught:

A testimony is fortified by spiritual impressions that confirm the validity of a teaching, of a righteous act, or of a warning of pending danger. Often such guidance is accompanied by powerful emotions that make it difficult to speak and bring tears to the eyes. But a testimony is not emotion.

And why would we need to feel things? Why would God make a group of people who were doomed to hell the moment they were born that way? But some religions believe that, I guess. Also some people believe that gay people are going to hell?
 
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