Showing posts sorted by date for query born this way. Sort by relevance Show all posts
Showing posts sorted by date for query born this way. Sort by relevance Show all posts

Friday, December 25, 2015

The self-violence of conscience

This ("Against Self-Criticism") was an interesting Adam Phillips piece in the London Review of Books about the harm that conscience often causes in the bearer due to self-judgment. Excerpts:

Lacan said that there was surely something ironic about Christ’s injunction to love thy neighbour as thyself – because actually, of course, people hate themselves. Or you could say that, given the way people treat one another, perhaps they had always loved their neighbours in the way they loved themselves: that is, with a good deal of cruelty and disregard. 
***
‘The loathing which should drive [Hamlet] on to revenge,’ Freud writes, ‘is replaced in him by self-reproaches, by scruples of conscience, which remind him that he himself is literally no better than the sinner whom he is to punish.’ Hamlet, in Freud’s view, turns the murderous aggression he feels towards Claudius against himself: conscience is the consequence of uncompleted revenge. Originally there were other people we wanted to murder but this was too dangerous, so we murder ourselves through self-reproach, and we murder ourselves to punish ourselves for having such murderous thoughts. Freud uses Hamlet to say that conscience is a form of character assassination, the character assassination of everyday life, whereby we continually, if unconsciously, mutilate and deform our own character. So unrelenting is this internal violence that we have no idea what we’d be like without it. We know almost nothing about ourselves because we judge ourselves before we have a chance to see ourselves.

Freud is showing us how conscience obscures self-knowledge, intimating indeed that this may be its primary function: when we judge the self it can’t be known; guilt hides it in the guise of exposing it. This allows us to think that it is complicitous not to stand up to the internal tyranny of what is only one part – a small but loud part – of the self. So frightened are we by the super-ego that we identify with it: we speak on its behalf to avoid antagonising it (complicity is delegated bullying). 

Like a malign parent it harms in the guise of protecting; it exploits in the guise of providing good guidance. In the name of health and safety it creates a life of terror and self-estrangement. There is a great difference between not doing something out of fear of punishment, and not doing something because one believes it is wrong. Guilt isn’t necessarily a good clue as to what one values; it is only a good clue about what (or whom) one fears. Not doing something because one will feel guilty if one does it is not necessarily a good reason not to do it. Morality born of intimidation is immoral. 
***
Just as the overprotected child believes that the world must be very dangerous and he must be very weak if he requires so much protection (and the parents must be very strong if they are able to protect him from all this), so we have been terrorised by all this censorship and judgment into believing that we are radically dangerous to ourselves and others.
***
The first quarto of Hamlet has, ‘Thus conscience does make cowards of us all,’ while the second quarto has, ‘Thus conscience does make cowards.’ If conscience makes cowards of us all, then we’re all in the same boat; this is just the way it is. If conscience makes cowards we can more easily wonder what else it might be able to make. Either way, and they’re clearly different, conscience makes something of us: it is a maker, if not of selves, then of something about selves; it is an internal artist, of a kind. Freud says that the super-ego is something we make; it in turn makes something of us, turns us into a certain kind of person (just as, say, Frankenstein’s monster turns Frankenstein into something that he wasn’t before he made the monster). The super-ego casts us as certain kinds of character; it, as it were, tells us who we really are; it is an essentialist; it claims to know us in a way that no one else, including ourselves, can ever do. And, like a mad god, it is omniscient: it behaves as if it can predict the future by claiming to know the consequences of our actions – when we know, in a more imaginative part of ourselves, that most actions are morally equivocal, and change over time in our estimation. (No apparently self-destructive act is ever only self-destructive, no good is purely and simply that.) Self-criticism is an unforbidden pleasure: we seem to relish the way it makes us suffer. Unforbidden pleasures are the pleasures we don’t particularly want to think about: we just implicitly take it for granted that each day will bring its necessary quotient of self-disappointment, that every day we will fail to be as good as we should be; but without our being given the resources, the language, to wonder who or what is setting the pace, or where these rather punishing standards come from. How can we find out what we think of all this when conscience never lets go?

I know plenty of people who have this relationship with their consciences. It's kind of sad but more disturbing.

And finally a fascinating support of different forms of expression and the interpretations thereof:

After interpreting Hamlet’s apparent procrastinations with the new-found authority of the new psychoanalyst, Freud feels the need to add something by way of qualification that is at once a loophole and a limit. ‘But just as all neurotic symptoms,’ he writes, ‘and, for that matter, dreams, are capable of being “over-interpreted”, and indeed need to be, if they are to be fully understood, so all genuinely creative writings are the product of more than a single impulse in the poet’s mind, and are open to more than a single interpretation.’ It is as though Freud’s guilt about his own aggression in asserting his interpretation of what he calls the ‘deepest layers’ in Hamlet – his claim to sovereignty over the text and the character of Hamlet – leads him to open up the play having closed it down. You can only understand anything that matters – dreams, neurotic symptoms, people, literature – by over-interpreting it; by seeing it, from different aspects, as the product of multiple impulses. Over-interpretation, here, means not settling for a single interpretation, however apparently compelling. The implication – which hints at Freud’s ongoing suspicion, i.e. ambivalence, about psychoanalysis – is that the more persuasive, the more authoritative the interpretation the less credible it is, or should be. If one interpretation explained Hamlet we wouldn’t need Hamlet anymore: Hamlet as a play would have been murdered. Over-interpretation means not being stopped in your tracks by what you are most persuaded by; to believe in a single interpretation is radically to misunderstand the object one is interpreting, and interpretation itself.

Wednesday, December 2, 2015

Epicureanism = religion for sociopaths

I have been really into the famous stoic Marcus Aurelius recently. Part of trying to become more aware of my emotions means that I am suddenly sometimes swimming knee deep in terrible emotions, without any practice dealing with any of it or making sense of it. Marcus Aurelius has been a good way to get more zen about things. Quotes like:

"When you wake up in the morning, tell yourself: The people I deal with today will be meddling, ungrateful, arrogant, dishonest, jealous, and surly. They are like this because they can’t tell good from evil. But I have seen the beauty of good, and the ugliness of evil, and have recognized that the wrongdoer has a nature related to my own — not of the same blood or birth, but of the same mind, and possessing a share of the divine. And so none of them can hurt me. No one can implicate me in ugliness. Nor can I feel angry at my relative, or hate him. We were born to work together like feet, hands, and eyes, like the two rows of teeth, upper and lower. To obstruct each other is unnatural. To feel anger at someone, to turn your back on him: these are obstructions."

And:

"The only thing that isn’t worthless: to live this life out truthfully and rightly... patient with those who don’t.”

In a similar vein, a reader rights about the appeal of Epicureanism for sociopaths:

This one is a long read, but I think you'll enjoy it.

http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2011/08/08/110808fa_fact_greenblatt?currentPage=all

Apparently Machiavelli was an Epicurean. Epicurean philosophy: materialist, rational, pleasure-oriented and pro-social. It is very different from Catholocism/Christianity.

Personally, Stoicism appeals to me more. It is basically the same philosophy, but with more emphasis on self-control in all situations. But if you are happy and full of joy and wonder, it is a lot easier to be nice.

If you always remember that you've only got right now to live - and that you'll be dead forever - that makes it a lot easier to be nice to oneself and others.

A selection:

Anyone who thought, as Lucretius did, that it was a particular pleasure to gaze from shore at a ship foundering in wild seas or to stand on a height and behold armies clashing on a plain—“not because any man’s troubles are a delectable joy, but because to perceive what ills you are free from yourself is pleasant”—is not someone I can find an entirely companionable soul. I am, rather, with Shakespeare’s Miranda, who, harrowed by the vision of a shipwreck, cries, “O, I have suffered / With those I saw suffer!” There is something disturbingly cold in Lucretius’ account of pleasure, an account that leads him to advise those who are suffering from the pangs of intense love to reduce their anguish by taking many lovers.

Saturday, November 7, 2015

Not caring to act like caring (part 1)

From a non-English speaking reader:

For a long time I haven't known about I am different from others. For example, if a friend's close relative dies, I always try to act like feel sorry for him/her. But, I thought it was normal and what everybody doing. Well, honestly I never thought about what everybody doing. I didn't care about them. That was all normal to me at least. Because I born this way.

Last year summer I was in some city, visiting my friend. His father is a coroner (I am in med school btw). So, his father asked if I wanna attend one of the autopsies. I said yes. 

Long story short, the guy was shot to dead. Young guy. His sister came in before the autopsy. She was saying something like "Get up my little brother, let's go home." and she was crying. But you know I find it kinda funny because I thought that "He is dead you idiot, How do you expect him to get up?". Well, I know actually it is not funny but it was to me. I've almost laughed at it. I slightly smiled at it so, I turned around and closed my mouth with my hand like feeling sorry. After that I realized something wrong with me. Not wrong actually but different.

So I started thinking about it a lot. I remembered some memories while I was thinking. I looked at internet about it. I read a lot about antisocial personality disorder. Remorse, irresponsibility, impulsivity, lack of empathy, conduct disorder bla bla... It fits perfect. So, I found that I am a sociopath. I like being it but the thing is I cannot stand pretending like I care. My tactic was just being sympathetic but I am right opposite inside. It is too hard to pretend for real. After I noticed it was not what everybody doing, it get harder and harder, day by day. People started to noticed something wrong with me (you are selfish, you are bastard cause you only care yourself, stuffs like that), one by one because I started doing it sloppy. 

The thing is, I don't want to have problems with people. It is just unnecessary but I can't do it anymore. I just try to do not interact with people but I am being the weird boy then, so I get spotted. You know people feel afraid from unknown. Then, that cause anger to unknown. If you don't talk to them you are an unknown. So, they are being hostile to me. 

I read a lot about sociology, psycology, some Dostoyevski books just to find how not to be spotted by them with the least touch. Still didn't find any solution. For now, I have to act if I wanna get some comfort. But I don't wanna fucking act a role anymore. When I communicate I see stupid things about them and it is fucking hard to be kind and act like they're cool, good friends or something. Or listen to them while they talk about their girlfriends/boyfriends, they are being strong because they handle so many difficulties bla bla bla... 

How you people endure this? I really need advice.

M.E.:

Your predicament is the predicament of all sociopaths and is probably the worst thing about being a sociopath. Can I publish what you wrote? People think that we wear masks just to manipulate and get what we want, but a lot of the time (most of the time?) it's because we have to, otherwise people will persecute us.

Just recently I was flying somewhere foreign. The flight attendants handed out the customs, etc. forms for our destination. I was familiar with this country, and knew that I would have time in line to fill out this form, so I planned to fill them out then. About halfway through the flight a flight attendant saw the forms on the seat next to me and asked me (only me) if I had filled them out. Why does she care? I said no and smiled what I thought was a friendly smile. She got irritated with me and demanded that I fill them out. Again, why does she care? But I know there's something about me that rubs people the wrong way, particularly psuedo-authority figures. The week before I got stopped and detained by a private security guard for nothing. A couple weeks before that, I got stopped and detained by the manager of an apartment complex of an acquaintance of mine. This has happened to me my whole life and as overt as this persecution is, there are dozens of little, less noticeable incidents that happen to me weekly.

But I'm so curious, why do you read Dostoevsky to figure out how not to be spotted?

(cont.)

Tuesday, September 29, 2015

"A Special Education"

... the title of this New York Times piece, in which the author relates his experience of suffering from what sounds like would be diagnosed nowadays as oppositional defiant disorder, and consequently being sent to a special education school in which he quickly stopped picking fights because the kids "fought like grown-ups. If you hit someone in the arm, he might hit you back in the face or the genitals." Despite the frequent violence from his peers and common apathy from "the system", he finds himself wondering about the value of the experience: 

Was riding the short bus for three years a good or a bad thing for me? I’m not sure. When I graduated from high school, I could not find New Jersey or Connecticut on a map. But one incident that happened in that first tumultuous year in fourth grade makes special ed invaluable in my adult eyes.

I realized after I got on the bus one morning that I’d forgotten my lunch and that there wasn’t any place near the office building to get food. When lunch period came, I was fearful, not because I’d go hungry, but because any public mistake was routinely seized upon by the other kids. “Idiot forgot his lunch” would make great fodder.

While the others unwrapped their sandwiches and unscrewed thermoses, I waited silently, looking down.

“Hey, man, why aren’t you eating?” a kid asked.

“F’rg’t m’lunch,” I muttered.

A whisper was passed down the table; here it comes, I thought.

A rectangular object wrapped in shiny foil whizzed through the air and hit me in the chest. I opened it and found half a bologna sandwich. An apple rolled my way, followed by half a turkey on rye, which I caught in midair. A bag of chips was slid down to me.

I looked up and all at the table were smiling at me.

“What do you say, Josh?” the teacher asked.

“Thank you,” I whispered to the class.

“Don’t mention it.”

“No problem.”

“You’re welcome, doofus.”

I held my breath in response to the sudden volcano in my belly and quickly shifted my gaze to my shoes, but it was no use. I knew how to squelch emotion in response to violence, but had not known mercy, kindness and warmth, and was not prepared for the waterfall erupting from my face. I sprang up from the table to run away and hide my feelings from the class, but was blocked by one of the teachers’ aides. I ran full speed into her arms, burying my face. She wrapped both arms tightly around me and maneuvered me quickly out into the hall, quietly closing the door behind her. She held me while I gasped and sobbed, my tears and snot staining her dress. She didn’t ask me what was wrong; she just held me. I looked up after a minute and saw she was crying, too.

In that moment I felt for the first time what it was like to be supported and accepted, taken care of rather than yelled at, punished or shunted off, which is how most people react to children who are violent or feral. Special ed got me directly in touch with a deeper place in the same way music would later on.

I think a lot of people see adult sociopaths and gate them and fail to see that they just happened to be born with that disposition with childhood experiences that triggered the development of those traits. I know that children with issues are easy to get angry at and to want to punish or scare straight. If those tactics worked, I would be 100% behind them too. But they don't. Not on these kids. So how can you justify treating a child like that? They may not seem as innocent as other children, but they can't help the way they are anymore than any other child can.

Saturday, August 22, 2015

Finding a sense of self

In the book I wrote something like I identify more as being a sociopath than any other common identity characteristic, e.g. gender, race, nationality, religion, etc.

I was thinking about that as I read this when I was reading excerpts from the book In the Name of Identity : Violence and the Need to Belong, via Brain Pickings:

Identity isn’t given once and for all: it is built up and changes throughout a person’s lifetime… Not many of the elements that go to make up our identity are already in us at birth. A few physical characteristics of course — sex, color and so on. And even at this point not everything is innate. Although, obviously, social environment doesn’t determine sex, it does determine its significance. To be born a girl is not the same in Kabul as it is in Oslo; the condition of being a woman, like every other factor in a person’s identity, is experienced differently in the two places.

The same could be said of color. To be born black is a different matter according to whether you come in to the world in New York, Lagos, Pretoria or Luanda… For an infant who first sees the light of day in Nigeria, the operative factor as regards his identity is not whether he is black rather than white, but whether he is Yoruba, say, rather than Hausa… In the United States it’s of no consequence whether you have a Yoruba rather than a Hausa ancestor: it’s chiefly among the whites — the Italians, the English, the Irish and the rest — that ethnic origin has a determining effect on identity.

[…]

I mention these examples only to underline the fact that even color and sex are not “absolute” ingredients of identity. That being so, all the other ingredients are even more relative.

But why then did I not associate with all of those markers living in the same society as everyone else who had those markers? Why didn't I identify as female and white just like every other white female child of my generation in my general geographic location? It's like I was born with an odd sort of immunity to that sort of socialization. Or maybe it was some sort of child strategy or defense mechanism because in identifying with something, there is vulnerability. Which oddly explains mob mentality, at least in a way that finally explains it in a way that I can sort of understand:

People often see themselves in terms of whichever one of their allegiances is most under attack. And sometimes, when a person doesn’t have the strength to defend that allegiance, he hides it. Then it remains buried deep down in the dark, awaiting its revenge. But whether he accepts or conceals it, proclaims it discreetly or flaunts it, it is with that allegiance that the person concerned identifies. And then, whether it relates to color, religion, language or class, it invades the person’s whole identity. Other people who share the same allegiance sympathize; they all gather together, join forces, encourage one another, challenge “the other side.” For them, “asserting their identity” inevitably becomes an act of courage, of liberation.

In the midst of any community that has been wounded agitators naturally arise… The scene is now set and the war can begin. Whatever happens “the others” will have deserved it.

[…]

What we conveniently call “murderous folly” is the propensity of our fellow-creatures to turn into butchers when they suspect that their “tribe” is being threatened. The emotions of fear or insecurity don’t always obey rational considerations. They may be exaggerated or even paranoid; but once a whole population is afraid, we are dealing with the reality of the fear rather than the reality of the threat.

So is it possible that my weak sense of self and invulnerability to mob mentality are both tied to this odd immunity to identity socialization?

Interestingly my therapist is huge about identity, or maybe he's just huge with me because he knows that I have traditionally lived my life with much of a sense of self. The way he talks, it's as if reconnecting with my identity will be the panacea for essentially all of my primary psychological issues. That's easy for me to buy, at least enough to explore the concept more, because I've always thought that most if not all of my sociopathic traits stem from this inborn or very early acquired weak sense of self.

It's also another interesting example of how seemingly every human trait, and at least sociopathic ones, can be seen as an advantage or disadvantage depending solely on shifting contexts. Like the dark side of empathy, the weak sense of self has allowed me to be this chameleon teflon adherent of instrumentalism. Because I rarely care what others think, I've allowed myself to follow paths in life that are solely of my own choosing (as much as we have(n't) free will to choose).  But I can also see how it contributes to my sense of meaningless and emptiness, which in turn promote my novelty and stimulation seeking behavior, which often isolate me further from human connection.

But if I had to give any unsolicited advice to non-sociopathic readers, it would be to ask yourself why you're so keen to protect and rally behind socialization aspects of your identity that you would sacrifice other more core aspects of your identity, and all only because you've been programmed to think that you need to or it's the honorable thing to do. See somewhat relatedly, Tim Wu on why You Really Don't Need to Work So Much

Sunday, June 21, 2015

"I Can Tolerate Anything Except the Outgroup" -- a review

I dated someone that used to give me a lot of flak for saying that I didn't particularly like white people -- that I was being very racist by saying such a thing. At the time I defended myself. What I meant was that I didn't like the expectations that white people have of me -- to act a certain way or else I'm making a bad name for the rest for "all of us". I got the same vibe often from women and mormons for similar reasons. Sometimes lawyers? Sometimes people of my same generation or social class. Sometimes musicians. If there were ways that I didn't quite fit into my "groups", I felt some degree of conflict over it. In fact, I was thinking the other day about how the racism and other isms that seem to affect me personally the most (not surprisingly being born white and privileged) are the aggressive attempts to include me within a particular group and keep me behaving rather than any attempts to exclude me from anything. But how have I let that all affect me, is an interesting question to explore.

This article "I Can Tolerate Anything Except the Outgroup" was a very interesting article about the way people form group identities and what it actually means to be tolerant of someone who is different from you and how easy it is to deceive ourselves of our level of tolerance (myself included). I guess I realize now more than ever that the fact that although I am fine with certain hated groups like pedophiles (or it used to also include transgendered people back when there was still a predominant ick factor about them in society, does anyone remember that from about a decade or two ago?! It's crazy how fast the world is moving), that doesn't necessarily make me a particularly tolerant person. Because do I have a lot of love and tolerance for moral hypocrites and those that claim to have empathy for every group but none for sociopaths? No, obviously not, and I now see that as a personal failing of mine.

Worth reading in its entirety, here is just the beginning:

In Chesterton’s The Secret of Father Brown, a beloved nobleman who murdered his good-for-nothing brother in a duel thirty years ago returns to his hometown wracked by guilt. All the townspeople want to forgive him immediately, and they mock the titular priest for only being willing to give a measured forgiveness conditional on penance and self-reflection. They lecture the priest on the virtues of charity and compassion.

Later, it comes out that the beloved nobleman did not in fact kill his good-for-nothing brother. The good-for-nothing brother killed the beloved nobleman (and stole his identity). Now the townspeople want to see him lynched or burned alive, and it is only the priest who – consistently – offers a measured forgiveness conditional on penance and self-reflection.

The priest tells them:
It seems to me that you only pardon the sins that you don’t really think sinful. You only forgive criminals when they commit what you don’t regard as crimes, but rather as conventions. You forgive a conventional duel just as you forgive a conventional divorce. You forgive because there isn’t anything to be forgiven.

He further notes that this is why the townspeople can self-righteously consider themselves more compassionate and forgiving than he is. Actual forgiveness, the kind the priest needs to cultivate to forgive evildoers, is really really hard. The fake forgiveness the townspeople use to forgive the people they like is really easy, so they get to boast not only of their forgiving nature, but of how much nicer they are than those mean old priests who find forgiveness difficult and want penance along with it.

Saturday, March 21, 2015

Sociopath?

From a reader:

Firstly, I'd like to tell you that I'm not a native English speaker, so excuse me, if there are any language mistakes.

I think I may be a high-functioning sociopath, but I also can find some definitely non-sociopathic behaviour. First, I have to tell you that I have cerebral palsy, but it's a light form, so I don't have much problems with it. But why i think I'm a sociopath? 

When I was a kid, I had moments in which I felt I didn't have the same feelings as other people. For example, I was never able to feel love to my parents, and therefore to say them: ''I love you'', or to be moved by a song, and I couldn't make many face expressions. Additionally, I was quite well accepted by people, but strangely I was good contacting mainly with the older ones, meaning that I was the loner at school. But I also had that period when I didn't want to meet new people and I was starting to growl and felt anger (I know that there is too much contradiction, right?). Another contradiction is that, while I was the loner at school, I also tried to be with the other kids and to communicate with them, but most of the time I was rejected. 

Later, at middle school, this tendency continued, but (another contradiction) I started chatting to some of my mates on the Internet and in 6th grade we became friends. My behaviour with them wasn't like the one that is expected from a sociopath - many times I was rude and sarcasstic with them, but it wasn't a big deal. Most of these people are still my friends. 

When I entered high school, the same story began. I tried to get in contact with people, but again I was somehow rude to them and I didn't made any friends (maybe here is the place to say that since I was a kid, I've had moments in which I had thought that I'm better without friends). At the second year, the rudeness peaked and I lost any opportunity to have friends at my class. In the summer I went to an excursion in the mountain, and met there three girls, all one year younger than me, and we became friends. On the next school year I had the idea of stay and repeat the school year, so we can be at the same class. It didn't happen, and, additionally, I started behaving extremely rude with my classmates, which worsed my relations with them (that rudeness was a theatre, but i will talk about it at another point of the e-mail). 

Now I'm 18 and I'm 11th grade, second-to-last year high school student. The relations with my classmates improved, but still I don't have friends at my class.

I think some of my problems at school are caused by my incapacity of feel empathy, gulit, fear (to a lesser extent) and remorse. For a contradiction, I have to say that I'm not very risky person, and even had regret missing some opportunities for meeting new people, for example. Another contradiction is that I don't like thinking much about important things. For example, I decided i want to learn Spanish at high school after the first episode of a Spanish TV series.

My personality is something very relative. I have never had any favourite music style, celebrity, etc. Instead I have taken parts of music styles that I like, and I have used them to try a create an image, but I have always failed. When talking with people, I immitate emotions, so I can be appropiate, but I have problem with face expressions. In last years, I have trained myself to be a good liar, and when I'm with friends, or face a problem at school, it works.

Boredom is something I have always experienced. It had led me to a number of things - changing wishes for jobs, becoming bored of people, imagining making friendships with other people, strange behaviour on the Internet (as you see, imaginary things are also a contradiction, but I will clarify this at the other part of the mail), etc.

At my family things are thew following: my parents say I was very good and sociable child, yet I've had also spend much time alone and i was selfish. Here is where my first problems at school started to influence me. At junior school I was the best student - no need to say that I loved being said that I'm smart and intelligent. But in 5th grade I started failing at maths. As my father is very good with maths, he started helping me to learn the things faster. The problem was that I wasn't understanidg anything and he started to yell at me and sometimes even insult me. After that I have always felt bad, but only for a short time. Another problem was my lying. When I had a bad mark at maths, I was lying that the results hadn't come out yet, but in few days I was ending up with an explanation and a dramatic excuse. Later I continued to lie them about other things, but it led to a paradox where in most cases when I lie, they believe me, but in some cases when I tell them the truth, they don't believe me.

I have a brother. He is 16 months old. When I heard I will have a brother, I turned to the calendar, pretending to see if it was the 1st of April, then I said: ''O.K.''
When he was born, I faked a smile at my face. I have never paid him much attention. But some months ago, something interesting happened. 

I was playing with him (very rare thing) an suddenly put my hand on his throat and I felt a crave to kill him. But I stopped for a second, started thinking, and then I felt horrible. The idea of doing it was horrible. But I continued imagining it and I got into a point when I liked the fantasy and even started asking myself: ''If I kill him, would I feel better?'' But I didn't do it. Now I don't have this fantasy. And it wasn't the first time I had experienced it. When I was a kid, I used to imagine myself killing my then baby cousin, and when I was holding a knife, I've had a craving to kill the person against me, and I even was asking myself: ''What it would be if I do it?''

With my relatives I have generally a good connection. The only real bad thing I have done was when my grandma died. She died in front of my eyes. firstly, I didn't feel anything, then I forced myself to cry, and cried for 15 minutes. At the funeral I wasn't crying and I was thinking: ''What's wrong with me?'', but, at the end, I forced again myself to cry and thought: ''I cry, so I'm normal''.

The non-sociopathic part of me is related to my behaviour and there are 2 crucial characteristics. The first one is my imagination. With this one I had fulfilled many of my time, and I still continue to do it. It's very various and includes things both from the real and from fictional worlds. I've had fantasies about making friendships with people, having talents like singing, I invented a parallel government of the youth people in my head and was the primr-minister for a while, I've had imagining ideal love and ways to get to know my crushes, etc. The other one is related with something which I call hyperactivity, and the others are calling it extra energy. It consists in constant walking, or jumping, or running inside and outside with stick, pen, pencil, or whatever similar, and it is a way to express the little bit of emotions that I have (a contradiction to what I've said above, but true), because this emotions are the power of this hyperactivity. I even do it in class if I'm bored (it happens almost all of the time) and is something that people around me know that is a part of me, but some of them, like my parents, are annoyed from it and try to stop me doing it. Recently, emotions aren't the power of this movement, because they don't exist, or if they are, I have to think about an emotion to be able to feel it.

There are two less important characteristics, as they are more recent. One of them is that I was a hypohondriac and had diagnosed myself with diabetes, AIDS, schizofrenia, paranoia, etc. Because of the schizofrenia thoughts I started visiting the school psychologist. Now she knows that I think I'm a sociopath, but doesn't believe I am one. The other one is something that I know is very non-sociopathic. I have a problem with my sexual orientation. When i was 11 I found out that I'm gay (I'm a boy) and as I knew that I find out boys as more beautiful than girls, I was O.K. with that. My friends (they are all girls), also. My crushes were boys from school, mainly younger than me. The only year I had crushes older than me was the first year of high school, as I was among the youngest. The feelings were always different, the time - not too much, and they all were boys that I didn't know personally. However, with the last two of my crushes I had strong feelings and I liked them for a longer time. My last crush was from the class of my friends and even started dating one of them. I was hurt, but overcame this for 2 days.

But even of the time when I liked my second-to-last crush, I had the thought that I may like a girl. It wasn't very important, so I forgot it after a while. But recently I realised that since then there was an emerging feel towards girls, which I still want to eliminate. Now I'm in a situation where I find many boys cute, I even have a crush, and it's a combination of jealous when I see him with another girl, and the knowing that I'm hetero.

That's it. I have more information, but maybe I will post it on the comment section of the blog.

Saturday, December 20, 2014

If it feels this good getting used...

I thought this recent comment on an old post was an interesting perspective:

You act like ALL sociopaths are abusers. That ALL of them are born to hurt and kill. You don't even considered human. ERROR! The whole reason why I'm alive right know is a sociopath. I've had a terrible and abusive life, but because of many reasons my sociopath friend is interested in me. The moments I was about to kill my self he told me "No. Why do you want to die when you know me?" I tried explaining to him all the benefits my death would bring him, but he comely explained that all of it's short term, where me living would be long term. This may seem so terrible to you, but I have PTSD and it's not for me. To me I don't have anything good about me, I suck at everything. I only harm everyone I'm around. To him I'm full of opportunities to benefit him in some way. To him I'm useful. To him it's a game of seeing how long he can hug me before I flinch away because of sexual abuse that happened to me. Sure, his motives isn't like yours or anyone else because they have motive but it's enough to help save a life. How could someone be evil who's keeping me alive at this moment in time?

Wednesday, December 17, 2014

I don't think you're a sociopath

Says a reader:

I don't think sociopathy is inherently some kind of evil thing upon humanity. They are useful people for tasks that most can't do. But I don't think you fit the bill of sociopathy. You fit the bill for a type of antisocial personality disorder that a normal person can obtain, but with the disorder can perform the tasks of a sociopath, but I don't think you're a sociopath.

Well, perhaps you are if you take sociopath as learned and psychopath as inherent... but if you don't do such a thing like modern diagnosis does, and you simple let all the learned APDs take their form in the various other names, you definitely are not a sociopath. 

I think you're just among one of the more common "express pathological capable", and you're much more similar to an empath than you care to admit (because empathic personality is achievable by every person not sociopathic). Sociopathy is born, or irreversibly instilled by damage or early 'wiring'. 


A sociopath can not actually love, because love means to value the person and stay by them even though you found something you think might be a better time. Sociopaths don't do such a thing. You seem to be able to do such a thing. I think you just have one of those very intense APDs that isn't sociopathy that is just self indulging and maintaining child-like behavior.

I don't mean any offense, it's just what I'm noticing compared to what I've researched.

M.E.: No offense taken. If sociopaths can't love at all, then I must not be a sociopath because I feel like I feel love.

Reader:

So the brain varies in many different ways and people just fall along it, of course you know this based on what I've read. The way your describe stuff puts you very analytical. I think that's just the way a person should strive to be. I feel like everyone has it in them to want to hate, cause harm, dislike, "see what if". 

Also, there's this way of thinking that basically anyone can accomplish, where one puts oneself as an observer of life like a show to watch, or one actively participates. I feel like a lot of people just observe, do "what if" and really see no one as important.

Once one immerses one's self into life as something that is important to survival, and so on, and realizes cooperation with a healthy sense of caution is important, it is all better, in my opinion. What with the possibility of life spans somehow miraculouly growing exponentially if some kind of technological singularity breaks lose, however unlikely it is to happen. I'm just saying, it's the way most people just act without realizing why they act that way. I really had to analyze this myself and understand how being good is important.

M.E.: I think I understand a little what you're saying. You're saying that this mindset, that you also share or admire, is normal (or at least natural) and probably better (or more logical?) then the other way of being. But the fact that there is another way of being that most people are that leads to completely different ways of relating to the world and others is sort of what I mean. I understand that people can be sociopathic without being sociopaths. I also believe the current trend in conceptualizing sociopathy is to see it as a spectrum, with people expressing certain traits more than others but all sharing the same basic thought processes. And I also understand sociopathy to be quite common, at least 1% and as much as 4% of the population. So I'm not really one of these people that think that sociopathy is a rare thing and that there is a bright line separating sociopath from normal (and particularly not sociopathic from normal). And yes, of course thinking sociopathically has advantages (for both the individual and society) -- otherwise it wouldn't have arisen as an evolutionary adaptive trait shared by a significant portion of the population.

Reader:

I also just want to point out that the more I try to figure out the reason people do things different, the more they're just similar but raised different. The reason someone gives me for a particularly striking social deviation has always been because this is my experience (or come to find lack of an experience that is common). So of everyone is so different in some analytical way, most people seem to be powerful computers that are simply capable of preferring anything, really.

And I just read one of your latest articles about caring. Tying into what I said last time, and remembering how most people describe children as sociopaths of the worst kind. I really believe people's default level of caring originates from upbringing. Its usually useful. Work together, get more done. Don't feel passive aggressive or be hurtful just for fun, feel more relaxed and ready for tasks. But one should take the power in themselves to not only re-evaluate if they should care less, because some of it is burdensome and pointless... Because what if there are other things to care about?

Intellectually, one may not care about strangers, but if one can train oneself to identifying within strangers the altruistic good behavior (that remains cautious, mind you) then one can safely indulge themselves in on that behavior, only ever going too far to help strangers when identifying such demeanor.

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?]
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