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Showing posts sorted by date for query breaking bad. Sort by relevance Show all posts

Saturday, August 20, 2016

How to break up with a sociopath (part 2)

One of the more popular posts here (not a good sign for the enduring likability of sociopaths) is how to break up with a sociopath, in which I basically advocate to take the time-honored defensive tactic (in both the animal and human kingdoms) -- make yourself as unappealing of a target as possible. 

For whatever reason, this suggestion has been sometimes controversial. People wonder why it is up to them to act like a loser just to throw the sociopath off their scent. I don't know what to say to that, except that not everything in this world is fair and I'm just describing what I have found to work best. 

Here is a recent comment on that post with someone working the system with success:

I was finally able to shake my sociopathic boyfriend by becoming annoying, helpless and whiney about things that didn’t involve him in my life. (I am the most independent, self-sufficient person I know). At first, he was just angry, but nothing changed, he still wouldn't leave me alone, still tried to yank my chain all the time and hurt me. But after a while, me acting like I was a total hot mess got WAY too annoying for him. 

I made it seem that I was no longer playing the game with him, but I was far too preoccupied by other meaningless drama and problems in my life that had nothing to do with him. My health, my aging parents, my boring job……….he had no interest in those things.

Since he lacked the ability to care about when I was going through hard times, and also refused to help me (or anyone) in any way, no matter the situation, he got bored because I was no longer engaging with him, and I seemed like I was on the edge of reason because of other things.

He finally lost interest for good and moved on to other ‘marks’ that were easy prey. He’d check back in every once and a while to see if I was back to my old self whom he could get some sort of rise out of. And I kept up the “helpless, depressed, flighty, hot-mess” persona every single time.

I’m free now, but I know if he had ANY idea how I played him on that one, he’d probably kill me.

Here's another recent comment with someone else not doing what I advised:

After doing a ton of research, and actually finding THIS blog, I figured a lot of things out. And I ended things for good with him. I kept it as short and sweet as possible, but put back his own bad behavior on him, told him I no longer found this acceptable because of what it was doing to me, and told him I was done and I wanted him to leave me alone.

(After researching, that was the wrong thing to do, because a sociopath does not want to be called on their behavior or think anything is their fault, but MY self preservation took priority over his mind games! I was no longer concerned with if he was happy or if I was fulfilling his needs, I was trying to save myself.)

Now he's SUPER angry with me and obsessed with getting me (or rather, what i DID for him previously) back. Not that he wants to be nice or anything, but he's angry at me DESPITE how horribly he's treated me, that I no longer love him.

I think the reason he is angry and will not leave me alone is because I stopped the game. And he wasn't quite ready to stop. I think I took that "power" over the situation away from him by refusing to play. And that's what makes him SO angry and obsessive.

I don't get it. My mind doesn't work that way. He doesn't want ME. He doesn't love ME. He got off on the GAME. He got off on thinking he had power over me because I LOVED him.

Now that's gone and it wasn't on his terms. I had no idea where the game ended and had a feeling the final part of the game was to destroy me. To see me fall apart. I refuse to do that. When I get to that point with a person, I cut and run. I simply cannot allow myself to self-destruct for someone who has done so little for me and who has hurt me so terribly. And in his mind, that's unfair. I didn't let him finish the game. THAT'S why he can't let go.

Your man didn't get to finish his game on his terms.

Nobody has to do anything they don't want to do, of course. But realize that you make compromises to keep the peace in your life all of the time. You may feel strongly about abortion (either way), or politics, or religion, etc. etc. etc. But most of the time you don't go around confronting people on these issues trying to get them to validate your own position, when you should know that they aren't likely to do any such thing and any attempts you make to do so will just lead to a heated argument. Likewise, you wouldn't argue with a three year old about what is their optimal bedtime. The easiest way to avoid a confrontation with a sociopath is not to make a big production out of breaking up with them because you find them to be unsuitable, but to make them think like whatever is happening is their decision and they are in control. Public Service Announcement over!

Friday, November 20, 2015

An sociopath's online journal

A reader writes:

I'm writing because I've recently come across your book and have found it mind blowing.  Particularly so, because it reads as if you are peeling back layers from my mind on every page. You have articulated things I have thought but not been able to express. I also was accused of being a sociopath by someone who had come across one before. I also let it go but felt offended. I am a black, 27 year old who has done pretty well but seem to have hit a wall in my life. I only came across your book by chance and I've not put it down since. It has inspired me to also write an online journal anonymously. I am not sure if I am a sociopath but many of the qualifying traits reside in me perhaps to a lesser extent than yourself. The journal has made me reach into my childhood to find out what is "wrong" with me so to speak.

An excerpt:

I do not think I am a bad person but I can do bad things. Most people tend to like me when they meet me. I genuinely care for people without always feeling any form of emotional compulsion towards them. I'm a generally smiley person, i know it encourages people to let their guard down. I love breaking ice, whether between my teeth or between myself and another person. It's exhilarating. I also have a penchant for the extreme. Though I admit I'm actually scared of most things I do, there is something that draws me to it. The sense of danger, the adrenaline, the suspense and the anticipation of conquering it. 

Sunday, November 1, 2015

Early childhood intervention -- a missed opportunity

From a reader:

I talked with my friend - I've written you about him before - Professor Psychopath. He's from a family with high-functioning psychopaths on both sides. His dad is/was a compulsive gambler, lives off various women, delights in knocking people out in street fights, etc. The mom had similar men in her family - they were literally royals (in their home country). PP is a professor with a lot of bad habits - things like driving down the street the wrong way for thrills. He's as Machiavellian/cold-hearted as they come.

He shared the following with me: when he was young, a teacher noticed he was really shy and had some issues suggesting he might need some help. They did a full battery of tests. The parents kept the information from the kids because - they said - they didn't want the kids to feel bad/good depending on their IQ ranking - all of the kids had genius IQs. These days two of the kids have PhDs in STEM and the other one was a successful entrepreneur. The parents didn't tell them that they'd done general psych tests, so they thought they were just IQ tests.

So today the dad gave him his scores from the psych tests. All he said was something about the IQ, and was proud (as if he had anything personally to do with having an IQ, passing it, on, LOL). Our guy learned today (30 years after the fact) that they'd done personality tests too.

He was surprised to see that they'd had him pegged when he was still a child. They figured that he was very smart, but with lots of problems relating to others, including social anxiety, OCD and aggression. They noticed all things that have made his life (and those in his family) difficult: OCD, social anxiety and lousy impulse control. They noted he had a great ability to strategize and scheme, but little ability to complete things. Total desire/inability to do assigned tasks - he wouldn't follow orders . He did work on tasks that he found interesting.

They didn't label him a "psychopath" or "sociopath", but they did say that given his body/age, they were recommending that he get some psychological treatment and learn to emotionally connect with others and control his anger, lest he become a bully in a few years (which he did). The OCD and social anxiety eventually became debilitating, at which point - decades later - he got treatment. After he got the treatment for anxiety he went on a tear, traveling around the world seducing women. A bit like Walter White (Breaking Bad) the high levels of social-anxiety (manifesting as emotions like fear, shame, envy) kept him in check. Once that lessened  his lack of a conscience, need for stimulation and antisocial bent led to him doing a lot of extreme things.

When he looked at the results, he felt disappointed. The teachers had tried to help. And nothing came of it. He wonders what might have happened if they'd intervened earlier.

He figures his narcissistic dad was too involved in his gambling habit to care. He's so self-absorbed he probably didn't read the report much, and probably ignored the negative stuff. The mom had her head way up her ass - but had she said anything about the kid needing help, the dad would have shut that down - if only because he needed to run the show. He didn't to be the guy with the screwup kid.  It wasn't hard at all for PP to put himself in his dad's shoes (they are VERY similar) and realize how his dad would have thought/felt about the report: "hey, MY kid is super smart. Of course he is. Chip off the old block." And that was it. He didn't act on the information that he could act on.

So PP wasn't too resentful about his dad. He said he had compassion for him; the dad really couldn't have done otherwise. I thought about my own family - very similar situation and way of relating to it - which is why he'd told me. FWIW, my dad only raised me because the government paid him to do it. He took custody of me weeks after it became possible to get paid to raise me due to my mother killing herself. I had to move out of the house as soon as the government checks stopped coming. He spent the money on his hobbies. When my extended family told me about my dad's behavior and motivations, it all made sense. I wasn't particularly bothered with him; what else was he going to do? The most irritating thing for me was that he couldn't be honest about his motivations.

I gave some thought to the phenomenon of diagnosing kids and the families dropping the ball. I know a family with Aspergery/ADD kids. I helped one of them (in his 50s) to do basic tasks that he'd never learned to do. It took me being patient, focused on the goal, creative, etc. I really made a positive difference in his life - the family is very grateful. When they expressed that to me, I was mostly angry with them - why hadn't they done the same thing? It wasn't like it was hard - how hard is it to hold a gun to someone's head to get them to do something? And it would have really helped him out. But then, spending time with them, it was clear why they couldn't help - they were all too Aspergery/ADD/Catlady to make it happen. As soon as the going got rough they would have folded. They were really lucky to have a kind psychopath in their lives.

Anyway, this got me thinking that psychopathic families will relate "psychopathically" to the news they are "special" (with a shrug, or perhaps a prideful, "yes, we're really at our best in crises"). If they get serious about change, they'll detonate their lives - really burn them to the ground - and set up a life with structure (join the military/monastery) and try again. Aspergery/ADD/Catlady families will wring their hands and start a self-improvement program (and then quit it 6 weeks in). Stupid families will be too stupid to integrate the information and do anything.

So in conclusion, perhaps it makes sense that extreme traits in families - creativity, psychopathy, stupidity, ADHD - exist because they are self-sustaining. Eg society will try to get the underclass to behave more like the middle class; it won't work. Society will try to get the psychopaths to behave - they'll ignore it. Society will try to get the ADHD/Aspergery people to retrain their brains - but perhaps they'll be too distracted/upset to make changes. Or maybe not - perhaps this is just overthinking it.

Saturday, August 29, 2015

Non-discriminatory love

A recent comment on an old post:

I have recently come across this blog and find this post insanely accurate. I know this love. I give this love.

I become obsessed with knowing everything about someone - every detail - and I love it whether it is good or bad or ugly. I love them so much they feel like they can't live without me. My love is intoxicating, obsessive and completely desirable. But none of that means my love isn't real - just different. The intensity within itself is enough to show that the love of a sociopath is real, cemented and totally accepting. What more could you want in love? Sure - I can't love for long periods of time because I end up breaking the person, and myself a little bit - but the love that I delivered prior to breaking them was real and intense and passionate. 

I don't think empaths are vulnerable and pathetic - I think they leave themselves open to be hurt by people like me. But that is what love is all about - give and take, ying and yang, compromise. I have recently allowed a lover (who is an empath) to move into my house with me, as she left her girlfriend (which I orchestrated, but she doesn't know that. She thinks it was her idea after years of emotional abuse. Truth is, I just like the idea of being powerful enough to rip someone out of an eight year relationship). She is now staying with me until she gets on her feet - and boy do I love her. I make her lunch, touch her in all the right places and make her feel wanted and needed and desired. I am everything she has never had. Apart from being her physical fantasy (tall, thin, blonde, green eyes, very womanly and pleasant yet edgy), I give her all of the support she needs - I listen, respond, understand - I see the REAL her and love her anyway. But I know this won't last long. Once everything has settled down, I will get bored and itch to move on. But I love her all the same. Sociopaths can love males, females, empaths, other sociopaths, intellectuals, simpletons - EVERYONE. We don't discriminate on love and that's why it's real. We can love. Regardless of what it looks like. We love. 

Friday, July 31, 2015

Sociopath fan boy

A list of movies/characters/tv:

Movies
Rosamund Pike - Gone Girl
Jake Gyllenhaal - Nightcrawler
Eva Green - 300 Rise of an Empire
Toby Kebbel - Dawn of the Planet of the Apes
Matt Damon - The Departed
Javier Bardem - No Country for Old Men
Carl Urban and Lena Headey - Dredd
Ralph Fiennes - In Bruges
Heath Ledger - The Dark Knight
Ryan Gosling - Drive
Robert De Niro and Joe Pesci - Goodfellas
Hugo Weaving - The Matrix
Christain Bale - American Psycho

Tv
Kevin Spacey - House of Cards
Bryan Cranston - Breaking Bad
Many actors - The Sopranos
Michael Kenneth Williams - The Wire
Robert Knepper - Prison Break
Iwan Rheon - Game of Thrones

Wednesday, January 21, 2015

Tearing things apart

I got a question on Twitter about what might be so beautiful about seeing another person torn down. I thought this comment from a not so recent post explored that question in an interesting way.

As a comment on the idea of all being aspects of a whole:
This makes sense. The human brain has a distinct base form, but naturally it has evolved to produce all shades of expression- from the person who cares deeply and personally for another, to the person who is categorically non-empathetic- and each acts according to his nature, most of the time without conscious consideration of the essence of his activities.

As for tearing down vs. building up:
I think on a basic level the human species has a need to find patterns. It was advantageous to survival in primitive times, and continues to be so. Generally we don't think about it much, instead it is a natural, maybe even inescapable tendency. (When was the last time you looked at a cloud and didn't see some kind of shape?) We also have both a supportive and a destructive instinct; consider the predatory animal, which rips apart prey and then brings the best part to her cubs before cuddling with them and playing with them gently. These instincts enforce social bonds, or take down dangerous others. M.E.'s love of ruining others could come from destructive social energy- as a highly successful woman she has few real threats. Or it could come from destructive predatory energy- people nowadays have no need to take down animals with claw and tooth, and often this innate drive is redirected into more socially acceptable outlets, such as football, or law. There's an element of empowerment involved as well- again, the chosen pursuit of many a primitive human. It could be her logic- she's good at ferreting out inconsistencies, recognizing masks and lies for what they are. Perhaps it feels good to rip apart that holey pattern to reveal the form underneath. (Ever take apart a theory, remove the bits that don't make sense, and come through with something more elegant? Elegance of articulation is categorically rewarding, I find.) Or, it could refer back to that basic pattern-solving mind- what's more fun than figuring out how something works, taking it apart, and experimenting with what you can make it do?

I say not that M.E. is primitive or base, save in that sense we all are. We are all the animal, shoved through the sieve of the social model, and this must be taken into account when attempting to understand the human mind.

-D 

I wonder a little at people's expressed inability of seeing the beauty in seeing things torn down. I feel like 90% of popular film, literature, television, etc. are based on people's desire to be thrilled in this way, so it can't really be an unpopular phenomenon? You wonder what made a television show like Breaking Bad popular, one where arguably this is what was happening to every character almost at all times. Whether schadenfraude or an aesthetic and even intellectual appreciation for seeing these disassembled and deconstructed, the pleasure or satisfaction or excitement that people get in seeing things torn apart seems so common to me that I wonder why some people claim to not feel it at all and to not understand it. 

Thursday, December 18, 2014

The science of evil

I wanted to write a response to this NY Times review of Simon Baron-Cohen's book "The Science of Evil," but I already expressed most of my outrage about the book and it's theory that a lack of empathy is the root of all evil here. Today, however, there was an interesting response to both Baron-Cohen's book and Jon Ronson's "The Psychopath Test" by Yale professor of Psychology Paul Bloom, again in the NY Times. Under the title "I'm Ok, You're a Psychopath":
For Baron-Cohen, evil is nothing more than “empathy erosion.”
***
Now, one might lack empathy for temporary reasons — you can be enraged or drunk, for instance — but Baron-Cohen is most interested in lack of empathy as an enduring trait.
***
For Baron-Cohen, psychopaths are just one population lacking in empathy. There are also narcissists, who care only about themselves, and borderlines — individuals cursed with impulsivity, an inability to control their anger and an extreme fear of abandonment. Baron-Cohen calls these three groups “Zero-Negative” because there is “nothing positive to recommend them” and they are “unequivocally bad for the sufferer and those around them.” He provides a thoughtful discussion of the usual sad tangle of bad genes and bad environments that lead to the creation of these Zero-Negative individuals.

People with autism and Asperger’s syndrome, Baron-Cohen argues, are also empathy-deficient, though he calls them “Zero-Positive.” They differ from psychopaths and the like because they possess a special gift for systemizing; they can “set aside the temporal dimension in order to see — in stark relief — the eternal repeating patterns in nature.” This capacity, he says, can lead to special abilities in domains like music, science and art. More controversially, he suggests, this systemizing impulse provides an alternative route for the development of a moral code — a strong desire to follow the rules and ensure they are applied fairly. Such individuals can thereby be moral without empathy, “through brute logic alone.”

This is an intriguing proposal, but Baron-Cohen doesn’t fully elaborate on it, much less address certain obvious objections. For one thing, if people with autism can use logic to be good without empathy, why can’t smart psychopaths do the same? And what about the many low-functioning individuals on the autism spectrum who lack special savant gifts and don’t spontaneously create moral codes? On Baron-Cohen’s analysis, they would be Zero-Negative. But this doesn’t seem right. Such individuals might be awkward or insensitive, but they are not actively malicious; they are much more likely to be the targets of cruelty than the perpetrators.

I think there’s a better approach, one that involves breaking empathy into two parts, understanding and feeling, as Baron-Cohen himself does elsewhere in his book. Individuals with autism are unable to understand the mental lives of other people. Psychopaths, by contrast, get into others’ heads just fine; they are seducers, manipulators, con men . . . and often worse. . . . The problem with psychopaths lies in their lack of compassion, their willingness to destroy lives out of self-interest, malice or even boredom.
Bloom goes on to criticize Baron-Cohen's theory by pointing out that everyone can suffer from a lack of empathy due to circumstances or sometimes through choice. Unfortunately Bloom does not then take the final step of questioning whether a lack of empathy should actually be the scientific definition of "evil," as Baron-Cohen advocates, but instead makes a nod to the I-hate-sociopaths camp, quoting: "'Why should we care about psychopaths? They don’t care about us.'" At least people are starting to think twice before drinking the Hare et al. Kool-Aid of fear-mongering.

Thursday, January 16, 2014

How to Manipulate People

This was a good Lifehacker article on how to manipulate people (quick read, worth reading in its entirety). The following are the headings from the article along with my thoughts on each suggestion:

  • Emotion vs. Logic: Appealing to emotion rather than logic in manipulation is a little bit of a no brainer. Not only do most people respond better to emotion than logic, irrational people often best (only?) respond to fear
  • Overcome Trust Issues and Heal Doubt: Building trust with your target is often critical, see number 2 here (does Lifehacker read this blog? or have a sociopath on staff cluing them in?)

Also, beware the anti-seducer, for they cannot be manipulated.

Saturday, September 7, 2013

Psychopaths feel emotions

This is an interesting interview with psychopath researcher and University of Wisconsin professor Joseph Newman in which he basically asserts that psychopaths feel the same breadth of emotions that normal people do, but that they do not attend to the emotions as others do so they do not experience them as other people do.

For those of you who want to skip around:
6:00: Non criminal psychopaths are characterized by weak urges breaking through even weaker restraints.

9:10: What happens when "guiding light" is absent is not necessarily consistent across all psychopaths, so psychopathy cannot necessarily be defined by behavior; behavior will depend on gender, age, social role, etc.

10:32: "The ones who break the law or who are violent, or commit criminals acts, those are the ones that are going to make it into my studies"

11:00: Do psychopaths experience emotions? If they do, are they less "deep" emotions? Sociopaths say they have emotions, will go out of their way to help others, capable of responding to affective materials.

13:53: Conventional wisdom regarding psychopaths and emotions being that psychopaths are fearless, incapable of emotions or general emotion deficit.

14:07: Newman's "attention deficit" theory -- "emotions don't have any power if you don't attend to them," psychopaths are not attending to the emotional cues that would elicit certain emotional responses.

16:12: "Emotions are there, to some extent, to the degree you pay attention to them"

16:48: Sociopaths are not obsessed in that the drive to do something is so strong, it's just that they are not considering other contrary info; but "if you can get them to pay attention to this information, they'll use it."

21:51: Treatment options using fear conditioning.
Newman thinks psychopaths are in some ways more likely to help a stranger than a normal person, which I think is correct in that the psychopath is just as likely to act impulsively doing good things as bad, and certainly doesn't see things in terms of "good" and "bad" anyway. (I talked a little bit about this lack of distinction here). I also think that there may be something to his theory that a lot of the emotional differences between psychopaths and normal people stem from the way that emotions are dealt with or attended to. If I focus on an emotion, I can greatly amplify its force far beyond what it should be. I frequently do this with pleasant emotions, but will also do this with "negative" emotions because there is pleasure in pain and I want to keep a flexible emotional repertoire (emotional yoga). For feelings that I don't care to feel, I just tune them out. I'm so good at compartmentalizing that it's easy to ignore anything I don't care to consider.

This video showed up on LoveFraud recently, leading to the following insightful comments from "Redwald" (excerpts):
It’s easy to understand this idea with an auditory or visual analogy. Suppose we’re in a room where a party is in full swing and there’s lots of noise. Now and again the noise can “interfere,” but on the whole the auditory signals are strong, and we can discern multiple signals. We can not only hear what a companion is saying to us, but we can also pick up snatches of other conversations around us, besides identifying any music that’s playing. In the visual field, we can easily recognize several people we know in a group of people nearby. There’s Ted, there’s Tom, there’s Sally. We can see all of these multiple people clearly and individually.

Conditions are different if the signals are “weak.” If there’s music coming from somewhere in the distance, and murmurs of conversation from the next room, we’ll have a harder time recognizing what’s being said, or played. More relevant here, trying to recognize it calls for an effort of concentration. If we’re straining to hear what’s being said next door, we may not even notice there’s music playing somewhere else. Or if we’re trying to hear the music, we may not notice the conversation at all, let alone make out what’s being said. Similarly, if we spot a group of people some way away, they may be hard to recognize at a distance. Quite possibly we’ll focus on one person who looks vaguely familiar and ask ourselves “Is that Ted or isn’t it?” But while we’re focusing on him we’re not focusing on the other two, so we may never recognize them. In short, we only pick up some of the many things going on around us, and miss others altogether.

Regardless of how strong (or weak) the emotional signals are in absolute terms, much of the problem with psychopathic behavior is still how strong (or weak) these signals are in relation to one another. If psychopaths’ perception of their “urges” is weaker than in normal humans, bad behavior can still result if their “restraints” (such as “conscience”) are weaker still.

I think the point being made is that because psychopathic behavior is not well regulated emotionally in any constant fashion, it tends to be impulsive. One characteristic of “impulsive” behavior is that it’s likely to be inconsistent from one time to another. It may even be somewhat RANDOM in the direction the impulse takes from one occasion to the next. The psychopath is a “loose cannon” whose behavior may be hard to predict.

Given this built-in inconsistency, it’s credible enough, at least in theory, that a psychopath acting on impulse could behave helpfully, even generously toward others at one time, and at another time, acting just as uninhibitedly on a very different impulse, be guilty of an act of sheer cruelty or predation.

For the reason I mentioned above, people observing these contrasting behaviors are likely to discount the psychopath’s acts of helpfulness or generosity and characterize him or her chiefly by the acts of cruelty. But people go further. They attempt to see (as Polonius put it) “method in the madness,” where sometimes there may not BE any “method”! People expect “consistent” behavior out of others, and they look for a pattern. If a psychopath appears helpful and generous to them at first sight, they’ll start off believing “this is a kind, caring person.” If the psychopath then turns round and treats them badly or exploits them, eventually they’ll decide “this person is a villain after all.” But they may still try to reconcile the contradictory behaviors in their own mind by trying to find a common motive or purpose behind both. Then they may conclude that the behaviors they saw as “kind” and “caring” were deliberately contrived by the psychopath in order to “take them in” and “put them off their guard.”
That may well be true in some cases, but in other cases it may not be true at all. The contradictory behaviors may be largely random and impulsive, not part of any greater “scheme” or purpose.

Wednesday, August 21, 2013

Worth the trouble

A lot of people wonder why anyone would be friends with a sociopath, or flat out assume that no one would want to be friends with a sociopath. The funny consequence to this mentality is that people assume that I must have no friends. The truth is that there are a lot of people who appreciate having me for a friend. I am not the type of person that they will come to if they just want a shoulder to cry on, but I am a great person to consult if there is a problem they want solved. I'm very good at coming up with workable strategies to help them accomplish whatever it is that they want. And I think a lot of my friends just appreciate my unique perspective, and even my amorality. I don't judge them, so they can be honest with me in a way that they can't really with most other people. People tell me a lot of secrets for that reason.

It's not even always the obviously positive or pro-social aspects of my personality that people are attracted to. I think sometimes they like the sort of negative or dangerous aspects of my personality -- the risk or excitement I bring to their life. Some of them are masochistic and like the pain. Some even like the ruining, perhaps because they want parts of them broken -- like breaking a jaw to reset it in better alignment. And I can see why too, so much of our personality is an accident of the way we were raised or the culture we were born into. Maybe we don't necessarily like those parts of ourselves and need a little help getting over them. You could see a therapist, or you could just enlist the help of your friendly neighborhood sociopath. That's why I found this recent email from a reader to be so interesting:

In high school I had a friend who was almost certainly a sociopath. He took pleasure in ruining people. I let him ruin me to a point. He tried to warn me in various ways. I paid no heed. But why not? I had something to gain by being 'ruined.' I was a painfully uptight young man. There were things I just wouldn't do. Under his influence, I did many of them and to my surprise, survived. He helped me with my scruples. (In Catholicism, 'scruples' refers to "An unfounded apprehension and consequently unwarranted fear that something is a sin which, as a matter of fact, is not.")  I'm much more relaxed now, though still basically uptight.

I'm drawn to sociopaths. They have something I need. The smart ones, the ones who don't end up in jail, have a delicate moral sense. They know where the lines are. They find my scruples amusing, as if to say "Oh you poor thing, that thing your afraid to do isn't a sin in anyone's book. Someone should let you out of your little cage."

I've often wondered why he tried to warn me. Wouldn't a totally evil person keep his bad intentions to himself? Yes. So again, why the warnings? Mainly, he wanted to be understood. Everyone needs to be understood. In my opinion, the effort to understand a sociopath, though fraught, is worth the trouble many times over.

When I read that, I thought maybe the sociopath respected his friend enough to get a sort of informed consent? Or found the friendship worth enough that he didn't want to necessarily lose the friend by making him a target, so wanted to make sure that the friend was at least aware of what was going to happen? What do people think?

Thursday, August 8, 2013

Breaking Bad: Is Walter White a Sociopath?

AMC's hit show, "Breaking Bad" returns this Sunday and some are asking "How Walter White Found His Inner Sociopath".  The show details the exploits of a chemistry teacher turned meth kingpin who finds his hands getting dirtier and dirtier until he seems to lose most of his humanity. Or does he? A.O. Scott writes for the NY Times:

In truth, though, his development over five seasons has been less a shocking transformation than a series of confirmations. Mr. Gilligan’s busy and inventive narrative machinery has provided plenty of cleverly executed surprises, but these have all served to reveal the Walter White who was there all along. The sides of his personality — sociopath and family man, scientist and killer, rational being and creature of impulse, entrepreneur and loser — are not necessarily as contradictory as we might have supposed.
***
Walter may have wanted us to believe — and may, at moments, have convinced himself — that he was a decent man driven by desperate circumstances to do terrible things, but that notion was either wishful thinking or tactical deceit. Viewed as a whole, in optimal binge conditions, with the blinds pulled down and the pizza boxes and chicken wrappers piling up around the couch, “Breaking Bad” reveals itself as the story of a man mastering his vocation and fighting to claim his rightful place in the world. 

But is he really a sociopath? He is great at lying. That's probably one of the most entertaining parts about the show. He is amazing at coming up with an answer that fits the facts, like a sort of WebMD for excuses that fit the symptoms perfectly yet innocuously. Where did all of this cash come from? He has a gambling problem. Why did his wife just have an emotional breakdown? She was having an affair and her lover is in the hospital. He is the master of deflection and playing upon not just people's emotions, but especially their expectations about him (as a loser, but ultimately harmless) and the world (that bad people are not your friends, relatives, and neighbors but people who seem "off" to you).

However, I don't think he is a sociopath. He may act like how one expects a sociopath to act (ruthless, disloyal, power hungry), but his motivations seem all wrong. If he was a sociopath, why does he constantly cling to an image that he's a good dad/husband/friend making the most of a bad situation? From the NY Times:

Walter is almost as good at self-justification as he is at cooking meth, and over the course of the series, he has not hesitated to give high-minded reasons for his lowest actions. In his own mind, he remains a righteous figure, an apostle of family values, free enterprise and scientific progress. 

For instance:

Walt: "When we do what we do for good reasons, then we've got nothing to worry about. And there's no better reason than family."

Here he extends his typical self-justification to his wife:

Walt: Skyler, you can't beat yourself up over this thing. Please. You didn't set out to hurt anybody. You made a mistake and things got out of control. But you did what you had to do to protect your family. And I'm sorry, but that doesn't make you a bad person. It makes you a human being. 

Skyler: Stop it, Walt. Just stop. I don't need to hear any of your bullshit rationales.

And an incredibly insensitive and oblivious moment of self-absorption:

Walt: So how are you feeling? 

Jesse: Okay, I guess. Broke it off with Andrea. I had to. She's gonna tell Brock. I'm still gonna take care of the rent and stuff. It's the right thing to do, but, you know-- 

Walt: (interrupting) I meant this. (gestures behind) How are you feeling about the money?

And finally the over the top but insincere display of emotions and taking huge offense when the sincerity is questioned:

Walt: I am just as upset as you are. 

Jesse: Are you? 

Walt: Really? How can you say that to me? Jesus! I mean, I'm the one who's the father here. What, do I have to curl up in a ball in tears in front of you? 

Walt in all of his self-centeredness clearly thinks that not only do his ends justify any means he chooses, but it's clear that this process of justification is important to him. If he were a sociopath, why he would care at all? As a corporate executive put it upon seeing Walt and his team balk at killing two innocent witnesses, "I thought you guys were professionals." But there's hardly anything professional about them. Despite being extremely clever and calculating (he fakes an emotional breakdown in his brother-in-law's DEA office to tap his phone), he seems like a prototypical narcissist who lets his emotions rule him, particularly his feeling that his talents were never truly appreciated and so he is finally going to make them realize that he is a force to be reckoned with. A sociopath would not care what people thought of him, as long as he was getting and doing what he wanted to get/do.

Walter White is also a great example of why I don't value people's "good" intentions--because they're incredibly subjective, often misplaced, and sometimes used to justify horrible atrocities. People never feel that they have done anything wrong as long as their intentions were not malicious. It reminds me of this recent comment from a reader:

Intentions don't matter. Hitler's intentions were good. What are good intentions? It depends who you're talking to. If you talk to the chicken just before you kill it and tell it "Hey chicken, my intentions are good, I don't want to be misunderstood, I'm just gonna eat you and share you with my family."

And also from this NY Times review of Jonathan Haidt's book The Righteous Mind: Why Good People Are Divided by Politics and Religion:

Traits we evolved in a dispersed world, like tribalism and righteousness, have become dangerously maladaptive in an era of rapid globalization. A pure scientist would let us purge these traits from the gene pool by fighting and killing one another. But Haidt wants to spare us this fate. He seeks a world in which “fewer people believe that righteous ends justify violent means.” To achieve this goal, he asks us to understand and overcome our instincts. He appeals to a power capable of circumspection, reflection and reform.

Friday, August 2, 2013

Criminal sentencing for sociopaths

The role that a diagnosis of psychopathy should play in criminal sentencing is an admittedly thorny issue. The legal standard for an insanity plea is that the perpetrator must not be able to distinguish between right and wrong. Sociopaths actually know the difference between right and wrong most of the time, they just don't care (enough to conform their behavior to societal standards). The debate is whether this faulty wiring makes them more culpable, less culpable, or equally culpable to a similarly offending non-sociopath. A prominent researcher who specializes in scanning the brains of sociopaths in prisons, Kent Kiehl, suggests in an interview with NPR that we should cut them some slack:
Brian Dugan . . . is serving two life sentences for rape and murder in Chicago. Last July, Dugan pleaded guilty to raping and murdering 10-year-old Jeanine Nicarico in 1983, and he was put on trial to determine whether he should be executed. Kiehl was hired by the defense to do a psychiatric evaluation.

In a videotaped interview with Kiehl, Dugan describes how he only meant to rob the Nicaricos' home. But then he saw the little girl inside.

"She came to the door and ... I clicked," Dugan says in a flat, emotionless voice. "I turned into Mr. Hyde from Dr. Jekyll."
***
"And I have empathy, too — but it's like it just stops," he says. "I mean, I start to feel, but something just blocks it. I don't know what it is."

Kiehl says he's heard all this before: All psychopaths claim they feel terrible about their crimes for the benefit of the parole board.

"But then you ask them, 'What do you mean, you feel really bad?' And Brian will look at you and go, 'What do you mean, what does it mean?' They look at you like, 'Can you give me some help? A hint? Can I call a friend?' They have no way of really getting at that at all," Kiehl says.

Kiehl says the reason people like Dugan cannot access their emotions is that their physical brains are different. And he believes he has the brain scans to prove it.
***
Psychopaths' brains behave differently from that of a nonpsychopathic person. When a normal person sees a morally objectionable photo, his limbic system lights up. This is what Kiehl calls the "emotional circuit," involving the orbital cortex above the eyes and the amygdala deep in the brain. But Kiehl says when psychopaths like Dugan see the KKK picture, their emotional circuit does not engage in the same way.
***
Kiehl says the emotional circuit may be what stops a person from breaking into that house or killing that girl. But in psychopaths like Dugan, the brakes don't work. Kiehl says psychopaths are a little like people with very low IQs who are not fully responsible for their actions. The courts treat people with low IQs differently. For example, they can't get the death penalty.

"What if I told you that a psychopath has an emotional IQ that's like a 5-year-old?" Kiehl asks. "Well, if that was the case, we'd make the same argument for individuals with low emotional IQ — that maybe they're not as deserving of punishment, not as deserving of culpability, etc."
***
This argument troubles Steven Erickson, a forensic psychologist and legal scholar at Widener University School of Law. He notes that alcoholics have brain abnormalities. Do we give them a pass if they kill someone while driving drunk?
***
At trial, Jonathan Brodie, a psychiatrist at NYU Medical School who was the prosecution's expert witness, went further. Even if Dugan's brain is abnormal, he testified, the brain does not dictate behavior.

"There may be many, many people who also have psychopathic tendencies and have similar scans, who don't do antisocial behavior, who don't rape and kill," Brodie says.

The jury seemed to zero in on the science, asking to reread all the testimony about the neuroscience during 10 hours of deliberation. But in the end, they sentenced Dugan to death. Dugan is appealing the sentence.
With this and the U.S. Supreme Court case allowing governments to indefinitely detain pedophiles, the halcyon days of believing in rehabilitation for criminals seem to be over. If there was one piece of advice I could give this upcoming generation of sociopaths, it would be to master the ability to authentically mimic the empath's exaggerated remorse and self-hate, a performance that is quickly becoming necessary to keep the lynch mobs at bay.

Monday, December 24, 2012

Sociopathy as spectrum disorder

I thought this was an interesting and straightforward explanation of what it means for something to be a spectrum disorder, particularly when we're talking about psychopathy, and the difficulties it introduces in terms of understanding and diagnosing individuals with that particular disorder. From a Wall Street Journal book review of the Wisdom of Psychopaths:

In one of her stand-up comedy routines, Ellen Degeneres riffs on those commercials for depression medications that begin: "Do you ever feel sad?" Ms. Degeneres's sardonic response: "Yes, I'm alive!" Everyone occasionally feels down, so mild depression might indeed be considered part and parcel of living. Recent research suggests that, like pain, it may be a way of coping with a bad situation by making a change. One problem with most psychological diagnostic tools, in fact, is that they attempt to squeeze into a well-defined box behaviors that are, on some level, not all that unusual. So the criteria lists grow and the diagnostic labels broaden into what psychologists call "spectrums."

"Psychopathy" is a spectrum personality disorder characterized by callousness, antisocial behavior, superficial charm, narcissism, grandiosity, a sense of entitlement, poor impulse control, and a lack of empathy or remorse. Popular culture invariably associates psychopathy with serial killers like Ted Bundy, who, after raping and murdering numerous women in the 1970s, boasted that "I'm the most cold-hearted son of a bitch you'll ever meet." Yet a slate of publications on psychopathy over the past two decades—from Robert Hare's path-breaking 1993 book "Without Conscience" to Simon Baron Cohen's 2011 "The Science of Evil"—reveals that about 1% to 3% of men in the general population could be classified as psychopaths. That is more than four million people in the United States alone, and they aren't all potential Ted Bundys.

The spectrum of psychopaths includes CEOs, surgeons, lawyers, salesmen, police officers and journalists. According to Kevin Dutton, the rest of us could learn a thing or two from many of them. In "The Wisdom of Psychopaths," the Cambridge University research psychologist notes that in many circumstances, such as in business, sports and other competitive enterprises, it is beneficial to be a little charming, tough-minded, impulsive, risk taking, courageous and even a bit socially manipulative. We have the makings of a dangerous psychopath only when that little bit of charm becomes devious manipulation; when self-confidence escalates to grandiosity; when occasional exaggeration morphs into pathological lying; when tough-mindedness devolves into cruelty; and when courageous risk taking slides into foolish impulsiveness. 


It's this sort of fuzziness that has led me to sometimes question whether I think that psychopathy is even a real thing. The difficulty is the heterogeneity in the psychopath population and fuzzy dividing lines between normal behavior (if perhaps a little extreme or rare), and disordered behavior. Of course there is evidence that psychopath brains look different, although the research is still very young. Still, I often have wondered what my brain would look like in one of these fMRI tests that some psychopath researchers perform, would it look normal or abnormal and in the same ways that psychopaths brains appear? I have often thought that my brain has to look abnormal, that there is no way I could have such a different way of thinking than everyone else without my brain reflecting that difference. But people say that is a common fallacy -- believing that you are different from everyone else. Then again, I probably prefer that error than to erroneously assume that everyone thinks exactly like me.

Saturday, December 22, 2012

Heroes and sociopaths

I have posted before about how being a sociopath can make you *feel* like you are a superhero. I think this feeling (narcissistic self-import) is relatively common among sociopaths. For instance, I stumbled upon this not-me description of it here:
Being a sociopath doesn't mean you have to be evil. We struggle to feel the difference between right and wrong, but we do know the difference since we have had it drilled into our heads since we were children, right? Fact is, us sociopaths have more choice in this world than the rest. That is because we can choose to be heroes or we can choose to be villains. No one else can do that, they have to be what they are, they are born a certain way, they will always be that way. Us sociopaths can change to our surroundings. We can do anything we choose to do.
Interestingly, some say this feeling goes both ways -- that superheroes can sometimes feel (or act) like sociopaths.
We look at heroes and do-gooders as a special sort of breed: people who possess extraordinary traits of altruism or self-less concern for the well-being of others, even at the expense of their own existence. On the other end, sociopaths also have an extraordinary set of traits, such as extreme selfishness, lack of impulse control, no respect for rules, and no conscience.

As crazy as it sounds, there may be a closer link than than most people would think between the extreme-altruistic personality and sociopathic personality. Would it shock you to know that two people, one with the traits of extreme-altruism (X-altruism) and the other the traits of a sociopath, could be related? Even siblings? And that their personality traits are very similar, with only a few features to distinguish them? Research by Watson, Clark, and Chmielewki from the University of Iowa, “Structures of Personality and Their Relevance to Psychopathology” [pdf], present a convincing argument in which they support the growing push for a trait dimensional scheme in the new DSM-V to replace the current categorical system.

[X- altruists are risk takers and rule breakers.] When they are faced with that moment, they just act. Compulsively. Barely considering any other course. The lack the impulse control to stop themselves from doing “the right thing” when it comes to the welfare of others, yet ironically, it almost always results in some form of negative consequence for themselves. They have no problem breaking the rules when it means helping an innocent, yet they highly value the importance of obeying rules in other contexts. That’s crazy, you say? Now you’re getting the idea.

[but sociopaths are unfeeling monsters, altruists are so great, bla bla bla]

Interestingly, these two type of individuals, the sociopath and the X-altruist, may appear similar in their displays of behavior, and at times, even confused for the other type. If an X-altruistic person is compelled to break rules without remorse in order to help a disadvantaged person, is may seem as if he is acting rebelliously, especially if the motives behind his behavior are not known. On the other hand, a sociopath may donate a large sum of money to a charity, a seemingly altruistic behavior, but his actions may have been motivated by his selfish need to appear better than or more generous than a colleague. The defining characteristic that separates the two personality types is their ability to empathize, either not at all or too much, which then drives the extreme behavior of each.
And my favorite comment from the article:
Interesting article, but not without bias, and in my opinion, unprofessionally written. Never before have I heard a health-care professional refer to a sociopath as "nasty". As a behavioral specialist, I would expect you to know better than anyone that sociopaths do not choose their hereditary personality disorders anymore than your beloved X-altruists do. Why call names?

And how do you define virtue and "good" intent? Is not the X-altruist's all-consuming desire to help others, at the expense breaking these rules you seem to value so much, just as selfish as the sociopath?
followed closely by this one:
Your intentions are obvious. Try as you like, we'll never associate heroes with sociopaths.

And the social order will thus survive, despite your kind's attempt to weaken and destroy it.
It's an interesting point, though. Are sociopaths considered "bad" just because they seem to do, on average, more "bad for society" type things? If so, can't we just punish the "bad behavior" without singling out everyone with the condition and eradicating them? For another interesting look at heroes and sociopaths in fiction/media, see this article on the "heroic sociopath," including such gems as this rationalization of Peter Pan: "He's only slightly less uncaring towards others as his nemesis Captain Hook and comes across better mostly because his sociopathy is a result of being a perpetual child, whereas Hook really has no excuse." Aspies or Auties, anyone? I'm not so much saying that the hate against sociopaths isn't at all warranted, more that there is no principled way to hate sociopaths and not hate other people/personalities/disorders that are widely accepted or even beloved in society.

Friday, June 15, 2012

Selectively caring more

I thought this was a very interesting comment left on this post about empathy and becoming sensitized to certain things, among others:


I used be able to watch videos/view images of the goriest and most explicit nature: brain avulsions, total dismemberment, horrific murders. In fact, I craved viewing them. There was something in there that was fascinating to me. This was when I was much younger. As I got older, these pictures began to bother me. Not because I felt guilt or empathy, but because I had suffered accidents/injuries of my own, and they served to remind me of them. Now I avoid them, for the most part, because in each body I see the inevitability of my own mortality, and I always end up relating them to my own situation. 

The same holds true for emotional pain: just yesterday a girl related a story about a woman who's mother was killed by a distracted drive. I laughed when I heard the specifics; it sounded like such a glorious explosion of metal. Everyone else was horrified, and some were holding back tears, but I couldn't stop grinning--I had such fun recreating the scene in my mind. I couldn't empathize. But if another person's emotional pain reminds me of the few, and I mean 2-3, things left from childhood that are still painful to me, I am distracted and lost in my own pain. This gives the appearance of empathizing; it's not. I don't cry for the other person; I cry for myself. 

That erroneous conclusion ("They're crying while I'm crying; they must understand me!") is what, I think, leads empaths, especially those with emotional ties to the sociopath, to insist that they're "not that bad" or that "there's really deep feelings in there." Perhaps. But those deep feelings will always be self-centered. If a sociopath cries because you're breaking up with them, it's not because they've suddenly grown a heart to pine after you with. It's because they've lost control, because their plans have been ruined, and they're thinking about how the break-up will fuck things over. 

I realize they are interesting, and perhaps very fine distinctions to make, but I think that they are actually legitimate distinctions to make between a sensitivity (or lack of sensitivity to things) and the general skill of empathy.  A good example, perhaps, is the one of the typical empath who becomes desensitized to things like violence in times of war.  According to wikipedia, horses, who have a natural fear of unpredictable movement, become desensitized to accept the fluttering skirt of a lady's riding habit.  We sensitize guide dogs to certain human concerns like automobile traffic. 

Everyone can learn to care more or less about a particular thing. It's not that sociopaths are just constantly choosing not to care.  I believe that they are partly incapable of caring, and even more simply unaware of what and when they should be caring.  Once you direct their attention to it or something else happens to make them aware of the seriousness of something (e.g. growing older and having more a sense of one's own mortality), it gets easier to understand why everyone else is upset.  But this does not mean that the sociopath will ever vicariously feel what the other person is feeling.  

Tuesday, May 29, 2012

On becoming a sociopath (female)

From a reader:
 
In terms of ASPD: I still am, to a degree, but I am much less inclined to that disorder than I was as a  child. For the high-functioning sociopath, it is mandatory for him to have a relationship with himself. He lacks any sort of internal social inhibition, and therefore, he doesn't automatically incorporate the majority ethics. As a kid, I was at my most impulsive. Until I came to develop a code rooted in reason, rather than guilt, I was all over the place. People take for granted "right" and "wrong,” and many don’t question the ‘why’ behind it until they are much older, because they may cruise along on autopilot with the common knowledge that stealing is bad, and that they feel bad. If the sociopath can't introspect, however, he'll grow into a dangerous criminal as he hits adulthood and gains the means. For the sociopath, he has to mature early in, or face possible legal consequences for the rest of his life.  Although being a female and a sociopath is unique, I am fortunate in this respect. If I were a man, there’s a great chance that I would not have made it.
    
I hate to sound sexist, but it’s the truth: men are typically stronger than women. At the age of eight, I was already fantasizing about sex crimes. I remember thinking, verbatim, that it wasn’t “enough to love. You have to rip apart.” For me, cuddling and kissing could only go so far before the emptiness sank in. The threshold was reached, and boredom stirred. A man, or woman, could satisfy with soft whispers and affection to a point. Then, to overcome that boundary, sadism came to play. The only way I felt that I could truly share something with another human being, was to torture and to push him over the edge. There was excitement in this, and my own brand of worship. I didn’t realize that my desire was abnormal. For a long time, I didn’t realize that others weren’t like me. I observed them, and I thought that we were putting on a show, and so I acted, too. I watched and waited, half-expecting an explosion as one of us broke. It never came. Every now and again, I saw them clearly and was slammed with questions. "Is this real?" I wanted to capture their faces, to make them look at me. I lived in denial.
    
Bottom line: I stayed out of prison because I lacked the brute muscles to kill, and the dedication to go through with plans (I had constructed a motif in my head). Twice, I snapped on human beings and did everything in my carnal power to injure them, craving their expressions, because the fear and shock filled up a void within me. It was a foreign substance, and, as such, I took it as a druggie. 
    
I was let down in my weakness. I didn’t go after children my age, but lashed out against men who I perceived as strong. I wanted the triumph of breaking them, and I fell short. It was humiliating to have revealed and lost. Thus, I retreated to my intellect, and became the cult-starter. I manipulated without touch, and although, in the end, the new approach could have proved even more dangerous than the corporeal given my structure, I was appeased by little stunts, and, thankfully, came to my senses before moving onto greater defeats. Honestly, I just grew up, and trust me when I say that if I had waited even another year, given the crowd that I had gathered, things would be different. I have formalized legal opinions now, and a definition for good and evil, but I don’t possess the faculty of remorse. I can regret: regret meaning, I can find the consequences of something not to my enjoyment, and I can wish that I had acted otherwise, but, if not caught, I don’t have remorse, in that I don’t feel guilt for doing what I see as justifiably illegal. Hence, my version of “right” and “wrong” revolves around what is good for me, psychologically. Unrestrained, I slip and intentionally perform acts which I reject, lawfully, when statistics suggest a lapse in capture, but I do try to avoid this more often than not, because, regardless of how good I am, it’s never surefire.

Thursday, October 6, 2011

Benign neglect: Rizzoli and Isles

In response to the Fringe and Breaking Bad post, a reader mentioned the character Dr. Maura Isles from the television show "Rizzoli and Isles" as someone to watch out for. In the episode "I'm Your Boogie Man," the (Asperger's? Autism? Sociopath?) sometimes odd acting Isles questions a serial killer's statement that she is not afraid of him because she is just like him:


Rizzoli: You okay? Come on, Maura, talk to me. He's a freak. He gets to everybody.
Isles: I didn't -- I did a lot of research into his background; his childhood. Maybe he's not wrong.
Rizzoli: What are you talking about?
Isles: Maybe I am a little bit like him.
Rizzoli: You are nothing like him.
Isles: I don't -- I don't know, Jane. I was a weird kid.
Rizzoli: Were you killing small animals?
Isles: [laughs] No, but I dissected a lot of frogs.
Rizzoli: That's different.
Isles: I just started to think about things that I never really thought about before.
Rizzoli: Here it comes. There are bodies buried in your basement.
Isles: I spent a lot of time alone. I was adopted, my father was a professor and my mother she -- she came from a wealthy family and was an only child. I just realized something when I was reading about Hoyt. It just never occurred to be before. There was a lot of benign neglect. It's not that they didn't love me. It's just that I didn't ask for much. I don't think I really knew how, and the less that I would ask for the less time that they have for me. They were just very, very involved in their own lives and into each other. They sent me to boarding school when I was ten. I actually think that I sent away for the brochure myself. [smiles with Jane] They were delighted. I was really lost.
Rizzoli: Come here. [takes Maura's hand] No matter what happened to you, you are nothing like that monster, okay? You're a little anti-social maybe, goofy, but that's not the same thing.
Isles: [crying] Thank you.

This was interesting, this idea of benign neglect. I think it's easy to write a character like this off as being a relatively harmless Aspie, but do negative environmental factors like this trigger autism or Asperger's? Even if she is Aspie, or even just an introvert, apparently the way she was raised has led her to become an antisocial, relatively unfeeling and unempathetic brand of humanity, which really isn't that different from her foil the serial killer.

Can benign neglect trigger sociopathic behaviors? Maybe. Or probably.

Friday, September 23, 2011

Socios on TV: Breaking Bad's Gus

From a reader:
Have you followed the TV show Breaking Bad at all? It has a fantastic premise: a middle aged chemist is diagnosed with cancer, and this in combination with a mid-life crisis of sorts leads him to begin cooking meth. The various travails of his life in the aftermath of this choice make for great viewing, and the show is great television. It's from AMC, whom you may admire already if you've ever seen the show Mad Men.

At any rate, there is a character named Gus who runs a massive meth production and distribution network, something he does with sterile precision and professionalism. In seasons 1 to 3, he remains courteous and polite at almost all times, although certain scenes allude to his likely sociopathy. In the first episode of the currently airing season 4, his true nature is shown for the first time, in an exhilarating portrayal of his ability to kill without the slightest hint of emotion, although it is a combination of calculation and burning anger that leads him to do it. The actor is exceptional- his face remains blank, but you can feel the smooth decision-making process happening behind it.

The link is here.

I strongly suggest you set aside 45 minutes to watch this, and I would love to know your impressions. In the event that you are too busy to spend 45 minutes on this, the scene in question is from appx. 27 minutes in until 38 minutes in.
M.E.: I have been a big fan of the show, initially for the fun premise and the overall bleakness. I too thought that Gus was a sociopath. When wearing a mask, he is almost obsequiously polite--classic sociopath. I particularly liked the third season for him, when he was clearly "seducing" Walter [protagonist] into going into business with him. It's so understated and tasteful the way he crawls into Walter's head and feeds him whatever he needs to hear. There is actually palpable chemistry between the two. But you are right, the portrait of Gus as sociopath was really completed in the first episode of this current season. Interestingly, the more I watch the show the more it seems like Walter leans narcissist, or at least is highly narcissistic. At first I just wrote off a lot of Walter's eccentric behavior to cancer and the premise, but the writers have actually done a great job making him seem like he was a ticking time bomb and if it wasn't the cancer scare, it would have been anything else that might have finally set him off into a narcissistic tailspin.

Saturday, April 16, 2011

The cruel aspie

I have a particularly hostile and clueless aspie in my worklife. Although I found his machinations incredibly annoying, I didn't react in the emotional way that he seemed to be expecting. This made the aspie try harder to be cruel at first, thinking perhaps that he just wasn't pressing the right buttons to send me over the edge. When I continued to react with apathy to his insults and played his games back on him until I got the upperhand, he began playing the victim, although not credibly because of the papertrail he left that I had the foresight to maintain. The weird thing about this sudden shift to the victim role is that I think he actually believes that he is the victim. In fact, he is the one that I tweeted about who vehemently complained that he was "a decent human being" (which he most certainly is not) and as such does not "deserve to be treated this way" (which he most certainly does).

This interpersonal "drama" is why I found this email from an aspie reader particularly interesting, both for the parallels (particularly a proneness to callous manipulation and self-deception) and the differences (whatever the relevant psychologist thinks they may be):
When I was 7 I was diagnosed with aspergers syndrome.

Until recently I had not realised that I was as cruel of a person as I see I am now in retrospect.

Whilst growing up I would physically attack my brother until he started to bleed, and when he did my only thoughts were for myself that I might get caught.

I manipulated people and lied to get more money from my mother (my parents divorced when I was age 6). I am no longer violent, But I am extremely emotionally manipulative and I still lie regularly without realising it.

After breaking up with my (now ex) girlfriend, she made me realise these things about myself. When I was with her, despite feeling that I should love her, I treated her with spite and coldness. When she would ask me to proofread her writing I would tell her I found the style boring and that I was astounded she received good marks for something so poorly constructed. I was contemptuously jealous of her ability to write so well. I would treat her like an unintelligent child when we debated and when she cried herself to sleep telling me of how her father never showed her any affection and was utterly self obsessed, I did not react. I saw such a time as merely an opportunity to become closer to her, gain more of her trust. I do not feel remorse for these actions although I do miss her affection and wish I had not been so cruel if only so she'd still be with me.

I told her that I suspected I was a sociopath and could not love her. I thought my honesty would be welcomed and she could help me become a better person. She left instead.

This was kinda crushing, not that I did love her, but because I was dependant on her to support me emotionally. I thrive on being loved, but as I am such an obliviously callous person (which I only realised recently) people find it difficult to love me. I also tend to discard people when they outlive their usefulness.

I was doing research on the subject to confirm my suspicion when I came across your blog. It seems as though my situation is congruent with the diagnosis, so I went to see a psychologist to find out if I could get help. I explained my childhood diagnosis and the psych seemed absolutely sure that I am not a sociopath and that I in fact do have aspergers syndrome.

She explained what Aspergers syndrome entails and how it fits my queries just as well as sociopathy, even slightly better.

I then came across a post on your blog about the difference in perception between "aspies" and sociopaths ("soc's"[SO-shez]). It occurred to me that even though I am perceived as a harmless, socially awkward, 'genius', I am just as bad if not worse than people who's correct diagnosis would label them as 'serial killers' or 'child molesters' what have you.

This is really just plain wrong. I would like to talk further with you and help in anyway I can with this issue of inequality of public perception. Having read so much it is clear to me that aspergers and sociopathy are similar disorders and poisonous associations in wider society will just continue to perpetuate themselves with books such as "the sociopath next door", and "the snakes in suits." It sickens me that you would be treated as a monster when I am treated with respect for essentially very similar neurological disorders.
So there you have it: tell a girl you're a sociopath and get broken up with, tell a girl you're an aspie and maybe get some pity sex.

Monday, April 4, 2011

Let's play doctor

From a reader:
I was wondering about sociopaths and have a feeling that I may be one.
So I've been scouring the internet searching for some sort of answer. Every site has different answers to what makes one as well as their tendencies differ. Unfortunately it seems I can confirm a majority of the tendencies. I play mind games with people and enjoy it when I hurt them through them. Breaking people up making them cry. Weird things like that. Also since noticing that I'm positive for things like that I've been thinking back on certain things. Everything I ever do causally with other people some how turns into a contest in my mind and I have to do everything possible to win. Extreme hatred towards loud obnoxious rude people (aka narcissist).

Also my ultimate goal is to take over the world... Has been for a long time. Long before I even started thinking about if I was a sociopath. I have had daydreams and dreams of gaining power for as long as I can remember. I've also had other dreams from about when I was 13. The first one was watching some kill themselves and it was extremely exciting. There have been other ones. Most recently I've been excited from the thought of watching as a rain of fire kills everyone on the earth. I know these things are "Wrong" but the thoughts of killing people is so exciting. I don't see anything wrong with it. It's supposedly just our animal instincts to kill. Of course I wouldn't kill anyone for pure pleasure right now. I still have no power and even though I could probably get away with it saying that they attacked me first. It would be a waste of time right now. I have an obvious lack of respect for human rights and people as people. I've thought before this that people are simply tools and I still do.

Your recent sociopath test was extremely helpful. The second question is exactly what I've always done for as long as I can remember. Lies about things that happened to gain sympathy, trust, or interest from other people. My favorite one is pretending to be grieving for an old friend who died of cancer. Of course I've learned that if you add some truth from a story that you have heard or read people believe it instantly. Yes again to questions 3,4,6,7,8 and 12.

As for why I think I am a sociopath I noticed it awhile ago when reading up on some stuff online and I came across the term sociopath for the first time. Now that I've read your site more I'm almost positive that I am. I guess I just came asking you for confirmation. Kinda pointless. I don't think it's a bad thing to be one. In fact supposedly from all I've read being a sociopath makes you superior to everyone else. That's pretty much all I can come up with to tell you. I don't know if you can tell me if I am one but thank you for your time either way. The only other question now is whether I was born one or if it was from childhood trauma. A bit of both I think. My parents were a bit abusive at times. Anyways thank you for your time and your Blog. It has been extremely helpful.
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