Anticipating regret

I apologize, I forget who sent me this article highlighting some recent research by Joshua Buckholtz, associate professor of psychology at Harvard, and Arielle Baskin-Sommers, assistant professor of psychology and of psychiatry at Yale University. I think we've talked about at least Baskin-Sommers before. I wish there was a little bit better explanation of the nature of the experiment and how robust their findings were, but essentially what they found was that sociopaths are actually capable of feeling regret and disappointment -- essentially just a wish that things had gone differently than they actually did, perhaps because we had acted differently than we did.

This I find to be true to experience. Not just that, I see it in other sociopaths that I've met and still talk to and I think it underpines the inability of sociopaths to learn for experience. Take for instance a sociopath who has totaled on average .85 cars a year since she started driving. That's very high! But I actually know two separate sociopaths who have a driving history like this. I'm not sure if it's always true, but most of the accidents are caused not by weather conditions, etc., but by inattention to road conditions. Maybe some texting while driving, maybe some wandering mind. But totalling a car is expensive. This is something that you think people would start really trying to avoid. And the advantage of texting while driving or doing other things while driving is so low. If sociopaths were true rational actors engaged in a cost benefit analysis, you'd think that these people would have lower automobile insurance premiums. But they don't. Why?

Maybe normal people are better able to learn from their experience because they can anticipate the regret that they would feel. In fact, probably a lot of the source of normal people's anxiety and worry is really just an anticipation of regret or disappointment. Does this sound right normal people? And because those emotions are so negative and powerful, it directs the normal person to avoid the behavior that carries a high risk of regret with it. Not always, but more than sociopaths maybe.

According to the article:

“The assumption has always been that they make these bad choices because they can’t generate negative emotions like fear, or appropriately respond to emotional signals generated by other people … but we turned that idea on its head.”

Using an economic game, Buckholtz and Baskin-Sommers were able to show that while psychopaths have normal, or even enhanced, emotional responses in situations that typically elicit regret, they have trouble extracting information from the environment that would indicate that an action they’re about to take will result in the experience of regret.

“There are two components to regret,” Buckholtz explained. “There is retrospective regret, which is how we usually think about regret — the emotional experience after you learn you could have received a better outcome if you had made a different choice. But we also use signals from our environment to make predictions about which actions will or won’t result in regret. What differentiated psychopaths from other people was their inability to use those prospective regret signals, to use information about the choices they were given to anticipate how much regret they were going to experience, and adjust their decision-making accordingly.

“It’s almost like a blindness to future regret,” he added. “When something happens, they feel regret, but what they can’t do is look forward and use information that would tell them they’re going to feel regret to guide their decision-making.”

“These findings highlight that psychopathic individuals are not simply incapable of regret [or other emotions], but that there is a more nuanced dysfunction that gets in the way of their adaptive functioning,” Baskin-Sommers said. “By appreciating this complexity, we are poised to develop more accurate methods for predicting the costly behavior of psychopathic individuals.”

Using a measure of prospective regret sensitivity, Buckholtz and Baskin-Sommers were also able to predict whether and even how many times study participants had been incarcerated.

“Contrary to what you would expect based on these basic emotional-deficit models, their emotional responses to regret didn’t predict incarceration,” Buckholtz said. “We know psychopathy is one of the biggest predictors of criminal behavior, but what we found was that behavioral regret sensitivity moderated that, raising the suggestion that intact behavioral regret sensitivity could be a protective factor against incarceration in psychopathic individuals.”

While the study upends the pop-culture image of psychopaths, Buckholtz is hopeful that it will also provide a new direction for scientists who hope to understand how psychopaths make decisions.

“We actually know very little about how psychopaths make choices,” he said. “There have been all sorts of research into their emotions and emotional experience, but we know next to nothing about how they integrate information that we extract from the world as a matter of course and use it to make decisions in daily lives. Getting better insight into why psychopaths make such terrible choices, I think, is going to be very important for the next generation of psychopathy research.”

Regret vs. remorse

I have actually forgotten where I got this from, but I thought it was an interesting etymological explanation of what I have always intuited about regret vs. remorse.

I always think of connotation - REMORSE "1325–75; Middle English < Middle French remors < Medieval Latin remorsus, equivalent to Latin remord ( ere ) to bite again, vex, nag ( re- re- + mordere to bite) + -tus suffix of v. action, with dt > s; see mordant" Defined as a "deep and painful regret for wrongdoing; compunction." Remorse seems to follow a morally wrong decision. REGRET "1300–50; Middle English regretten (v.) < Middle French regreter, Old French, equivalent to re- re- + -greter, perhaps < Germanic ( compare greet2 )" Defined as alternatively "a sense of loss, disappointment, dissatisfaction, etc" or "a feeling of sorrow or remorse for a fault, act, loss, disappointment, etc." It is interesting that regret's second definition denotes a relationship with remorse but I have always thought that regret follows a decision that can be morally wrong but might just be a function of maturity. We have remorse for something that is unequivocally wrong and we feel regret for something that could be wrong but might just be stupid.

For me, regret means either feeling bad about something I get caught at OR a missed opportunity. Remorse is more connected to morality and is when I feel bad because I know what I have done is wrong (according to my conscience and internal compass).

I agree particularly with the last paragraph--that regret is wishing things could have gone differently, and remorse seems to be associated with a sense of guilt.

A comprehensive attempt to categorize oneself

A long email from a reader asking:

First of all, I wanna say I have read almost every post of your blog, and it really makes me happy that someone's taking the time to do this. Actually help us with our doubts and everything.

Before beginning my history, I just want to note that my main language is not English, so there will probably be mistakes with grammar or something like it. 

It's hard to choose where to start, but I'll do my best.

I have had an inner doubt for a few months now: am I a sociopath? 

How did I get to this question?

During one class at school, my teacher was talking about Sociopaths, noting every trace that one might have, and, to be honest, I had seen myself in those traces as he spoke, but said nothing. The thing is, as soon as the teacher finished, my friends looked at me and smirked, 'you're a Sociopath', they said. And I simply took that as a joke. 

It's been in my mind since then.

In my small group of friends, I've always been known as the 'weirdo', simply because I'm not outspoken, I don't get along with most of our colleagues, and always been called the 'cold' one, because I never really showed my feelings. I never been outspoken, but I always been articulated with words.

Lately I have developed a curiosity towards serial killers. I've always had this 'uncommon' interest in things that people usually tend to ignore because it doesn't seem healthy. 

The therms sociopath and psychopath became a routine, but it was more like a hobby until I came across this personality test to see if you're a 'sociopath'. My intention was just to amuse myself, but when the result was positive, I made other three tests like that, and all of them the same. I don't think this could be a trustful diagnoses, so I started looking up for the traces of a sociopath, and it seemed that I had many things in common. 

Since I have been a child, I have never got along with other people very well, simply because I'd rather my own company, but people always seem to love me. Teachers, other students, everyone. They saw me like this smart and sweet little girl, but deep inside I felt like I was pretending. Until I learned I could get things from it. I'd usually be nice to people to get something. Anything. Not a big deal to me, everyone does that, and specially back then (I believe I was 9). 

I think my life took this turn when I was 4, because I was molested in school, but I can't really say, since I don't remember anything before that. My mom says that after that, I turned into this more reserved girl. This was a fact that I had to pretend I forgot for the next 10 years, because I did not want my parents to worry about it. 

Since I can remember, I haven't been really that person that loves everyone. No, I'm not saying I don't love. I do. I love my family. My mom, my dad, my grandma, my brother... The ones that are with me in a daily basis. 

I don't have many people I consider friends, because I just can't trust people. And even if I do trust them, I have never been able to be truthful with them. I'm not saying that I lie about everything, but even when there's no reason to, I'll make up a lie or two, sometimes just to show them that I'm better somehow. In my whole life, I only had one friend I have been totally honest, and that I totally trusted. Someone I'd give my life for. (What happened isn't really what matters.)

I think, even when I don't feel able to love or feel empathy for everyone I know, I love too much that small group of people that I'm able to feel something for. I hope I'm making sense here, as said, my mother tongue is not English. But I love too much, to the point I feel it gets close to an obsession.

Manipulating people to get something, sometimes only amusement, is also something I do quite often. Isn't really something I try to do, it comes and I don't even realize. To mention one case that happens often, I usually will talk guys into believe I like them, so I'll get something back. Information about something I have the need to know, getting them to pay for things and all that. 

I also have bursts of anger often, since really young. Sometimes there's not even a reason behind it, I just get the urge to hurt someone or break something. In the past few years I blamed this on self destruction. 

First time I ever tried to hurt someone, I was really young, to the point I can only remember flashes and what my grandmother tells me. She was laying down on the couch, and I simply hit her head with something. To be honest, the only thing I can remember of this event is me looking at her head and then just hitting her. 

Second time I can remember, I was between 8 or 10 years old, when my cousin was tripping on the stars and reached out for me. I grabbed her hand but I wanted to see what would happen if I let her go, and I did. She didn't get hurt, and I convinced one other cousin that was there with us, to tell my aunt that I didn't let her go, that her hand slipped from mine. My aunt believed me, and nothing happened to me.

Last year, I was camping with three friends, and this one was making me irritated, somehow. He took something from me without asking, and lost it. I was really angry, and told him to look for it, but instead, he sat down and started using his phone. He was sitting in the dark, and I remember walking to a pile of sticks, grabbing one and going behind him. When I was about to raise it and hit him, he turned around and saw me, so he walked away. Our other friends had to sit me down and make me calm down.

I don't think I am a bad person, nor these episodes make me a Sociopath or not, because everyone has these bursts of anger and do things they'd regret. But I don't regret. I don't regret almost hitting him, because in the end he found the thing and gave it back to me. I don't regret lying, I don't regret manipulating, and I don't regret doing things that other people wouldn't. I think the closest I have to feel something about it, besides the thrill, is being anxious with the possibility of being caught on my lies or anything I do.

For the last two years, I've been to therapy. I hate school, and that's normal, so I had suicide attempts and started self harming, because I wanted a way to get away from school. It worked for one year and a half. I started therapy and my therapist would write to school to justify why I wasn't going to my classes. But back then my explanation to myself, was that I had depression. Maybe I had, I'm not really sure, but these days I've been thinking about the possibility of being a Sociopath, and it crossed my mind that maybe I created these symptoms to get away from school, something I hated. Something I was forced to do.

I never really had problems with my exams, so that wasn't the problem. I'd like to consider myself quite smart. I never really had to study for tests, I'd only listen to the teacher for half an hour, and I'd get high notes on my exams. I always been the best in my classes, without much effort. 

Again, it always led people to like me. I never really understood why, because I never did anything, but people always try to talk to me, they always like me. I guess I started liking the fact that I could get something from it.

Earlier today, I had therapy, and questioned my therapist about being a Sociopath. Mentioned the tests and all. She said I'm cold, insensitive, egocentric, but didn't get to the point to tell me if I was or not. She simply said 'all of us have the traits of a sociopath'. 

I know it might sound like I'm trying to convince you that I might be, because I have seen several people claiming to be sociopaths because they want to hurt other people when they're angry, but I am being truthful, here. I have nothing to lose by saying the truth, and nothing to gain by lying. I just wanted to know if I am or not, because for the first time I think I found someone that is like me, and that there's actually nothing wrong with not being empathetic with everyone you know, just because society tells you to. 

My friendships never last for too long, because I always expect more from them, and they always disappoint me. Letting go of them and losing the feelings (sometimes, shallow feelings), is never too hard. The only thing is the feeling of revenging for the betrayal. 

I think these are the things that might help you with... Helping me. I need to get this doubt out of my head. 

It never entered my mind

I'm mildly to medium-ly obsessed with the song "It never entered my mind."



To me there is only one thing that really can haunt me, and this sensation, whatever it is, is so perfectly incapsulated by this song.  It is partly a worry that I am missing out on something, but it's worse than that.  It's more the worry that I will regret the decisions I have made because I have missed out on something.

One of my favorite movies is the Woody Allen comedy Sweet and Lowdown.  The protagonist is a completely pompous jazz guitarist from the early half of the last century: a delusional, raging narcissist, beautifully talented, but without any real emotion in his playing.   He meets and (sort of) falls in love with a mute girl named Hattie, played incomparably by Samantha Morton.



She puts up with him like no one else will and he finds that even the simplest pleasures of life are made more pleasurable with her beside him.  Still, he feels like he deserves better (or just more) so breaks up with her about halfway through the movie:



He continues his hijinks through the second half of the movie and even marries an icy femme fatale played by Uma Thurman.  Near the end of the movie he runs into Hattie again.  She is married now and even has children.  He is disappointed, but tries to play it off.  Later that night he tries to console himself by doing some of his favorite activities: shooting rats by the train station and playing the guitar.  Frustrated and emotionally overcome he grabs the guitar by the neck and slams it into a nearby tree, shattering it.  He is a man whose only goal was his own happiness, who has consistently chosen without compunction whatever he thought would make him most happy, and yet he is not happy.  As he clubs the tree with the guitar over and over again he screams, "I made a mistake!  I made a mistake!"

This scene haunts me.  This man thought he was choosing happiness, and chose as wisely as he could, but still ended up crippled by regret.  But it's not the fact that he happens to end up alone that's disturbing.  I acknowledge that much of life is chance and all sorts of bad things might happen to me during life.  I'm fine with that.  The thing that haunts me more than anything else is the thought that I could unwittingly be the author of my own unhappiness -- unhappiness so surprising that it never entered my mind that things could play out that way.  It is the ultimate in powerlessness -- not just the thought that nothing I do really matters, but that things I do could matter and actually make things worse.

Of the negative emotions I feel, regret is the saddest and strongest.

It never entered my mind:
I don't care if there's powder on my nose
I don't care if my hairdo is in place
I've lost the very meaning of repose
I never put a mudpack on my face
Oh, who'd have thought that I'd walk in a daze
Now I never go to shows at night but just to matinees
Now I see the show and home I go

Once I laughed when I heard you saying
That I'd be playing solitaire
Uneasy in my easy chair
It never entered my mind
Once you told me I was mistaken
That I'd awaken with the sun
And order orange juice for one
It never entered my mind

You have what I lack myself
And now I even have to scratch my back myself

Once you warned me that if you scorned me
I'd sing the maiden's prayer again
And wish that you were there again
To get into my hair again
It never entered my mind

Feelings (part 3)

The reader responds (edited for length):

What I can say for sure is that I have changed. Yes, of course we are different people now than when we were young, thank the gods and the nine circles, but... The extent of how much my personality and my behavior has altered - and how different I am aware that I act while on the pills - will have to be my character witness. When I was young I was impulsive and brash, a bit clueless and devil-may-care. I was also very honest for a child, and a bit sensitive since I had self-esteem issues, which is part of what led to my depression. And I know I had a sense of guilt, because of a few admissions I can recall I made voluntarily. Not so much the case after [the emotional dissociation]. And I think that's another crucial point; when I take the pills (Metamina 5mg capsules, by the by) much of my hesitation to stop and to go back to "normal" is out of what I think is a sense that I am betraying someone or something.

And if that isn't guilt, then perhaps I never did know the feeling of it, or the definition. And isn't guilt really the crucial point, when it comes to the separation of the socios and psychos from the normals?

M.E.: I wanted to comment a little bit about what you said about guilt.

I don't really know what people mean by guilt. I find that particular diagnostic criteria difficult to pin down and I'm not entirely sure that sociopaths never feel a type of regret or cognitive dissonance that is essentially what people mean by guilt. By regret I mean wishing things had gone a different way or you had made a different choice (without necessarily assigning moralistic values to your choices). By cognitive dissonance, I mean that you do something that is not in harmony with your personal view of yourself.

Now I think that guilt definitely must have elements of regret and cognitive dissonance to it, but is it something more? Is there a third ingredient, perhaps in which you feel the hurt you caused another as if you had hurt yourself, or perhaps for the religious you feel like you are being cast further away from the divine? I think the emotion "guilt" is a lot more complicated than people acknowledge. I think when people say that sociopaths are "remorseless" or "don't feel guilt," at the very least they mean that sociopaths are able to do certain things that most people would consider morally wrong without seeing or feeling the "wrongness" of them. I don't know if that means that a sociopath is categorically incapable of feeling "guilt," but I guess it would depend on one's definition.

But self-knowledge is such a Sisyphean endeavor, don't you think? At least I have recently found it to be a cycle of self discovery and self doubt.

Regret being sociopathic?

From a reader:

I consider myself neurologically atypical if not also sociopathic. I don't have any official diagnosis so I'm not sure if my self-diagnosis is useful.

I wanted to ask about regret for being sociopathic. Much of the website posts and your book resonate with me rather deeply. I see myself in many many of the different posts and comments and stories.
I read the book (having been drawn to it primarily because I have considered myself atypical since my teen years) in only a matter of days and determined that I very strongly matched enough of the factors or variables that would classify me in the socio realm.

I struggle with something of a cognitive dissonance, though. And I'm not sure other identified sociopaths would agree I am in that realm based largely on this factor. I can't fit in anywhere since I behave in manners so out of place and abnormal to the folks at large (social, work, etc.)

But I want to. I see how others act and emote and engage and connect and I get angry at myself for not understanding how to do that and not being able to. I have definitely learned how to feign it, but I find that cuts a number of relationships short because the empathic (to use book language) types try to get me to open up and be vulnerable like they are and I think they see how shallow that pool of mine is or see something else that creates a sense of unease and they remain somewhat distance.

In a few instances I've invested a lot of time and energy into a specific person to get them to convince themselves that I am more and deeper and I feel things just like them. I have in essence made some very good pawns from it. The latest addition to my collection of people is someone who I've somehow managed to totally ...glamour. They are enamored to the point where I've had to detach time and energy from them. To the point where I think I've broken them or gone too far. They adore me, they love me, they want more of me, they dream of me, they masturbate to me. I am overwhelmed that I did this.

The latest ...conquest only happened after I underwent a lengthy period of loneliness / retrospection / self-revelation. I'm in my late 20s now and I identified my last couple of years with the "blue" period from your book, where you seem to have realized just how lonely life can be, for someone who has a rather difficult disconnect from a lot of other run-of-the-mill people.

This is getting long, but ...do you, in some ways or at certain times...regret being sociopathic? Do you have desires to be 'normal?' To not have to think about yourself in these ways? To not have to watch yourself carefully and present a persona all the time? To just...be able to relax and be "yourself" and not worry about being chased up the mountain by torches and pitchforks?

M.E.: I think I definitely do feel that way. It's not necessarily that I feel dysphoria so much as a sense of meaninglessness that can started creeping up on me in my late 20s and took firm hold of my early thirties. If everything is a game, then what's the point of playing? That sort of thing. And there is a lot of effort spent just maintaining a status quo. It just didn't seem that sustainable, at least not when you looked as lasting for decades. So I've tried to expand my mental and psychological horizons, so to speak, in terms of figuring out different ways to be. I don't ever expect to cease being sociopathic entirely, but I guess I am aiming to be more bilingual. 

Regret

I don't know if I have ever felt remorse, but I've definitely felt regret. I have several formerly close friends/former love interests who no longer speak to me. The first couple times it happened were particularly heart breaking. I was just starting to realize that I was different, but reckless about it still and a little in denial about the extent of the difference. To one I even confessed that I had a tendency to treat people in my life like paper napkins -- use them all up and then dispose of them. I didn't really mind being different back then, but I already understood how toxic it could be to others.

One particular old incident still haunts me. I had a rocky friendship with someone I admired a great deal. A long school trip coincided with our most recent fight, and we had to spend time together on a bus. At one point in the trip we were stopped and I watched my friend get off the bus. I looked out the window and saw the person engaged in an impromptu game with classmates. Taking advantage of the moment, I rifled through my friend's belongings and found a personal notebook/journal. I was so desperate to know what my friend thought of me that I immediately starting skimming it. Less than a minute later i looked out the window and couldn't see my friend anywhere. I panicked, threw the notebook down on the ground, and started running for the bus door where I encountered the friend. Trying to distract and buy myself time, I playfully tackled my friend to the floor. My friend was charmed by the playful gesture and seemed willing to reconcile. Once my friend looked over and saw the journal on the ground, however, I knew it was all over. I'd never seen hatred like that in someone's eyes before. I knew in an instant what I had done and what it had cost me.

I don't blame people for hating me. I hate myself a little. Not everything destructive in my life was my fault or anything I would have done differently, but some of it I deeply regret.

More on PTSD

From a reader, written to me previous to the other PTSD inquiry, for a second set of thoughts:

I started reading your blog a few days ago (ordered your book as well) and it's been really helpful. Not sure how many random emails you get or how happy you are to reply to or publish them on the blog, but I'm giving it a shot as this is something I've been trying to get some information and/or reflections on for a long time. 

So I'm not diagnosed with ASPD (never been assessed), but this last year the pieces have started coming together and I'm pretty sure I'm a sociopath with narcissistic tendencies. I hate admitting it but eventually I suppose you have to look at the evidence. I've tortured animals. As a kid I had a list of people I was going to kill and I knew exactly what doing that meant. I've spent my entire adult life exploiting and manipulating everyone around me for professional, monetary or sexual gain. I'm a sexual sadist and have put people in hospital for kicks. I've seen the blank look in people's eyes when they think it's all over and it's the hottest thing I've ever seen. Got a pretty standard history of drug, sex and adrenaline abuse. Don't really know how many people's lives I've ruined, but some of them are in therapy now. Just putting all of this out for factual reference. I never felt bad about doing any of these things and never really considered myself a bad person. I suppose on some level I knew what I was doing was wrong, but it's hard to make morally correct decisions when the wellbeing of other's doesn't feel relevant. I just did what I wanted and didn't really think about whether it was right or wrong.

So that's the background. Eventually it all blew up in my face when I messed with the wrong people. Was almost killed and had to literally flee the country and start a new life. Before that, these people made sure that the life I had was completely ruined. Everything I'd been built up like friends, work, networking etc vanished and everyone I thought I had under control started seeing me as a monster. And then I was abused and mindfucked by people who were way better at it than me. Ended up a total wreck, got diagnosed with PTSD. And suddenly I started feeling guilt, which I'd never really felt before. Eventually I learned that it was just regret, or at least I think so. Example: I hurt two different people in the same manner. I get away with the first one, so I don't feel guilty. I suffer consequences for the second, so I feel some kind of regret that my brain interprets as guilt. Does that make sense? I also suddenly started caring about what people thought of me or how they saw me. Nowadays I'll actually feel bad if someone dislikes me, which makes no sense as I never used to care. I'm suspecting it's the trauma. My brain interprets anyone who dislikes me as a potential threat. I may be mostly fearless but being abused and almost killed isn't something I want to repeat. My brain works a bit like this: Person dislikes me = gets others to dislike me = mob mentality = I'm dead. It's fairly irrational, but then I suppose it happened once so it could happen again. 

I suppose what I'm looking for is any insight into the connection between sociopathy and PTSD, and how this might influence one's emotional spectrum through "false" guilt or self-consciousness. My ASPD friend claims sociopaths can't be traumatised, but I'm skeptical. My life doesn't make much sense if I can't simultaneously have sociopathic traits and be traumatised, because there's evidence of both. I'm 28 and female if that's relevant. 

Our sociopath gets interviewed (part I)

As I mentioned previously, I get a lot of flack from attributing every aspect of my personality to my disorder (and i mostly do think that it is a disorder, as much as i would love to believe otherwise). I've tried to do better at just presenting who I am, leaving it open to interpretation exactly what about my descriptions should be taken to represent me personally and what can be abstracted to apply to sociopaths in general. In answering the following questions from a reader, then, I do not claim to speak for all sociopaths, but instead express what I have personally experienced and observed:

Question 1: I have two sociopath friends who frequently engage me in power struggles. What surprises me in both of them is, even though they are pattern-breakers, they have a pretty obvious attack pattern which becomes very predictable after the 3rd-4th attack. You just have to wait a while and pretend to become a victim, pretend to lose until it is revealed. What do you think about this pattern? Are sociopaths able to surprise other people but not prone to surprise themselves? Do they believe that they have consistent behaviour? Would breaking their pattern disturb them in any way?

Answer: Interesting observation, and congratulations for performing so well against sociopaths. I think that we in the sociopath community would like to think that all sociopaths are clever and good at what they do, but the truth is that many of them are stupid, and those are the types who usually end up in prison for taking unnecessary risks. It's true that sociopaths think differently from empaths; this can give them the advantage of surprise in a fight, particularly if their identity as a sociopath is unknown. Despite their reputation as being outside-the-box thinkers, however, sociopaths don't seem to be particularly adaptable. Their general strategy is to focus most of their efforts on attack, little on defense. That mixed with a tendency for overconfidence can leave them vulnerable to surprise attacks, particularly by clever defensive players like yourself. I have been duped before in a manner similar to what you describe (victim pretending to be weak until my guard is down, then asserting dominance), and it was very disturbing. I myself have used shamefully simple tactics on other sociopaths I know, like flattery, so you would think i should know better. (By the way, flattery works shockingly well on sociopaths.) But in general, sociopaths seem to not realize that their own tricks can be used against them. Like the two con men in Dirty Rotten Scoundrels falling into the trap of their "victim," sociopaths can get so caught up in the hunt that they forget they can also be hunted.

Question 2: You don't feel much, but what makes you feel? Does losing a game make you feel, or the death of someone, or a kiss?

Answer: Feeling emotions = loss of power/control, so I try to be very judicious about how and when I feel emotions. Interestingly, I think that to compensate for the lack of feeling, I have super sensitivity to sensory stimulation. Music, good food, beauty--simple things can lead to debilitating waves of pleasure, even shivers of ecstasy. In terms of emotion, there are certain emotions that I feel very well, and others not so much. Instead of frustration, I usually feel anger; instead of love, gratitude; instead of happiness, pleasure or satisfaction; instead of remorse or guilt, regret; instead of sorrow, disappointment. I have a different (more limited) emotional palette than most people, particularly those of my same socioeconomic and cultural background. In terms of what makes me feel, I get angry when a friend cries because I have hurt them. I feel grateful when I hear my mother's voice. I feel pleasure when I am kissed, satisfaction when I have played a game well, regret and disappointment when I have played a game poorly or have betrayed myself. When I lose someone, I feel their lack in same proportion to how I felt their presence before.

Sociopathic traits: lack of guilt

I thought that this was an interesting comment from a fairly recent post:

People that think they have traits they could use to label themselves as sociopaths. Most aren't, so sorry! Go get another label, that one is full. Having those traits, and having them in a pathological level are not the same cup of tea. Get over it! This is one of the things money won't get you.

When doing that trait test, reading "lack of remorse" - imagine your best at lacking remorse, the true best you can. And that's not it, is that point that you can no longer have imagination to take it to the next level. After, do the same to every other trait.

But there has to be something wrong with people that wish they were sociopaths. And here is the bullseye - maybe some people are ready to take themselves as socio's but not as anything else.

This is the kind of people I think hangs around here, in very general alineas, and they are only bringing more fuss to a matter that is allready hard to deal with or understand even from a MD's skills.

I wanted to address just one aspect of this comment -- the guiltlessness. The commentator suggests that to test whether you are a sociopath, think of your most remorseless moment, then imagine something that you can't even imagine because you're not a sociopath and that's still not even close to how sociopaths actually feel about guilt.

I wonder if this is really true. I know that a lot of people think that lack of guilt or remorse is a key identifying trait in a sociopath, but I think this is a trait that many (if not most) sociopaths would not self-identify with, but rather one that third party observers blithely claim to have observed in sociopaths with little to no evidence supporting it.

Here's how I think this myth got started. Take a typical situation you might encounter in a prison setting: convicted sociopath criminal justifies some reprehensible act he did by blaming his behavior on the victim: "she had it coming." The sociopath does not seem to feel guilt for something he should clearly be feeling remorse, does not even understand why he should feel guilt for that behavior. Ergo, sociopaths do not feel guilt.

Really? Why would a sociopath even bother to justify his behavior ("she had it coming") if he was incapable of feeling anything even resembling regret?

What is really happening? I think that sociopaths believe that they feel "guilt" or "remorse" over some things, just not for what people expect them to feel guilt or remorse. In the example above, I think the sociopath was simply expressing that the action was warranted ("she had it coming"), so there was nothing to feel guilty about. Sociopaths do not necessarily value (or are even aware of) society's rules or moral standards and they feel little to no cognitive dissonance for violating these standards. They may, however, feel cognitive dissonance, or regret, over violating one of their own beliefs about who they are, or what type of world they live in. Sociopaths may feel this cognitive dissonance less frequently than normal people because it is so easy for them to justify their own behavior ex post facto and most "successful" sociopaths would have enough control and foresight to typically avoid breaking their own rules. But feeling it at inappropriate times (and rarely), does not mean that they cannot "feel" it.

So do sociopaths feel guilt? I think a lot of sociopaths would say that they do, or at least have. Do they feel guilt every time society thinks they should? No, not necessarily. People need to understand that lack of "conscience" or "empathy" does not necessarily equate with an inability to feel remorse. But bonus points for anyone who identifies when "lack of guilt" was first used by the psychological community to demonize us further.

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.

Parent to a sociopath

I finally got around to watching We Need to Talk About Kevin, the film version of the book of the same name, about a school massacre perpetrator and his mother. The story starts with the mother Eva becoming pregnant. She is ambivalent about motherhood. Her son Kevin does not respond to her mediocre attempts to bond or soothe. As he grows just a little older, it becomes clear that he is not normal, perhaps even deeply disturbed.

The film is no chronological and skips between before and after the massacre. Her life before was first young and exciting New York then a downgrade (in her mind) to a suburban estate with her growing family. Her life after is lonely squalor where she is the victim of all vandalism, violence, and sexual antagonism meant to, what? Shame her into denouncing her son? Some of the perpetrators seem to be family to the victims of the massacre, but others apparently are just looking to participate in socially sanctioned aggression and exploitation (her co-worker, after a rebuffed unwelcome advance, snarls "Where do you get off, you stuck up bitch? Do you think anyone else is gonna want you now?"). Her life is ruined. The second part flashes back to her early struggles with motherhood, then power struggles with her son, as evidenced in part by his refusal to be potty trained. In a fit of rage over him deliberately soiling his diaper after she just changed it, she throws him and breaks his arm. When recalling the moment later, he tells her "It’s the most honest thing you ever did. Do you know how they potty train cats? They stick their noses in their own shit. They don’t like it. So they use the box." After coming home from the hospital, he lies to his father about the broken arm, saying he fell off the diaper changing table. He then extorts his mother with the threat of exposure in order to get his way.

She is obviously not mother of the year, but who could be with a son so cold and apparently evil? That at least seems to be the suggestion of the first half of the film -- that there's nothing else she could have done better and we're supposed to feel sorry for her because she was unlucky enough to have birthed a demon. By the middle of the movie, we know what is going to happen, we are just filling in details. We get a little more realistic characterization of the son. The mother puts a cd marked "I love you" into her computer, which infects it with a virus (and all computers from her office connected to the network). She asks, why would you have something like this, what's the point? "There is no point. That's the point." She makes fun of fat people at a rare mother son excursion, to which he points out "You know, you can be kind of harsh sometimes."

Eva: "You’re one to talk."

Kevin: "Yeah, I am. I wonder where I got it."

Apart from a brief childhood sickness, when young Kevin cuddles with her while she reads him a book, their relationship is strained. Oddly, she is shown devotedly visiting him in prison, even though they hardly exchange a word. What's her motivation? Penance? Curiosity? Duty? Not love, is it? We also discover that although she lives a lonely, isolated existence, she has at least in part chosen this life (still lives in the same town despite the antagonism, avoids her mother's plea that she visit for the holidays). Finally, we see that her new home has a bedroom for him with all of his things, including his clothes that she regularly washes and irons to keep fresh. Why? On the second anniversary of the massacre she again visits Kevin in prison. He is about to be transfered to an adult facility. His head is poorly shaved. His face is bruised. He is not his usual confidently unapologetic self. She tells him he doesn't look happy. "Have I ever?"With their time running out, she finally confronts him:

Eva: Why?

Kevin: I used to think I knew. Now I'm not so sure. [pause]

Prison guard: Time's up.

They hug, Eva finally apparently reaching that place of love and acceptance for her son that had for so long eluded her.

I liked a lot of things about the film. There are some very accurate portrayals of sociopathic behavior. For instance, although Kevin never feels remorse about the massacre, he does show signs of regret -- an acknowledgment that perhaps he has miscalculated or misunderstood the true nature of life, including a sense of permanence of some consequences that many teenagers fail to intuit.

Perhaps the most interesting aspect of the film is the way it contrasts moral certainty (portrayed as ugly behavior) with self-doubt (portrayed as a sign of hope and the possibility of change). When the mother is at her most self-assured, Kevin hates her the most. It's only when she was weak enough to break his arm that he respects her for being honest. And Kevin's only redeeming moments are when he is sick and at the end when he is unsure whether the massacre was a good idea. These are stark contrasts to the moral indignation of the mother as she repeatedly tells her son off, the son as he repeatedly tells her everything is meaningless and that she is a hypocrite, the townspeople as they rally around to collectively dehumanize her (a small nod to the Scarlet Letter?), the husband who tells her she is a bad mother, etc. The problem with making these sorts of comprehensive judgments about a person are not that they aren't founded in truth, but that people naturally defy such pat assessments. They're simply too dynamic and life is too complicated (and subject more to chance than choice) to say with any degree of certainty that "so-an-so would never do something like that," or even "I would never do something like that." Moral certainty is often based in truth, but it denies so much more than it ever considers.

The film is also a true tragedy in that despite Kevin being particularly sinister and Eva particularly cold, there is nothing inherently wrong with either of these characters. Put in different circumstances, Eva could have been a wonderful mother and Kevin could have channeled his machiavellian traits to more pro-social activities that would have made an equal splash. The problems were in the way they interacted with each other. They were locked in a death struggle, a double drowning. In a desperate effort to ensure that the one would not unduly rule the other's life, they spent all of their time reacting to each other instead of just quietly going about their own lives. I see this with victims on this site too -- becoming so obsessed with making sure that someone does not unjustly assert their will on you that you allow your whole world to revolve around thoughts of the other person. They were both so focused on winning particular battles with each other, thinking that the sum of small wins would add up to a gestalt of victory. They did not consider the possibility that these might be Pyrrhic, or that sometimes when you win, you lose. Because neither Eva nor Kevin were willing to bend their vision of the world to accommodate other viewpoints, they were both eventually broken.

Opportunism

I often tell people that sociopaths are not necessarily malicious. They wonder what I mean by that and I have always struggled a bit to try to explain. While on this recent trip, however, something happened that I thought was a perfect example of what I mean.

I was sitting eating lunch, including some apples and bananas. I was caught up in conversation with a friend and we weren't paying attention when a monkey jumped into our eating area, grabbed the fruit and ran. It was pretty hilarious. My friend freaked out. The monkey didn't get my food only because I acted quickly to throw my jacket over it.

Ever since then she's been totally anti-monkey, considers them devious creatures. She always says things like, "They're staring me down. They're looking for weakness."And she's probably right. But it's not like they are out to get her because of who she is as a person or are even intending to take her stuff for the purpose of depriving her of her property or harassing her. All they want is her food. They are focused only on themselves. The point is not to hurt her. In fact, the effect that their actions have on others is an unintended consequence. If they could get the fruit in a way that did not hurt her, they would probably do that as often as the stealing. They just are looking for opportunities and when they see them, they quickly act upon them with no hesitation, compunction, or regret.

So too sociopaths frequently act based on a spirit of opportunism. They are not necessarily trying to hurt the people they exploit or victimize. They just see an opening and act on it. That's what I mean about a lack of maliciousness.

Approval vs. power

A reader wonders why people do the things they do and how that affects the relationships they form:

It’s like there are 2 ways to be with people

1. Approval seeking
2. Power seeking

We are a mix of those 2 to different degrees with everyone we interact with, which is exactly why we’re different depending on who we’re talking to . It's usually all subconscious, it’s like our personalities form hierarchies everywhere.

1. Does a lot of stupid things for approval, and has since the dawn of time. Like the things people did for kings and god and people that stay in relationships that aren't any good for them, hazing, the desire to be in the ‘inner circle’ regardless of how bad it is. It explains people like Snooki. These people let others mold them. This also explains the existence of the all-forgiving, all-accepting powerful paternal father figure also known as god in most cultures, people create someone that gives them approval whenever they want, and I think people need it to be happy and to function, like sort of a feedback that they’re valuable people.

Also 1 seems to be stereotypical woman behavior and 2 seems to be stereotypical guy behavior, they seem gender related but it’s actually only so because (generally) women are more submissive and men are more assertive.

So most emotions seem to come out of interactions with 1. and 2. These are extreme examples, but people mix and match these and things come out more balanced.

Like
1-1: to equal degrees is where true bonds form, like real friendship and love.  But the problem is that people have to make themselves slightly vulnerable and easy to take advantage of for this dynamic to work. This is where functional families are too, regardless of who they are they get down or up on each others levels and reciprocate. Reciprocation is the best way to have 1-1 and it works with uneven playing fields.

1->2: the 1 will feel like the 2 is emotionally unavailable, distant, they will get clingy onto them, which will reinforce 2’s behavior and drive them further away. This is why most guys are all like ‘bitches be crazy’. They don’t understand that it’s a normal response to neglect. The 1 will wrongfully take this personally, and think there is something wrong with them. They will want to re-balance things but will usually go about it the wrong way. The irony is the harder they try, the more they'll be a nuisance.

2->1: 2 will experience boredom with 1, so they’ll either end the relationship, enjoy the attention, or reduce 1 to more and more of a functional role. Which is why most girls are like ‘guys are assholes’. 

So say 1 gets reduced to more and more of a functional role, the gap between 1 and 2 widens. There’s obviously a sub/dom thing going on, but at a certain point, sub/dom turns into inferior/superior in the mind of the dom, this can also happen if people are told they’re more worthy than others,and if they believe it. They start to build their self-worth on that concept that that’s when things unhinge because for them to feel worthy, they need to keep that dynamic in place. If 1 tries to reassert themselves, 2 will resent that [like with all the hateful comments on yt when porn stars try to conduct a normal interview, proving that they have a brain] and crack down further. This may be because the animal brain finally gets engaged, and that part deals with dominance, hatred and lust. That exact thinking pattern is present in racism, lust, treatment of POWs, in domestic abuse, murders, gang members, bullying, it explains why those hot-headed middle easterners are so angry at everyone that’s female or not of their religion, why some people have authoritative personalities, why bosses can be intolerable. They’re all equally as bad. There’s also a study that proves that people like to exert more and more dominance over people that allow them over time, not out of malice but out of a want to control, and they sort of gain joy out of that process. The people that do this in a way that's not considered socially acceptable are the sociopaths. Pure 2.

So why do people do this if it’s bad? Complete dominance over someone is euphoric, seriously, it feels amazing in a twisted kind of way. It induces guilt and regret for a regular person, but sometimes the (empath) 2s come up with ways to circumvent that and allow them to act that way at will, to their benefit. These excuses make no actual sense, but if they’re socially supported that’s all that matters (screw logic if we can feel good about ourselves is a stance people love to take, case in point: religion). These excuses are : She/he’s black, she’s a whore she/he’s a communist, she/he’s dumb, she/he is an enemy of god and in the way of my blissful afterlife where 7 virgins will cater to all my needs. In this way, they can relish in the fact that they think they're better than at least one person, the ego boost that it gives them, and can partake in the illusion that it actually means something.

2-2: Could be bad, like wars and armed standoffs. But could also result in competition, which is what pushes thing forward the fastest. Competitions don’t always endanger lives and they’re not always about interpersonal relationships so they're not always destructive.

I've learned not to be angry despite this, it’s not really peoples fault that they are SOO easily manipulated by their context, I mean it is but it's clearly not an individual problem since it's so widespread, it's more like the wiring. It seems that it’s just  what happened to their brains after experiences, outcomes, and places where social reinforcement was applied. It makes a ton of evolutionary sense, not actual sense, and that can only work if people see things through a self-serving perspective. 

Mask of Sanity: Homosexuality and Sex

I realized that I referenced this Hervey Cleckley Mask of Sanity story in the book, but never posted it here. It's hilarious, one of my favorite, particularly because of the old-timey narration. I'm sure many will recognize some of their tendencies here:

In psychopaths and in many other people who cannot be correctly placed with the well-defined homosexual group, there are varying degrees of susceptibility or inclination to immature or deviated sex practices. In contrast with others, the psychopath requires impulses of scarcely more than whimlike intensity to bring about unacceptable behavior in the sexual field or in any other. Even the faintest or most fleeting notion or inclination to forge a check, to steal his uncle's watch, to see if he can seduce his best friend's wife, or to have a little fling at fellatio, is by no means unlikely to emerge as the deed. The sort of repugnance or other inhibiting force that would prevent any or all such impulses from being followed (or perhaps from even becoming conscious impulses) in another person is not a factor that can be counted on to play much part in the psychopath's decisions

The activities of a typical patient of this sort whom I once studied are highly illustrative. This 27-year-old man, honor graduate of a college despite great irregularity in his studies, had for a number of years followed a career so similar to those of the other patients cited that there is no point in going into detail. He showed no indications of ordinary homosexuality in manner, dress, physique, or in personality features. He had been rather active in heterosexual relations since about fifteen, his partners being professionals, girls of respectable family, and married women.

All of these relations had apparently been to him more or less equivalent and entirely without personal significance. He admitted having once or twice, and more or less experimentally, submitted to the wishes of a homosexual and also to a couple of blundering ventures into deviated activity while drinking with others apparently more like himself. These did not seem to give him any particular satisfaction, and there is reason to believe that he distinctly preferred what he did with women. To the patient, any idea that he might be a homosexual seemed absurd

In the absence of any persistent or powerful urge in this specific direction, the patient, apparently without much previous thought, hit upon the notion of picking up four Negro men who worked in the fields not far from his residence. In a locality where the Ku Klux Klan (and its well-known attitudes) at the time enjoyed a good deal of popularity, this intelligent and in some respects distinguished young man showed no compunction about taking from the field these unwashed laborers, whom he concealed in the back of a pickup truck, with him into a well-known place of amorous rendezvous. At the place he chose, "tourists' cabins" were discreetly set up in such a way that women brought by men to them for familiar purposes could enter without the possible embarrassment of being identified by the management. Despite these facilities suspicion arose, and the patient was surprised by the man in charge of the resort while in the process of carrying out fellatio on his four companions. He had chosen to take the oral role

When seen not long after this event, the young man was courteous but a trifle impatient about how long he might have to be hospitalized. He showed some concern with what use psychiatric examination might be in helping him avoid the term of imprisonment that would, according to the law, befall him if he should be convicted of the charges made by the proprietor and which he did not deny. This possibility did not, however, greatly alarm him

He had often evaded penalties for antisocial acts in the past, and he had a good deal of easy confidence. Although he expressed regret and said his prank was quite a mistake, he seemed totally devoid of deep embarrassment. On the whole, his attitude might be suggested by such phrases as "Well, boys will be boys," or "Now wasn't that a foolish damn thing for me to do." These were not his literal words, but they are congruent with his behavior. By some legal step, his family, whose members were wealthy and influential, succeeded in having him avoid trial. Finding himself free, he left against medical advice within a few days

As might be expected, in view of their incapacity for object love, the sexual aims of psychopaths do not seem to include any important personality relations or any recognizable desire or ability to explore or possess or significantly ravish the partner in a shared experience. Their positive activities are consistently and parsimoniously limited to literal physical contact and relatively free of the enormous emotional concomitants and the complex potentialities that make adult love relations an experience so thrilling and indescribable. Consequently they seem to regard sexual activity very casually, sometimes apparently finding it less shocking and enthralling than a sensitive normal man would find even the glance of his beloved. 

None of the psychopaths personally observed have impressed me as having particularly strong sex cravings even in this uncomplicated and poverty stricken sense. Indeed, they have nearly all seemed definitely less moved to obtain genital pleasure than the ordinary run of people. The impression one gets is that their amativeness is little more than a simple itch and that even the itch is seldom, if ever, particularly intense.

Being told you're a sociopath (part 1)

A lot of people ask me, do sociopaths know that they are sociopaths? I have always said yes, or at least that they usually know that they're different even if they're not quite sure what to label that difference. But I also think that young sociopaths often underestimate exactly how different they are from most people. From their perspective, the main differences they notice are how people make irrational emotional choices or how people do not use their brains as efficiently and effectively as the young sociopath does. What they don't necessarily realize is that other people are making similar assessments about them and their behavior. Perhaps other people notice that the young sociopath makes hyper rational choices, or that the young sociopath seems emotionally detached. In other words, young sociopaths often spend much of their time watching and studying the behavior of others, but sometimes they themselves are being observed and classified, perhaps by people that actually know what a sociopath is and are able to identify the observed traits as being sociopathic. I thought this story from a reader was a great illustration of how a sociopath feels about being told they are a sociopath:

I am 18 and an undergraduate freshman, and my story begins when I took a Philosophy class titled EVIL. I took it because it struck me as an interesting way to go about taking care of a GE requirement. And indeed, it was interesting, just not for the reasons I thought it would be….

As we started really dissecting the nature of evil, morality, conscience, guilt and regret, I began to notice things I had previously not even bothered to acknowledge. I began to disagree with my professor's black and white view on many concepts. I began to receive strange looks from classmates who always left the lecture hall with teary eyes and heavy hearts. An older woman sitting next to me eventually confronted me and suggested that I stop commenting to the class as it seemed I was offending her and other people with my, as she put it, “complete soullessness.”

I didn't understand what the big deal was. I had never had any real problems with what I said to people. I could be fun and sarcastic and usually everyone just loved to be around me. And now, for the first time, I felt exactly like an alien failing at disguising herself as a human.

One day, my professor asked me to stay after class. He asked me about my views I had expressed in lecture, so I clarified the way I had always thought of the nature of evil. He went on to ask me about more personal questions, like my attitudes towards friends and family… so on and so forth. For the first time, I didn’t know what to say. No one had ever asked me about my thoughts on these things so I said what I thought was appropriate. Finally, he  asked me if I had any history of mental health or violence. I told him, honestly, that I didn’t as far as I knew.

Then he brought up one word. He asked me if I knew what the word ‘sociopath” meant. At the time, I thought the word only existed in movies and TV dramas. A romanticized adjective to describe the Hannibal Lecters and the Dexter Morgans. As far as I knew, it had no practical meaning in everyday life. I told him as much.   

He confessed that he had been talking about me with one of his psychiatrist friends. It turned out he had actually invited his friend to sit in on a few of the lectures. He said that his friend had confirmed what he had already suspected, that I exhibited some traits of Antisocial Personality Disorder. (He didn’t use sociopathy the second time, but I learned later through research that they mean basically the same thing.) He suggested that I go see the school therapist or immediately seek some other form of professional help.

Hearing that from someone was like having water thrown on my face. I didn’t know what to say, or how to respond, how to act. So I didn’t say anything. I just thanked him for his time, told him I’d consider it, and left. I started doing meticulous research after that I learned that APD or sociopathy was a very real thing… and that the criteria of diagnosis hit very close to home for me.

And that’s when I stumbled across your book.
  
Reading through it opened my eyes in ways I wouldn't have ever guessed were possible. It was exciting and…fascinating, to have this previously fictional world open up to me and suddenly become very real. I wasn’t afraid or that shocked even. I was curious. I had to know more. And your book offered me insight that I wouldn't have never gotten otherwise. I could relate to most of what you wrote. I saw your writing and through it saw myself in a new light.

Which is what brings me to here and now. I don’t know if I really am a sociopath or just messed up in the head. Part of me really doesn't care. I am what I am. Others may have had issue with me in the past but I have never had any problems with myself. However, part of me also can’t help but be suspicious. I can look back at my life and make all the excuses I want for things I barely remember doing but that doesn’t change who I am now. If sociopathy is genetic then I don’t know where I would get it from because no one in my immediate family (that I know of) is anything like me. Is it like a switch, a mutation, a genetic malfunction, that can just happen from time to time? I don’t know.

The only thing I ask myself is how I could have gone through my life without the thought ever even entering my mind. I mean, from your book and from what most research says about this, you should know in your childhood years. But I didn’t have a normal childhood where this would have become immediately apparent. I was off, certainly. I was weird and creepy, sure. But was I really that weird, and that off?

The Killer Inside Me

I recently watched The Killer Inside Me. Casey Affleck plays a sheriff's deputy psychopathic killer with a "sickness" that seeks to break free. It's not the best portrayal of a psychopath I have seen, in fact it's a little hackneyed. I wonder if the book was any better in this regard, according to Stanley Kubrick "Probably the most chilling and believable first-person story of a criminally warped mind I have ever encountered." There are a couple interesting reasons to watch the film, though.

The movie has a somewhat unique brand of indiscriminate killings. The method and mode of the killings appear unfathomable, presumably because there is some self-delusion or insanity going on in the mind of the killer, but it's never made explicit. He convinces himself that he needs to kill these people, that it is the only thing to do and the facts support his conclusions to a certain extent but not quite. The audience is left thinking, "I can sort of see why he did that, but it also seems like a mistake."

This is unlike either most horror films where the killings are unapologetically senseless or crime dramas where the killings are unapologetically telelogical. The resulting depictions of killing are all the more disturbing because of this aspect -- you wonder whether he isn't jumping to conclusions, doing something that he may regret when he finds out the real facts. It reminds me of the same horrific self-justifications in Boxing Helena that leads the protagonist to perform amputations on the object of his obsession. People who think rationally, people who have not killed or maimed for pleasure watch these types of movies and squirm because they can't quite convince themselves that this could never happen to them. They know of their own powers of self-deception and think, there but for the grace of God go I.

The other fun aspect of the film's indiscriminate killings is seeing how the victims each respond. In one scene our killer is explaining the deaths of two people to a friend of his. The friend volunteers that the victims must have had it coming, to which the killer replies, "No one has it coming. That's why no one can see it coming." Indeed, because the killings are relatively unprovoked and unwarranted, none of his victims do see it coming and they all react to the killings in different ways. One moment they are self-assured, even making small demands of the killer, "not now," "get dressed," "where's the money," etc. In just a few moments they are being killed and staring up at him with not just surprise, but real disbelief. For a second you can see them wonder, "how could this possibly be happening?" as if they just saw a law of physics being violated. It makes you realize how entitled we all feel, how everyone believes that they have certain rights that will never be violated, could never be violated, chief among them being the right to life. Yet here is an individual who routinely violates those rights, with no repercussions. Some of the killings are done in such odd ways that the audience also feels disbelief, "Can you really die that way?" and you realize that the world holds many more dangers than you ever dared admit to yourself.

Best quote by the creepy Bill Pullman: "A weed is a plant out of place. I find a hollyhock in my cornfield, and it's a weed. I find it in my yard, and it's a flower. You're in my yard."



Boxing Helena:

Mr. Birdick responds

Mr. Birdick gets analyzed by "Dr. Robert" and responds:

Number one, I’ve never actually copped to being a "psychopath". I might score high on the PCL-R, but not high enough to warrant that particular “diagnosis”. I believe that there is a meaningful difference between psychopaths and sociopaths.

Second, whether I can "fathom" other people’s suffering is an irrelevant red herring. My feeling sorrowful or righteously angry when I hear about someone else’s pain does not change things for that person -- it would not change the reality of the man in the picture or make the Iraq war and all of its associated consequences disappear. Dr. Robert’s regret, his remorse, his compassion may mean the world to him but it means nothing at all to the man in the picture.

Third, I still believe that Dr. Robert’s photo placement was manipulative to the degree that it was deliberately designed, by his own admission, to induce emotions in other people in order to prove a point. He was trying to prove himself and to his faithful readers that he was right and the father wrong. Dr. Robert was acting in a self-serving, manipulative fashion. His expression of moral horror served only one purpose -- his.

Fourth, for someone as eager to paint me as arrogantly certain of my superiority, Dr. Robert comes off as awfully... superior, to the point of being downright condescending. Doesn’t the deliberate use of terms like “limitation” and later “deficiency” imply that? Dr. Robert likes to think of himself as a compassionate, liberal and open minded soul, but who is also in fact more judgmental and moralistic than he cares to let on, even to himself. And I caught the misspelling of my name. Quite a class act our Dr. Robert, isn’t he?

Finally, I love it when so called empathic people tell me what I do and do not believe without bothering to ask me. He completely misrepresents my thoughts on those who practice the healing arts. The people that I believe are “foolish, sentimental, and weak” are those that allow others to run roughshod over them; to destroy what they’ve spent a lifetime building; or to allow any system of ethics to dictate, a priori, the decisions that must be made in real time because of their adherence to morality or principles.

It’s too bad Dr. Robert decided that he needed to prove his mettle as a compassionate, liberal healer (how much better he is than the poor, deluded ‘psychopath’), by writing in such an obvious and overtly manipulative fashion. I’d say he was far more concerned with demonstrating his so called great compassion than he was in answering Brian Lippman’s question. Then again, moral hypocrisy, especially the unconscious kind, is so typical for the conscience bound.

Hyperrational or sociopath?

I've met a couple people now where I half wonder if they're not so much sociopathic as hyperrational. A lot of them will sense the difference themselves, i.e. they're the ones telling me that maybe they're a little on the sociopathic spectrum or have similarities, but it's primarily on the hyperrational side. I got a recent email from a reader along those same lines, maybe we can get other people's thoughts?

First thing first, I'm sorry it's a long read, and since English is not my first language there could be some unclear passages, but I tried my best.

I admire your introspection, M. E. I found your book casually surfing the internet, while I was seeking info about personality disorders. I read it in a night, with my admiration of you growing page after page. I share some personality traits with you (sociopath traits), but at the same time, we have some big differences, which are leading me to question myself, and I am writing to you for this reason. Only recently, despite my young age, I came to realize that there’s something not quite right about the way I look at the world. I don’t have empathy, at all. There are really a few people I have feelings for, almost all of them close family members. After recent events, I realized that whereas other people suffer seeing someone else feeling pain, I don’t. I am incapable of feeling any negative emotion about someone else. I am glad to be this way. I look down on empaths, so emotionally unstable, feeling miserable just because of others feeling that way.

I feel no guilt, no remorse. I am ruthless, I have no moral code. To me, there doesn’t exist anything good or bad per se. It all depends on the point of view. One big difference with you though is that I usually don’t engage in behaviours risky for my life. Being dead is not a great way to succeed. I learnt to control my impulses and to be cold, especially if I sense some great danger. Usually, if I’m about to do something that others consider bad, I think twice about the pros and cons, and the likeliness of getting caught. I am cold and callous, and I don’t really care about other’s emotions and needs. The only person I truly care about is me. I dislike strong emotions. I get annoyed when someone around me is crying or yelling or complaining.

I consider others chess pawns in my hands, I maintain a relationship only if I can profit from it. If the bads outweigh the goods, I shut the door. I believe that everyone is completely replaceable. “friends” are no more than people I use, and I enjoy putting one against another. In fact, I plot in the dark and I instil doubt in people, unaware of my deep feelings. The best situation for me to act is war, conflict, enmity. When everyone is against each other my manipulation is more effective. I seek this situation, I try to create it trough suspicion and lies.

I don’t really like talking, communicating, if there isn’t a clear purpose. Most of the times I find people talking do me annoying.

I get easily bored of what I do, what I study. I have a boring life, and anything different than usual thrills me.  For example, a friend of mine has been recently diagnosed with BD, and although everyone else is sad about it, I find it extremely exciting. It’s out of the ordinary, it’s a new thing. I am interested in mental illnesses and psychiatric drugs, so I find an extremely positive thing for me. This is one of the facts that led me to this period of introspection: I am happy for a thing considered bad by everyone.

Until this point, I believe I met a sufficient number of criteria to be diagnosed as a sociopath. I don’t want to be officially diagnosed, that’s why I’m asking your insights. Anyway, the truth is, I often don’t succeed in manipulation this way. I am not the classic sociopath who can manipulate others and bend their will in any situation, but I was. Now I am the perfect sociopath just in my mind. Fantasies about controlling others are sweet as honey, they give me pleasure. Plotting itself is so satisfying. I am not so charming anymore, unfortunately.

The first experiences about manipulations were in kindergarten. Back then I was really good. Kids were really easily bent, especially if younger than me, and adults too, even if to a minor extent. Elementary school was also quite a proficient period. And here we come to the main reason I am questioning my sociopathy. After elementary school, I was not the same anymore. I started being inhibited, I wasn’t popular, I wasn’t charming, I was kinda shy. I became no one. I never had a good physical shape or strength, and given how was the “social value” of someone measured in middle school (and generally by teen population), this could be a reason I lost my charm. Now, more than half a decade later, I am trying to restore my social power. Even during those years, I kept not having feelings for others. But due to my lack of social prestige, I was down psychologically, maybe depressed, I don't know. This is really a thing I regret about my past. So I’m not immune to depression if it involves being socially powerless. Is this a relevant feature? I am not immune to anxiety either.

According to your book, you kept that charm and those manipulative skills throughout the whole childhood and adolescence. I wish I was like you in that sense.

I blend very well with society now, and in the past too, maybe because in the past years I wouldn’t even seem a sociopath. Maybe I wasn’t. Maybe I’m not. But my dark and cold heart Is difficult to ignore. I rarely disclose what I really think, who I really am. No one really knows me, maybe because there is nothing to know: I’m unsure about my identity, I don’t feel having one. People build a world around me starting from the chunks of information they have. I am well used to then become who the other person imagined. No one got the bigger picture yet, even if my lack of empathy was noticed sometimes. I try to conceal under layers of lies my real thoughts and what drives me.

I don’t get upset easily, I am quite detached. There are a few people who can make me lose my temper. In that case, I can harm them verbally and psychologically – but not physically, I already said I am not at my best in that sense. There are many emotions I can fake, but I have a hard time crying fakely.

I think a lot about killing. I never even attempted, obviously. I have no intention in going to jail. But my enemies' destruction is a sweet fantasy. I wouldn’t mind sacrificing someone innocent to obtain the destruction of my enemies.

I am very intelligent, more than literally anyone I know. Probably more than you too. I was extremely precocious, my early infancy is totally relatable to yours. While other kids wondered about princesses and superheroes (kindergarten) I was already deeply aware of myself and my surroundings, and I was experimenting with every kind of scientific thing. At 4 I discovered that joining the two poles of a battery with a wire and touching the poles I would get a mild shock that made me drop the battery. Silly thing, but I was very curious. I learnt reading at 5, by myself. By the time I was 6 or 7, I would know more about science in general that someone entering high school. I used to read any sort of things, and I still do. I like knowledge. Knowledge is power. I learn just for the sake of knowing things. Of knowing more than others. I feel joy when I am the best, in every field. I had the habit of talking to myself too.

I am interested in people, in the relationship between them. In elementary school I wrote secret papers that contained strengths and (especially) weaknesses of everyone I knew, addressing ways to bend them and secret information I could use if my plans failed. I get a thrill about it just remembering. I have a good memory about people’s secret. I crave them.

I am not in university yet. Over the years I often had confused ideas about what I wanted to be. Right mow I want to be a surgeon. I completely relate with the trauma surgeon you wrote about in your blog. I don’t want to be a surgeon to do something good for patients. I just want to operate for the sake of operating, to interact with flesh and organs, to have power over someone. And to excel in what I do, be groundbreaking. Emergency surgery is what I like the most. I like the rush, the speed you have to make challenging decisions.

I will have success. It’s not sort of a megalomaniac and narcissistic delusion. I am born to be the best, to shine. I already had some personal successes, but I will not talk about it here.

I am sexually fluid, and I experience sexual love or lust. But they’re just superficial feelings, I believe, even if they are strong.

Generally, I understand what people want, even if others made me notice that I sometimes don’t recognise if someone is sad. One of the things I am so bad at is comforting people in grief. I am clueless, even if I know that is socially required to comfort sad people. If it was up to me, I wouldn’t even wanna know people’s problem unless I can use them to manipulate. I learnt to know people, but I still don’t understand them completely. I don’t understand how they can have such strict moral codes that they are unable to live their life freely but I suppose it’s better for us this way. It would be impossible if everyone was ruthless and cold-blooded. There can’t be only lions. There must be sheep too.

Concluding, this is the first time of real introspection in my life. I had a hard time getting to know myself, and I feel like I’m unable to grasp the majority of things anyway. And I don’t know what I am. I struggle in defining myself, I would seem sociopath if not for the negative emotions, I could be a malignant narcissist maybe? Or am I just a sociopath with some narcissist features? I need your opinion Ms Thomas, and I am thankful I found your book.
Thanks in advance 

My response:

I guess you are still a bit young, which makes me hesitate to say anything definitive, but I would say that you appear to be on the sociopathic spectrum. One thing that has surprised me as I've gone around meeting people is that I have met people that are less charming -- only like 2 out of 15 or something, but it is interesting to meet them, and yet still know that they are like me in a lot of other ways. It makes me think that there are sort of 12 traits of sociopathy and people sometimes have more of one and less of another. For instance, you seem to be high on conscientiousness to the point where you almost seem to be just hyperrational. And maybe you are, maybe as you continue to age and develop, that will be the more pronounced thing about you. But I feel like even hyperrational people are able to recognize the emotions of others (e.g. recognize when someone is sad), even if they don't have a ton of empathy. This suggests to me that there's something more going on then just hyperrationality. But should we post what you wrote on the blog and see what people say?