Monday, October 20, 2008

Sociopaths in the news

On actress Anne Hathaway's ex, Italian businessman Raffaello Follieri:
When I advise women and men about how to avoid someone with sociopathic tendencies, I tell them don't expect a monster; instead expect someone oozing with charm. Yet, underneath the heat and charisma are cold thoughts and actions devoid of empathy. Impulsivity, thrill-seeking, and constant boredom are characteristic.
Relationships are used as stepping stones to get them where they want to go. They have an uncanny ability to push someone to the brink, but then suck them back into the relationship again. It's drama, and they love it.

But cads are not infallible. There are always signs. That's why it's so important to educate men and women to see the signs, as well as helping them achieve the courage and willingness it takes to interpret them.
I'm not sure exactly what the signs would be, possibly claiming a personal relationship with the Pope?

Friday, October 17, 2008

Sociopath advise on how to deal with sociopaths, part II

Reading these comments from sociopaths, you may be asking yourself, why does anyone put up with sociopaths in the first place? Can sociopaths love? Can they be in a relationship?
"In the beginning, what people are attracted to in psychopaths is they seem to know what you want, what you need, what makes you laugh, and feel good. They are mirroring what is inside you back at you, and throwing in what they've learned. In return, they absorb part of who you are psychologically. They become what you want as much as they can. The relationship feels good because it seems you've found your soul mate."

"I can't comment on what will be enough to have a specific person leave you alone. I can comment on what his motivation might be in continuing to contact you, assuming he is a psychopath. He might be after something you provide, such as money, sex, comfort/normalcy, a fear or fight fix. You might be considered part of who he is. He has absorbed part of your personality by mirroring and he wants to continue or have that back."

"Co-dependant people are attracted to us because we provide a complete immersion of attention and focus. But co-dependant people are not inherently strong enough of personality. The experiment fails and we begin to despise. If she begins to show weakness, such as eventually seeking our guidance or not maintaining discipline and surety of purpose, we begin to despise. We seek to give in a relationship, but we cannot give love, compassion, or empathy. We seek to give what we have."

"From my point of view a boundary is: "Either don't do this or I will do this unpleasant thing to you" and, "If you do this, I will do this nice thing for you." A psychopath will push you to find out how concrete those boundaries are. Willpower and discipline must be maintained in order to keep the psychopath in line until a natural order is established and a direction given (if the psychopath wants a relationship)."

"As an N, I also memorize other people's emotions. It's the easiest way to seem human because I have no idea how to feel them myself!! I'd be very easy to spot if I didn't know how to pretend to have emotions like everyone else."

"Normal people may sense or feel the presence of 'evil'. It permeates from the P. We react with nauseau, fear, and we often say "Oh, he doesn't mean that". It is often intangible and something we can't really define."

Thursday, October 16, 2008

Sociopaths advise on how to deal with sociopaths, part I

There aren't many places for sociopaths in this world, even on the World Wide Web. There's the elite sociopath website, this blog, and a couple other brave souls I've seen outing themselves anonymously. In contrast, there are a ton of sites and support groups for victims of sociopaths. Sociopaths frequently troll these adding their two cents. And so here we have sociopaths giving advice on how to deal with sociopaths:

"If he's not out to get something else from you (sex, money, whatever), but is after a "relationship", then the following is what happens in my experience: For a brief while, the psychopath "feels" something. He can fool himself into being the very thing that he longs for so dearly: normal. When you're gone, though, his patterns begin to slip. They begin to fade as any memory does. Remember that he can't hang his memories on anything because there is no core to hang them on. To him, you've got part of him walking around in you. He wants that back. If someone had taken a part of who you are, what would you go through to have it again?"

"Psychopaths are natural masters of body language and nuance as it is a survival skill."

"I've always had anger as long as I can remember. I'm thinking it is the one emotion it seems I can really FEEL."

"It doesn't bother me in the least if people are angry. I believe I rather enjoy it. I'm thinking since I can't have love, might as well have hate."

"I adore a good fight! Not many things will stop me from causing strife wherever I go. I have to have a pretty good reason not to start disassembling social structures."

"The repeated references to narcissists lacking emotion and being unable to love others seems straight out of the typewriter of proselytising evangelists who couldn't made a sentence without relying on either a misconception, an exaggeration, an outright lie, or, as here, irrational generalisations. Did you study your manual? Do you have it all memorised so you can strike out at your proverbial abuser with incomplete medical information and a malicious lack of understanding? At least I've never accused someone of being less-than-human. I just proclaim myself as greater-than-human. Heh."

Wednesday, October 15, 2008

On a friend asking if I'm a sociopath

I sort of self-diagnosed myself five years ago. It seemed to fit. Not everything, of course. I believe that there is a spectrum of the emotionally impaired like there is a spectrum of the blind or the deaf. You are legally blind without your glasses, right? But that doesn't mean that you consider yourself in the same category as completely blind people. Similarly, I may be emotionally impaired without necessarily being handicapped. I think there is a big difference in terms of how people can function in the world depending on where they fall on the spectrum. But I do think that emotional language is like a second language to me. I have to go through several different deductions before I can "empathize" with people, and not just sometimes but most of the time. I do think that I use different strategies to navigate the world than most people--that I have different wiring.

I definitely have sociopathic impulses. I find myself ignoring urges to kill or do great bodily harm to ignoring a temptation to ruin somebody, to even just ignoring the invitation to view the world in a way that would push me to engage in excessively risky behavior. These urges cloud my judgment and take me away from the person I want to be, so I try not to indulge them. I treat them like hallucinations instead. They feel very real, everything feels so real, but I have experienced them frequently enough to know that they are wrong--that I will regret acting on them. So I try to ignore them, just like I would try to ignore the image of a monster breathing fire in my peripheral vision.

Tuesday, October 14, 2008

Overheard at a family wedding

Future in-laws during a toast: "And we'd like to thank the _______ family, who has completely seduced us."

Cousin: "Not surprising, from a family that reads how-to books on seduction."
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