Friday, October 23, 2009

Glenn Close: Sociopaths must be stopped

This is paraphrased and taken out of context, but yes, Glenn Close pretty much says that in her blog about mental illness in the Huffington Post:
There are some notable exceptions, of course -- Dustin Hoffman in Rainman, or Russell Crowe's portrayal of John Nash in A Beautiful Mind. But more often than not, the movie or TV version of someone suffering from a mental disorder is a sociopath who must be stopped.
I get it Glenn. If they are bipolar or schizoaffective or have whatever other disorder that someone in your family has, they are fine. If the disorder was portrayed by a lovable Hollywood favorite or the portrayal ends up winning an Oscar, it is fine. But sociopaths must be stopped.

On a positive note, sociopaths seem to be getting more press than usual recently (excluding news about the Bush administration, of course).

Sunday, October 18, 2009

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.

Thursday, October 15, 2009

If You Kill My Demons You will Kill My Angels Too

I snuck a peek at the comment page recently. I see a lot of dialogue between empaths and sociopaths, which to me is really groundbreaking. Where have you ever seen this done outside of clinics where specialists being the only ones interacting? So I want to feed this discussion some food for thought.

Since I know M.E. best I'll talk about myself. I've always loved myself. Yes, people would call it narcissistic. I do believe I'm the greatest person who's lived. Sometimes I've gotten a little god complex. That's just how I am, and I'm not really going to apologize for it. I wake up everyday and I feel like I'm amazing. I channel this energy to focusing on being the best in anything I take part in. I don't try to be the best. I am the best. In doing so I will do everything and find a way to get there. This is my way of making who I am positive.

I can manipulate people. More than that, I do manipulate people. Everyday, every week, every month, and every year. The medical community calls this 'superficial charm.' But charm to me can't be defined as superficial. Either you are charming or you're not. People like charming people -- that's why they give them things so selflessly. When you have the power to persuade people to do and give you what you want it's easy to abuse it. For empath readers I want you to imagine what it's like to have everyone love you right off the bat, and want to do things you want them to do. Would you manipulate people to give you money? Would you manipulate people into sleeping with you under false pretenses? Would you honestly tell me you wouldn't get tempted to justify reasons to fuck them over? Most people would. You make up excuses. "Oh well I heard they stole from so and so," or, "He's there with someone I don't like," or, "Well I'll try to make it up to them." You will find ways of demonizing the people you victimize until they seem like the worst people you're ever met. You don't feel guilt, just justification. The positive side is people can channel this feeling into businesses to sell products, make effective advertising, diplomacy, intelligence, etc.

I am emotionally shallow. The commenters are completely correct. I'm not emotionless. I don't walk around with a exoskeleton under my skin saying, "You will be terminated." I feel what I make myself feel, when I'm supposed to feel it. Sometimes I can't. I can't feel for other people. I don't get excited with people, or feel someone's pain when they cry. I get angry at them because I can't understand. A less extreme example of this: recently someone close to me had their identity stolen and bank account wiped out, and their rent was due the next day. The bank wouldn't refund it till they investigated for few months. The person was crying and looked at me for comfort, and I thought, "What do they want from me? I hope they won't ask me for money." After a while I asked what they wanted me to say. The person looked at me like I was retarded, and I got angry. I told them, "Just get it done and don't worry about things you can't change." The person got angry and left.

What I lack in my own capacity for emotion I make up for in manipulating others'. When I was younger I abused the hell out of this. I could make people happy, excited, sad, depressed, disturbed, hurt etc. It was fun. It still is sometimes, but I don't abuse it that much any more. I cut people into pieces with things I've said. I would save things I knew they were insecure about and cut them deeply with is when I didn't get what I wanted. One person told me that they would rather have me hit them then tell them the things I said. A emotional bully, I guess you can call me. I admit that I did it. I didn't know I was doing it till I took more time to learn about who I was and why I do what I do. Now I use it sparingly.

Sociopaths have a lot of power over people, like it or not. Denying that power exists doesn't improve the life of either side of the fence. I denied it and I was out of control. What I realized is that by acknowledging who I was, and wielding that power for what was effective and not just destructive, I could become more powerful. To have true power you need to have control over yourself first. People trying to change that power instead of focusing it will only meet in failure.

I think it's important for sociopaths to accept themselves the way they are, and not try to change. There isn't a 'cure' for sociopathy because there's no way to change someone's complete identity. Change who they are: their tendencies, their motives, their behaviors, and even their feelings. Is it possible? Perhaps, but is that the kind of power you want substituted for natural human behaviour?

Tuesday, October 13, 2009

Psychopaths = mentally handicapped

One researcher has found that psychopaths may be more aggressive than the average population because they do not assign meaning to the fearful faces of their victims:
In her groundbreaking work funded by the National Institute of Mental Health, [Abigail] Marsh and her colleagues have been exploring how “callous and unemotional” individuals tend to show a very specific cognitive deficit: namely, they are especially poor at recognizing, processing and responding normally to the facial expression of fear on other people’s faces (a “normal” response being ceasing an assault on the frightened person or offering aid). Curiously, their trouble in this area is not due to a problem with facial expressions in general—they do perfectly well deciphering the look of disgust, anger, happiness and so on on other people’s faces. In contrast, autistics have trouble with pretty much all facial expressions of emotion, suggesting that, for them, this generalized difficulty is meaningfully linked to their broad social disfunction. Rather, it’s only the look of fear that puzzles diagnosably antisocial people (and to a somewhat lesser extent, sadness). Thus, in a converted boathouse on Squam Lake in early July, Marsh discussed several key studies, all indicating a fear-specific facial processing deficiency in children and adults with persistent antisocial behavioral tendencies. That is to say, “behavior that violates the rights and welfare of others or breaks important normative rules.”
. . .
Marsh relayed a chilling anecdote about a colleague of hers, University College London psychologist Essi Viding, who was going through a task with a psychopathic murderer in which a series of faces with different emotional expressions were laid out before the woman. When the murderer saw the picture of the fearful face, she scratched her head and said: “I don’t know what that expression is called, but I know it’s what people look like right before I stab them.”
Interestingly, another study found that the people who can recognize fearful faces recognize them faster than any other "emotion" face. I guess that makes psychopaths literally "slow."

Sunday, October 11, 2009

Frauds in Love

Today we are going on a field trip. A field trip to the opposite side of the spectrum. A lot of times when I need a good laugh I will visit Lovefraud.com. In case you don't know about this site, it's dedicated to victims of sociopaths. Broken, self-loathing, and bitterness fills the pages. It's like a sociopath's trash dump. My personal opinion is that these people set themselves up to be victims, then want to point the finger at the person who took advantage. Nobody put a gun to their head and told them to stay in a relationship they admit was so terrible. If you read the posts and comments (from people with weak names like 'justabouthealed'), you can see how they've already started off with defeat in their minds. It's not hard for ready made victims to become victims. The following post is the perfect example of how they set themselves up for the fall. Victory is not fighting, it's persevering. The old turn the other cheek. Lying to themselves, they believe that licking your wounds after getting victimized is a 'viable' victory. In reality it's failure. Here is the article:

My wonderful stepfather was a young basketball coach when he got his first real job coaching for a very small rural school which had not had a winning game in over a decade. The team was dispirited and had no real expectation of ever winning a game.

One of the local coaches bragged that he would beat them “by a hundred points!” at the next game. The team thought there was a good possibility that that coach’s team could do just that. However, it is “good sportsmanship” for a coach playing a much weaker team to let their second, third, and fourth strings get a chance to play, and to win over the weaker team, but not “tromp” them.

Daddy thought this other coach’s brag to stomp and tromp his team was poor sportsmanship so he made a plan. When the fourth quarter started and Daddy’s team had the ball, they “froze” it (which was legal in the game then) and wouldn’t either shoot the ball or take a chance on losing it, so passed the ball from one of Daddy’s team members to another the entire quarter. They didn’t make any points, but they kept the other team from even getting their hands on the ball the entire quarter, and thus making points against them. Daddy’s team didn’t win, but the other coach didn’t win by his “hundred points” either. That little team went on the next year to win their division championship because of the confidence that Daddy inspired in them.
Sometimes “winning” or “victory” can be interpreted in different ways. I’m also reminded of the old Country and Western song, the “Winner” where an older man and a younger man are in a bar talking. The younger man wants to be a “winner” in bar fight brawls, and the older man is educating him on what is “winning” and what isn’t.

Sure, you can get into a fight and you may inflict more damage on your opponent than he inflicts on you in the fight, but like the old man said, “He gouged out my eye, but I won.” Sometimes it is better to walk away from a fight and not lose more than you have already lost, or allow your opponent to take another “pound of flesh” in your attempts to “get justice.”

It isn’t always about getting what you deserve, or victory over them, or even seeing that they get “what they so richly deserve,” sometimes, I think, “winning” simply means keeping them from taking more out of you and, like Daddy’s team, “freezing the ball.” Sometimes, it is like the would-be barroom brawler, walking away (intact) with the other guy yelling curses in your direction.

It is emotionally tough to watch a cheater “get away with it” when they have ripped us off, and go “waltzing away” unscathed and apparently the victor. It eats at our sense of fairness to let them “succeed” and not pay a price for their bad behavior.

Yet, sometimes, “discretion is the better part of valor” to use an old phrase, or to “be a live dog, rather than a dead lion,” and “retreat and live to fight another day.”

Those victims who are not able to fight for a “victory” of any sort, I don’t think need to feel that they have “failed” because they chose not to fight the sociopath.

Too many times fighting the psychopaths are like “fighting a circular saw,” as my grandmother would have said. It “just isn’t worth it,” because the damage to yourself will be worse than you can possibly inflict on the psychopath. They stack the odds so in their own favor, that even if you “win,” you end up like the old brawler sitting in the barroom, broken and so gravely injured yourself in your effort to gain a “victory, of sorts” that in retrospect the price was too high.

Sometimes, it is better to walk away a “loser” but still intact, and with your head held high, using the energy and resources you have left to focus on healing yourself, on recovering what you have lost in terms of finances and strength, and take care of yourself. To me that is also a “viable victory.”
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