Occasionally I worry for my sanity. In my younger years, I could do all sorts of stuff and walk away unscathed. Now I feel like my mind is getting old just like my body is getting old. Sociopaths have a flexible sense of self, but does it get less flexible with age? Like my skin or my muscles? If my sense of self becomes more brittle with age, what will happen when I am 80? Will my mind eventually break, just like my brittle bones? If I am sane, will I still be able to put on my "mask of sanity"? Will people find out who I am? Or will my ability to do devious things just be compromised to the point where I no longer am able to do them, or when I do them I'm found out and simply labeled a garden variety asshole? I am starting to wonder whether there could be a mental version of viagra for sociopaths. If my mind goes, where am I?
Sunday, January 3, 2010
Friday, January 1, 2010
I'm looking through you
For my all my readers, but particularly empath victims of sociopaths -- wishing you the ability to see things and people how they truly are in 2010.
Monday, December 28, 2009
Economic disaster = sociopaths' fault?
So says the good Doctor Robert Hare:
Robert Hare, from the University of British Columbia, Canada, said in a seminar on psychopathy that people with a certain degree of psychopathy sometimes have their own place in a society.I'd like to think that sociopaths collectively have the power to send the world spinning out of control, but I wonder if that could possibly be accurate. Sociopaths take risks, and with risk comes higher return. But risk is still risk and there certainly aren't enough greedy sociopaths to have tipped the scales of excessive risk without empath help, no? Let's hope his comment made more sense in context.
"They tend to be important to society sometimes," he said.
"These are people who take risks, tend to not be afraid."
He pointed out the example of a white-collar psychopath, viewed as "a good leader, good person and charismatic", but who secretly did harm to their surroundings.
Hare added such psychopaths were behind last year's global economic downturn.
"They engage in all sorts of illegal behavior. Half of the financial crisis we had throughout the world in the last few years, who's behind it all? Warm, loving people? No, people who want all they can get, they don't care about millions of people who lost their life savings," he said.
Sociopaths: pitiable?
I confess to never having had the patience to read The Sociopath Next Door all the way through, but I did find this psychologist's review of it interesting because it gets at the core of what many have accused this blog of trying to accomplish -- manipulating people to pity us:
"The most reliable sign, the most universal behavior of unscrupulous people is not directed, as one might imagine, at our fearfulness. It is, perversely, an appeal to our sympathy."I sort of don't understand this argument, perhaps not surprisingly. Does the devil not deserve pity because he doesn't meet the criteria (i.e. not pitiable enough)? Or does he not deserve it because it wouldn't mean the same thing to him (i.e. wasted on him)? Or is it because, as the author suggests, there is something wrong with your pity being used for a purpose (i.e. getting you to think about something from another's point of view) rather than just functioning as one of the empath's favorite self-indulgent pastimes? I really want to understand, and I know some of our readers are very smart with strong feelings about this subject, so let's have at it. For once and for all, let's discuss all the reasons why this blog is manipulative and sociopaths aren't worthy of pity, etc. etc. And just for fun, let's try to use arguments that wouldn't apply equally to some other more "acceptable" variants of humanity.
The pity play or attempt to appeal to the sympathy of others was also addressed in research conducted by the Minnesota Department of Corrections and The Hazelden Foundation (2002). There, researchers concluded that criminal thinkers most often attempt to control others by portraying themselves as a victim, turning to fear tactics only when the victim stance fails to get them what they want.
The act of eliciting pity from another unequivocally makes the elicitor something to be pitied, a victim, per se. It is human nature to aid the pitied. Hence, the pity play, or victim stance, stands to get the Sociopath what he or she wants easily and without being found out as a bad guy. This is manipulation. Manipulation is the tool of choice for smart criminal thinkers and, according to Dr. Stout, the Sociopaths amongst us. She says, "Sociopaths have no regard whatsoever for the social contract, but they do know how to use it to their advantage. And all in all, I am sure that if the devil existed, he would want us to feel very sorry for him."
Sunday, December 27, 2009
A proposition
A reader offers:
I recently became aware of sociopathy and found your blog, which I have enjoyed reading today. It's difficult to find anywhere else online anything written from the point of view of a sociopath, and I've learned some valuable info from the posts and comments.One of the reasons that I am religious is that I refuse to accept truth only from state sanctioned sources, so to speak. I think that it is too limiting and that there is a certain amount of hubris in looking for truth only from those sources that you have pre-screened as being legitimate. So I replied:
I have been studying astrology for twenty years and enjoy studying birth charts. If there are any blog followers here who believe they are sociopaths who'd be willing to provide thier birth data, I would like to study their charts to see if there are correlating aspects and placements that form a pattern. I don't think anyone's done this sort of astrological research yet, at least I haven't found any. Would you or your readers be game? If so, what I would need is the date of birth, the exact birth time, and the city in which one was born. Once I have a few charts, I can post the results on your site if you'd like.
Ah, very interesting proposition. I would be game, and I wonder if some of my readers would also be interested, in the name of science. I actually don't know exactly what I believe about astrology, though I tend to think it is interesting, accurate, and predictive, but of whether or not stars have any impact on our lives I am less sure. I've often wondered whether certain signs lead more to sociopathy, or whether certain signs lead to higher functioning sociopathy. (For instance, I am Cancer, supposedly a feeler. Does that make me a "softer" sociopath than most?)Sensitive information like birth dates, times, and locations should not be posted to the internet. So I suggest that you email me if you would like to participate. Feel free to come up with a "fake" email address just for this purpose. I'll pass them along, and we'll make sure that birthdates and locations never get published.
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