Saturday, September 25, 2010

No longer a "victim" of a sociopath

A reader and the author of a sociopath survival book, Dark Souls gives this opinion about healing:
I had an email from a woman who said I am thinking about going back to my sociopath ex. He is thinking about being open and honest. What do you think ?

I said I think the chances are he has been caught with his pants down and wants to keep the relationshp going in the hope that he might be able to have you for supply in the future. I get a reply back to say he has raped, buggered, and battered her. Why does she want to go back. Because it feeds into her victim mentality and she is not ready to heal.

To heal you have to stop being a victim. Its basically that we have to understand the sociopath, narcissist or psychopath, know what they do to manipulate us us then STOP trying to figure them out. Then we stop being a victim and Then we can heal. Learn why we would have such low self esteem to want to be with these people in the first place. work on that and then we can leave.
A reader mentioned reading it, so I asked for her opinion on the book:
One thing that drove me nuts were all of the typos. For the amount that she's charging that book shouldn't have a bunch of typos. I am a technical writer so maybe I am too picky.
She also kept talking about this douche who she calls Oliver over and over and she's all over the place with time references. She kept saying that she didn't want to sound like she's a victim but that's exactly what she sounded like to me. I also had an issue for her not ever once taking responsibilty for her actions. Nothing was her fault. I asked her why she didn't acknowledge responsibility for fucking a married man for five years, and what about what she did to his wife? NOPE, her excuse was that he said he had cancer. Another thing I disliked about her book was how she went on with this whole spiritual crap.
I think I found her book on an "anti-sociopath" site. I mean I don't like getting fucked over but Jesus tap dancing Christ, take some responsibility for your actions. Empaths want you guys to take responsibility so why won't they/we?
I honestly cannot remember how I found your site but it has been more helpful than anything. However, I am not like most empaths so I guess I'm in between. I think the book, "He's Just Not That into You" was more helpful than any of these empath pussies.
They want to crucify you guys without looking at themselves.
I think that if you are going to write one of these self-help books then you should be an expert or guru. I think I could write a better book than she did.
Anyway, if you did recommend it, the empaths would go apeshit and whine some more and it would give you sociopaths plenty of ammo.
So there ya go. Two sides...

Friday, September 24, 2010

Criticisms of PCL-R confirmed by recent study

The blows keep coming to the PCL-R (Psychopathy Checklist Revisited). As one forensic psychologist blogger reports:

In a result with potentially momentous implications for forensic practitioners, the researchers found that Factor 1 of the Psychopathy Checklist-Revised (PCL-R) does not predict violence. As you know, Factor 1 purports to measure the core constellation of a psychopathic personality (superficial charm, manipulativeness, lack of empathy, etc.). When introduced in court, evidence of psychopathy has an enormously prejudicial impact on criminal offenders.

But, the PCL-R's much-ballyhooed ability to predict certain types of violence owes only to the instrument's second factor, according to the metaanalysis by researchers Min Yang, Steve Wong, and Jeremy Coid. And that's no surprise. After all, Factor 2 measures the criminogenic factors (criminality, irresponsibility, impulsivity, history of delinquency, etc.) that even a fifth-grader knows are bad signs for a future of law-abiding citizenship.

In my experience, the Factor 1 items -- the ones purporting to measure an underlying personality profile -- are the ones more likely to be inflated by some evaluators. That's because many of these items are pretty subjective. Glib? Superficially charming? If you don't like a guy -- and/or he doesn't like you -- you are more likely to rate these negative items as present. That's one of my hypotheses for the large evaluator differences and partisan allegiance effects found with the PCL-R in forensic practice.

Cumulatively, the emerging PCL-R findings beg the question:

Why introduce the Psychopathy Checklist in court if other violence risk tools work just as well, without the implicitly prejudicial effect of labeling someone as a "psychopath"?
I wonder -- would there be any prejudicial effect of labeling someone a "psychopath" if psychologists finally stopped conflating psychopathy with violence/criminality?

Thursday, September 23, 2010

Questioning the validity of the PCL-R

From the Drs. Skeem and Cooke article that got Dr. Robert Hare's panties all in a wad about the validity of his PCL-R (Psychopathy Checklist Revisited):
“Without a history of violent or criminal behavior, even an individual with pronounced interpersonal and affective traits of psychopathy is unlikely to surpass the PCL–R’s threshold score for diagnosing psychopathy.”

“We specifically argue that the process of understanding and appropriately diagnosing psychopathy must be separated from the enterprise of predicting violence.”

“First, the PCL–R is a measure that imperfectly maps psychopathy, the domain of interest. Second, the PCL–R’s factor structure is not a conceptualization of, or explanation for, psychopathy and does not fully correspond to Cleckley’s (1941) conceptualization, on which it is purportedly based. Third, reification of the PCL–R forecloses on the possibility of iteratively using theory and empirical results to revise this tool (and others) to advance understanding of psychopathy.”

“’Thanks to Hare, we now understand that the great majority of psychopaths are not violent criminals and never will be. Hundreds of thousands of psychopaths live and work and prey among us’ (Hercz, 2001, ¶ 11). The two-factor model poorly identifies this “great majority of psychopaths” who escape contact with the legal system or simply express their psychopathic tendencies in a manner that does not conflict with the law.”

“Beyond past criminal behavior, adding such variables as gender, age, or substance abuse to the PCL–R might also improve prediction of violence. Such an improvement would not imply that these characteristics are central to psychopathy.”

“The pursuit of validly diagnosing a personality disorder is distinct from the enterprise of predicting violence.”
(Email me if you would like to read the article in its entirety.)


Wednesday, September 22, 2010

The scheming sociopath myth

There seems to be a persistent belief that sociopaths are omnipotent scoundrels who are constantly taking advantage of mere mortals. Yes, sociopaths seem to naturally look for weaknesses and loopholes to exploit, but how is that any different from a day trader in the stock market playing off of whims of society, or a retailer, a corporate raider, or any other arbitrageur? Some of society's greatest achievements were made by someone who was trying to outplay the other guy, e.g. Christopher Columbus.

Plus it is quite rare to make a career completely out of exploiting others -- there simply are not enough opportunities to go around for all potential takers. And make no mistake, if there were more opportunities to go around, there would be more criminals. The prohibition against police entrapment exists because we believe that even your typical lay-abiding citizen will indulge in a unsavory scheme if presented with the right opportunity. Yes, you have your career criminals, "playmakers" who are not only looking for opportunities, but creating them: maybe con men, gypsies, golddiggers, or meth-addled petty thieves. The bulk of people committing an "exploitative" crime, however, are simply people who were presented with the right set of circumstances for their particular needs/wants/skills.

People who believe that there are ample, risk-free opportunities for sociopaths to live off of the weaknesses of others are the same delusional souls who respond to requests from Nigerian princes. The truth is that even for the bulk of sociopaths, when you factor in the risk of getting caught, crime simply does not pay.

I noticed a lot of responses in yesterday's post either scoffing at or supporting the idea of a successful sociopath. What a lot of people don't realize is that despite sociopaths being largely ruled by impulses (or perhaps because they are), they are incredibly sensitive to incentive structures and actively consider both actual costs and opportunity costs in their decisionmaking. I think "Gabriel" explained the situation very well in his comments:

I'm no world leader, but I do have a well-paying professional job in a Fortune 500 company rather than languishing in prison, so I guess you could say I am a successful sociopath. I'm as capable as anyone else of learning from mistakes. I certainly never learned empathy, but I'm intelligent enough to learn rules and learn that breaking them often has consequences that are unpleasant.

As to wanting to follow the rules, if following them benefits me sufficiently, then I'm fully capable of following them. If breaking them will bring consequences I don't like, then I don't break them. No empathy is involved, simply a logical examination of cause and effect.

I agree with your second paragraph, 2 said, that it's more likely dependent on intelligence. I have untoward impulses like any other sociopath, but I have the intelligence to foresee what the likely outcome would be, and decide whether it's worth it to me. I'm not ashamed to say that I usually make decisions based on what will benefit me the most, and acting impulsively and stupidly is rarely what will benefit me. Even I know that benefiting others in the short term is often what will benefit me most in the long term -- just like any normal person.
***
Having worked in major corporations for about 3 decades, I know that no matter how you choose to rise through the ranks, there have still got to be people higher who promote you, and they aren't going to do it unless you bring value -- to either themselves or the company. If all socios left nothing but a path of carnage and destruction along their career paths, do you think that's hidden from those with the power to move them upward?
Perhaps the best reason to want to avoid living off someone else, though, is the low quality of the people you could live off. Prostitutes, golddiggers, etc., they all have to "earn" it somehow, almost always by filling a role that nobody is willing to do for free, which makes them the underworld's equivalent of garbage men and tax collectors. If you want to be around quality people, you have to learn to check the manipulation and the gamesmanship and engage with those people on a higher level. If lower quality people don't demand the same from us, is it really our fault if we give them what they're looking for?
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