Wednesday, October 20, 2010

Sociopaths in the news: Russell Williams

Colonel David Russell Williams of the Canadian Air Force recently pled guilty to various crimes, including murder. As reported by The Star:
By day, Russell Williams was the commander of Canada’s biggest air force base, CFB Trenton. By night, he broke into homes, taking pictures of himself modeling the bras and panties of little girls.

He escalated quickly, from fetish break-ins, to sex assaults with no penetration to rape and murder. He logged his crimes, kept track of police reports of his crimes and left notes and messages for his victims. “Merci,” he thanked a 12-year-old in a typed message on her computer.

“Merci beaucoup,” he captioned a souvenir photo he took of his penis strapped to a sex toy he stole from a 24-year-old Ottawa victim in June 2008.

We learned that Williams made a video of his brutal beating and asphyxiation of Comeau after breaking into her home Nov. 24, 2009. He also made sex tapes of Lloyd after kidnapping her the night of Jan. 28, taking her to his cottage in Tweed, raping and torturing her for at least a day before dumping her corpse in a field.
Although sociopaths are notoriously difficult to diagnose even for a trained psychological professional,the Col. David Russell Williams case has several hallmarks of sociopathic behavior. To friends, families, and co-workers, he seemed to be a successful leader in the community. He was outwardly admired for his strengths and his commitment to community and service were almost too perfect. Given his arrest for a string of crimes including two murders, however, it seems clear that his public persona was nothing more than a mask to hide his true identity. This is protypical behavior of a murderous sociopath.

Even more confirming of such a diagnosis would be his actions subsequent to his arrest. You would expect sociopaths when cornered to deny all allegations made against them, scrambling to come up with any plausible explanation for their behavior. A trapped sociopath will seem unflappable, confidently asserting his innocence. He is only half pretending. Ever an optimist, he will have deluded himself into believing that he may still skate away unharmed. In contrast, a truly innocent man would be apprehensive upon his arrest and prosecution because even an innocent man would understand the true danger of his predicament and the possibility of wrongful prosecution. If Col. Williams has seemed largely unshaken by his turn of fortune and confident of his imminent release, this would also be a strong indicator of sociopathic behavior.

What I don't really understand is why he pled guilty. Maybe he realized that the jig was up. Maybe they had such strong evidence against him that he realized it was better to just plead out and get a lesser sentence. Or maybe he realized that he had become a monster and lost all ability to control his impulses. If so, this is yet another cautionary tale of why you should not indulge urges to the point that they get out of control.

Monday, October 18, 2010

Sociopaths in science

Some articles related to sociopathy:

A "Wired" study of monkey's brains implying a possibly physical basis for empathy:
Our brain divides space into at least two major sectors — one in which we can do things, in which we can act, and one in which we can’t," explained Marco Iacoboni, who studies the human mirror neuron system at the University of California at Los Angeles. "Our cognition, even fairly complex stuff like empathy, seems grounded in our body.
From a recent NYT article on the death of biologist George C. Williams:

Dr. Williams pursued his ideas even to results that he found disturbing. “He concluded that anything shaped by natural selection was inevitably evil because selfish organisms outproduced those that weren’t selfish,” Dr. Nesse said.

Dr. Williams acknowledged that people had moral instincts that overcome evil. But he had no patience with biologists who argue that these instincts could have been brought into being by natural selection.

“I account for morality as an accidental capability produced, in its boundless stupidity, by a biological process that is normally opposed to the expression of such a capability,” Dr. Williams wrote starkly in 1988.
Dr. Williams sounds like he was a sensible man.

Sunday, October 17, 2010

Sociopath quote: the other side of the coin

Strangers can pretty much go right into any old persons' house without any permission and take them and no one really cares, which is probably terrifying if you are an old person who can barely walk. And yet probably great if you need an old person who can barely walk.

Sarah Silverman

Friday, October 15, 2010

Sociopaths and sex

A reader wrote asking about sex with sociopaths:
I have a question about sociopaths and sex? Do sociopaths feel emotions when you have sex? I mean obviously you feel the physical part but to what extent if any, do you feel emotionally? My ex, who I am certain is a sociopath, didn't ever make love. I mean it was what it was and I didn't realize it until right before I dumped him. We had that one last romp and I realized it. He acted like he was making love and the sex was great but when I asked him the next day out of curiosty if he left anything, he said it was great. I chuckled and said, "Sex for you is a function like using the toilet, eating, showering or sleeping." He looked at me like "why was I bringing up the obvious" and it hit me. I think for him sex was a way to conquer and exude power and that the chase of luring a hot chick in was more exciting than the act itself. He tried to use sex for manipulation. I have heard of women doing that but never a man.
For someone like me, a normal (whatever the fuck normal is) I can just fuck, but when in love sex is emotional for me and I can't just go fuck all of the time. I am very passionate and I'll leave it at that but I noticed that they were really good at one thing but not so much all of it -- they were either good at oral or good at fucking but not really both. And I am not saying all sociopaths are like this. I hate putting even sociopaths into one category. One thing that sticks out that he was NEVER vocal, not even during climax. Not all men are, but both socios I've been with were that way. They were also VERY concerned about pleasing me which sometimes got to be old. I thought it was insecurity at the time but maybe it was trying to learn how fake emotions. He would say, "does that feel good?" too often. Uh yeah shut up, can't you tell???
He loved the way I can orgasm and that's probably the attraction between socios and others; the energy.
I guess, hell I don't know. I guess that's what I'm trying to figure out.In no way am I bashing sociopaths but I really wonder if most of you feel emotions during sex or about sex. I'd love some feedback on the subject if possible. Your site is great and I learned a lot. Thanks.
It's an interesting question, and I imagine that although there are commonalities, a lot of the sexual experience will depend on the individual sociopath. For instance, here is how a socio reader described sex:
Pain is integral to my sexual experience. When with my ex, there was never any violent sexual encounters. She wouldn't have fought me, and that's part of my pleasure, so with her it would have been pointless. I need unwanted pain or domination in any sexual encounter I have. With men, and women, there has to be some sort of pain or humiliation in order for me to be interested, or to get off. Sex with men can be boring. I control it more than half the time, and they get emotional and lovey dovey somewhere in it. If I am with a freak, the challenge to dominate him is what gets me off, not the actual act. I have gone after freaks, but in the end they get boring. With women, to dominate them is easy, they seem to want it. Even the head strung females I go after turn into droids of mushy nothingness.
When I state I am never there, that means mentally, and emotionally, and sometimes physically, figuratively speaking. I can do what I need to to seem like I am interested, but when the act happens, if normal sex, I am a programmed robot doing the same routine with different people. I would touch human skin, but feel no warmth, I would kiss lips, but feel no softness, I would smell them, but only pick up the scent of air and dirt. My experience with people in regular sex is as if I am alone. I don't connect at all. I see them either above or below me, and think about what they could possibly be feeling, and why. I get nothing from connecting with a human, so what does everyone else get?

I often have this reoccurring fantasy that I have met my sexually violent match, and that we were roughing it to the point where I "lost" the control. I was the one being dominated, and it gets out of hand. I turn the violent sex into a fight for my life, testing my lover to anger and fury to where they would want to hurt me. I would then use this imagined victimization as an excuse to get unorthodox-ed, and do anything in my power to protect myself, including kill. In this fantasy I never use guns, or anything quick. It's always blunt force, where I have to use almost all of my strength to destroy them. Never a knife, always something blunt. In the end I kill my lover, and use the violent sex as an excuse to get away with a planned murder, play Lizzy Borden, and hope my femininity gets me out free. Never went through with this because I doubt the escape would be that easy, heh, hence fantasy. That's one serious impulse I always fight to keep under control, to set up my victimization to kill. Though I would love to experience that high, it isn't worth taking the chance at losing my freedom.
To answer the original question, emotions aren't a strong part of it for me. When I am being intimate with someone, I have a running monologue in my mind of what's going on and my reactions to it, as if I am merely observing the festivities rather than being a very active participant. I rarely get "lost" in the experience, except at the actual point of climax. But again, I've never had normal sex, so I wouldn't know how and to what extent it differs. Does this seem to comport with everyone else's experiences?

Wednesday, October 13, 2010

Keeping/getting out of the system

From time to time we get readers who have gotten caught up in the "system," institutionalized for one reason or another by government agencies trying to "help" them. Sociopaths need to prepare for such a contingency. Here's how one reader got off the psychological hook after being raped:
To get out of counselling, I convinced everyone I had PTSD. After they put a label on me, they felt okay to "release" me. After I got out, life went back to "normal". I never pressed charges or filed a formal report because it felt unnecessary to do so, so I didn't have to act like I had PTSD at school (the event occurred during secondary school). The only glitch in the whole plan was my parents; they were concerned with my lack of... reaction, I guess. Everyone in my family is quite aware of my APD and sociopathy. (We have kind of a Don't Ask, Don't Tell policy when it comes to what I do with my, what I like to call, skills.) I guess they thought we were more vulnerable, haha, that a rape would break me or something. What a riot.

Anyway, it was probably the most frustrating and best learning experience I've ever had. I have since built a mental repertoire of how to react in certain (mostly traumatic) situations, should they ever arise. I'm prepared now. (;
I think for most situations it's easiest to actually concentrate on feeling an emotion that is in the ballpark of "appropriate" rather than faking it. For instance, another socio reader recently suffered a miscarriage. I advised her to respond to people's inquiries by just repeating that she "feels loss." That's my go to response when something bad has happened to me, because I really can feel loss, and if I just keep focusing on the loss I feel, if any, I think I give sufficiently legitimate emotional responses approximating grief.

If you don't have a good "reaction," it can mean trouble. One small example is when I went 10 days with a ruptured appendix. I didn't have any satisfactory answer for why I hadn't come in sooner. People kept asking me questions about my pain threshold, tolerance for pain, etc., but I didn't have answers that jived with my medical history for that either. I think the truth was that I was just very good at compartmentalizing the pain -- mind over matter stuff like walking over coals? I don't know. I obviously still don't have a good enough explanation for it. Once they have you in some sort of "care," though, it's all about playing the game to get out before they have time to observe you for too long. The last day I was in the hospital, I was flushing food down the toilet because they said I couldn't leave until I had eaten. Luckily I wasn't in there with something suspicious like a knife wound, otherwise I might never have been able to leave.

Figure out the "right answer" they are looking for if you can and give it to them -- I know that's the goal, but it's easier said than done. How do you know what the right answer is for having been assaulted? Or having lost a child? The cops and doctors have seen it a hundred times before, so they know how you should act. That's the worst part about it! They sit there all smug, staring at you and comparing it to their wealth of experience while you try to verbally tap dance your way out of custody, sometimes tap dancing your way into even more trouble. It's enough to make you want to run whenever the cops or other authorities get involved, but of course that looks quite suspicious if you do and they later catch you.

As I'm writing this, I realize that maybe I'm a bad person to give advice on this subject. I tend to give people a confused look that makes them want to detain me. My internal dialogue goes something like this: "Is this a situation where less is more? Or where more is less? Do those phrases even make sense? Why are they whispering into that two-way radio while staring at me?"

I've been held on suspicion of all sorts of things, like drug use, cheating, concussions, and smuggling. Once I have triggered more than one red flag, I better hope I am innocent because I can't talk my way out of a paper bag at that point. Cops are the worst. I can't ever give them the reaction they're looking for. I guess that's why I think having a contingency plan is so important, because I have had so many problems with it in the past. It's certainly not because I have any talent for it.
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