Treatments for borderline personality disorder

A reader sent me this article in the NY Times profiling a pioneer in treatments for borderline personality disorder, who also suffers from borderline personality disorder herself. There are some interesting parallels and some good suggestions for anyone who is seeking to control their behavior:

She borrowed some of these from other behavioral therapies and added elements, like opposite action, in which patients act opposite to the way they feel when an emotion is inappropriate; and mindfulness meditation, a Zen technique in which people focus on their breath and observe their emotions come and go without acting on them. (Mindfulness is now a staple of many kinds of psychotherapy.)
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“I think the reason [her therapy] has made such a splash is that it addresses something that couldn’t be treated before; people were just at a loss when it came to borderline,” said Lisa Onken, chief of the behavioral and integrative treatment branch of the National Institutes of Health. “But I think the reason it has resonated so much with community therapists has a lot to do with Marsha Linehan’s charisma, her ability to connect with clinical people as well as a scientific audience.”

I wonder whether someone will ever develop a treatment for sociopaths who have poor behavior control. I think it will happen, I just wonder what it will look like.

Social experiment

I've been thinking that it's been too long since we've done a social experiment. I maybe want to do something with Omegle this time, maybe a race/best to seduce? Or best mindgame? People can post their transcripts in the comments section or email me and I can post a winner? If you all don't have any suggestions, I'm sure I could come up with something, but I thought I would throw it out there.

More thoughts on the pleasure of power

I initially started thinking about power after talking to a friend about what I get out of a seduction. When I responded power, my friend asked me what is so great about power? As I started to explain, I realized that at a meta level, I actually didn't know what about power I find so appealing. I told my friend that I have to interact with people anyway, and so I would rather it always be on my terms. My friend wasn't satisfied with the answer and neither was I.

I could also say that my brain must be wired to reward power the same way that is is wire to reward eating, sleeping, and other "positive" bodily functions, but did it come that way? Or did I train it to have some sort of pavlovian response, the same way I could maybe train myself to especially crave gambling or other habitual thrills. But power is a special thrill, right? Take a straightforward thrill like riding in a speeding car. Isn't it more pleasurable to be the driver? And what is the difference there but power and control? I don't know. It's odd because I can blithely but truthfully say that I am most driven by the pursuit of power, but I still don't quite know why.

The pleasure of power

From Zhawq:

In your article The Art of Massage you posed the question:

"What pleasure does the seducer get then? Why go to all of the trouble? It's a good question without a good answer."

I think there is an understandable explanation to why psychopaths (and other manipulative people to some extent) tend to get pleasure from being active and the giver in a seduction event rather than being the receiver.

We like to give because of what we receive that way. This is true for all people - even Mother Theresa gained something from her martyrdom - but it is most of all true for psychopaths.

The neurotypical majority of people do tend find it slightly annoying, something to get over with so as to get to the pleasurable part. This is a common experience, and psychopaths can certainly feel just as bored with it as everybody else. Of course there're exceptions to this...

First of all, it isn't quite as unusual for neurotypical men to enjoy the giving role as it is for the women. There're also neurotypical people who simply enjoy the active giving role, it is part of their personality. The most common exception is when someone is in love with another and spontaneously like to cause that person pleasure.

It is very different for psychopaths. I find that psychopathic people's overall greater joy from being the active party, being the one who gives, has to do with the way we (psychopaths) experience the world.
One obvious reason is that we gain pleasure from being in control, and that to get in control you have to be the active part at least in the beginning.

But there's more to it than that...

The neurotypical majority of people always have a clear inner sense of what they feel, at any time and about anything, though very often not why. But they seem to have a two-part, or a 'split up' radar which monitors both their own feelings and the feelings of others. Their empathy may be what keeps them focusing on both others and themselves, but it may also be what keeps them from focusing on a certain outcome.

A psychopath's attention is not split in two and our focus is mainly outward (unless we're in pain or otherwise in an unpleasant state). We are very extrovert people and extrovert people are more likely to enjoy the active role when interacting with others. We generally enjoy having the dominant role.

Psychopaths do also not get our attention bend inward via empathy triggered emotions from those we interact with, because we largely lack the ability to feel empathy. We don't have the neurotypical person's common range of emotions, and the ones we have are often not clearly defined. And because we don't have the 'mystical link' (empathy) with other people and their feelings that neurotypicals have, we are pretty much left to gain an understanding of others by observing their behavior.

Our emotions aren't the only central element in how we (psychopathic people) experience the world. On the other hand, our senses - what we see, what we understand cognitively and intellectually, and what we can do with what we see, experience, understand - is the great and main part of life for us.

Neuro-science have been making discoveries that support the above. One could hope that the so called growing understanding of the human mind will lead to a better understanding of people like our host, M.E., like myself, Zhawq, and like many of our readers. But sadly I don't think that's the way it's going.

Habitual thinking and adherence to outdated dogma is a strong incentive to keep things at their status quo, and for as long as even the leading researchers use the easy way out and blame psychopaths for all wrongdoings in the world like a broken record about 14.th century witch hunt, there'll be build new concentration camps and Dr. Mengele types will induce their 'gene therapy' and 'brain chip implants' in the name of the greater good.

The art of massage

I am on vacation so posting may be light or intermittent for the next couple of weeks. While I was getting a massage, though, I was thinking what a good example of one-sided pleasure it is. There you are experiencing pleasure, or depending on the skill of the masseuse -- bliss, while the masseuse is hard at work. You are hardly aware of how hard the masseuse is working, what exactly they are up to, and with some of my best massages I almost forget that there is even a masseuse at all, I am just having an intense feeling of pleasure.

Seductions are like massages in these ways. Good seducers know just how to play their seducee. There is a skill and an art in granting pleasure to someone in a one-sided way. Like massage, most of the moves are rote, but based on years of experience and the feedback and visible pleasure of countless seducees, the seducer has learned what tends to work. Although everyone is different, most people are not really all that different and a stable of reliable techniques with a few tricks for variety are frequently sufficient for most tasks. Like a masseuse, the seducer starts gradually, attempting to acclimate the seducee to submission to a force outside themselves. The masseuse/seducer keeps escalating the intensity until the massage can become truly painful. Some recipients might balk at this pain and withdraw, but most will stay in the game because they trust the seducee/masseuse, they assume that whatever is being done to them is somehow necessary.

I say one-sided pleasure because the masseuse is presumably not getting pleasure. Some in a seduction might project their feelings on the seducee, assuming that the seducer is also in love, is also feeling the same or a similar connection/emotion. To do so is as wrong as to assume that your masseuse is also feeling a tingle down their spine as they shuffle their hands down your back. What pleasure does the seducer get then? Why go to all of the trouble? It's a good question without a good answer. The easy answer would be to say power and control, but it just begs the question -- what's so great about power and control?

But it's been a long time goal of mine to take some classes on massage, exactly because it gives the illusion of connectivity without needing actual connection.