Saturday, July 2, 2011

Dominque Strauss-Kahn

I actually don't know if I can speak for him, but his accuser has some very tell-tale sociopath signs. From the New York Times under the headline, "Strauss-Kahn Accuser’s Call Alarmed Prosecutors," the story starts with a phone call made to her boyfriend in immigration jail 28 hours after the assault:
‘Don’t worry, this guy has a lot of money. I know what I’m doing."

It was another ground-shifting revelation in a continuing series of troubling statements, fabrications and associations that unraveled the case and upended prosecutors’ view of the woman. Once, in the hours after she said she was attacked on May 14, she’d been a “very pious, devout Muslim woman, shattered by this experience,” the official said — a seemingly ideal witness.

Little by little, her credibility as a witness crumbled — she had lied about her immigration, about being gang raped in Guinea, about her experiences in her homeland and about her finances, according to two law enforcement officials. She had been linked to people suspected of crimes. She changed her account of what she did immediately after the encounter with Mr. Strauss-Kahn. Sit-downs with prosecutors became tense, even angry. Initially composed, she later collapsed in tears and got down on the floor during questioning. She became unavailable to investigators from the district attorney’s office for days at a time.

Now the phone call raised yet another problem: it seemed as if she hoped to profit from whatever occurred in Suite 2806.
***
In the beginning, her relationship with prosecutors was strong. Her account seemed solid. Over time, the well-placed official said, they discovered that she was capable of telling multiple, inconsistent versions of what appeared to be important episodes in her life.
***
Her immigration history was a focus. At first, she told them what she told immigration officials seven years ago in her accounts of how she fled Guinea and her application for asylum on Dec. 30, 2004. She described soldiers destroying the home where she lived with her husband, and said they were both beaten because of their opposition to the regime. She said her husband died in jail.

But then, in a subsequent interview with Manhattan prosecutors, she said the story was false, one she had been urged to tell by a man who gave it to her on a cassette recording to memorize. She had listened to the recording repeatedly.

The housekeeper also told investigators that she had been gang raped in Guinea. She cried and became “markedly distraught when recounting the incident,” according to a letter to the defense from prosecutors released Friday. But she later admitted that that, too, was a lie, once again one she had told to help her application for asylum. She said she was indeed raped in Guinea, but not in the way she had described.
Apparently she was lying for her asylum application, and of course not everyone who lies on an asylum application is a sociopath, but that combined with her fluency of lying, her ability and willingness to exploit a powerful wealthy man and in a rather cunning way all suggest that she is somewhere on the spectrum.

Thursday, June 30, 2011

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.)
***
“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.

Tuesday, June 28, 2011

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.

Monday, June 27, 2011

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.
Join Amazon Prime - Watch Over 40,000 Movies

.

Comments are unmoderated. Blog owner is not responsible for third party content. By leaving comments on the blog, commenters give license to the blog owner to reprint attributed comments in any form.