Friday, August 5, 2011

Companionship

A reader asked me how I feel about companionship and how far I would go to maintain someone's companionship. I responded:

I have a hard time answering hypotheticals, but companionship for me is probably like vitamin c. It's necessary and if I don't have enough I can start showing the signs of mental and emotional scurvy. Once I get it back, I show no lasting damage from the deprivation. I get most of what I need during my daily interactions. Finally, in high doses it is toxic. If I find a good steady source, particularly if it gives me a large dose of my other essential nutrients, I'll work pretty hard to keep it. Like a farmer!

Thursday, August 4, 2011

Research help

I was recently contacted by Willem H.J. Martens, a psychiatric researcher known to many of you as being the source of some of the most insightfully sympathetic and understanding portrayals of psychopaths in the academic literature. He is author of, among others, "The Hidden Suffering of Psychopaths" and "Emotional Capacities and Sensitivity in Psychopaths." He is writing a book on psychopathy and is soliciting more examples, histories, and illustrative stories ("self-reports") from psychopaths (either diagnosed or self-diagnosed), particularly regarding certain diagnostic criteria. From Dr. Martens:
I am Willem Martens, psychoanalyst, psychiatrist and chair of the "W. Kahn Institute of Theoretial Psychiatry and Neuroscience." I have published on psychopathy in many international journals. I am a psychopath myself, which became obvious during my study and work. My PhD trajectory was a horrible road with numerous conflicts. I spoiled three teams of promotors in three universities. But, I graduated on a controversial study on the correlation between remission and maturation in psychopaths (only 14 of 667 cases). This idea was inspired by the life of my brother, a very gifted and charismatic person who did all the things which were forbidden. Suddenly he changed after a series of impressive incidents. My psychopathy and my childhood experiences gave me an advantage during my work for decades with psychopaths in forensic settings, I understood them and they understood me.

I'am writing a book on psychopaths's reflections on their personality features, condition and characteristics. The intention of this book is to form a counterbalance against the existing superficial, incorrect and incomplete theories of and viewpoints on psychopathy and sociopathy. This internet forum provides a huge amount of valuable and revealing information. However, with regard to some topics (diagnostic features of the PCL-R; psychopathy checklist of Hare) I need responses in order to make my book complete and convincing because it must cover all the topics of the PCL-R and related references.

I need more self reports for the following traits. If you are a sociopath and manifest one or more of these traits, please contact me at martens_92 at hotmail dot com.

1. Glibness/Superficial Charm
2. Grandiose Sense of Self worth
3. Need for Stimulation/Proneness to Bored
8. Callous/Lack of Empathy
9. Parasitic Lifestyle
10. Poor Behavioral Controls
12. Early Behavioral Problems
14. Impulsivity
16. Failure to Accept Responsibility for Own Actions
17. Many Short-Term Marital Relationships
18. Juvenile Delinquent
19. Revocation of Conditional Release
20. Criminal Versatility.

Please provide self-reports rather that theoretical visions.
I believe that this is very important work, so I may be updating or reminding you periodically to contact Dr. Martens. I hope that through our extensive collective cooperation, the book will more accurately depict the realities and spectrum of the psychopathic experience.

Wednesday, August 3, 2011

Vigilantism

I've recently had experiences where I was nice to someone, a stranger or someone I didn't think mattered, and then had them show up again in my life in another context, or turn out to be a connection I needed to a third person, or I ended up developing a crush on them. I used to be less careful about being nice to strangers, but have learned that it frequently pays off, particularly very visible kindness to strangers.

Behaving better when people are watching turns out to be a trait that everyone shares. In this Ars Technica article covering a recent Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences issue dedicated to human cooperation.
Some studies do find that we empathize with the plights of others, and just want to help out. Participants in one study saw a worker getting a series of electrical shocks. When told that they could reduce the number of shocks the worker got by volunteering to get shocked themselves, most volunteered for the jolt. The response was the same whether the participant would continue to see the worker after their decision or not, indicating that they weren’t just trying to make the unpleasant situation disappear. Instead, the researchers suggest that the participants wanted the best for the worker.

However, studies show that the prospect of someone else watching—even if it’s just a drawing of a pair of eyes—makes us more cooperative. Similarly, when participants in the Ultimatum Game are told that their offers will be made public, they tend to offer a greater proportion of their cash. Clearly, our motives aren’t all selfless.
Why are people worried about a pair of watching eyes? The article answers that unlike the rest of the animal kingdom "we are the only species that seems to be offended by inequalities that we aren't affected by, and as far as we know, we're unique in our liberal use of punishment." In other words, we're worried about rampant vigilantism.

And there will almost always be a pair of eyes looking out for misbehavior, if not a vigilante, the victim himself. The truth has a way of getting out. I used to be more reckless when I was younger because I didn't have much to lose if people discovered that I am black hearted. My current life position makes negative behavior more difficult for me to explain away, so I just default to being courteous to most people, and obsequiously charming to some.

If vigilantism doesn't scare you, google "necklacing."

Tuesday, August 2, 2011

I'm not an addict

People have suggested to me several times that drugs might enhance my ability to "feel," particularly MDMA or cannabis. I haven't tried either, but even if I were to feel different things I think my brain would reject them as not coming from me. Already when I have emotional hallucinations, I basically ignore them as being quirks in my brain chemistry, like you might ignore voices in your head. I think the same would go double for narcotics, particularly if I knowingly consumed them as opposed to be drugged.

Sociopaths are supposedly prone to addiction. I can sort of see why that might be true for some--chronic boredom would mean self medication in some form or another. I have never been drawn to narcotics, though, in fact I would say that I affirmatively dislike them because they hamper my brain function/control. Not only do I not like narcotics, a recent study, discussed in this NY Times article, suggests that sociopath's brains may make them particularly unsusceptible to addiction. The article first discusses how addicts tend to have an underactive reward system in the brain:
Dr. Nora Volkow, director of the National Institute on Drug Abuse, has shown in several brain-imaging studies that people addicted to such drugs as cocaine, heroin and alcohol have fewer dopamine receptors in the brain’s reward pathways than nonaddicts. Dopamine is a neurotransmitter critical to the experience of pleasure and desire, and sends a signal to the brain: Pay attention, this is important.

When Dr. Volkow compared the responses of addicts and normal controls with an infusion of a stimulant, she discovered that controls with high numbers of D2 receptors, a subtype of dopamine receptors, found it aversive, while addicts with low receptor levels found it pleasurable.

This finding and others like it suggest that drug addicts may have blunted reward systems in the brain, and that for them everyday pleasures don’t come close to the powerful reward of drugs.
In contrast, there is research that suggests that sociopaths have an overactive reward system, which would presumably make them largely immune ("aversive") to at least certain substance addictions.

Interestingly, the article cites the borderline personality disordered as being particularly susceptible to addiction ("People with borderline personality disorder, who struggle to control their impulses and anger, often resort to drugs and alcohol to soften their intolerable moods."). Is this possibly a way to distinguish between the brains of sociopaths versus those with BPD for purposes of diagnosis? If so, it might be a step toward ending the gender stereotype for sociopathy and BPD.

In any case, those facing drug addiction problems can always rely on Vermont addiction services or other similar programs across the United States for treatment help.

Monday, August 1, 2011

Limitless

A few readers had suggested I watch the movie Limitless for being sociopath related, and I finally got a chance to watch it on a plane. It is a pretty fun movie, particularly when he first becomes genius smart. They don't really explore how he changes emotionally with all of his brain changes, which is too bad, but it's not really that deep of a movie. Here's the scene that probably shows the sociopath angle the best:

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.