Thursday, August 18, 2011

Tautology

A reader asked me if there is any definitive way to tell whether somebody isn't a sociopath. I took the opportunity to preach:

The diagnosis of sociopathy is useful, but only to the extent that people understand it's limitations. The main limitation is that we cannot identify it by its root source, we know it only by its symptoms/characteristics.

I like to use the analogy of determining someone's religion. How might we determine that someone we met at a cocktail party is Catholic. Let's say they have an Irish last name. We know (or think we know) that Catholicism is a very common religion in Ireland. Let's say that the guest is married. We think that marriage is valued in that religion, culturally and doctrinally. This man starts talking about his 5 children. We have met other Catholic people who have a lot of children and think we remember something about the Pope being anti contraception. Some of our new acquaintance's children are named things like Mary and Joseph, not just biblical names but particularly Catholic sounding names to our ears. He makes mention of being involved in various charities. Catholics seem to be charitable people because they have all sorts of relief organizations and hospitals.

This is the sort of datamining and coming to conclusions that we do everyday (sociopaths more fluently than empaths). After we have concluded that there is a decent likelihood of our new acquaintance being Catholic, we can bring up things to which he might respond well (family, purity, etc.) and avoid topics that he might find offensive or incendiary (child molesting priest scandals or abortion).

What have we actually done? We have taken a list of characteristics and put our new friend in a particular category based on those characteristics: Irish last name, married, 5 children, Catholic names, charitable. We wouldn't be that surprised if he turned out not to be Catholic -- it's certainly possible for people to be all of those things and not be Catholic. Nor would we expect every Catholic person to manifest any or all of these traits.

These traits are not definitive. Catholic does not equal Irish, big family, bible names, and charitable. But some of them get at traits that we would consider definitive, such as the doctrinal belief of procreative sex or the importance of love for fellowman--they are the manifestation of beliefs that are definitively Catholic.

If we had to, how could we conclusively prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that this man is Catholic? Perhaps if he were baptized, but what if he lapsed or converted to another religion? Would that count? What if he had the exact beliefs but was never baptized. What if he was baptized, attends mass with his family, but doesn't believe?

It is so difficult to define what it means to be "Catholic," and the definition might expand or contract for certain contexts. For instance, we might use a broad definition when we are examining the influence of Catholicism in a community, narrow when considering who could be appointed to high positions of church leadership. But for most purposes we are content to accept people's subjective self-identification.

Like the label "Catholic," the list of sociopathic characteristics literally come from researchers' collective observations about what traits tend to be shared by sociopaths. Recent brain scans and other studies suggest a link between these characteristics and something more "definitive" and unique about a sociopath's brain. But it would be a mistake to conflate the list of characteristics of a sociopath with the definition of sociopath, just as it would be a mistake to assume that all Catholics would share the exact same traits -- or that having a certain list of traits is what makes people Catholic.

Wednesday, August 17, 2011

New sociopath (part 2)

My response:
I find that most sociopaths are not sad at the thought that they might be one. You could also be BPD, but you might just be a young teenage socio girl in a sorority living in the narcissistic generation that you belong to. Does criticism hurt your feelings?

If you are a socio, learn to use your drives for power to help you keep self control. For instance, it bothers you when you weird people out because you lose power over those people, right? So let the part of you that craves power lead you to a better choice, e.g. keep people wanting more by being less available. Read the Art of Seduction and 48 Rules of Power.
The reader:
I don't know if I could be BPD, however, I do play different...personas? with different people. Being in a sorority has nothing to do with anything though, as I just recently joined one. I just think I'm a socio because I manipulate people instinctively.
Since I sent this email I've been really analyzing my present behavior. I realized how much I watch other people's faces, trying to see if their feelings are sincere or just being fascinated by the way they react to things. I sometimes even try to replicate their faces. People always give me strange looks when someone is crying because I ask why or become irritated by it. I hate being criticized, mostly because I don't think other people deserve to judge me and because I see their flaws clearly and accept them, so why can't they do that for me? It seems unfair.
I always feel extremely powerful when people pay attention to me or treat me in a special way. For example, the boy I'm dating now sees me as his only confidante and that's why I like him, even when his depression gets irritating because he harps on how he wants to kill himself. I always pretend to them that they're special to me and that they're the only ones I can come to for certain things and that I really appreciate them. Another thing is that I've lived apart from my family for my entire life and people ask me if I miss them and I say yes, because it's what is expected. I find questions like do you miss them or who's your hero or things of that nature stupid. I don't miss anyone, I miss the things they could be doing for me or the entertainment they could be providing, as I'm constantly bored.

I make mistakes in my reactions to things sometimes. My girlfriend (I'm "bisexual") cheated on me and I was more concerned about whether I looked stupid or not in front of her friends instead of the fact that she "betrayed" me. I didn't really care and I was only dating her because I liked the attention we got or the reactions I got when I told people I was dating a girl.

Tuesday, August 16, 2011

New sociopath (part 1)

From a reader:
Hi, I'm beginning to question whether or not I'm a sociopath. I've been called observant and perceptive and adaptive and bright all my life and up until now, I've just been puzzled by this. I remember having a friend who I would convince that he didn't need to see my parts but would get him to let me touch his all the time, even though he didn't want to. He followed me around all the time. I remember that my grandmother, who everyone said doted on me a lot, died but when she did I didn't ask any questions I just assumed she was gone somewhere yet I didn't care. I stole almost two hundred dollars from my aunt and never felt guilty when I was caught. I also stole at least twenty dollars from my elementary school every week so I could eat. Anyway, this stuff isn't really important.

I just need help, a mentor if you will, in controlling myself better. I can't control my anger or annoyance very well and I can't get myself interested in "normal" things that other teenage girls do, like posting pictures together and all that stuff. I can't control my initial reactions of being confused or annoyed when people want to be affectionate with me or say they love me. Until recently, I've been very distrustful of people because I thought they all thought the same way I do, using every single word or action to try and get something from me but I'm starting to get over this. I had to stop smoking pot because I would get so sucked up into my head plotting that people would get weirded out and I wouldn't be doing "normal" things. Which is something else that angers me uncontrollably is when someone points out something I do and says how weird it is, I get very defensive and angry and end up looking suspicious. Anyway, another thing I have a problem with is attention. I literally can't control myself, especially when drunk or on MDMA, from seeking attention or approval. I constantly message people on facebook, sometimes who consider me a friend, sometimes those who consider me a distant friend, sometimes people I want to sleep with...I can't help it and I get so angry when they don't answer or stop answering or I just weird them out. Is there anything you can do to help me with control? Is it because I'm young? I'm not in the mood to lose the people I just got to be my friends and start all over again, I'm in college and in a sorority so I have several roles to play.

Anything you can do to help would be great. And also if you think I'm a sociopath? It doesn't bother me in no way to think I am, instead it makes me feel excited. It actually pulled me out of months and years of wondering if there was something wrong with me as a result of most of the people in my family resenting/hating me.

Monday, August 15, 2011

Emotional moral judgment

This was an interesting (although sometimes confusing) overview sent to me by a reader of some of the recent work that researcher Jean Decety has been doing on moral judgment (Decety is teaming up soon with our favorite brain scan-ologist Kent Kiehl for more brain scans of male psychopathic prisoners).

The most interesting assertion in the article was: "Negative emotions alert people to the moral nature of a situation by bringing on discomfort that can precede moral judgment, and such an emotional response is stronger in young children, he explained." Apparently children's moral judgment is not just preceded by a negative emotional response, but is essentially a negative emotional response: "For young children, the amygdala, which is associated with the generation of emotional responses to a social situation, was much more activated than it was in adults."

The emotional moral judgment of the child evolves as an adult to be tempered by the "dorsolateral and ventromedial prefrontal cortex — areas of the brain that allow people to reflect on the values linked to outcomes and actions." So while children are assuming that every bad act is malicious, adults are able to recognize and discount accidents and find nuance in levels of maliciousness.

I hadn't realized that moral judgment starts out as an emotional reaction in both adults and children (and remains an emotional reaction in children). It makes sense that sociopaths would have a comparatively blunted sense of morality, assuming that they either do not feel this emotional impetus or feel it less, which is certainly the case with me -- I have never felt moral outrage. My friends joke that I wouldn't be able to smell a lynch mob coming.

I have mixed feelings about the emotional component of moral judgment. On the one hand, I understand how nature reinforces important functions with emotion. On the other hand, emotional moral judgment also enables people to do really horrible things to each other for little to no provocation.

Do any empaths want to defend their way of doing things, i.e. argue that emotional moral reason is better than unemotional moral reasoning?

Sunday, August 14, 2011

Moral secularism

As a follow up to the previous post on morality, this was an unintentionally hilarious USA Today article about how secular moral judgment is so much better than religious moral judgment. I'll leave it to the truly interested, but here is just a sample of the specious reasoning:
Should we be afraid that a morality based on our genes and our brains is somehow inferior to one handed down from above? Not at all. In fact, it's far better, because secular morality has a flexibility and responsiveness to social change that no God-given morality could ever have. Secular morality is what pushes religion to improve its own dogma on issues such as slavery and the treatment of women. Secular morality is what prevents ethically irrelevant matters — what we eat, read or wear, when we work, or whom we have sex with — from being grouped with matters of genuine moral concern, like rape and child abuse. And really, isn't it better to be moral because you've worked out for yourself — in conjunction with your group — the right thing to do, rather than because you want to propitiate a god or avoid punishment in the hereafter?

Nor should we worry that a society based on secular morality will degenerate into lawlessness. That experiment has already been done — in countries such as Sweden and Denmark that are largely filled with non-believers and atheists. I can vouch from experience that secular European nations are full of well-behaved and well-meaning citizens, not criminals and sociopaths running amok. In fact, you can make a good case that those countries, with their liberal social views and extensive aid for the sick, old and disadvantaged, are even more moral than America.
Sweden and Denmark are secular? The Church of Sweden was the state church until as recently as the year 2000 and the citizenry still pays a "church tax" which can be as high as 2% of their income. I don't think now is a good time to talk about how secular the Scandanavian countries are with the recent religiously motivated massacre in Norway. In fact, that massacre is a cautionary tale for all moral zealotry, religious or secular.

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