Saturday, September 3, 2011

Famous sociopaths (part 3)

Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio:
About 17 o'clock [lunchtime] the accused, together with two other people, was eating in the Moor's restaurant at La Maddalena, where I work as a waiter. I brought them eight cooked artichokes, four cooked in butter and four fried in oil. The accused asked me which were cooked in butter and which fried in oil, and I told him to smell them, which would easily enable him to tell the difference.

He got angry and without saying anything more, grabbed an earthenware dish and hit me on the cheek at the level of my moustache, injuring me slightly... and then he got up and grabbed his friend's sword which was lying on the table, intending perhaps to strike me with it, but I got up and came here to the police station to make a formal complaint.


Thursday, September 1, 2011

The empathy dealbreaker

A reader sent me a link to this article, "Student sues after university dumps him for ‘lack of empathy’":
A 44-year-old man is suing a Missouri university for $3 million after he was dumped from a graduate counselling program for lack of empathy.

David Schwartz received a “no credit” for his practical experience internship after receiving mostly A’s and one C in his course work, said the lawsuit against Webster University in St. Louis.

Dr. Stacy Henning, director of the counselling centre at the university, is alleged to have used three taped counselling sessions to show that Schwartz he “would not make a good counsellor because he lacked empathy,” the lawsuit claimed.

Judging empathy, Schwartz’s lawyer, Albert Watkins, told the Star, “is an extraordinarily subjective assessment.”

If empathy can be taught, Watkins said, the university had a duty to teach it to Schwartz. If it can’t be taught, his supervisors should have disqualified him from the graduate course before he paid $77,000 for tuition, books and fees.
I love this! There are so many weird implications. A court is going to decide whether or not empathy can be taught? In order to limit potential liability, counseling programs will test candidates ahead of time for empathy? Ah, the perversity of making empathy a job qualification.

Wednesday, August 31, 2011

Genetically predisposed to crime?

Yes, although that is not the full picture. From the NY Times:
Researchers estimate that at least 100 studies have shown that genes play a role in crimes. “Very good methodological advances have meant that a wide range of genetic work is being done,” said John H. Laub, the director of the justice institute, who won the Stockholm Prize in Criminology last week. He and others take pains to emphasize, however, that genes are ruled by the environment, which can either mute or aggravate violent impulses. Many people with the same genetic tendency for aggressiveness will never throw a punch, while others without it could be career criminals.
***
Kevin Beaver, an associate professor at Florida State University’s College of Criminology and Criminal Justice, said genetics may account for, say, half of a person’s aggressive behavior, but that 50 percent comprises hundreds or thousands of genes that express themselves differently depending on the environment.
The article is interesting because it talks not only about one's childhood environment, but one's current environment. One such environmental factor is marriage:
[Steven Pinker] mentioned one of the biggest risk factors leading to crime: remaining single instead of getting married, a link uncovered by Mr. Laub and Robert J. Sampson, a Harvard sociologist who was a co-winner of the Stockholm Prize. Marriage may serve as a switch that directs male energies toward investing in a family rather than competing with other males, Mr. Pinker said.
For those who are interested in improving their environment in order to maximize self control, this NY Times article about decision fatigue is good. The gist of the article is that you have limited amounts of self control, so don't waste it on unimportant things. Also be very aware of your blood glucose levels-- glucose can erase the effects of decision fatigue. It's oddly a lot of things I have just intuited about myself over the years, but still helpful to learn the science behind it.

Tuesday, August 30, 2011

Defining normal

Before I jump into a small rant, let me say that I believe there are true differences between sociopaths and neurotypicals. I also believe that the number of people who could be classified "neurotypicals" may be an actual minority (e.g. less than 50%). Furthermore, I understand that defining someone as being neurotypical does not necessarily mean that this person is "normal" or somehow better than everybody else who is not neurotypical. Let's call those the three assumptions.

My problem with some of the sociopathy research et al. is that too often people do not account for these assumptions. We talk about sociopaths being 1-4% of the population as if the other 96-99% are normal, maybe even the opposite of the sociopath. Maybe we believe that if sociopaths have low empathy, then everyone else has robust empathy? Maybe if we believe that if sociopaths do not feel guilt, everyone else must? Maybe if we say that sociopaths frequently engage in crime, then no one else does?

It's interesting, I started this blog in part to help people realize that sociopaths are natural human variants. I thought at the time that the big challenge would be to try to showcase some of our strengths in a more positive light, that we have more in common than people maybe realize. Recently I have been thinking that the real problem is not in getting people to believe that we're better than they think, but that they are worse than they think.

The weird thing about the three assumptions mentioned at the beginning is that I think most people don't believe them, not really. Most people assume that they are that minority of "normal" people instead of thinking that they might be one of those majority of people who are a little jacked up. Equally if perhaps more troubling is that many people lament that the psychological world would label half or more of us with a diagnosis/neurosis. So what if the majority of people have a label? Doesn't that seem equally if not more probable than assuming that half of the people in the world are pretty much interchangeable in terms of brain/emotional function? I understand the urge to define normal as the way most people are, but if there is not a clear way that most people are, is it really that helpful to distort our definition of "normal" to arbitrarily include some small deviations and not others?

The appeal of defining normal as whatever you happen to be is quite convenient. No need to confront the possibility that maybe you aren't as empathetic as they seem. Maybe your conscience doesn't have quite the sway that you thought it did. Maybe you are both capable and incapable of much more than you had hoped. Maybe you have a lot more in common with sociopaths than you'd like to think. Maybe it is just one big long spectrum with only a few of us at the extremes and the rest of us huddled closer to the middle. Could it be that self-diagnosed sociopaths are just much more honest with themselves than the rest of you who sneer, "that's not sociopathic, everyone does that." Could both be true? That something could be sociopathic and that everyone does that? Or most people do that? Specifically, you -- that you sometimes do those things? Does that make you normal or me?
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