Friday, October 14, 2011

S + BPD: Byron and Lady Caroline Lamb

People often remark in the comments sections that sociopaths and borderlines seem made for each other. This is what I was thinking as I read the Wikipedia account of Lady Caroline Lamb, spurned-lover come stalker of Lord Byron:



She had spurned the attention of the poet on their first meeting, subsequently giving Byron what became his lasting epitaph when she described him as "mad, bad, and dangerous to know." His response was to pursue her passionately.

Lady Caroline and Lord Byron publicly decried each other as they privately pledged their love over the following months. Byron referred to Lamb by the hypocorism "Caro", which she adopted as her public nickname.[10] After Byron broke things off, her husband took the disgraced and desolate Lady Caroline to Ireland. The distance did not cool Lady Caroline's interest in the poet; she and Byron corresponded constantly during her exile. When Lady Caroline returned to London in 1813; however, Byron made it clear he had no intention of re-starting their relationship. This spurred what could be characterized as the first recorded case of celebrity stalking as she made increasingly public attempts to reunite with her former lover.

Lady Caroline's obsession with Byron would define much of her later life and as well as influence both her and Byron's works. They would write poems in the style of each other, about each other, and even embed overt messages to one another in their verse. After a thwarted visit to Byron's home, Lady Caroline wrote "Remember Me!" into the flyleaf of one of Byron's books. He responded with the hate poem; "Remember thee! Remember thee!; Till Lethe quench life’s burning stream; Remorse and shame shall cling to thee, And haunt thee like a feverish dream! Remember thee! Ay, doubt it not. Thy husband too shall think of thee! By neither shalt thou be forgot, Thou false to him, thou fiend to me!"
***
In 1819, Lamb put her ability to mimic Byron to use in the narrative poem "A New Canto." Years before, Lamb had impersonated Byron in a letter to his publishers in order to have them send her a portrait of Byron. It worked; the tone and substance of her request fooled them into sending the painting.
***
Lamb's struggle with mental instability became more pronounced in her last years, complicated by her abuse of alcohol and laudanum. By 1827, she was under the care of a full-time physician as her body, which had always been frail, began to shut down.

Thursday, October 13, 2011

Twitchy

I have what some people might think looks like a facial tick. Have you ever seen a musician playing a solo who is so into the music that his or her face expresses it acutely, in what could be described as twitching? The face is contorted in something that looks a little like pain, or perhaps pleasure, and there always seems to be something sexual about it. What is this phenomenon?

I know some people think a lot of these musicians' expressions are fake or at least exaggerated, but being a musician myself I have noticed myself making these faces while playing or even while listening to someone else play. There is something about that particular moment --an overwhelming sensory stimulation. It's not like I don't have control over it, because I could just tune out of the experience and put my straight face right back on. But if I allow myself to be caught up in the moment, the face is part of the experience.

I didn't always do this as a musician and I haven't always done this as a human. It took about 8 years to get to the level of musicianship where it started, and then maybe another 4-8 to reach its present level. Similarly, I didn't start doing the twitching thing until about 6-8 years after I became self-aware, and another few years after that to reach its present level. I'd like to think they're related. I'd like to think that just as I became a better, more nuanced, more appreciative musician with better taste and a deeper level of pleasure in certain musical choices, that I have similarly become a better human.

Have I acquired more of a taste for humanity? I think I have, at least for the human existence. The faces I make do draw odd looks from strangers, though.

Interestingly, I think the adjective versions of words like "choice" and "select" highlight what is best about that existence.

Wednesday, October 12, 2011

Dexter = whipped

This NY Magazine article discusses the transformation of the fictional character Dexter, from cold-blooded killer to soccer dad:

Dexter returns for its sixth season on Sunday, and with it comes the requisite gore deftly contrasted with the brutal sunshine of Miami. Some things never change! But some things really, really do. Like Dexter. Over the course of the series, he's gone from stone-cold sociopath to slightly-less-cold lovable vigilante. Whatever moral ambiguity the show used to embrace — is it okay to ... root for a murderer? — is gone, replaced with a strange certainty (definitely root for this murderer!) that takes a lot of the creepiness away from the show. How did Miami Metro's favorite blood-splatter analyst go from his pas de deux with the Ice Truck Killer in season one to trying to get his son into a prestigious nursery school in season six? By following this plan to go from scary serial killer to soft suburban dad in these seven easy steps!
People ask me whether I think Dexter is an accurate portrayal of a sociopath. I say that in the first season, maybe second, it was so eerily accurate on some of his internal dialogue that I thought there must be someone on the writing staff or a consultant who was a sociopath themselves. Now I still watch it and it is entertaining and makes me want to live in Miami, but not so much accurate.

By the way, how to achieve your own predatory stare? Practice a half smile in front of a mirror, then while maintaining the smile, add a sneer gradually until you get just the right mix of sinister masked by friendly.

Tuesday, October 11, 2011

Calculated authenticity

I thought this NY Times article about the changing definition of "authentic," as the "it" value amongst those trendsetters and powerbrokers that command the most of our collective attention.
“I THINK what people see in me is that I’m a real person,” Representative Michele Bachmann told ABC News, after her victory in Iowa last month. “I’m authentic.”

Discussing his new daytime television show, Anderson Cooper told The Vancouver Sun that “in everything I’ve done, I’ve always tried to just be authentic and real.”

Sarah Ferguson, Duchess of York, told The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette in July that “if you fear what people think about you, then you are not being authentic.”
***
“What you can’t do is be told by a social media guru to act authentic and still be authentic,” said Jeff Pooley, an associate professor of media and communication at Muhlenberg College in Allentown, Pa. He said authenticity today is more accurately described as “calculated authenticity” — a k a stage management.

“The best way to sell yourself is to not appear to be selling yourself,” Professor Pooley said. Politicians do it. Celebrities do it. And you, reader, do it every time you tap out a status update on Twitter, Facebook, Google+.
Where has authenticity led Andereson Cooper? Spray tanning with Snooki. But it is interesting that a skill that sociopaths have long been cultivating, the art of calculated authenticity ("you mean the world to me"), has become a necessary survival skill in a world of social media.

Monday, October 10, 2011

Sociopathy and Self-Defense

From a reader:

Last night I was reading through one of your old blog posts about love. You had an exchange with an empath which began with her raising a valid question on the nature of sociopathy. She asked if perhaps a sociopath's inability to make human connections was like an aquired defense mechanism stemming from rejection and social isolation in his youth. From the moment I became aware that I was a sociopath several months ago this is exactly what I believed. I was always shy in grade school and high school, although around my close friends and adults I was very charming. Adults often commented on the fact that I carried myself very well for someone my age. However, I could never translate that persona when talking to girls and failed miserably at every connection I tried to make. I thus spent all of my youth in the fantasy world instead of the real one when it came to dating.
I've had minor mental health problems my whole life such as severe anxiety and poor impulse control. I used to have panic attacks when I was 17. I also had a bad habit of talking to myself. Sometimes I would spend what seemed like hours talking to myself in the middle of the night. Whenever I would take a minute to reflect on the reality of what I was doing it would make me feel insane but I'd still keep doing it because it made me feel better. The point is that I was always lonely. In a nutshell, I think the emotions I had were hurting me more than they were helping me. Afterall, what good is it have love inside you if the feeling is never reciprocated by those to whom it's directed at? It created too much negative emotional baggage which prevented me from pursuing certain activities with the proper amount of confidence.
During the winter of this year I could tell my mental health was deteriorating exponentially. After suffering post traumatic stress earlier this year over something which shall remain nameless, I realized I was no longer feeling emotion. At first it was a very liberating feeling, all my past regrets and emotional worries weren't bothering me at all. I felt so good it was like I had gone through some sort of spiritual transformation. I immediately became fearless and after a couple days approached a pretty woman with confidence and had a nice conversation with her. However, after a few weeks I noticed little things here and there that began to disturb me...All of which led me to a psychiatrist and ultimately, your site. My psychiatrist didn't label me sociopathic even though I tried to hint at it in as many ways as possible. I couldn't bring myself to simply come out and tell him that I no longer had feelings for anyone. I was afraid of the ramifications that might ensue.
Which brings me back to my original point. I see sociopathy in my case serving as a self defense mechanism, shielding me from the emotional traps that caused me so much pain in the past. When I analyze the evolution of myself over the course of the years it seems that nature found a way to make me stronger therefore allowing me to accomplish more than would otherwise be possible. I'm going to do some research but I'm curious if there are books on evolutionary psychology which support this idea. It certainly seems plausible.
M.E.: I think the readers will tend to think that you're not a sociopath, just sociopathic. Certain psychologists think that there is a spectrum of sociopathic traits and that normal people can express high levels of sociopathic traits, particularly at certain times in their lives.

Apart from that, though, I wonder if there is a functional difference between people like you who are very sociopathic (at least for now), and people who are sociopaths. I'm sure there are, at least in the same way that a second language will never be the same to you as your first language, even if you choose never to speak your first again. I'm curious to see if you ever snap out of it, though.
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