Wednesday, December 21, 2011

Fictional sociopaths: Hurt Locker

A psychologist suggests a fictional depiction of a psychopath is the protagonist from the Hurt Locker:
Patrick Bateman in the film American Psycho inserts a chainsaw into a prostitute. Alex in A Clockwork Orange fantasizes about torture and slaughter while listening to music. 
But psychopaths can wreak havoc in workplaces without stabbing, or eating, their colleagues.
"It's a much more ordinary condition than those movies portray. They aren't more intelligent than the rest of us," Dr Polaschek said. 
She suggested another movie character for a different look at psychopaths: Sergeant First Class William James in The Hurt Locker. 
James joins a bomb disposal team in Iraq and quickly earns the distrust of his comrades through his lack of care. 
"He could well be a psychopath, but he doesn't do anything to hurt anybody. He's a bit of a cowboy and does a fearless kind of work tracking those improvised explosives, and he doesn't work well in a team."
The researcher goes on to opine:
Dr Polaschek said it was a complex disorder - there was no clear line dividing a common and commendable display of boldness from full-blown psychopathy. 
"But there probably isn't such a thing as a harmless psychopath. People who live for themselves and for the day will tend to blunder around, causing harm to people - because that's not how society works." 
I think this sign represents his character well (and the awkwardness of a sociopath trying to deal with someone's very emotional state, rather unsuccessfully):



Sergeant JT Sanborn: I'm ready to die, James.
Staff Sergeant William James: Well, you're not gonna die out here, bro.
Sergeant JT Sanborn: Another two inches, shrapnel zings by; slices my throat- I bleed out like a pig in the sand. Nobody'll give a shit. I mean my parents- they care- but they don't count, man. Who else? I don't even have a son.
Staff Sergeant William James: Well, you're gonna have plenty of time for that, amigo.
Sergeant JT Sanborn: Naw, man. I'm done. I want a son. I want a little boy, Will. I mean, how do you do it, you know? Take the risk?
Staff Sergeant William James: I don't know. I guess I don't think about it.
Sergeant JT Sanborn: But you realize every time you suit up, every time we go out, it's life or death. You roll the dice, and you deal with it. You recognize that don't you?
Staff Sergeant William James: Yea... Yea, I do. But I don't know why.
[sighs]
Staff Sergeant William James: I don't know, JT. You know why I'm the way I am?
Sergeant JT Sanborn: No, I don't.

Tuesday, December 20, 2011

Married to BPD (part 2)

My response:

I don't really know that much about BPD. I've never met anyone in person who is BPD, just the people who write in to me or comment on the blog. It seems to be a real thing, even if all we're really saying is that there are people similar enough to each other that it makes sense to give them all a similar label.

Still, I think that quite a few female sociopaths might get misdiagnosed BPD when sociopathy would fit better. I think that may be due to a gender bias of both the criterion and the people doing the diagnosing. I also think that because there is really not a diagnosis of "sociopath" right now, your only other option is ASPD and a lot of female sociopaths don't seem to rise to the level of aggression and acting out that ASPD requires, so they get shuttled into a BPD diagnosis.

If your wife is actually a sociopath and not BPD, I do think there are ways that she can love you. She is probably already attached to you, and as you become more of a fixture in her life she will become even more attached. If it helps you to avoid power struggles, you can just tell yourself that when she provokes you, she is doing so expecting to get a rise out of you. The sociopath in you should know that it would actually be a better tactic to avoid confrontation and wait around until a better moment to strike, on your terms not hers.

Monday, December 19, 2011

Married to BPD (part 1)


From a reader:
I am intrigued by your honesty on your almost autobiographical perspective on sociopathy. You have quite an insightful blog that is helping me gain some different perspectives. I don't think all sociopaths are bad people, just as I don't believe all empaths are good people. 
Recently, I married a woman I knew for a relatively short amount of time (4 months and we've been married since May) out of impulse and I have come to the realization that she may be a Borderline. When it's good, it's great...but when it's bad, it's horrid. When we fight, I become just as bad as her, trying to one-up her or try to control her, as she tries with me. I have never had these sort of power struggles with anyone. But my emotions have been on a roller coaster ride for the past nine months . Never have I experienced such exhilarating pleasure and turmoil at the same time with one person.
I recently joined an online "BPD" support forum for Non's and have come to fine many "veteran Non's" who ended up with BPD's (often bitter) express a common opinion and that is that the BPD label is actually a farce, namely created by "recovered borderlines" and those with empathy towards females afflicted with sociopathy.
In my personal opinion about the Cluster B's...From what I've gathered thus far, I am starting to believe that BPD is in actuality a form sociopathy and Histrionics may just be an offshoot of Narcissism. Modern psychology likes to compartmentalize everything into "disorders" as to easier "label" an individual. I agree with doing away with such compartmental labels and placing diagnoses into degrees on a spectrum, such as high functioning, low functioning and everything in between.
I consider myself to be a low-level sociopath (anti-Narcisssistic). I do have some of the tendencies (I often switch between apathy and empathy...and certain things I cannot feel, but I consider myself to be an empath for the most part). But my philosophy that if you mess with me, I will go out of my way to make your life hell, reinforces my belief of my tendencies.
Thus, I would like your opinion on BPD? Do you think it's a solid label or is it a variant of sociopathy? Thus I think my wife has "BPD"...Sociopathy. But she intrigues me and although we have highs and lows, the relationship is nothing close to boring. I love her and would like to make this work. I just want to know something, am I merely an object to her, a possession? Or do you feel sociopaths are capable of love in their own way? There are many good qualities with the bad...or is that just part of an act?

Sunday, December 18, 2011

Sociopath = broken brain?

The question of nature vs. nurture for sociopaths is controversial. Arguing "nature" seems to give sociopaths a free pass--being "born with it" somehow makes them more pitiable and acceptable by society. Whereas arguing "nurture" suggests that sociopaths can one day reverse their condition through hard work and therapy, or recruit more of their kind by abusing children. Scientists think that sociopathy is a mixture of both nature and nurture, but the real mystery is whether the sociopath's brain is actually physically different from the empath's. I don't have anything more than anecdotal evidence regarding sociopaths specifically, but we know that the brain learns different things at different stages. If you miss the window to learn a particular skill or concept (e.g. empathy), you may never be able to "catch up" or "become normal."

One example of brains missing their learning windows is feral children. This article discusses the story of a 7 year-old girl who was found living in her own filth in a closet. The girl wore diapers, was nonverbal, and was unable to feed herself. Essentially she lived like a big toddler with minimal human contact. The girl had a "normal" brain, no sign of genetic mental retardation, but she behaved as if she were severely mentally handicapped. This girl will never be normal. When she was found, no one expected her to ever learn to speak. The best that could be hoped for is that she would become potty trained, learn how to feed herself, understand simple communication. Her brain had missed too many windows of opportunity--too many neural connections were never made.

Does the feral child story sound like this comment from a reader?
I stumbled across this site while trying to define my own personality traits. I certainly exhibit a fair number of the associated traits of a sociopath, so maybe I am one.

The thing is, I never used to exhibit these traits, in fact as a child i was very empathic - this changed when i went from a loving home to living with an abusive and largely uncaring stepfather, and a mother who just didn't want anything to jeapordise her relationship with said stepfather.

What happens when you systematically abuse an empath?

The answer is simple - they stop empathising and start lashing out once it gets too much. In my opinion, and i could be wrong on this, but the medical definitions don't take into account the complexities of the human soul, sociopathy is simply a natural instinct for survival and even revenge on those that destroyed part of their psyche. I never got justice for the wrongs that were done to me, my child brain at the time "toughened" itself to deal with the situation and went about exacting revenge in lieu of justice provided by those that should have been protecting me from such harm. The problem is, how do you stop?

Having been in such a psychological torment for the formative years of childhood, how do you become "normal" when you've never really known normality?

The moral superiority exhibited by sociopaths was once just that, they did once hold the moral high ground, they knew right from wrong and they knew wrong was being done to them and nothing was being done about it so they adapted their views of the world accordingly - it's difficult to feel empathy for anyone when no empathy is shown to you.

So in my view, and this is just my opinion, a sociopath is probably just a scared child in an adult body, trying to protect themselves from the harm that has been visited upon them by "normal" people. Once the walls go up, it's damn hard to bring them down again and each negative response just adds another brick to the wall - more proof that they are right to mistrust the world and treat it with contempt.

There may be genetic factors involved, differences to the brain even, but largely I think that society itself has created sociopaths and the reason they fear sociopaths is because of the skeleton in society's closet that sociopaths represent.

Saturday, December 17, 2011

Kicking against the pricks

I related to this recent comment from UKan in response to a question, "why did you say you must have been a little lost?"
Because violence became my obsession and it cost me years of my life. Everything seemed so right, so I couldn't understand why I kept going in and out of facilities. I felt like they were persecuting me. I didn't figure it out till my last year in prison. Even then I couldn't put the brakes on because I had been going down the hill so fast for so long. I'm still trying to hold the brakes. I've had a few incidents in a year span, but I think I've slowed down a bit. 
I know most people think it seems simple. If you keep getting arrested for violent deeds, it should be easy to see why you are getting jammed. In my mind everything was not only justified, but I projected myself on everyone. Consequently I thought they thought it was ok too, but they were just jamming me up because they wanted to keep me down. I don't know if you understand. Like I said I was lost. Delusional even.
When I studied music, we looked at the composition below. The text of the piece is from the New Testament. Jesus appears to Saul, the persecutor of Christians, saying "Saul, Saul, why persecutest thou me? It is hard for thee to kick against the pricks."  What Jesus meant is that it was difficult for Saul to continue doing the same (self) destructive stuff over and over again.

I knew exactly what the angel meant.  I had done this so many times in my life, diving headlong into some hare-brained scheme or another, and repeating my mistakes over and over again like a moron.  I would provoke the people in my life until they erupted, then provoke them again until they erupted, then provoke them again until they erupted.  It was like I was a skipping record.  I finally hit a sort of rock bottom and straightened out quite a bit, but I'm still susceptible to getting stuck in these sorts of ruts.  I wish I knew what it was about me that made me so susceptible to this self-defeating behavior.

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