No shame (part 2)

A reader sent me this clip from the television show Community to go along with yesterday's post.  One of the characters is trying to get over an ex-boyfriend who is a carnival worker but has an inexplicable draw. The Joel McHale character asks him what the source of his irresistible magnetism is, which he explains in this scene.

No shame

I was in a public toilet the other day engaged in some compromising activity when a stranger opened the door, which had not been latched properly. Witnessing the stranger's horror at barging in on me was very pleasurable to me. I thought in that moment that most people would be extremely embarrassed by this episode, but I am only enjoying the discomfort that I have induced in my unwilling voyeur. Sigh.

Self-diagnosing

It's been a while since we've had one of these.  From a reader wondering if she is a sociopath:


I didn't even consider it until a few weeks ago, when I was just taking some personality disorder quiz, rated ridiculously high on antisocial personality disorder, and then proceeded to identify with all of the symptoms listed. This doesn't really alarm me, but I think it should? I don't know. 

See, I wouldn't even think twice on it if it wasn't the answer to the question I've been asking myself for years: namely, the "what the hell is wrong with me" question. I always thought that I was probably crazy, but it wasn't impairing me so it didn't bother me. I use people like toys even when I know intellectually that I shouldn't. I've been astonishingly cruel to people who have offended me in the past, but on the whole, I'm the most charming person I think I've ever met. I don't think I'm seen anywhere besides my house without a smile on hand. Ask any of my friends; I'm a fun kind of person. Except I don't trust my friends. I don't tell them anything remotely personal, but I read them like a book, from body language to facial expressions to verbal cues. They tell me everything and trust me completely. I'm not touched but I feel like I should feel honored or some such thing. If I'm tearing into someone for some reason, I don't feel anything but a vague satisfaction if they're reduced to tears, and later on I don't feel guilty. In the past I've even tried to feel guilty for using people like that's the reason they're in my life, but I can't think of another use for them. If they can't benefit me in some way, why would I want them around? Anyways, all of those attempts at true remorse have failed dismally. I can produce tears at will, muster up enough emotion to put it on my face and watch other people believe me, but it goes away immediately. I can lie so convincingly that sometimes even I don't know if I'm actually telling the truth or not, much less the person I'm lying to. And they flow so naturally, I barely even have to think. I don't discriminate, either - at some point in my life I'm sure I've lied to just about everyone I know. I get bored, also. Insanely bored. I try to find almost any way out of this boredom; it makes me feel like I'm stagnating or something horrific like that. I can just see the rust forming in my brain. Ugh.

What used to bother me is that I'm such a chameleon that I don't even know who I am, or what kind of person I am (aside from charismatic). I have so many masks, they help me ace interviews, make friends wherever I find people, and get authority figures to trust me immediately even when they really, really shouldn't. I've displayed such behavior since I was around five, as far as I recall. Sometimes it feels like I'm not even a real person, just a collection of interchangeable personalities and an unshakeable coldness that seems to form the core of who I am. And I feel like this should upset me greatly, but what I find concerning is that it doesn't. Shouldn't it? When someone asks me if I feel guilty, or if I want to apologize, I always feel like saying, "should I?" They seem to know who I'm supposed to be, but I don't. And I certainly don't trust their judgement. But you seem to have similar occurrences, based on what I've read in your blog. And if anyone would know what exactly is the reason for these little, um, quirks, I figure it would be you, dear sociopath (and that honestly isn't an insult, fyi).

Please assist on this soul-searching quest I find myself on, and inform me if my suspicions are rooted in real evidence or I'm seriously just a lunatic with delusions of sociopathy. If you've read this, thank you for your time. If not, well, I'm sure you're busy and have many things to be attending to, but you couldn't spare a single moment to help a semi-innocent girl with an identity crisis? Where is your humanity? Yes, that was a joke. I'll stop wasting your time.

I thought -- it's always hard to tell from an email whether someone is a sociopath or not, but there is nothing here inconsistent with sociopathy.  And actually she doesn't seem to care what the diagnosis is either way.  I give it a big "maybe."  Thoughts?

Famous sociopaths: Gesualdo

Having studied music, I was a little familiar with the madrigals of the late renaissance composer Don Carlo Gesualdo, but somehow missed his backstory as a psychopathic murderer until I stumbled upon this New Yorker article, which unfortunately is not available in its full text.  Here are selections from the abstract:

On the night of October 16, 1590, a palace apartment near Piazza San Domenico Maggiore, in Naples, was the scene of a double murder so extravagantly vicious that people are still sifting through the evidence, more than four centuries later. The most reliable account of the crime comes from a delegation of Neapolitan officials, who inspected the apartment the following day. On the floor of the bedroom, they found the body of Don Fabrizio Carafa, the Duke of Andria, whom a contemporary described as a “model of beauty,” one of the handsomest young men of his time. The officials’ report stated that the Duke was wearing only “a woman’s nightdress with fringes at the bottom, with ruffs of black silk.” The corpse was “covered with blood and pierced with many wounds,” 

Lying on the bed was the body of Donna Maria d’Avalos, the famously alluring wife of Don Carlo Gesualdo, the Prince of Venosa. Her throat had been cut and her nightshirt was drenched in blood. Interviews with eyewitnesses left no doubt about who was responsible for the murders. Gesualdo had been seen entering the apartment with three men, shouting, “Kill that scoundrel, along with this harlot!” The report ended with the observation that Gesualdo had left town. 

A prince being a prince, there matters rested. Yet Gesualdo paid a posthumous price for the killings. In the decades after his death, he became a semi-mythical, even vampiric figure, about whom ever more lurid tales were told. 

Gesualdo also wrote music, publishing six books of madrigals and three books of sacred pieces. He turned out to be one of the most complexly imaginative composers of the late Renaissance, indeed of all musical history. The works of his mature period—he died in 1613, at the age of forty-seven—bend the rules of harmony to a degree that remained unmatched until the advent of Wagner. There have been no fewer than eleven operatic works on the subject of Gesualdo’s life, not to mention a fantastical 1995 pseudo-documentary, by Werner Herzog, called “Death for Five Voices.” 

The origins of “Gesualdo fever” are not hard to discern. The lingering question is whether it is the life or the work that perpetuates the phenomenon. If Gesualdo had not committed such shocking acts, we might not pay such close attention to his music. But if he had not written such shocking music we would not care so much about his deeds.

Although, as the article notes, some scholars "reject[] the picture of Gesualdo as a 'violent psychopath'," he certainly has plenty to recommend him as one.  I know that these sorts of guesses about whether or not a historical figure was a sociopath are as ridiculous as the aspie's claiming that half the famous scientists from history had Asperger's.  But, I find Gesualdo to be a particularly fun historical candidate for sociopathy not just because of how well it explains his violence and flouting moral conventions, but also how well it explains the experimental aspects of his music, which have managed to sound utterly modern and cutting age in every time period.   The article continues from the above quoted selections in the abstract:

Many bloodier crimes have been forgotten; it's the nexus of high art and foul play that catches our fancy.  As with Gesualdo's contemporary Caravaggio, who killed a man by stabbing him near the groin, we wonder whether the violence of the art and the violence of the man emanated from the same demoniac source.  

Song: Everytime you go away

I heard this song the other day out and about and thought that it was oddly applicable.  Every time someone leaves me, they do take a piece of me with them.  That's why I fight so hard to get it/them back.



Baby, if we can't solve any problems
Why do we lose so many tears?
Oh, so you go again
When the leading man appears
Always the same theme
But can't you see we've got everything going on and

Everytime you go away
You take a piece of me with you

Go on and go free
Maybe you're too close to see
I can feel your body move
But does it mean that much to me
I can't go on singing the same theme
"Cause you can't see we've got everything
Baby, even though you know that

Everytime you go away
You take a piece of me with you
You just don't care