This NY Magazine article, "Is everyone on the autism spectrum?" has some pretty funny moments, but this is probably the most relevant. In regard to the difficulty of making psychiatric diagnoses, particularly amateur ones:
Men have caught on and, in a kind of inverted gaslighting, begun to describe themselves as having Asperger’s as a way of controlling their spouses. “Having Asperger’s-like syndrome does not give you Asperger’s,” says David Schnarch, a Colorado-based couples therapist. “Having a big belly does not make you pregnant. I’ve not seen a single case of what I would consider to be diagnosable Asperger’s. But I have seen any number of cases of wives accusing husbands of it, any number of cases of husbands claiming to have it.” It’s the new ADHD, he says. “The wife doesn’t want to accept that the husband knows what he’s doing when he’s doing something she doesn’t like.” Schnarch recalls a man who phoned him the day before a scheduled initial couples session and announced that he’d just been diagnosed with Asperger’s. “As soon as this happened,” Schnarch says, “I knew I had difficulty.” He contacted the referring therapist, who said he’d suspected the man had Asperger’s because he said things to his girlfriend that were so cruel he couldn’t possibly understand their impact. As far as Schnarch was concerned, it was an all-too-familiar instance of sadism masquerading as disability. “If you’re going to perp, the best place to perp from is the victim position.”
I like the part about big belly not making you pregnant -- PCL-R, anybody? And the flipside of the coin are the self diagnosers who need a diagnosis to give them a sense of ... antisocial belonging?
Monday, December 17, 2012
Sunday, December 16, 2012
Moonstruck and cages
This is not really that topical, but I was watching the film Moonstruck on the plane. There are two pieces of dialogue I had forgotten about. The one-handed Nicholas Cage character explains to Cher how he lost his hand:
RONNY
It's wood. It's fake. Five years ago
I was engaged to be married. Johnny
came in here, he ordered bread from
me. I put it in the slicer and I
talked with him and my hand got caught
cause I wasn't paying attention. The
slicer chewed off my hand. It's funny
'cause - when my fiancé saw that I
was maimed, she left me for another
man.
LORETTA
That's the bad blood between you and
Johnny?
RONNY
That's it.
LORETTA
But that wasn't Johnny's fault.
RONNY
I don't care! I ain't no freakin
monument to justice! I lost my hand,
I lost my bride! Johnny has his hand,
Johnny has his bride! You come in
here and you want me to put away my
heartbreak and forget?
Later she tells him what she thinks of him:
LORETTA
The big part of you has no words and
it's-a wolf. This woman was a trap
for you. She caught you and you could
not get away.
(She grabs his wooden
hand)
So you chewed off your foot! That
was the price you had to pay to be
free.
(throws his hand down)
Johnny had nothing to do with it.
You did what you had to do, between
you and you, and I know I'm right, I
don't care what you say. And now
you're afraid because you found out
the big part of you is a wolf that
has the courage to bite off its own
hand to save itself from the trap of
the wrong love. That's why there has
been no woman since that wrong woman.
You are scared to death what the
wolf will do if you make that mistake
again!
RONNY
It's wood. It's fake. Five years ago
I was engaged to be married. Johnny
came in here, he ordered bread from
me. I put it in the slicer and I
talked with him and my hand got caught
cause I wasn't paying attention. The
slicer chewed off my hand. It's funny
'cause - when my fiancé saw that I
was maimed, she left me for another
man.
LORETTA
That's the bad blood between you and
Johnny?
RONNY
That's it.
LORETTA
But that wasn't Johnny's fault.
RONNY
I don't care! I ain't no freakin
monument to justice! I lost my hand,
I lost my bride! Johnny has his hand,
Johnny has his bride! You come in
here and you want me to put away my
heartbreak and forget?
Later she tells him what she thinks of him:
LORETTA
The big part of you has no words and
it's-a wolf. This woman was a trap
for you. She caught you and you could
not get away.
(She grabs his wooden
hand)
So you chewed off your foot! That
was the price you had to pay to be
free.
(throws his hand down)
Johnny had nothing to do with it.
You did what you had to do, between
you and you, and I know I'm right, I
don't care what you say. And now
you're afraid because you found out
the big part of you is a wolf that
has the courage to bite off its own
hand to save itself from the trap of
the wrong love. That's why there has
been no woman since that wrong woman.
You are scared to death what the
wolf will do if you make that mistake
again!
Later he tells her what's up with her life:
RONNY
And what do you know? You tell me my
life? I'll tell you yours. I'm a
wolf? You run to the wolf in me,
that don't make you no lamb! You're
gonna marry my brother? Why you wanna
sell your life short? Playing it
safe is just about the most dangerous
thing a woman like you could do. You
waited for the right man the first
time, why didn't you wait for the
right man again?
I thought this was such an interesting concept -- "playing it safe is just about the most dangerous thing a woman like you could do." I sometimes feel this way when I think about things that might be considered "playing it safe," like planning on being in a job for longer than three years, being in a committed relationship, otherwise locking myself into something, caging myself in or allowing myself to be caged. I realize it is actually a dangerous thing for a person like me to do. I realize that I probably won't be able to stay locked up like that forever and that when I finally try to extricate myself, there may be significant damage to myself and others.
It reminds me of the letter Amelia Earhart wrote to her husband George Putnam before they wed: "I may have to keep some place where I can go to be myself, now and then, for I cannot guarantee to endure at all times the confinement of even an attractive cage." And commenting on her own capriciousness in a letter to a friend, "I don't want anything, all the time." So true.
Saturday, December 15, 2012
Promoting prosocial behavior
This was an interesting recent article in the NY Times, "Understanding How Children Develop Empathy," but I thought some of the parts about the source and development of prosocial behavior were just as interesting--particularly that it is not just about (or even primarily) about empathy:
By itself, intense empathy — really feeling someone else’s pain — can backfire, causing so much personal distress that the end result is a desire to avoid the source of the pain, researchers have found. The ingredients of prosocial behavior, from kindness to philanthropy, are more complex and varied.
They include the ability to perceive others’ distress, the sense of self that helps sort out your own identity and feelings, the regulatory skills that prevent distress so severe it turns to aversion, and the cognitive and emotional understanding of the value of helping.
And this part about how people can be taught to feel the rewards of prosocial acts:
Experimental studies have shown that the same brain region that is activated when people win money for themselves is active when they give to charity — that is, that there is a kind of neurologic “reward” built into the motivational system of the brain.
“Charitable giving can activate the same pleasure-reward centers, the dopaminergic centers, in the brain that are very closely tied to habit formation,” said Bill Harbaugh, an economist at the University of Oregon who studies altruism. “This suggests it might be possible to foster the same sorts of habits for charitable giving you see with other sorts of habits.”
The other theory of prosocial behavior, Dr. Huettel said, is based on social cognition — the recognition that other people have needs and goals. The two theories aren’t mutually exclusive: Cognitive understanding accompanied by a motivational reward reinforces prosocial behavior.
But shaping prosocial behavior is a tricky business. For instance, certain financial incentives seem to deter prosocial impulses, a phenomenon called reward undermining, Dr. Huettel said.
I thought that made a lot of sense, that a lot of prosocial acts stem from a greater cognitive understanding that other people have needs and goals. I feel like the more aware I have been taught to be about the inner worlds of others, the more I am naturally inclined to defer to those needs and goals, especially when it is hardly any trouble to me and means so much to them.
By itself, intense empathy — really feeling someone else’s pain — can backfire, causing so much personal distress that the end result is a desire to avoid the source of the pain, researchers have found. The ingredients of prosocial behavior, from kindness to philanthropy, are more complex and varied.
They include the ability to perceive others’ distress, the sense of self that helps sort out your own identity and feelings, the regulatory skills that prevent distress so severe it turns to aversion, and the cognitive and emotional understanding of the value of helping.
And this part about how people can be taught to feel the rewards of prosocial acts:
Experimental studies have shown that the same brain region that is activated when people win money for themselves is active when they give to charity — that is, that there is a kind of neurologic “reward” built into the motivational system of the brain.
“Charitable giving can activate the same pleasure-reward centers, the dopaminergic centers, in the brain that are very closely tied to habit formation,” said Bill Harbaugh, an economist at the University of Oregon who studies altruism. “This suggests it might be possible to foster the same sorts of habits for charitable giving you see with other sorts of habits.”
The other theory of prosocial behavior, Dr. Huettel said, is based on social cognition — the recognition that other people have needs and goals. The two theories aren’t mutually exclusive: Cognitive understanding accompanied by a motivational reward reinforces prosocial behavior.
But shaping prosocial behavior is a tricky business. For instance, certain financial incentives seem to deter prosocial impulses, a phenomenon called reward undermining, Dr. Huettel said.
I thought that made a lot of sense, that a lot of prosocial acts stem from a greater cognitive understanding that other people have needs and goals. I feel like the more aware I have been taught to be about the inner worlds of others, the more I am naturally inclined to defer to those needs and goals, especially when it is hardly any trouble to me and means so much to them.
Friday, December 14, 2012
Sociopath quotes: shell
Thursday, December 13, 2012
Seeing through a glass darkly
A reader asks, "How can we be close to people or things if we can't feel?" My response:
It's a good question. I don't think we can do it in normal ways, we just have to figure out what works for us. Have you ever read the Helen Keller story? Very fascinating. I remember being amazed when I first read it, just thinking about this girl who had no frame of reference for anything that we consider part of the "real world" other than touch. I found it so curious that she was smart, was able to spell words, but was just unable to understand that the words applied to different objects, that there was such thing as a word. I had first heard the story when I was young and i remember most of my young colleagues seemed less impressed by her. I felt that they didn't really understand that someone could have an entirely different existence than theirs, even in the same world, the same city, the same family even. I think I had my own Helen Keller epiphany-moment when I read her story. Before, I had thought of everyone as being essentially robots existing in a world solely for my interactions and my benefit. The story was such a detailed account of another person and I remember it making me think: different people exist, just like different animals exist, and people can be as different from each other as a fish from a llama or a cow from a parrot. Of course I still thought that most of the people around me were the same-ish, like dolphins (including me, when really i turned out to be a shark). But I think this was a good way to learn the lesson because when I did discover I was a shark, I wasn't horrified. I just thought i was a natural variant, had an entirely different world view from most, like Helen Keller.
I had already learned not to let who I was interfere with who I wanted to become. I had already made the decision not to be defined by my race or my height or my age or my gender or my intellect or anything else. That may sound funny because I refer to myself as a sociopath and have this blog all about what it is like to be a sociopath. I may use the term sociopath as shorthand for the type of person I am, the particular genus and species of human animal, but I do not let it define me. I do what I want to do. I realize that my world, my experiences, my relationships, my love is not the same as anyone else's love, but I have all of those things. Maybe other people want to say, "poor you" (or "you monster," depending on their inclinations), "you'll never have what I have." I just want to say to those people, "yeah, you're right. Thanks for pointing out the obvious." So let them sit at holiday tables eating roast beef while I am eating tofurkey, let them have their emotional dramas and outpourings while I remain blissfully unaffected. I have no shame in who I am, and frankly I find it offensive when people ask, "do you ever wish you were different?" Can you imagine asking that of someone of a different race? or a different gender? or even someone with a disability? I should answer, "yes I wish I was different, I wish I had the ability to completely ignore inane comments."
But to more specifically answer your earlier question, I don't suffer from depression, and I don't even really suffer from loneliness, thanks to a large circle of family and friends. I actually find some meaning and joy in playing my "part" in society. I just think of it as every day is someone else's birthday, so I have to be on my best behavior and be nice to them. I try to get lost in pleasing other people, making them happy, making their world better. It is actually rewarding, and reinforces and maintains personal ties (which I appreciate), and indulges my desire for power as well. I have tried living a lot of different ways, but I have been happiest and most stable when I have been trying to have an others-centered life rather than a self-centered life. I'm not saying that the latter is any sort of "wrong" or a "bad choice," that is just what has worked for me.
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