Tuesday, July 23, 2013

Female sociopath

Female sociopaths are more hated than male sociopaths? I stumbled upon this post on LoveFraud from Lianne Leedom, psychiatrist, sociopath victim, and author of "Just Like His Father?" She also infamously threatened her child with going to "the dark place" as a punishment when he had an incredible phobia of the dark. Let her never be accused of being too soft on sociopaths (including her own son), she has plenty of vitriol and anecdotal evidence to spew about female sociopaths:

There is something inherently more repulsive and unbelievable about a female sociopath. Women by nature are preprogrammed to learn empathy and care-taking, the antithesis of sociopathic behavior. Indeed, one of the best indicators of sociopathy in a women is seen when the woman fails to care for her own child. It would seem then, that we would all be revolted by a female sociopath, so why do men become victims?

My own theory, which has been corroborated by many men who have written to Lovefraud, is that men accidentally fall victim to sociopathic women when they have sex with them. You see, normal men experience bonding just like normal women-especially when the sex is good. The sex with a female sociopath (I’m told) isn’t just good, it’s better than most mortal men have ever hoped for. Once hooked on the female sociopath, men become victims just as much as the women who become hooked on the male sociopath. Many male victims feel ashamed and emasculated. But, take heart guys, she actually preyed on the more masculine side of your nature, your enjoyment of sex!

So there you have it feminists, women who aren't natural care-takers are repulsive and revolting (because women are preprogrammed to learn empathy and care-taking), and it's a little shocking that men fall victim to them (because men are pretty clever, otherwise), but easily explainable because these women are obviously whores. Apparently most women either aren't good at sex or don't like it, so it's easy for sociopathic women to ensnare men with sex. But guys don't take it as a threat to your masculinity that she ultimately denied you ready access to sex because she's just a whore. Did I say whore? She was probably just after your money or something anyway, because that's how whores operate, and she's clearly a whore.

Leedom's focus on the female sociopaths is almost entirely on their ability to raise children, please their man, and/or extract money or privileges for sex. If this is not the definition of anti-feminism, I don't know what is.

What about other aspects of a female sociopath? My guess is that they can be very successful in their careers. Not only would they have the same potential advantages of male sociopaths (ruthless, fearless, power-hungry and ambitious), but because they don't fully identify with their gender, they might be less influenced by some of the defeating (and self-defeating) "lessons" that young girls are taught about a woman's place in the world. They wouldn't be socialized to want particularly things and not others like a lot of women seem to be. Also they might not readily seem themselves as a victim (as society is so quick to portray women), but rather someone who acts and accepts responsibility for herself, empowered? We really don't know what female sociopaths look like in general because there has been next to no research done on female sociopaths. But it's very disappointing to see bald stereotypes perpetuated such little obvious personal slant and moral prejudice by someone claiming to be a medical professional and expert on sociopaths. 

Monday, July 22, 2013

Practical empathy

This was an interesting video about the relevance (possibly revolutionizing effect?) of empathy in our society. The video discusses the difference between affective empathy where you feel what another person is feeling, and cognitive empathy, which is about perspective taking or "stepping into somebody else's world."

An interesting assertion was "We make assumptions about people. We have prejudices about people which block us from seeing their uniqueness, their individuality. We make we use labels and highly empathic people get beyond those labels by nurturing their curiosity about others." Do people make assumptions about sociopaths? Do empathic people choose to go beyond those labels by nurturing their curiosity about sociopaths? And if so, is this a net good or net bad?



The video tells the story of how George Orwell tried to nurture his curiosity about the under privileged classes by going on an "empathy adventure", "tramping" about London in disguise, to understand what it felt like to be in the lower classes -- literally putting himself in the shoes of another.

The narrator also discusses the possibility of having empathy not just on a personal level, but on a grander scale -- political, national, religious, etc. As an example, he tells the story of the English abolitionists who got former slaves to share their experiences as slaves, which movement eventually led to the illegalization of slavery.

The narrator talks about how traditionally people try to empathize with the downtrodden, but argues that we should be more adventurous in who we try to empathize with and to focus on more practical and strategic purposes of empathy, e.g. empathizing those in power because "only then are we going to be able to adopt effective strategies" for social transformation. Similarly, he thinks the gap between what we know about climate change and what we do about climate change is also due to a lack of empathy, particularly individuals failing to empathize with people on the other side of the world and people who have yet to be born.

The thing I found interesting about this video was that (1) it was very practically and not morally based analysis of empathy and (2) although the narrator only made the distinction once, he basically was only talking about the practical usefulness of cognitive empathy. I don't think that means that affective empathy is never useful, but it has its limitations in time and space. For instance, it's difficult to say that you are feeling the emotions of people you have never met and know nothing about. Similarly, it should be impossible to say that you are feeling the emotions of people who have yet to be even born. And yet we can feel cognitive empathy for these people by trying to imagine what it might be like to be them. If we exercise our cognitive empathy by putting ourselves in their shoes like George Orwell did, our perspective will broaden and we will get greater insight into not only the institutions of the world that we live in, but also perhaps some insight into our own selves. The good news is that anyone with theory of mind can practice cognitive empathy, including sociopaths, who actually do it perhaps better than most.

More on trying to gain more awareness of our own minds:

Sunday, July 21, 2013

Unleashing our power of seduction

Seduction gets a bad rap, as argued by Chen Lizra in her TED talk "The Power of Seduction in Our Everyday Lives."


The goal of her talk is to get people to see seduction as a valuable life skill. She thinks everyone can learn how to seduce, particularly when they start young. She talks about how the term seduction has been so sexualized that most people do not think that it could be a positive skill set. People think that seduction is a less honest or acceptable form of influence. People who have been seduced feel like they have been manipulated. Men are given more leeway to seduce and when it comes to work and seduction, people immediately think that you are sleeping your way to the corner office. These negative aspects of seduction are not inherent in seduction, but rather is neutral -- seduction can be used for all sorts of reasons, according to Lizra she uses it to be "classy" and "add to it" her sense of loyalty and integrity. At it's most basic, it is power. "Seduction is about charm, connection, vulnerability, pride, self confidence, and appeal."

Seduction formula




  1. Desire -- knowing what you want and having the courage to go after it. "Keeping the maybe alive is a skill of presenting potential possibilities and then fueling them with desire. It's about learning where the emotional buttons are and then triggering them." The key is to look for what the other person is missing, then give it to them, and it's almost impossible for someone to say no to that.
  2. Confidence -- Our self image is formed at an early age and is deeply affected by environment, e.g. since there is no advertising in Cuba their self image is not distorted. "Cubans grow up feeling intense pride and self confidence no matter what body size or shape they might have." Because, it turns out, that there is no objective beauty and to the extent we enforce particular standards of beauty we have allowed ourselves to be influenced into doing so by external forces
  3. Body language -- "It makes it really easy to seduce and be seduced because you know what the other person is feeling."
  4. Arousal -- You must "wake up in them the desire to give you what you want and lure it out." "You must give it your undivided attention in the moment." Fearlessness is key, because then a "no that was a maybe turns into a yes." 
"Everyone has the power to seduce in them" "Seduction is a skill no matter how you look at it. You can call it wooing, persuading, winning someone over, charming, it doesn't matter." The key is to "build the connection that gets you what you want." 

Saturday, July 20, 2013

Is Twisted's Danny Desai a sociopath?

Twisted, an ABC Family teenage murder mystery drama along the same lines as their Pretty Little Liars, has a potential (likely?) sociopathic teenage protagonist -- Danny Desai. It's so likely that Danny is a sociopath that the original working title for the show was "Socio" and the abbreviation gets thrown around at least once an episode, along with plenty of accusations that he is a sociopath from his teenage peers, some amusingly framed in amusing pop culture references to The Good Son, The Bad Seed, and We Need to Talk About Kevin.

The show begins with Danny, now sixteen years old, having just been released from juvenile detention for having killed his aunt when he was eleven years old, starting high school with his former peers. In the pilot another girl gets murdered and Danny's past history (and the convenient timing of the second girl's murder) make him a prime suspect both in the eyes of the police and the townspeople. But perhaps the show comes closest to acknowledging that Danny is a sociopath when his mother goes to visit his court ordered therapist:

Mother: "So, how's he doing?"

Dr.: "Well, he's a smart young man."


Mother: "Yes he is. Dr. Reidy, I'm sure that you've heard of some of the hateful words people have been calling Danny... monster, freak, sociopath..."

Dr.: "I wouldn't let it get to you Mrs. Desai. It's a heightened time."


Mother: Oh I know, but as a mother, how should I respond to people calling him that. [Pause] I'm not being clear. What are the signs that someone is a sociopath, so that I can explain why Danny isn't one?"


Dr.: "Most sociopaths don't murder anyone, but they do exhibit glibness, superficial charm, an easy ability to lie."

Mother: "Right."


Dr.: "Let's see, what else, they love risk, they don't consider consequences, they have a talent for imitating human emotion -- grief, joy. It's never real, but they're good at making you believe it is. Is that helpful Mrs. Desai?"


The funny part is that Danny actually did murder someone, along with exhibiting all of the other traits of a sociopath that his therapist mentioned. But his mom stands by him, even after having her suspicions about his sociopathy essentially confirmed. She even helps (she thinks) him cover up another possible murder.

Even if Danny is not a sociopath, it's an interesting exploration of a teenage boy living with the stigma of having murdered someone (or at least having been convicted of murder), and how he deals with that (spoiler alert, by alternating violent outbursts against his enemies and charming himself back into the hearts of his already smitten followers), and how his friends and family deal with it (almost unwavering support). That he is such a likeable character (unambiguously so if Twitter is any indication) suggests that the millennial generation (the audience for this particular show) might be the first generation to really accept and even embrace sociopaths in their own lives. So, that's hopeful.


Friday, July 19, 2013

More on cruelty

Keeping in line with yesterday's post, from The American Conservative, "The Walking Boy", a true story about one man's experience being a boy-racist because he hung out with racist friends and he couldn't help himself?:

All I can say in my defense is that I never hurled a stone at him, or shouted abuse. But I stood by, many a time, as others did those things, and I neither walked away nor averted my eyes. I never held anyone’s cloak, but then I was never asked to. I watched it all, gripping a rock in my hand as though I were preparing to use it — so that no one would turn on me with anger or contempt — and I always stood a little behind them so they couldn’t see that I wasn’t throwing anything. I was smaller and younger than the rest of them, and they were smaller and younger than him. In my memory he seems almost a full-grown man; I suppose he was eleven or twelve. 

We called him Nigger Jeff. I have never doubted that Jeff was indeed his name, though as I write this account I find myself asking, for the first time, how we could have known: I never heard any of the boys speak to him except in cries of hatred, and I never knew anyone else who knew him. It occurs to me now that, if his name was Jeff, there had to have been at least a brief moment of human contact and exchange — perhaps not even involving Jeff, perhaps one of the boys’ mothers talked to Jeff’s mother. But we grasp what’s available for support or stability. It’s bad to call a boy Nigger Jeff, but worse still to call him just Nigger. A name counts for something.
***
Sometimes I would be playing alone in my yard, and would look up to see Jeff walking by. My heart would then buck in my chest, but he never turned his head to acknowledge my presence. At the time I wondered if he knew that I never threw rocks at him, that I didn’t curse him — for, if my memory is not appeasing my conscience, I avoided that crime as well. But now I realize that he neither knew nor cared about the individual members of our cruel impromptu assembly: with rocks in our hands we were just mobile, noisy impediments to his enjoyment of some of the blessings of life — friendship, comfort, safety — but when unarmed and solitary we posed no threat and therefore, for Jeff, lacked significant substance. He kept his eyes on that day’s small but valued prize, and kept on walking. 

Why didn’t I throw rocks at him? Why didn’t I curse him? Well, obviously, because I felt sorry for him. But not sorry enough to walk away, or to turn my back on the scene; and not nearly sorry enough to stay a friend’s hand or demand his silence. I was young, and small, and timid. I saw one valid option: to stand as a member of the chorus, grasping the rock that was the badge of our common identity. There’s no point now in trying to distinguish myself from the others. But I can’t help it.

First, is it really true that "Nigger Jeff" is better than "nigger"? Arguably worse, right? Because it's both acknowledging his humanity (that he is a human boy with a name) and in the same breath saying that he is a lesser form of humanity. I myself prefer less personal, nameless insults, but maybe I'm not typical that way.

This sort of bullying is not unique to just children, but adults can be equally childish about it. Mainstream media trades in it, despite all of their recent anti bullying talk. One of my friends was recently remarking at how it's amazing that Lindsay Lohan has put up with all of the abuse -- for the past 10 years or so there have probably been no fewer than five negative articles/posts/tweets per day about her. And Lindsay Lohan is not even the most hated human alive, not by a landslide, but apparently she just happens to have a particular suite of personality characteristics that make her a perfect storm for gossip? Bullying, really. But let's argue for a second that she brought it on herself (should that matter?). But when do you finally leave someone alone? Does that give people moral carte blanche to engage in shaming and other ugly behavior about her personal life? But no one really questions their right to do so, I hadn't even noticed it myself until my friend mentioned it. And why are people so eager to engage in ugly behavior in the first place that they're looking for socially "legitimate" opportunities to throw stones?

The American Conservative story reminded of the creepy Shirley Jackson short (fictional but not so far-fetched) story, "The Lottery." Someone gets chosen completely randomly to get stoned, but that doesn't matter -- once the person became marked, everything was fair game because they had the sanction of the group.

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