Saturday, November 16, 2013

Empath hypocrisy

I'm not saying all empaths are stupid and illogical, although some of them are. Similarly, there are some sociopaths that are stupid, horrible, evil, or whatever else. But let's focus on illogical empaths for a second. This is from a recent comment:

I'm an empath.
I believe that all humans are born with free will.
I believe that every human life is intrinsically valuable.
I believe that good and evil exist as absolutes, even if at times it is difficult to distinguish between them.
I believe that sociopaths are evil. 
If I could find an effective way to screen for you guys without too many false positives, then I would kill you as children. Of course, given that you are master manipulators I can already see you arguing your way out of a corner, convincing the other empaths that I am the evil one for suggesting the killing of children, suggesting that there is some error in my detection system. 
How many times do you have to burn your fingers before you realize that fire is hot? In love, you get back 100 times what you give. 
In war you fight to win.
I know I'm right. 

Now, I am not great at understanding sarcasm, so it's possible this was said with tongue firmly planted in cheek. But I have heard enough very similar statements from other people that I believe this person was being sincere. This person believes that every human life is intrinsically valuable but would kill sociopathic children? Really? Kill small children in a genocide? Just as long as the test wouldn't lead to "too many" innocent deaths due to "too many false positives"? Wow. Ok. An "empath" who seems not at all capable of understanding (must less empathizing with) someone sociopathic. Also, this person absolutely certain he is right. Good to know. 

Friday, November 15, 2013

Mistaken identities

I was visiting some friends over the weekend whom I hadn't seen in a while. I got picked up from the airport by one of them who had brought a health drink, saying, "I know that you only drink healthy things," when really I have a raging caffeine addiction and always have. After we fooled around a little, the same person remarked about how much gayer I seem and that I should just get over it and come out of the closet already. Later that evening when telling the story to another friend with her own self-interest in the subject, she argued that the fact that I could tell the happenings of the afternoon in such clinical detail indicated how not gay I seemed.

The next day I was at an invitation only party hosted by another friend. There was drama when someone uninvited showed up -- an ex of one of the guests. I asked if I should act as "enforcer," hockey style. My friend jokingly told me that I should and I nicely nicely showed the gentleman the door. When I came back, people were aghast that I had actually gone through with it, as if he were an innocent victim himself. I reminded the friend (who knows what I am) that I don't understand sarcasm, and you better be serious when you ask me to do something.

As I was taken back to the airport, I was talking to a different friend about my recent activities. She was amazed at how much I have been able to accomplish since I last saw her. In her words, I went from "fuck up" to "legitimate player." I shrugged at this because I didn't ever think I was ever so low as a "fuck up," nor am I successful enough now to be a "legitimate player."

I was amazed at how poorly all of my friends knew me. Perhaps they were projecting, misremembering, or making very inaccurate small talk, or maybe I used to be a different person around them.

I know this must happen to everyone -- to go back to a place you used to know and realize that you have since become someone different. But it still amazes me how much people will take every piece of information they learn about you, and somehow cram it to fit their own preconceived notions about you. People's knee jerk reaction is to cram a square peg into a round hole, for whatever reason.

Some of the readers here wonder how they weren't able to recognize the sociopaths in their lives for what they are. Part of it is the sociopath wearing masks, but mostly he doesn't have to try hard at all -- all of the work is being done for him.

Thursday, November 14, 2013

Quote: Why I fight bullies and hate mobs

You can only protect your liberties in this world by protecting the other man's freedom.

Clarence Darrow

Wednesday, November 13, 2013

James Fallon: The Psychopath Inside Q&A

Professor James Fallon has written an exciting new book combining his background in neuroscience with his personal experience having many characteristics (and the brain scan) of a psychopath. THE PSYCHOPATH INSIDE: A Neuroscientist’s Personal Journey into the Dark Side of the Brain (Kindle version here) is part memoir and part scientific review of both the recent genetic and neuroscience research that has been done on psychopaths.

As a special offer to this blog's audience, Dr. Fallon has graciously offered to answer some of your questions. If you have a question for Dr. Fallon, please post it in the comments addressed to "Dr. Fallon:". I will collect your questions (or a representative sample) and send them to him. When I receive his answers, I will post them in a future blog post.

Here is an except from his book:

I was thinking about putting something up about the book and then asking my readers and twitter followers if they had any questions in particular that they would like to ask him. I could select a representative sample, if he would be willing to give his thoughts? 

One October day in 2005, as the last vestiges of an Indian summer moved across Southern California, I was inputting some last-minute changes into a paper I was planning to submit to the Ohio State Journal of Criminal Law. I had titled it “Neuroanatomical Background to Understanding the Brain of a Young Psychopath” and based it on a long series of analyses I had performed, on and off for a decade, of individual brain scans of psychopathic murderers. These are some of the baddest dudes you can imagine—they’d done some heinous things over the years, things that would make you cringe if I didn’t have to adhere to confidentiality agreements and could tell you about them. 

But their pasts weren’t the only things that separated them from the rest of us. As a neuroscientist well into the fourth decade of my career, I’d looked at a lot of brain scans over the years, and these had been different. The brains belonging to these killers shared a rare and alarming pattern of low brain function in certain parts of the frontal and temporal lobes—areas commonly associated with self-control and empathy. This makes sense for those with a history of inhuman violence, since the reduction of activity in these regions suggests a lack of a normal sense of moral reasoning and of the ability to inhibit their impulses. I explained this pattern in my paper, submitted it for publication, and turned my attention to the next project. 

At the same time I’d been studying the murderers’ scans, my lab had been conducting a separate study exploring which genes, if any, are linked to Alzheimer’s disease. As part of our research, my colleagues and I had run genetic tests and taken brain scans of several Alzheimer’s patients as well as several members of my family, who were serving as the normal, control group. 

On this same October day, I sat down to analyze my family’s scans and noticed that the last scan in the pile was strikingly odd. In fact it looked exactly like the most abnormal of the scans I had just been writing about, suggesting that the poor individual it belonged to was a psychopath— or at least shared an uncomfortable amount of traits with one. Not suspicious of any of my family members, I naturally assumed that their scans had somehow been mixed with the other pile on the table. I generally have a lot of research going on at one time, and even though I try to keep my work organized it was entirely possible for things to get mixed up. Unfortunately, since we were trying to keep the scans anonymous, we’d coded them to hide the names of the individuals they belonged to. To be sure I hadn’t mixed anything up, I asked our lab technician to break the blind code. 

When I found out who the scan belonged to, I had to believe there was a mistake. In a fit of pique, I asked the technician to check the scanner and all the notes from the other imaging and database technicians. 

But there had been no mistake. 

The scan was mine.

Reprinted from THE PSYCHOPATH INSIDE: A Neuroscientist’s Personal Journey into the Dark Side of the Brain by James Fallon with permission of Current, a member of Penguin Group (USA) LLC, A Penguin Random House Company. Copyright (c) James Fallon, 2013.

Tuesday, November 12, 2013

A sociopath's love story (part 2)

(cont.):

Now comes commitment... At first, if the sociopath is truly interested in love, commitment should be a no-brainer. How can one expect to love another without the intention of staying with them? Like I mentioned before, a sociopath may have a reason for ending a relationship because of some flaw that they cannot get past. But this doesn't mean he/she should go into a relationship looking for flaws or expecting to find one. Rather the sociopath should begin the relationship with the intention of staying with that person. When some sort of failure presents itself, it is up to that person to decide whether or not it is something they can live with (or even embrace). Remember: flaws are what make us who we are, we all have them. It's just a matter of deciding "does this flaw affect me?" or "do I even care?" Recall what I said before about how a sociopath may come to the realization that they don't care about the power struggle anymore, so not caring about something is perfectly within their limits. So what happens when that time you have spent together with your significant other turns into weeks, months, years? The more time passes, the more the sociopath will become complacent and accepting of this new lifestyle. Now does complacence detract from the true feeling of love? Well for a sociopath who previously had other motivations for being with someone and would find any plausible excuse to leave, this is certainly a big change for them. They may realize that this is a much more pleasurable and worth-while life. Did the sociopath do this for their own self-interest? That's actually a hard one to answer being a sociopath myself. My idea is that at first the sociopath is simply interested in experiencing this feeling of love, something they should not be capable of, which (in my mind) would make one only want it more. This clearly points to self-interest as the motivating factor. However once they find themselves in a well-functioning relationship, things start to change. The sociopath may come to the realization that this new-found way of life is totally dependent on their partner and his/her happiness. This causes the sociopath to do uncharacteristic things that purely serve the interest of their partner. This makes their significant other happy, pleased, content, etc., which in turn translates to happiness for the sociopath. The sociopath achieves this happiness by a sense of knowing they affected another's emotions, which is something sociopaths are well known for doing, yet in a positive way. Is this self-interest?... maybe. Who doesn't like the feeling of helping someone else feel happy? Why do we (all humans) tend to band together in the wake of a disaster to donate enormous amounts of money and goods and services? We don't do it because we like giving away our crap, nor do we do it out of a sense of civic duty. We do it because we know we are making the lives of another better (no matter how marginal it may be). This makes us feel important because we made a difference, and it gives us a sense of self-worth. So we keep our partner happy so that we may be happy, simple enough. And to really know how to keep your partner happy and ultimately the relationship genuine, one must form an honest bond with the other. Mutual happiness is a good thing.

In the long term the goals and plans of both partners begin to seriously overlap. The sociopath must keep his/her goals grounded and realistic and make sure they don't jeopardize the relationship as a whole. He/she should keep in mind that the plans they make should benefit their partner whenever possible. This goes back to keeping your partner happy, but it does so much more. These shared plans whenever developed under the influence of a sociopath have the potential to be hugely beneficial to both partners. This is because the sociopath knows what to do to get ahead, and this means that not only will the sociopath profit but so will their partner as well as the relationship as a whole. Commitment is indeed very much within the realm of possibility for a sociopath given they understand what is required of them and what they may have to sacrifice.

So what does this all mean? If a sociopath finds themselves in a relationship that meets the criteria I have laid out, does that mean they have achieved love? First of all I don't consider myself to be an expert on love or relationships by any means, this is just my way of thinking. But what if there is some truth to what I have said? Is this really love, or is it something mechanically similar or even equivalent? Well according to Robert Sternberg's Triangular theory of love, if the individuals involved in an interpersonal relationship exhibit three components: Intimacy, Passion, and Commitment simultaneously then it is described as "Consummate love." This is also known as the complete form of love, an ideal relationship, the "perfect couple." Whether this is genuine love or just a carbon copy remains up for debate. But what's the point of debating when both people are perfectly happy being a couple? What should also be noted is that consummate love is not permanent, and can easily degenerate into one of the lesser "forms of love." My belief though, is that a sociopath will realize this ideal type of love as highly preferential. Consequently, the sociopath will use all of his/her abilities to preserve this status. So it stands to reason that a relationship involving a sociopath will be more adept at facing and overcoming otherwise daunting hardships that always tend to pop up in any relationship. 

I will reference Maslow's hieracrchy of needs in which self-actualization is at the peak. A typical definition of self-actualization according to Maslow is “the full realization of one's potential and one's true self.” If a sociopath realizes what he/she is and understands all of the benefits and consequences associated with sociopathy, then they can be recognized as having achieved self-actualization. Maslow maintains that those who have reached self-actualization are capable of love. My personal conclusion: Love is attainable for any sociopath, myself included. All it takes is a little willpower and some self-sacrifice, something that is within a sociopath's capacity. All we have to remember is "give a little, get a lot."
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