Wednesday, January 29, 2014

Psychopathy, autism, and pointing fingers (part 1)

This was an interesting article from an autistic activist who is also anti-ableism in all its forms about why psychopath is a too often misused and maligned term/disorder:

I have become used to being told that I do not have feelings, that I am innately incapable of relating to other people as human beings or having any empathy at all, that this is a core component of what it means to be autistic. I have become used to hearing this said constantly by so-called professionals, dramatically by television personalities, clinically by journalists and academics, and casually by friends, acquaintances, family. But I have never become used to the feeling of absolute devastation weighing somewhere deep in my chest each time I find myself on the receiving end of this accusation.

Empathy is what makes us human.

It’s no wonder that the idea of psychopathy is terrifying. If psychopathy means the inability to experience empathy, and empathy is what makes us human, then psychopathy is literally the dehumanizing condition. Psychopaths populate crime dramas, horror films, murder mysteries, and thrillers. It’s the casual diagnosis for mass murderers, serial rapists, and child abusers.

But it is also deeply personal, profoundly ableist and sanist, and rooted in a complex, interlocking web of structural racism, ageism, and sexism.

She draws connections to autism and sociopathy and criticizes those with disorders who distance themselves from other disorders for the sake of seeming more normal to the ableist:

In response to frequent claims in the media and by policymakers that autistic people lack empathy (and are therefore violent psychopaths), many people in the autistic community, including autistic activists, begin the process of disavowal.

“No, autistic people are nothing like psychopaths. We are more likely to be the victims of crime while psychopaths are usually victimizers.”

“No, someone who would shoot dozens of innocent children wasn’t autistic. That’s not autism. That’s mental illness.”

“An autistic person wouldn’t commit such horribly violent crimes. Only a psychopath could do that.”

If empathy is what makes us human, and autistic people are as human as anyone else, then we must have empathy. It must be some other kind of person who doesn’t experience empathy. It must be someone who is truly psychopathic. This is the logic path that afflicts so many disability communities. Disavowal of one another has become a way of life. Many autistic people routinely decry the use of the slur retarded, yet assert in the same breath that they aren’t crazy or mentally ill. 

I love this tendency amongst people to distinguish their own failings as being somehow more excusable than other people's failings, e.g. "my limitations on empathy are not as serious as yours," or "my impulsivity or violence is due to excess of emotion, not lack of emotion," or "I'm only violent when I'm misunderstood, but you can be violent based solely on opportunism."

For more on the problems of stigmatizing mental illness, either coming from within or without the mental illness communities, see also United States President Barack Obama.  

Tuesday, January 28, 2014

How to maximize utility of socio relationship?

I thought this was a remarkably insightful comment, left July 7, 2013 at 7:56 AM

HOW TO BEAT A SOCIOPATH ... is the wrong question. If you're trying to beat, that means you're engaged in a competition, and non-socios tend to get revved up by their emotions during competition and thus will make it very difficult for themselves to "beat the socio", while the socio expends much less effort to pick at the non-socio's weaknesses.

Instead, the proper question for non-socios is "How do I maximize the utility to me of the socio relationship?"

In some cases, there may be no utility, so just terminate the relationship, or get out of it with at little damage as possible. In other words, you're in a hole, stop digging, don't try to beat or compete with the socio, just tend to your own needs. Do not feel sorry for the socio, or try to make the socio regret or repent, just leave. (If you can't control your own emotions, particularly to stop worrying about the socio, then you certainly aren't going to be able to control anyone else, including the socios, who are very good at control.)

If there is possible utility, then strictly enforce your boundaries, so the socio cannot damage you. Constantly assess whether you are getting enough from the relationship; do not worry that you are being selfish, trust that the socio is doing the same calculation for themselves, and will leave if they aren't getting what they want, so you can just worry about your own needs.

The tricky thing is to realize that socios imitate emotions to manipulate non-socios. If this satisfies your utility need, then great. Otherwise, realize that the socio has limits, and if you impose unrealistic expectations on the socio, you will just get burned.

It reminds me of this recent tweet:

Monday, January 27, 2014

Sociopath quote: self-justification

"Smart people believe weird things because they are skilled at defending beliefs they arrived at for non-smart reasons."

Michael Shermer, editor of Skeptic Magazine

Sunday, January 26, 2014

Guest song: To Live in Your World




I don't remember her face
Or why I was there
I just remember feeling angry
Something made me hate her
I had to suffocate her
My common sense
Spoke of no consequence

But I want to live
I want to live
In your world
I am evil
I am brutal
So you say you must
Be rid of me
It frightens you
To look at me
'Cause when you do
What you see
Is a reflection of yourself
And your society
But I want to live
I want to live
In your world
For the man who steals
A piece of bread for his children
Shall we cut off his hands?
Yeah...that'll show him
For the man who speaks
His mind to the sentry
Shall we cut out his tongue?
Yeah...that'll teach him
I want to live
I want to live
In your world
This isn't justice
This is revenge
It doesn't work
It doesn't end
What of the man
Convicted innocent?

Saturday, January 25, 2014

The natural born chameleon?

My friend recently told me, "I think it's funny that you are so impressionable, that you think of yourself as a void, because you are one of the strongest personalities I know. You are so distinctive and peculiar."

I could see what she meant. Everyone who knows me for longer than a few hours realizes that I am "quirky." I say all the right words and do all the right moves, but don't quite have the social fluency to seem completely normal. I can also be very lazy about maintaining a mask, particularly in low risk situations or with people who don't matter. Despite seeming distinctive and peculiar, however, I am still extremely impressionable.

Some of the psychologists that I have talked to via the blog have expressed surprise that I consider impressionability and the related weak-sense-of-self to be sociopathic traits. I don't know why they would be surprised. There must be some reason why we are so good at being chameleons, I always just assumed that it was instinctive, a symptom of who I am. Blending in has more or less been a reflex for me as long as I can remember, as it has been for most sociopaths I have known. For instance, this reader:
I moved a lot as a child. I knew how to adapt a fresh persona and ways to gain friends in an expedient fashion before I knew my long division. I also was obliged to lie, convincingly so, about who I was. For years I wasn't even allowed to use my own name and acknowledge where I was from.

When you speak of impressionability, that for me was sort of a survival tactic. America has many different cultural microcosms that vary so much, if they didn't speak English you'd guess it was a different country. I had to learn the local social norms and adapt to them quickly, and also their accents and local lexicon. Even more lizard-brain style mannerisms would be local, like specific body language gestures. In that case, I guess it isn't necessarily lizard-brain, but you understand.

I essentially spent years learning how to be other people. So much so, that I had no idea who I even was when I was allowed to be Me again. I still don't even know if I have a real Me. And it doesn't bug me, either, if anything, it entertains me.

I know for a fact that I did some very odd antisocial behavior, like practice emoting in front of a mirror, accents, etc. but when I was that age, I didn't realize that everyone came with their own emotional cheat-sheet, and I was the only one that had to study for the test.
When I read things like this or think back on my own early experiences, I wonder -- do we learn how to be chameleons? Is it learned behavior to subjugate who we "really are," perhaps as a survival tactic? And maybe after we've pretended for so many years we just forget who we used to be? Or are we born with our shapeshifting abilities? Maybe we're like liquids or gases, always taking on the shape of our environment. Because we do have some finite qualities, we just have no where near the rigidity of the typical empath.
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