Saturday, March 8, 2014

James Fallon's Life as a Nonviolent Psychopath

I've been meaning to do a post on the Atlantic's interview with James Fallon (Life as a Nonviolent Psychopath) about his new book, "The Psychopath Inside: A Neuroscientist's Personal Journey into the Dark Side of the Brain." Both the book and the article are worth reading in their entirety.

My favorite part in the article was Professor Fallon describing his relationship with his close associates, wife and sister:

I started with simple things of how I interact with my wife, my sister, and my mother. Even though they’ve always been close to me, I don't treat them all that well. I treat strangers pretty well—really well, and people tend to like me when they meet me—but I treat my family the same way, like they're just somebody at a bar. I treat them well, but I don't treat them in a special way. That’s the big problem.

I asked them this—it's not something a person will tell you spontaneously—but they said, "I give you everything. I give you all this love and you really don’t give it back." They all said it, and that sure bothered me. So I wanted to see if I could change. I don't believe it, but I'm going to try.

In order to do that, every time I started to do something, I had to think about it, look at it, and go: No. Don’t do the selfish thing or the self-serving thing. Step-by-step, that's what I’ve been doing for about a year and a half and they all like it. Their basic response is: We know you don’t really mean it, but we still like it.

I told them, "You’ve got to be kidding me. You accept this? It’s phony!" And they said, "No, it’s okay. If you treat people better it means you care enough to try." It blew me away then and still blows me away now. 

My second favorite part was on the possibility of change:

I think people can change if they devote their whole life to the one thing and stop all the other parts of their life, but that's what people can't do. You can have behavioral plasticity and maybe change behavior with parallel brain circuitry, but the number of times this happens is really rare.

Interestingly, I've felt like with my life being somewhat ruined by publishing the book, I have plenty of time now to do this very thing. I'm curious where it will take me.

Other topics include how sociopaths have a Zen Buddhist perspective, the difference between someone who becomes a violent sociopath and someone who does not, how and why treatment of infants and small children is critical to their development, and why sociopathic traits might not really "mature" until the adult brain has matured.

Friday, March 7, 2014

Sociopathy as treatment?

From a reader:

As a 'neurotypical', I found your book both fascinating and inspiring. In fact, it may have been life-saving, if that description does not sound too melodramatic. 

I was diagnosed with an eating disorder (EDNOS) about three years ago, and the disordered habits in turn triggered a very self-destructive form of depression. That depression came with its own score of disordered behaviors, steadily growing into masochism. I was, essentially, drowning myself in emotion. I lost sight of what was important for me and my life, and instead spent my energies either helping others or antagonizing them until they used me as an emotional punching bag.

And then I came across your blog, and the perspective you presented captured my attention. It was the opposite of where I was mentally, and thus intrigued me as I struggled to imagine what it would be like to be a sociopath. Several weeks later, I hit rock-bottom in all aspects of my life. I was either half starved or full to bursting, suffered frequent panic attacks, and couldn't find the strength or motivation to complete my classwork. For a period of about two weeks I was incapable of anything that wasn't self-destructive, and I was in a constant emotional state of pain and guilt.

When your book came out I purchased it immediately. I latched on to the personal perspective and tried to imitate it, just to see if I could get relief from my own situation long enough to recover my grades. It slid on like a second skin, and I couldn't shake it. I did not magically become a sociopath, of course; but I do think something in my subconscious clung to the behaviors I had tried to imitate. For a period of about a month I lost all of my programed emotional responses. I no longer felt pangs of empathy, nor could I consciously recreate those feelings. All my self-destruction evaporated as I was suddenly able to see how completely idiotic such behaviors were, even as coping mechanisms or addictions. I no longer had intense emotional reactions to food, and I no longer cared empathetically for my friends or family. In essence I became a creature of complete selfishness. Boredom was my arch-enemy, for I had no emotional issues to occupy my thoughts (except anger; interestingly, I felt anger with a bright passion I hadn't ever felt before), so I launched myself into projects of my own creation. I wanted to see what I could do. I found I had huge influence over the emotional states of the people around me, and I convinced my teachers to extend due dates and give me opportunities to gain back the points I'd missed with very little effort. I enjoyed pushing people and watching their reactions with a fascinated sort of distance. Of course, I also lost the love of a few friends, simply because I didn't have the motivation to sustain a relationship if it wasn't giving me anything. But the gains I made were outstanding. I could eat normally and was able to lose weight healthily. I participated in sports without having fainting spells. 

After my exams were over, I slowly fell out of that state and returned to a pre-eating disorder, pre-depression mentality, with a much healthier body and mind. And I began to wonder if sociopathy is not a programmed survival mechanism. Perhaps we all have the capacity to abandon empathy and embrace an a-moralistic and self-centered world view. Perhaps it is an adaptation which allows those who do not have the luxury of being pro-social to survive. Of course, I do not pretend to have become sociopathic. But I was able to step into a similar pattern of thinking and behavior which likely saved my life. It certainly improved it. Maybe the sociopathic mind is designed to surmount obstacles the empathetic mind cannot. 

Either way, you have given me a new perspective and a very good book, and I thank you!

This was a particularly interesting email for me to receive because one of my friends also has an eating disorder and found it to be very empowering, which is not the typical response that most people have to the book. I wonder if there are other disorders or issues that people have that would benefit from trying to put themselves more in the sociopathic mindset, at least temporarily?

Thursday, March 6, 2014

Manipulation 105

How to turn a hater into a fan, Benjamin Franklin style, from David McRaney's "You Are Not So Smart: A Field Guide to the Brain's Guile". First he talks about how our flawed perception of the world provides ample opportunity for us to be fooled:

The last one hundred years of research suggest that you, and everyone else, still believe in a form of naïve realism. You still believe that although your inputs may not be perfect, once you get to thinking and feeling, those thoughts and feelings are reliable and predictable. We now know that there is no way you can ever know an “objective” reality, and we know that you can never know how much of subjective reality is a fabrication, because you never experience anything other than the output of your mind. Everything that’s ever happened to you has happened inside your skull.

Second, the Benjamin Franklin method of messing with another person's mind:

Franklin set out to turn his hater into a fan, but he wanted to do it without “paying any servile respect to him.” Franklin’s reputation as a book collector and library founder gave him a standing as a man of discerning literary tastes, so Franklin sent a letter to the hater asking if he could borrow a specific selection from his library, one that was a “very scarce and curious book.” The rival, flattered, sent it right away. Franklin sent it back a week later with a thank-you note. Mission accomplished. The next time the legislature met, the man approached Franklin and spoke to him in person for the first time. Franklin said the man “ever after manifested a readiness to serve me on all occasions, so that we became great friends, and our friendship continued to his death.”
***
When you feel anxiety over your actions, you will seek to lower the anxiety by creating a fantasy world in which your anxiety can’t exist, and then you come to believe the fantasy is reality, just as Benjamin Franklin’s rival did. He couldn’t possibly have lent a rare book to a guy he didn’t like, so he must actually like him. Problem solved.
***
The Benjamin Franklin effect is the result of your concept of self coming under attack. Every person develops a persona, and that persona persists because inconsistencies in your personal narrative get rewritten, redacted, and misinterpreted. If you are like most people, you have high self-esteem and tend to believe you are above average in just about every way. It keeps you going, keeps your head above water, so when the source of your own behavior is mysterious you will confabulate a story that paints you in a positive light. If you are on the other end of the self-esteem spectrum and tend to see yourself as undeserving and unworthy [and] will rewrite nebulous behavior as the result of attitudes consistent with the persona of an incompetent person, deviant, or whatever flavor of loser you believe yourself to be. Successes will make you uncomfortable, so you will dismiss them as flukes. If people are nice to you, you will assume they have ulterior motives or are mistaken. Whether you love or hate your persona, you protect the self with which you’ve become comfortable. When you observe your own behavior, or feel the gaze of an outsider, you manipulate the facts so they match your expectations.

This is why volunteering feels good and unpaid interns work so hard. Without an obvious outside reward you create an internal one. That’s the cycle of cognitive dissonance; a painful confusion about who you are gets resolved by seeing the world in a more satisfying way.

By the way, a while ago I posted something about Benjamin Franklin possibly being a sociopath, and people vehemently disagreed:

Like many people full of drive and intelligence born into a low station, Franklin developed strong people skills and social powers. All else denied, the analytical mind will pick apart behavior, and Franklin became adroit at human relations. From an early age, he was a talker and a schemer, a man capable of guile, cunning, and persuasive charm. He stockpiled a cache of secret weapons, one of which was the Benjamin Franklin effect, a tool as useful today as it was in the 1730s and still just as counterintuitive.

Maybe he was not a sociopath, but he certainly had many sociopathic traits. 

Wednesday, March 5, 2014

Weighing the pros and cons

I frequently get asked if I could choose to stop being a sociopath, would I? Or would I choose to remain the way I am? I tell people that I would change, because I've already lived half of my life this way and I'm a novelty seeker and it would be interesting to live life completely differently. I think what people are really asking, though, is whether I think it's better to be a sociopath or better to not. Although there are certain advantages to being a sociopath (e.g., ruthlessness or outside the box thinking), there are also disadvantages, like being unable to predict when a lynch mob will come after me or not being able to sustain relationships or employment positions. It can be frustrating and lonely sometimes. I feel like I often misunderstand and am misunderstood. So it's really a mixed bag.

I was thinking about this when I read this NY Times article about a high school long distance runner with multiple sclerosis. Before she was diagnosed she was completely unexceptional as a runner. After she was diagnosed, she became one of the fastest runners in the nation. During the race, she loses feeling in her legs. While other runners have to fight through the pain, she feels nothing. This allows her to keep up a remarkable pace, however when she gets to the finish line she always collapses into her coach's arms.

At the finish of every race, she staggers and crumples. Before momentum sends her flying to the ground, her coach braces to catch her, carrying her aside as her competitors finish and her parents swoop in to ice her legs. Minutes later, sensation returns and she rises, ready for another chance at forestalling a disease that one day may force her to trade the track for a wheelchair. M.S. has no cure.

Does this give her an unfair advantage?

Though examples of elite athletes with M.S. are scarce, some have speculated that Montgomery’s racing-induced numbness lends a competitive edge, especially given the improvement in her times since the diagnosis.
***
“I think there’s a benefit to numbness,” he said. “I don’t know anyone in their right mind, though, who would trade this; who would say, ‘Give me M.S. so I have a little bit of numbness after Mile 2.’ But I think that’s when she gets her strength.”  

Of course besides the very real possibility of a wheelchair, there are other drawbacks to her condition:

“When you push to your limit, your body usually sends pain signals to warn you that you’re damaging tissues,” said Dr. Peter Calabresi, director of the Multiple Sclerosis Center at Johns Hopkins. He has not treated Montgomery.

“Pushing that limit is what endurance sports are all about. But if you can’t feel those signals and push from tingling to extreme or prolonged numbness, you could be doing damage that we won’t even know about until down the road. It’s a paradox.”

Sound familiar to any of the sociopaths out there? Ignoring normal fear, pain, and other emotional cues to do outrageous things, with both the advantages and disadvantages of doing so?

(On a related note to the previous post about people's perceptions being tainted by their previous experiences, those people who know nothing about her assume that her finish line collapses are seizures, fainting spells, or simply due to her being a wimp, as opposed to the less obvious but correct answer of multiple sclerosis).

(Also look here for thoughts on advantages and disadvantages to being ordinary vs. extraordinary).  

Tuesday, March 4, 2014

Shifting perception

This NPR post is a good follow-up to the previous post about certainty -- how and why people change their minds about something. The set-up is simple, a man shot photos of huskies playing with migrating polar bears. In 1994 he published the shots in National Geographic, but people hated the photos and the photographer:

[The] photographer Rosing "was besieged by angry faxes and phone calls," from people who thought the photos couldn't be real, that the dog was probably put in the bear's path, "chained up as bait for the white monster." This wasn't play. This wasn't innocent. This was the prelude to a kill — "a sinister trap." The bear, they said, was about to spring and bite the dog; when the pictures stopped, the bear pounced. The dog, they imagined, was probably terrified. No one wanted to look at these photos, Rosing told Jon. "People just couldn't believe it," so he didn't try to sell them. He just stashed them away.


In 2007, the photos were reposted online. The reactions were flip-flopped. More modern audiences were enchanted:

What happened? How could people, maybe the same people, just 13 years later stare at the same pictures and feel so differently about them? Mooallem has a theory. In 1994, he thinks, polar bears were still thought of as proud, dangerous, scary animals. A decade earlier National Geographic put out a polar bear video called "Polar Bear Alert" that begins with a young couple pushing a stroller through Churchill, while Jason Robards, the narrator, describes the town as the "one place in the world where the great white bears roam the streets, dangerously immune to the presence of their only enemy ... man." The dad had a rifle around his shoulder. He needed to, because these bears attacked.

NatGeo's film was rich with bear clawings, bear murders. . . . This film made a particularly deep impression — that these animals were instinctive killers. Knowing that, feeling that, the sequence in Brian Ladoon's backyard made no sense. Vicious Lords of the Tundra don't nuzzle dogs.

Thirteen years later, polar bears hadn't changed, but our sense of them had. By 2007, most people had seen scenes of weak, starving bears struggling to stay on shrinking hunks of melting ice. The earth was warming and polar bears had no place to go. Suddenly, they were vulnerable, heading to extinction. Animals, says Mooallem are "free-roaming Rorschachs." We see them through the heavy filter of our own feelings, our own needs. And our filter for polar bears had flipped. Animals who'd once been proud and vicious had become "delicate, drowning" victims, lonely animals — who now just might need the companionship of a friendly husky — who might come to a backyard, looking for a hug.

Jon Mooallem believes that the stories we tell ourselves about animals totally color how we see them. "Emotion matters. Imagination matters, and we are free to spin whatever stories we want about them." The wild animals, he says, "always have no comment." 

Sociopaths have long had no comment either on the way they are portrayed. I wonder what will change now, if anything, about the public's perception of them. From the comments section of the NPR post:

"Seems to me that MOST hatred.................is based on ignorance."

Or rather, a limited perspective, which we all have. It isn't such a broad term or loaded phrase, but is the same idea. Comes from the popular wisdom that hate comes from fear, which in turn comes from a lack of understanding, especially when we are talking about people fearing/ hating other people. I agree that this is in large part the problem, a human problem. We all have a limited view of the world, and try to judge based on our understanding of our own reality. It takes someone, not necessarily with charisma, or money, or a great idea, but someone with a deep understanding of people, who can be the type of leader to bridge us past this hatred to empathy and understanding instead. Only then can we move on to solutions.


I, too, wondered if the polar bear in the first photograph was going to eat the dog, but it didn't fill me with hate. That would be totally natural. But seeing it in context with the playing is pretty phenomenal.
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