Sunday, March 16, 2014

Right brained (part 2)

A lot of right-minded people don't believe me when I tell them that the people talk very seriously about sociopath internment, sterilization, forced brain surgery, extermination, etc. I don't know why, I think they are obvious. It's true that most of the time you see things in passing, a quick comment like "let's round up all the sociopaths onto an island." Because it seems like every time someone makes a new discovery about differences in the socio brain as revealed by brain scans, people start talking about early detection and eradication. But I thought that this was a succinct list of everything that people think about sociopaths, with or without actually saying them:
When it comes possible to diagnose psychopaths should they be placed under greater sustained law enforcement scrutiny? The better adapted psychopaths who feel a great deal of fear of getting caught are currently getting away with many crimes. If we can identify who they are should they be treated differently?

Also, if a psychopath can be diagnosed in advance as extremely dangerous should it be permitted to lock such a person up in an institution before they rape or kill or do other harm to people? What if a person could be identified as a psychopath at the age of 14? Should such a person be removed from normal society?

Suppose it became possible to treat the brains of psychopaths to cause them to have greater empathy, greater remorse, and less impulsiveness. Should the government have the power to compel psychopaths to accept treatment that will change the wiring of their brains?

Also, if there is a genetic basis for psychopathy and it becomes possible to test for it then should people who have the genetic variations for psychopathic brain wiring be allowed to reproduce? Should they be allowed to reproduce if only they submit to genetic engineering of their developing offspring?

I predict that most of these hypothetical questions will become real questions that will be debated in many countries around the world. I also predict that most populations will support either preemptive restraint of psychopaths or forced treatment to change the brains of psychopaths to make them less dangerous.

Saturday, March 15, 2014

Right brained (part 1)

This is a somewhat old study done by ex-USC research Adrian Raine that suggests that the difference between high functioning "successful" sociopaths and low functioning "unsuccessful" sociopaths might actually be neurological:
He tested the theory that psychopaths with hippocampal impairments could become insensitive to cues that predicted punishment and capture. As a result, he said, these “impaired’ psychopaths were more likely to be apprehended than psychopaths without that deficit.

Fewer than half of both the control subjects and the “successful” psychopaths had an asymmetrical hippocampus.

Ninety-four percent of the unsuccessful psychopaths had that same abnormality, with the right side of the hippocampus larger than the left.

Raine said the results suggest, but don’t prove, a neuro-developmental root for psychopathy.
In a second study, he looked at the corpus callosum of both types of sociopaths, and found that they are both longer and thinner than that of the average neurotypical:
The corpus callosum is a bundle of nerve fibers that connects the two hemispheres of the brain, enabling them to work together to process information and regulate autonomic function. Raine explored its role in psychopathy for the first time.
“There’s faulty wiring going on in psychopaths. They’re wired differently than other people,” Raine said. “In a way, it’s literally true in this case.”

He found that the psychopaths’ corpus callosums were an average of 23 percent larger and 7 percent longer than the control groups’.

“The corpus callosum is bigger, but it’s also thinner. That suggests that it developed abnormally,” Raine said.

The rate that the psychopaths transmitted information from one hemisphere to the other through the corpus callosum also was abnormally high, Raine said.
Of course they don't credit the sociopath brain as having an advantage over a neurotypical brain, despite the demonstrated greater efficiency in transmitting information between brain hemispheres. Instead this efficiency is vaguely insinuated as the cause for the sociopath's "less remorse, fewer emotions and less social connectedness - the classic hallmarks of a psychopath."

Normal people, even scientists, won't ever admit that a sociopath's brain might actually be better. Every single article I have seen that even comes close to discussing some of the advantages of the sociopathic brain eventually backs off and makes some pat conclusion about how broken we are. In fact, the title of the article is "Out of Order." But there are two meanings to that phrase, and I think only one of them applies to this sort of bias thinly masked as science.

Friday, March 14, 2014

Fictional sociopaths: Smerdyakov?

For some reason I found this to be so funny. From a reader:

I am 70 years old. I posted to the forum on your website but got a very nasty response from the denizens there. I thought maybe it was because saying I looked forward to finding a community of like minded people was a faux pas. But you say the same thing so I guess it was alright. 

I think I'm a sociopath/psychopath but I am different from you in some ways. You describe yourself as a chameleon in who you are around different people. I have been a different person at different times and places in my life but my identity has been driven primarily by fantasy. When I was 13, I identified with Smerdyakov in The Brothers Karamazov by Dostoevsky. Since he killed himself at the end of the novel, I decided to kill myself. But I didn't succeed and ended up in a mental hospital instead. While my parents were finding the right place for me and I was getting interviewed, I felt my fantasy shifting from Smerdyakov to just a suicidal mental patient. I saw myself as the director and author of a play in which I was also the star. It seemed everyone acted accorded to the role I assigned him/her. I liked that. I was in the nut house for about two years. At some point, I read about teenaged "thrill killers" and decided I wanted to be one. So I selected a victim who was convenient and tried to kill her. I had nothing against this girl, a childhood friend and neighbor, actually. I hit her over  the head with a heavy,  blunt object. She got away and, luckily for me, I was already a mental patient so I didn't go to jail. I just went through my adolescence in the hospital and was discharged around the age of 15, finished high school and went through college and managed to have a pretty normal life since then. 

I discovered I was a sexual masochist, was adventurist, worked in offices, dropped out to be a hippy, joined a cult (Maharaj Ji), co-founded The Eulenspiegel Society, S/M liberation, etc. At 70, I'm in a stable relationship, 24 years. I'm on Social Security and am pretty mellow and laid-back in my old age. I'm pretty happy about the life I led, I don't feel guilty about much of anything although I realize some of the things I did were pretty shitty. I don't know. Blame it on the old amygdala. 

Hilarious, Smerdyakov really? And why is the Brothers Karamazov so popular with sociopaths?

Thursday, March 13, 2014

"When the Ether Stares Back" (part 2)

My response:

I really like the passage about people recognizing their emotions through the physical manifestations. I have said before that I feel emotions, but I have difficult identifying them (alexithymia) or contextualizing them in any meaningful way (or if I do, it's erratic). Only in the past five years or so have I spent any great effort in trying to identify my emotional reactions. Before I wouldn't even label them, e.g. I wouldn't know if I was feeling betrayed or incensed or jealous or whatever, I just knew that I really wanted to hurt a particular person. Now I really do try to play detective with my emotions, using certain clues in my own reactions and what prompted them to figure out what exactly I am feeling (as opposed to just being aware of what I am thinking). It's a lot (I imagine) like how a doctor will use certain physical symptoms to diagnose. Thanks for the heads up on "The Growth of the Mind and the Endangered Origins of Intelligence". I'll have to check it out.

About the relationship, I'm not sure if you will be able to stop the chain reaction of apathy. I think the pull might be too strong. I feel that way sometimes when I am around other sociopaths, even the ones that like me and want what's best for me. There is just not enough social/emotional glue sticking us together, really.

The reader responds:

And you're right. It lasted about forty five days. Today we occasionally call one another when we want/need something.  But otherwise it didn't last.  Overall, a lack of either partner ACTUALLY caring, drove the "relationship" to the brink of the abyss, and plummeted over the edge and into the black.  


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Wednesday, March 12, 2014

"When the Ether Stares Back" (part 1)

From a reader:

Dearest M.E.,

Let me start by saying I am incredibly grateful for your book and website.  

In true ironic fashion, what drew me to buy your book is almost comical.  I despise how dramatized and one-dimensional most fictional socio/psychopathic characters are portrayed on TV... But my empathic partner at the time would constantly correlate me with the likes of Sherlock (from the popular British TV show), Dr. House, Nick Naylor (from Thank You for Smoking), Doctor Who (cerebral narcissist who is rarely wrong and plays god with glee), and even said he saw me capable of the kind of dispassionate violence of Dexter or Hannibal.  

(To this day I despise these rather caricatured versions of those with a sociopathy diagnosis.  It tries to make people with the disorder into something they are not.)

A while back I had been to a psychologist who had suggested something in the Cluster B category of anti social personality disorders, strongly leaning on and suggesting sociopathy.  Like you, I never put much thought into it.  Why did it matter? It all seemed so droll... and that it might work against me in the grand scheme of things, were I to move forward and pursue a formal diagnosis.  

I have a history of great success and plummeting failure for my young age.  Usually due to becoming bored or being mindlessly vindictive to entertain myself.  Today I am an entrepreneur making my place in the tech and marketing industry. My customers claim it's like I can see the soul of their business and reveal it to the world as it truly is.  Making money and strategic associations/networks has been a natural talent of mine since I was a young girl.

I am quite good at working a crowd and eliciting trust and confessions from strangers.  People constantly claim it is like I have always known them, though I reveal little about myself.  I have been berated for my "intense" eye contact, and am known to seduce or terrify people without much effort or even intention.

I don't typically have thoughts of violence... But I adore being a social predator.  There is nothing more delicious to me than the idea of emotionally ruining someone and making their feeble little world collapse on them. 

On a day-to-day basis, I don't feel much of anything except for a sense of neutrality and an empty roving hunger and boredom.  Though I am an adept cognitive empathizer (through conscious and deliberate effort), I don't have automatic or bodily affective empathy.  And the moral worlds of other people is endlessly fascinating to me.  I have moved through several sects of religion and philosophy, in an attempt to truly grasp why this is of such grave magnitude to most people; the "inherent" nature of such an abstraction is lost upon me. 

And as you can probably ascertain from this long diatribe... I have a very sincere form of narcissism. 

When I finally read your book, I ate it up with endless mirth. Not out of spite or because I found it to be perfunctory. Quite the contrary. You were the first author who wrote about WELL HIDDEN (or as the neurotypicals cutely coin it, “functional”) sociopaths who blend seamlessly in the world without having a tangible/traceable history of crime or malevolence. Finally someone I could relate to that was multifaceted... And actually existed!

It inspired within me two things.  One, I wanted to learn as much about this "condition" as possible, so that I could utilize it with even more accuracy than before.  Which leads to Two, my committed attempt to be more constructive, rather than destructive, with my personality and power.  If I cannot change this thing that I am (which is the first form of foundational self I can honestly say I've ever truly perceived), then I might as well do the most with it. 

Please accept my sincere gratitude for sharing so openly.  Even if half of it is lies or greatly masked, your story has made the first indelible impact on my life that I have ever had the immense pleasure of experiencing. 

That being said, I am looking to you for your perspective.  

Recently I have began to initiate a relationship of sorts with someone whom is also appears to be sociopath.  Both of us are aware of our "condition". And both of us have committed to not play games, and to be painstakingly honest with one another.  Believe it or not, I find him endlessly fascinating and have a strange respect for him, as I see him as one of my few equals.  We have similar goals of being as functional as possible... But we also greatly enjoy relaying our daily hunting and games to one another. It's an unspeakably delicious outlet.  Not to mention the level of attention/adoration between us is unlike that of an empathic relationship, where I can easily and without intention hurt that person (and subsequently watch it disturb my life and plans—what an inconvenience). 

Being honest with one another, we have not made any commitment or exclusiveness... And in fact this honesty only seems to increase the sense of intimacy between us.  Another first in my life--this person has inspired some kind of bodily feeling of emotions in me... And he reports that I have much the same effect on him.  It's been overwhelming and at times uncomfortable. We've been experiencing this together, and trying to talk it out... Leading to more research.

Funny that you recently posted regarding the body-mind connection associated with emotions, and not being able to identify them.  Have you read "The Growth of the Mind and the Endangered Origins of Intelligence" ?  

There is an excerpt on pages 78-80, regarding a woman who "acted" on emotions, because she could not express them.  And in fact, she could not even describe or process the bodily experience of an emotion. I think you'll find it quite valuable:

“Something as simple as a child saying ‘I want to go outside’ can be responded to with a yes or no on the one hand, or, on the other, ‘What do you want to do outside?’  The latter response helps the child reflect on his wish, while the former only gives in to it or inhibits it.  Reflection fosters the use of symbols, and, more broadly, the ability to think, while inhibition or immediate giving in both foster only a tendency  toward action.

Meanwhile, the child's concomitant neurological growth helps his repertoire of symbols multiply rapidly.  The nervous system allows for quicker learning now, and he accumulates words and ideas with growing ease.  He can imitate almost any sound or word and does so regularly.  This is still not automatic, however.  New words take on meaning and become part of the child's vocabulary only when attached to the emotion or intent.

Memories are formed that involve not only images of patterns of action but also emotions, intentions, and desires.  Without these affective components, memory would be a mere computer screen that showed pictures by rote, without meaning or structure.  Because of them, however, memory becomes part of the expression of the individual self.  Meaning and purpose, in other words, together with remembered sensations, form the dual code that is essential to our humanity.  

When a child lacks nuanced relationships or cannot for neurological reasons learn from them, the images he develops contain less detail and complexity, his personality less differentiated, and his later ability to form relationships is much reduced. Many adults have never sufficiently mastered the ability to form images.  

One such person, Susan, came into therapy in the hope of saving her deteriorating marriage.  Her husband was spending increasingly long hours at the office, and their relationship was becoming more and more acrimonious.  Whenever Jim's work hours lengthened, she would complain and criticize, which naturally made him spend even more time working--which in turn only stepped up her complaints.  Try as she might, she lamented to the therapist, she could not get him to pay her the attention that she needed and deserved. 

Susan couldn't connect the couple's problems to her own feelings. She knew only that she felt generally "bad" but couldn't find words to describe her state of mind or the root of her trouble.  Nothing she tried seemed to break the pattern that was driving Jim away. 

Her intense orientation toward changing Jim's behavior alerted the therapist to the fact that had great difficulty representing many of her feelings symbolically rather than simply acting on them.  When he asked her for more details about her feelings, she said that Jim's refusal to come home made her behave coldly toward him. She would describe her actions or tendency to act a certain way, but not how she felt.  The therapist, hoping to help her focus on her feelings, asked her first to attend to her physical sensations. She began by describing her muscles as tight and tense. Over time her descriptions hinted at emotions: for example, her body felt as though it were ‘getting ready for an attack.’  Only gradually did feelings like anger and furry emerge more clearly. 

Eventually Susan learned to identify the bodily manifestations of fear and loneliness as well as anger.  She came to realize that she felt vulnerable, helpless, and lost.  Never before had she discussed her anger of feelings of loss; she had only sensed a vaguely defined, overly inclusive state of panic. Once she learned to talk about her sense of loss, she was able to connect her anxiety to Jim's absence to similar terrors she had felt as a child.  Whenever Susan had became needy, her stubborn, domineering mother responded by rejecting her emotionally.  Distant and controlling, her mother had refused to brook any communication around issues of vulnerability, helplessness, or loss. Anger was completely taboo. Thus she had prevented the little girl, and the woman she had became, from learning to represent herself the feelings that surround rejection and abandonment. Unable to abstract and understand the painful feelings Jim's angry absences evoked, Susan could only act them out and experience a global state of distress.”

Now, in my case, I would be acting like Jim... But I digress. I thought this would further help your hypothesis.  Personally, as I begin to write out the physical sensations I undergo in given situations, it helps me identify and even parse out something that may be affective.  Some food for thought.

To continue on my dilemma... While things are going quite well between myself and this man, there is something I've noticed.

Overall we are quite good at mutually driving each other to our very best in everything.  We foster an interest to understand each other. It helps our behavior become less erratic. 

However, when one or the other of us grows apathetic, as we tend to do when we have subdued acting on impulses/destructive desires... It tends to rub off on the other.  We are at least cognitively empathetic toward one another, but obviously it's quite hard to feel much distress for one another when we otherwise don't feel distress for anything but an extreme or rare basis. It seems apathy breeds apathy, as we look to one another for some sort of solace in an otherwise dull world.   

Have you ever heard of sociopaths in an intimate/meaningful relationship with one another?  

We don't have very much motivation to destroy or manipulate one another. If anything, we may egg each other on to act on our impulses at times.  The reward in acting and moving forward with one another, without the usual neurotypical baggage/expectations, is much greater. Being largely without affect, we can offer one another advice that is mostly sound.  But it seems that even though we commit to not mirror one another, we still can't escape our natural inclination to do so, at least in this particular instance. Perhaps due to our very small sense of self?  That we have conditioned ourselves to do such things and aren't sure how to do otherwise?

What is your take on this?

Thank you for your time and thoughts. 

Much adoration and respect,


Artemis
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