Thursday, March 27, 2014

An aspie's view of sociopathy

From an Aspie reader reader:

I found your blog by chance, a week or two ago, and can't help but feel intrigued. I have Asperger's syndrome (or as the next version of the DSM has it, "autism spectrum disorder") and the experiences you describe seem to have as many similarities to as differences from my own. 

We both find it necessary to mask ourselves for daily life because most people, most of the time, don't want to know what we're really like. They want an interface they know how to use, and an impression they can easily categorize. I don't switch masks with the fluidity of a sociopath, nor do I have as large a repertoire to choose from. I'd be willing to bet that I have to put more conscious effort into each one, so once a given mask passes I have greater incentive to stick with it and practice until perfect. (I don't know what you look like without yours, but at times when I can't maintain a mask I've been told that I either don't emote, or that the other (neurotypical) person doesn't know how to interpret my body language.)

Changing contexts, some facets of my personality behind that mask may fold away and others unfold such that people in either seem to form substantially different impressions of me, but I don't make a conscious decision to change what aspects I have on display, nor bother with deception. I simply omit what isn't relevant.

On the other hand, I'm pretty sure that I lack the typical sociopaths' need for stimulation and excitement, nor do any of your examples mention sociopaths with a typical autistics' sensory hypersensitivities. Sitting in a quiet room with dim lights, my experience is finally not *over*stimulating.

In that vein, there's one thing that I really don't understand. What do sociopaths get out of manipulating or otherwise having power over other people? What about it interests you? To my view, people are mostly boring and interacting with them is a nontrivial drain on my resources. (There are rare exceptions to that rule, and I've married one. He describes me as "asocial".) And so I have to ask: Why bother?

I look forward to your answer.

My response:

Thanks for this! I think that sociopaths get a lot of things from power. They get a sense of connection and intimacy with another person. They get a sense of purpose or sense that they are a being in the world that acts, not just gets acted upon. I think for a lot of sociopaths there was some sort of childhood trauma that made them feel like they weren't the masters of their own destiny. Not everyone is bothered by this, but I think for sociopaths it goes too strongly against their megalomania. But these are sort of just guesses. For me I have felt the need for power as a basic need, like the need for love or acceptance must be for most people, but I'm not sure why. Thoughts?

Wednesday, March 26, 2014

Knowing right from wrong?

Some of you may have seen this article, "UC Santa Barbara professor steals young anti-abortion protester’s sign, apparently assaults protesters, says she ‘set a good example for her students" from Eugene Volokh writing for the Washington Post (originally from the Santa Barbara Independent). The short story is that anti-abortion protesters were on UC Santa Barbara campus with graphic photos of aborted fetuses:

Joan said that at around 11 a.m., Dr. Mireille Miller-Young — an associate professor with UCSB’s Feminist Studies Department — approached the demonstration site and exchanged heated words with the group, taking issue with their pro-life proselytizing and use of disturbing photographs. Joan claimed Miller-Young, accompanied by a few of her students, led the gathering crowd in a chant of “Tear down the sign! Tear down the sign!” before grabbing one of the banners and walking with it across campus.

Joan said she called 9-1-1 and Thrin started filming, and that the pair followed Miller-Young and two of her students … into nearby South Hall. As Miller-Young and the students boarded an elevator, Joan said that Thrin repeatedly blocked the door with her hand and foot and that Miller-Young continually pushed her back. Miller-Young then exited the elevator and tried to yank Thrin away from the door while the students attempted to take her smartphone. “As Thrin tried to get away, the professor’s fingernails left bloody scratches on her arms,” Joan claimed. The struggle ended when Thrin relented, Miller-Young walked off, the students rode up in the elevator, and officers arrived to interview those involved.



When I read about this, I thought of two things. First, in a recent post about how a culture of morality often leads to people having self-justified feelings of hate, a lot of people suggested that right-wing conservatives or religious people were the only ones who moralized issues and acted accordingly, even in defiance of the law or rights of others. Second, and more generously than I think a lot of people are willing to be on this issue, I think it is honestly harder to know what the right thing to do is than most people will admit to themselves. A conscience is not infallible. Your feelings about right and wrong can easily lead you astray. From the police report:

Miller-Young went on to say that because the poster was upsetting to her and other students, she felt that the activists did not have the right to be there.
***
I asked Miller-Young if she felt anything wrong had happened this afternoon. Miller-Young said that she did not know enough about the limits of free speech to answer my question. Miller-Young went on to say that she was not sure what an acceptable and legal response to hate speech would be. Miller-Young said that she was willing to pay for the cost of the sign but would “hate it.”
I explained to Miller-Young that the victims in this case felt that a crime had occurred. I told Miller-Young that I appreciated the fact that she felt traumatized by the imagery but that her response constituted a violation of law. Furthermore, I told Miller-Young that I was worried about the example she had set for her undergraduate students.

Miller-Young said that her students “were wanting her to take” the sign away. Miller-Young argued that she set a good example for her students. Miller-Young likened her behavior to that of a “conscientious objector.” Miller-Young said that she did not feel that what she had done was criminal. However, she acknowledged that the sign did not belong to her.

I asked Miller-Young what crimes she felt the pro-life group had violated. Miller-Young replied that their coming to campus and showing “graphic imagery” was insensitive to the community. I clarified the difference between University policy and law to Miller-Young and asked her again what law had been violated. Miller-Young said that she believed the pro-life group may have violated University policy. Miller-Young said that her actions today were in defense of her students and her own safety.
Miller-Young said that she felt that this issue was not criminal and expressed a desire to find a resolution outside of the legal system. Miller-Young continued and stated that she had the “moral” right to act in the way she did.

I asked Miller-Young if she could have behaved differently in this instance. There was a long pause. “I’ve said that I think I did the right thing. But I acknowledge that I probably should not have taken their poster.” Miller-Young also said that she wished that the anti-abortion group had taken down the images when they demanded them to.

Miller-Young also suggested that the group had violated her rights. I asked Miller-Young what right the group had violated. Miller-Young responded, “My personal right to go to work and not be in harm.”

Miller-Young elaborated that one of the reasons she had felt so alarmed by this imagery is because she is about to have the test for Down Syndrome. Miller-Young said. “I work here, why do they get to intervene in that?”

I explained to Miller-Young that vandalism, battery and robbery had occurred. I also told Miller-Young that individuals involved in this case desired prosecution.

I later booked the torn sign into evidence at UCPD. I also uploaded the audio files of my interviews into digital evidence.

I request that a copy of my report, along with all related supplemental reports, be forwarded to the District Attorney’s Office for review.

Along similar lines, The New Yorker reported (paywall) about an art forger who donated all of his forgeries, and consequently didn't break any laws, and the vigilante art curator, Matthew Leininger of the Oklahoma City Museum of Art curatorial department, who would stop at nothing to end his reign of terror (tongue in cheek):

Leininger wanted "to get him thrown into the slam," he told me. "The guy's a crook. Fraud is fraud." He contacted the F.B.I., where he spoke to Robert Wittman, the senior investigator of the Art Crimes Team, who is now in private practice. "We couldn't identify a federal criminal violation," Wittman told me. "if he had been paid, or taken a tax deduction, perhaps. Some places maybe took him to dinner, gave him some V.I.P. treatment, that's their decision, but there was no loss that we could uncover. Basically, you have a guy going around the country on his own nickel giving free stuff to museums."

What does this say about how people's individual sense of morality actually tracks the dominant sense of morality (can't really say "objective morality" here, because there's no such thing, right?), I don't know. Maybe it just says that it's hard to know what's right and wrong and even if it seems easy for you to know in a particular instance, it may be hard to convince others to see things your way. This is why I'm not sure how useful a concept like morality is on the macro, policy debate level. See also the vaccine debate?

Tuesday, March 25, 2014

Quote: Psychopaths

“There are people who have the capacity to imagine themselves as someone else, there are people who have no such capacity (when the lack is extreme, we call them psychopaths), and there are people who have the capacity but choose not to exercise it.”
― J.M. Coetzee, The Lives of Animals

Psych survey

From a reader:

Hi M.E.,

I read your book a few months ago, and I really loved it.  I created a psychology survey that looks at different psychological disorders for science fair, and I'm having a little trouble getting the link out to the masses.  Would you mind putting the link in one of your blog posts?  It would be very helpful.  the link is here: https://www.surveymonkey.com/s/VHTJ666

If you do decide to put it up, mention that only people with ASPD should participate in the survey.  

Thank you for your time!


Monday, March 24, 2014

Child sociopath: Early intervention as treatment

Sociopathic children represent a unique quandary for people who love children and hate sociopaths. They are also the most impressionable, which some see as an invitation to target them with attempts at early intervention. From Fox News:
Criminologist Nathalie Fontaine of Indiana University studies the tendency toward being callous and unemotional (CU) in children between 7 and 12 years old. Children with these traits have been shown to have a higher risk of becoming psychopaths as adults.

"We're not suggesting that some children are psychopaths, but CU traits can be used to identify a subgroup of children who are at risk," Fontaine said.

Yet her research showed that these traits aren't fixed, and can change in children as they grow. So if psychologists identify children with these risk factors early on, it may not be too late.

"We can still help them," Fontaine said. "We can implement intervention to support and help children and their families, and we should."

Neuroscientists' understanding of the plasticity, or flexibility, of the brain called neurogenesis supports the idea that many of these brain differences are not fixed.

"Brain research is showing us that neurogenesis can occur even into adulthood," said psychologist Patricia Brennan of Emory University in Atlanta. "Biology isn’t destiny. There are many, many places you can intervene along that developmental pathway to change what's happening in these children."
How do you accomplish this early intervention?
"You don’t have to do direct brain surgery to change the way the brain functions," Brennan said. "You can do social interventions to change that."

Fontaine's studies, for example, suggest that kids who display callous and unemotional traits don't respond as well to traditional parenting and punishment methods such as time-outs. Instead of punishing bad behavior, programs that emphasize rewarding good behavior with positive reinforcement seem to work better.

Raine and his colleagues are also testing whether children who take supplemental pills of omega-3 fatty acids — also known as fish oil — can show improvement. Because this nutrient is thought to be used in cell growth, neuroscientists suspect it can help brain cells grow larger, increase the size of axons (the part of neurons that conducts electrical impulses), and regulate brain cell function.

"We are brain scanning children before and after treatment with omega-3," Raine said. "We are studying kids to see if it can reduce aggressive behavior and improve impaired brain areas. It's a biological treatment, but it's a relatively benign treatment that most people would accept."
I'm conflicted about this news. On the one hand I am reminded of very well-meaning attempts at early intervention for children of first generation immigrants, Romani children, aboriginal children, native children, and other efforts at forced integration and assimilation into the "norm." On the other hand some sociopaths really do suffer immensely. To the extent that these efforts demonstrate society's increasing awareness of sociopaths and desire to cater more carefully to sociopathic needs, e.g. using very consistent incentive schemes instead of punishment to achieve desired behavior, I see it as a step in the right direction.
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