From a reader:
I've just completed your book and was particularly struck by a few things towards the end. Its inspired me to share a few things with you mindful of your comments in the epilogue (which I'm guessing you intended would draw attention to your 'vulnerabilities'?).
As a highly sucessful health professional with experience and interest in the brain it has taken me a while to realise where on the spectrum I lie personally. I doubt I am fully sociopathic within your conception though certainly have family history and personal features (impulsivity, occasional recklessness, narcissism, lack of inborn empathy - though I'm a good actor) recognised by a psych friend and my therapist. I score pretty high up on the various formal inventories I have filled.
Your book I found entertaining, certainly does strike a chord and there is much I can resonate with, so I guess you have succeeded in part of your mission to demystify and encourage tolerance and understanding, if only to those whose experience of life fall within the same ball park as yours.
My principle reason for contacting you relates to your thoughts about the relationship between neuroanatomy, neuropsychology and neurochemistry in hard wiring the features of sociopathy. I have had the unique (to me at any rate) experience of having had parts of my neuroanatomy and chemistry rewired following neurosurgery for tumour, radiotherapy and the commencement of psychoactive drugs to control resultant epilepsy. My MR is a battle field. Of interest to me, and perhaps to you, is that this has not really changed who I am. It has (pre diagnosis of my tumour and subsequently as the years of 'recovery' have rolled on) attenuated, and in some cases damaged, my carefully honed life skills which have enabled me to deal with myself and what life throws at me.
In studying myself going though this I have begun to realise (I think I already knew) that I have controlled most of my sociopathic features in ways that have generated professional and (to casual observers) personal relationship success over the years. Having acquired structural neuro damage and been forced to take drugs whose neurochemistry is well understood to have bad effects on people like me, these features have not gone away (I'm still me) , but have become more likely to leak out in ways I find increasingly difficult to control.
I guess I'm saying that to me I'm still the same (despite the re-wiring) but to others (family and colleagues - largely but not exclusively empaths as you call them - terrible term but I know what you mean) I've become more difficult and more 'sociopathic'. This to my mind gives credence to some of your speculation about aetiology and might be of interest? I have certainly worried about my kids' genetic predispositions and sought to parent in ways that teach them how to deal with whatever emergent traits might given them difficulty as they grow.
I've just completed your book and was particularly struck by a few things towards the end. Its inspired me to share a few things with you mindful of your comments in the epilogue (which I'm guessing you intended would draw attention to your 'vulnerabilities'?).
As a highly sucessful health professional with experience and interest in the brain it has taken me a while to realise where on the spectrum I lie personally. I doubt I am fully sociopathic within your conception though certainly have family history and personal features (impulsivity, occasional recklessness, narcissism, lack of inborn empathy - though I'm a good actor) recognised by a psych friend and my therapist. I score pretty high up on the various formal inventories I have filled.
Your book I found entertaining, certainly does strike a chord and there is much I can resonate with, so I guess you have succeeded in part of your mission to demystify and encourage tolerance and understanding, if only to those whose experience of life fall within the same ball park as yours.
My principle reason for contacting you relates to your thoughts about the relationship between neuroanatomy, neuropsychology and neurochemistry in hard wiring the features of sociopathy. I have had the unique (to me at any rate) experience of having had parts of my neuroanatomy and chemistry rewired following neurosurgery for tumour, radiotherapy and the commencement of psychoactive drugs to control resultant epilepsy. My MR is a battle field. Of interest to me, and perhaps to you, is that this has not really changed who I am. It has (pre diagnosis of my tumour and subsequently as the years of 'recovery' have rolled on) attenuated, and in some cases damaged, my carefully honed life skills which have enabled me to deal with myself and what life throws at me.
In studying myself going though this I have begun to realise (I think I already knew) that I have controlled most of my sociopathic features in ways that have generated professional and (to casual observers) personal relationship success over the years. Having acquired structural neuro damage and been forced to take drugs whose neurochemistry is well understood to have bad effects on people like me, these features have not gone away (I'm still me) , but have become more likely to leak out in ways I find increasingly difficult to control.
I guess I'm saying that to me I'm still the same (despite the re-wiring) but to others (family and colleagues - largely but not exclusively empaths as you call them - terrible term but I know what you mean) I've become more difficult and more 'sociopathic'. This to my mind gives credence to some of your speculation about aetiology and might be of interest? I have certainly worried about my kids' genetic predispositions and sought to parent in ways that teach them how to deal with whatever emergent traits might given them difficulty as they grow.