Tuesday, November 4, 2014

Secret identity

I'm trying something new. For the past couple months or so I've been back in hiding. This is different than what I have been doing for the past decade or so, which is to be relatively open with people. If I haven't used the actual word sociopath (except for family and just a handful of others), I've been pretty out about what type of person I am. I would read quotes like this and think, yeah, I want to live this way:
The art of life is to show your hand. There is no diplomacy like candor. You may lose by it now and then, but it will be a loss well gained if you do. Nothing is so boring as having to keep up a deception.
-- E. V. Lucas
See, I had a history of self-deception. And I was always worried that I would backslide into that self-deception and become like a fool narcissist, whom I just personally cannot stand. So in part because I realized how easy it is to lie to myself, and in part because I was so self-assured I enjoyed telling people what I was and still being able to mess with them, I was largely transparent. Of course that doesn't mean I never lied -- I would doubletalk my tongue out. I would never volunteer information, would spin story after story just to see what I would get away with. But sometimes, maybe if someone had figured things out or just so I could get away with more bad behavior, I would sometimes come clean.

I just don't believe it anymore. I used to always think that I would eventually tell people that were close to me. Now I think -- what's the point? If they aren't an idiot, they'll pretty much know who I am without me telling them or giving them the keywords to punch into Google. If they are an idiot, then it wouldn't really help to tell them anything anyway.

There's basically no upside to telling people now that I'm not worried as much about self deception (I have you all to keep me honest with myself) and I don't care as much about "proving" myself, to myself or to others. Call it laziness, or agedness, or shadiness, but that's where I'm at.

Monday, November 3, 2014

Karma and dismissals

I feel like I'm experiencing a bit of karmic whiplash. I myself have been having to deal with someone with a personality on a daily basis, even being responsible for this person's welfare to a certain extent.  Let's call her Lola. I feel like I am getting more of an understanding of why people hate sociopaths so much. I kind of understand the source of the feeling behind comments like "Even if inherited..THEY KNOW RIGHT FROM WRONG." Because the thing is that it is quite apparent that Lola knows right and wrong. To a certain extent she understands cause and effect -- drive under certain conditions and you will lose your license, fail to file a tax return and you will get audited. But she keeps doing these things. The next year she fails to file a tax return or the next month she is getting pulled over again and fighting to keep her license again.

Other family members have given up -- "if she wants help, she needs to learn to help herself." And the thing is all of these things are true, and she is low functioning. But the low functioning causes the behavior to be so bad, rather than the the behavior causing her to be low functioning. Even if it seems like she knows right and wrong and seems to be acting with free will and making wrong choices, it's more like when a pet dog is naughty and gets in the trash even though he knows he shouldn't rather than a normal personal with all of his faculties knowing right and just choosing wrong. But this is incredibly hard to understand, even for me. She says things like, "I don't want you telling people I have a disorder because then they will blame things on the disorder." Ok. But you do have a disorder. And they most likely will be quite correct in blaming things you say or do on the disorder. I don't really understand (because it is not in my personal experience) how can someone both be sort of ok in admitting that they have a disorder, but then in denial that the disorder is actually affecting their emotions and behavior and that they aren't 100% the captain of their destiny. But that dual belief is also part of the disorder.

In some ways I am one of the best positioned people to deal with her because I have my own experiences of knowing that I am expected to act or think or feel a certain way but never being able to close that gap between expectations and reality, not for lack of trying. And I have been thinking a lot about the idea of how it is very difficult for us to believe something that we have not experienced ourselves, particularly if it seems so far outside of our experience. Some people will admit that there are things that exist even though they don't understand how they could. Others are more prone to tidy dismissals. I thought of this in reading this quote from Jeanette Winterson:

The fashion for dismissing a thing out of ignorance is vicious. In fact, it is not essential to like a thing in order to recognize its worth, but to reach that point of self-awareness and sophistication takes years of perseverance.
***
An examination of our own feelings will have to give way to an examination of the piece of work. This is fair to the work and it will help to clarify the nature of our own feelings; to reveal prejudice, opinion, anxiety, even the mood of the day. It is right to trust our feelings but right to test them too. If they are what we say they are, they will stand the test, if not, we will at least be less insincere.

She's talking about understanding art, but I think her thoughts have interesting parallels to dismissing anything out of ignorance:

When you say “This work has nothing to do with me.” When you say “This work is boring/pointless/silly/obscure/élitist etc.,” you might be right, because you are looking at a fad, or you might be wrong because the work falls so outside of the safety of your own experience that in order to keep your own world intact, you must deny the other world of the painting. This denial of imaginative experience happens at a deeper level than our affirmation of our daily world. Every day, in countless ways, you and I convince ourselves about ourselves. True art, when it happens to us, challenges the “I” that we are.

A love-parallel would be just; falling in love challenges the reality to which we lay claim, part of the pleasure of love and part of its terror, is the world turned upside down. We want and we don’t want, the cutting edge, the upset, the new views. Mostly we work hard at taming our emotional environment just as we work hard at taming our aesthetic environment. We already have tamed our physical environment. And are we happy with all this tameness? Are you?

[...]

The solid presence of art demands from us significant effort, an effort anathema to popular culture. Effort of time, effort of money, effort of study, effort of humility, effort of imagination have each been packed by the artist into the art. 

Sunday, November 2, 2014

Therapy

From a reader:

I am almost at the end of your work. I assume most of the story was true ( although you made reference to snow in Southern California). The story of you dad punching the holes in the door was quite disturbing. I would imagine you have many stories this severe from childhood.

My observation is that you have the tools to be more successful in your career and life. I am a physician but not a psychiatrist. The premise of the book is that you are a sociopath. I think you might also have antisocial personality disorder. You have likely researched this given your intelligence.

Have you ever considered therapy? Maybe you are happy with your life. From your academic acheivements you could easily be a full partner at a large firm or a full professor of law.

I can from a damaged childhood too. I know how hard it can be.

Take care.

From M.E.:

https://www.google.com/maps/search/big+bear+mountain/@34.2363405,-116.8919775,14z/data=!3m1!4b1

Yes, I have considered therapy. I've actually been seeing a therapist for the past year or so. He intentionally doesn't tell me what he is doing so I don't thwart his goals and make it a power struggle, and so I would guess that 80% of our sessions are misdirection on his part, which makes for an interesting therapy dynamic. But therapy has been really helpful. I feel like I finally learned how to not be manipulative. I think people always assumed that it was a choice with me, but I really had no idea how to not be because I didn't feel like I had a default choice that I would make just for my own sake, rather than as an attempt to manipulate somehow. So I always just chose things with other people's preferences in mind instead of my own. Does that make sense? I'm not entirely sure how I started recognizing that I had my own preferences. And now when I don't want to be manipulative, I just do those things. I completely ignore the outside world and just try to figure out what is my true desire, rather than thinking of the effect my choices will have on other people. The probably sounds selfish, and maybe eventually I will get to whatever happy medium most people have on this, but right now I just feel doubly skilled to be able to not only manipulate when I want to, but stop manipulating when I want to. 

Saturday, November 1, 2014

Your boss, the sociopath

Bob Hare and others recently released an estimate that as many as 1 in 25 bosses are psychopaths:
They disguise it by using their status, charm and manipulation.

It is only positive experiences such as having a happy childhood that stop them from turning into potential serial killers, according to the scientists.

The ruthless corporate culture helps psychopaths by rewarding callousness and the disregard of people’s feelings.

What’s even worse is that these vicious bosses are rubbish at their jobs. They keep climbing the ladder because they cover up their failings by charming people.

The pioneering study was led by New York psychologist Dr Paul Babiak who said: “Psychopaths really aren’t the kind of person you think they are.

“You could be married to one for 20 years and not know it.” His team studied business chiefs to find out how many psychos work for major companies.

Fellow researcher Professor Bob Hare said: “A psychopath can tell what you’re thinking but what they don’t do is feel what you feel. These are people without a conscience.”

The findings . . . showed that bosses are four times more likely to be psychopaths than the general population. Scientists believe 1% of the public are psychos.
The tone of the article is completely sensationalist. It's also typical of any positive information about sociopaths to try to put as negative a spin on it as possible. Instead of congratulations sociopaths for being apparently 4 times more likely to succeed than normal people (am I doing the math right?), they are instead bad at their jobs and succeed by disregarding people's feelings? In what way does disregarding people's feelings lead to success, necessarily? I mean, it's so obviously a ploy, so obviously thinly veiled propaganda -- the type that allows dictators to ascend to power and oppress people all in the name of courting power over the idiot masses.

The quotes from Babiak and Hare are pretty reasonable, though.

Thursday, October 30, 2014

Fantastic Mr. Fox

This is an old comment from UKan that I've been meaning to give its own post. It describes why psychopathy is not necessarily maladaptive, but rather can be quite fantastic:
See here's the thing that bothers me with people who write about psychopathy. They display all the traits of a psychopath as a weakness. As if all the psychopaths out there are doomed to eternal suffering in a emotional void. In a psychopaths point of view it is quite the opposite.

Its all about perspective really. Robert Hare, which many of you know to be the worlds leading expert on sociopathy said he believes he would find more of a percentage of psychopaths in the cut throat business world than in prison. That doesn't really sound like a disorder to me. The hype over psychopathy is over a small minority of sexually violent predators, most of whom went through serious child abuse.

My lack of impulse control allows me to take risks others could not. In business its all about taking risks. If you don't have what it takes to make quick decisions you are fucked. Especially my business.

Constant boredom is a great thing to have. It keeps you busy and enables you to multi task. It sets you apart from the rest.

Being grandiose can be self actualizing. We belong in roles of power even if we have to creste it from thin air. If you make yourself look great and you are so convinced that others around you believe it to be true, does that not make it so?

A psychopaths temper is quick, sharp, and its also effective. Why not get it all out there instead of bottling it up till you have to go cry to some therapist. If I don't get my way I'm fucking angry. Guess what? Most of the time I get my way. Who wouldn't want that?

Psychopaths don't have shallow emotions they just have different reactions because they lack empathy. Is rage not potent? Is possessing someone not passion? I feel want. I want it all.

Which brings me to this pirate shit. What a cheeky way of portraying a psychopaths constant hunger for more. Some people are satisfied with a mediocre existence. Not the psychopath. This constant need for more gets you more. Funny how that works. Who wants to employ someone who is satisfied over someone who will never be? Dissatisfaction can make one ambitious.

Like I said its all perspective.
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