Tuesday, January 13, 2015

Attitudes about lying

From a reader:

I've just recently found your blog, and I love it. I basically skimmed through your whole blog over the weekend, so maybe you did address this and I missed it, but just in case you haven't, I thought I'd ask:

Was there ever a particular moment/epiphany where you realized that people genuinely struggle to lie - either just as a skill set, or morally they can't abide by lying?

I was never able to take fictional characters who struggled to lie seriously, and merely assumed they were yet another dumbed-down archetype meant to instill a moral objective in children, one of many that society ultimately fails at. Why should I take the grown-ups seriously about not lying when they also, in the process of telling me to "be nice", encouraged me to lie (either outright or by omission)? I struggled to understand the subtle social cues, and took them as invisible nuances of walking and talking that I worked hard to understand - and I assumed lying was apart of these 'unspoken universal actions'.

When I responded to people's various dilemmas over the years with "why don't/didn't you just like?", I never understood them when they said, "I can't!" Didn't they see how pointless this moral attitude was? It wasn't until my early teens when someone explicitly said that they froze up in that situation, and that the lies I'd thought of on the spot they were only able to conceive after careful consideration, that I realized lying was less of a universal and more of a skill-set. After all, if I knew there were people out there who could, say, do a complex math problem easily in their heads that I struggled to do with pen and paper, then of course it made sense that lies I could easily think of would come harder to some people.

Even then, it didn't really occur to me that people could feel such moral aversion to lying. I could understand disliking lying, and I could understand not being good at it. But then a very recent incident sharply reminded me how easily other people become guilt-ridden over the most ridiculous things:

A female friend of mine comes from an extremely micromanaging and conservative family. She wanted to visit a sex shop with the rest of our social group, and we suggested she tell her family that she is seeing "The Hobbit" to justify being away from home and not answering her phone for several hours straight. Simple, right? Except a day later I got a text from her asking if we can see another movie instead. I was very confused and assumed she just wanted a different time frame (preferring a 2-hour block instead of the 3-hour block to be gained with The Hobbit), and after a couple of back-and-forths it turned out now she actually wanted to take us to see a movie "so the guilt and shame would not kill her".

Considering she upheld a very active social life that often has somewhat sexual components to it without her family's knowledge, I was genuinely shocked that she had this aversion to lying. Lying about whether someone is a friend or sexual acquaintance is okay, lying about which part of the city you are in is okay, and lying about what you are doing those long hours you are supposed to be studying in college is okay, but you draw the line at lying about a movie? I'm...actually still rather confused by it. Both by the fact she, specifically, has such an aversion - and that someone can feel guilt about lying when they are doing so as a measure of self-support in the face of unnecessary social suppression. I intellectually understand that some people feel guilt when lying. But I cannot understand why someone who was lying to an overtly-controlling family just to be able to go out with some friends would feel guilty about it. The only explanation that makes sense is that it's a domestic analogue to Stockholm Syndrome - except that she obviously isn't kidnapped nor abused by her family (there was an abusive father, but he has been gone for years, now).

I'm muddling through it on my own and after poking around some of her issues I started to understand it, but now that I've stumbled across your blog, I have to ask - when did you learn people struggled with lying, or did you always know without any particular epiphany? Did you never differentiate between people who struggled with lying purely as a skillset vs those who struggled with it "morally"/emotionally? Did you ever try to explain to yourself why they struggled? If so, what are some of the explanations you've come up with? And if not, how did you handle people's bizarre attitudes towards lying?

M.E.: I don’t think I ever wondered about people’s ability to lie, but I definitely remember trying to coach my long distance cousin about how to stand up to the bullies in his life and being shocked that he wasn’t able to naturally intuit ways of subtly undermining others while maintaining a veil of innocence to onlookers. 

I myself don’t think about or understand lying much. Should we publish what you wrote to see what others have to say?

Reader:

Sometimes, I still have trouble grasping how difficult it is for other people to lie. It's like saying you don't know how to brush your teeth or something. Several years into college and I still have to remind myself that just because I can immediately figure out what someone else's insecurities and psychological weaknesses are, doesn't mean everyone else can. (And it really takes some reminding, sometimes, because it just seems so obvious to me.)

And definitely, go ahead and publish it (and hell, this e-mail, too). I'm curious to see what other people would say. I've had some...interesting reactions to explaining to people (every day people in real life) that I had to 'learn' in my tweens that lying didn't come easy to most people, because I'd been doing it so naturally and easily all my life.

Sunday, January 11, 2015

Sliding scale of emotions

From a reader:

I just heard your interview on CBC radio and was totally fascinated by you.

I could really identify with your perception of yourself as a child, and the knowingness of being different, your high intelligence and your ability to read people.  As  I listened, I was right there with you.  Funny enough, I am a highly empathetic person. I feel people and in the same way you enjoy "ruining people" I enjoy building them up.  I  hone in on an attribute and try to mirror it back to them to lift them up. It is a skill that I have and I derive much joy and satisfaction from expressing this aspect of myself.  Lucky for me, society looks upon this as an acceptable trait and therefore life is made easier for me.

I have come to believe that we all reside on a sliding scale when it comes to emotion.  If you are a sociopath, what would we call those who are so into their emotions that they are constantly surrounded by chaos, drama and never ending suffering. I love the way you see yourself, I love that you have rules you live by that allow you to exist in society and to find a solid balance between being o.k. with who you are and being o.k. with how the world sees you.  We should all be so lucky.

I just wanted to say thanks for sharing.  I wholeheartedly believe that we are all aspects of the whole and I was able to experience what you have to give today and for that I am grateful.  You are magnificent and I just wanted to express how much joy I felt listening to you.  I look forward to reading your book.

My response:

I actually also enjoy building people up. I enjoy seeing the effect that I can have on people, the power that I have over myself and my environment. I even have a preference for building people up, for whatever reason. But that doesn’t detract for me at all the pleasure in seeing something torn apart. Maybe being in law is a good career choice for me — tearing apart people’s stories, the lies that they’ve decided to live or at least try to pass off as truth.

Tuesday, January 6, 2015

Quote: Mobs

“No snowflake in an avalanche ever feels responsible.”

― StanisÅ‚aw Jerzy Lec

Saturday, January 3, 2015

Pros and cons of dating a sociopath

This was an interesting blog post about the pros and cons of maintaining a relationship with a sociopath. I believe that this definitely could be one person's experience of one particular sociopath. I wonder whether people think that it could be generalized. Some traits, sure -- exciting, charming, etc. Others, maybe not? For instance, is it true that sociopaths tend to push their partners to achieve their potential? I could see that happening perhaps with a high functioning sociopath that sort of takes the partner under his or her wing and teaches him or her to be more risk seeking, brave, confident, etc. 

Thursday, January 1, 2015

Curing Psychopathy

I got this press release and a copy of Willem Martens' new book on psychopaths who are no longer psychopaths:

[T]he new book of William Martens – MD, PhD. The Firebirds among the Psychopaths – Development and Remission in Psychopathy,” will be available from January 15 2015 on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Google Play, Kobo, Apple iBookstore etc; ISBN: 978-2-7659-0740-4

This book is an attempt to describe and make understandable this rare phenomenon of complete remission in psychopathy and the developmental embedding of it. In this book the history of the concept of psychopathy; the psychosocial, psychodynamic, genetic and neurobiological aspects, the diagnostic tools as well as the therapeutic determinants of the phenomenon will be discussed in this volume.

A complete remission of psychopathy is defined as complete disappearance of all such manifestations of disease.  The case reports of remitted criminal and noncriminal psychopaths which are presented in this book are the only examples of real remission in a sample 667 patients which were treated in a forensic psychiatric hospital between 1966 and 1995. This a percentage of just nearly 2% .They might become “weller than well” as Karl Menninger called this phenomenon in his study of remitted in schizophrenic patients. This means that these patients are not just cured, but their life as very much enriched by the experience of conquer the disorder and self-transformation. They will continue improve still further.


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