Friday, February 6, 2015

Re-thinking personality disorders

From a reader:

I read your blog post from 2012 titled "Why I hate narcissists" and I think you should try to think of them a little differently(if you don't already, considering the post is from 2012.) I've been best friends with a narcissist since elementary school. He is obsessed with being liked, looking cool, etc. He'll lie to make himself look good, do anything for attention etc. He has all the hallmark traits of a classic narcissist.

My point is, I have always kept him around as a sort of sidekick. He is not very smart, again a trait of a narcissist, so he doesn't notice when I am manipulating him. He loves attention, no matter if it's good or bad, so he was a great fall-guy anytime we got in trouble. He'd gladly take all the blame just for the attention, allowing me to get away scot-free. He would also improve my image and allow me to indirectly manipulate my impression on others through him. He would lie about me in order to make himself look better. After all, if his friends are great then that makes him look great too. Of course that meant that I could put all the blame on him if any of the lies were discovered, thus avoiding all risk while still getting all the reward. 

All in all I'd just like to say that narcissists might be the most useful tools in a sociopaths arsenal. so you might want to reconsider your opinions on them.

I have actually already have reconsidered my opinions on them. "Hated" was always an overstatement as it applied to narcissists, I'm sure. But also I think I don't think of people as fitting such neat boxes as "narcissist" anymore. Or at least I try not to if I can help it.  I still think that labels are a useful abstraction that help people understand themselves and others. But particularly for personality disorders, the lines separating us are not bright as people make it out to seem. These diagnoses say things like you need "three or more" of a long list of characteristics, but a lot of people have in their mind that a "true" diagnosis actually looks like. Like the classic BPD is a female cutter who is emotionally unstable with outbursts and oversexualized or whatever else. Where do they get this picture from? Stereotypes probably owe their genesis to truth, but the stereotype is by its nature an oversimplification. Still, people assume that if you don't fit the stereotype you must not be X. And I sort of feel like personality disorder diagnoses (at least as they are commonly conceptualized and used) are essentially as valuable and truthful as a stereotype. And that's where the label making starts getting a little absurd. Lately I am more of the opinion that personality disorders all share certain things in common -- problems with identity and sense of self, e.g. Then there are maybe 50 or so traits that they could also have depending on how the lack of sense of self played out in their development -- variations in how they understand and deal with their emotions, variations in their conception of their self, variations in how they deal with others, are they generally passive or aggressive, are they generally driven or lazy, introverted or extroverted, delusional or self-aware? And is it possible to have a driven introverted self-aware sociopath? Or do they all come out extroverted lazy and delusional? What if, like a rubics cube, we change just one of those traits. When does a sociopath who has all of the classic traits suddenly cease to be a sociopath? Taking away one trait? Two? And which ones are essential and which ones could you expect to see some variety within the population

Tuesday, February 3, 2015

Sociopath or not?

From a reader:

Hi, I was wondering if you could give me some kind of answer on whether or not I have sociopathic tendencies? Honestly I'm pretty concerned with my thoughts and emotions and I was hoping you could give me some kind of advice if possible.

I'm a 14 year old female and from a very young age I've been known to be aggressive and both verbally and physically abusive. It has calmed down slightly throughout the years but for a while now I've been having both suicidal and homocidal thoughts. I have no intention with carrying out with the actions but at times they're so overwhelming I get frustrated. I'm no longer in schooling for the moment because of my outbursts and anger, I have no talent for being patient and although I had numerous chances, I was unable to change my behaviour and how I reacted to things. It got to the point where I could barely make it through a whole class.

I've researched the signs and symptoms and I could honestly relate to some. I'm going to point a few things out which I lack and if its decided that they're one of the primary traits of being one, it'll make the rest of this email irrelevant. 

"Animal cruelty" is beyond what I could do. If I were in a situation where I could either choose a human or a dog to live, It'd be the dog all the way. I don't take much interest in animals and it doesn't bother me that most die but there are around 3-4 certain animals I couldn't tolerate dying. I'm rather fond when it comes to the common house pet. With all of that said I still wouldn't mind slaughtering something, maybe even dissecting.

"Lack of empathy", I'd be lying if I said a severe lack of it. I'm to the point where I'm not exactly sure if I lack it or not. I care about my family and would do anything to attempt to prevent danger but I'm not too sure if its love. I recently attended my nan's funeral, of course my eyes got watery but I couldn't cry. I wanted to, I really did considering I looked like a heartless bitch but I couldn't. Over the last two years I've been gradually losing it. 

I believe I'm quite smart, I'm able to spot things that most people couldn't. I've been told numerous times that I'm manipulative but not as straight forward as that. I could change someones opinion within minutes of talking to him/her. Sometimes I get so caught up with thinking about myself that I over see reality and wonder if I'm enabled to some kind of supernatural ability, I believe that I could do many things, anything I want to do. 

I'm just going to run over some things that would possibly be needed to judge and provide your opinion. In the past I've done drugs and have drank alcohol, well whenever I go out. I'm really anti-social, I can't stand being around others for more than an hour at most. The first time I smoked was to try it out, the second time was an attempt to calm down and since I've been smoking. Sometimes I enjoy laying in bed and thinking of ways to end people, to end myself. I've made plans in my head that I couldn't follow through with. Honestly, I'd love to follow through with them but there's things that stop me. Simple things like the outcome of it, wasting away in a cell where I couldn't fulfil my ambitions and become something better then everyone else. I couldn't do it for simple things like that, including what my family would go through because of me.

My old school suggested that I have ADHD, the one after suggested I had some kind of severe anger problem. I often get irritated and angry and when I do I say things that I wouldn't normally say, I take my frustration out on walls and objects in the house and when at my worse I'd lash out without even thinking. 

I'm not too sure what else to say or if you even took time to read this but if you did, thank-you.

Saturday, January 31, 2015

Beliefs vs. ideas

I thought this was interesting idea, from a recent comment on an old post:

And finally, as for your comment about thoughts vs beliefs, I would say I personally have found it better to have ideas about as many things as possible as opposed to beliefs since ideas are more easily changed if necessary whereas beliefs can limit you as a human being. I'm not saying it's wrong to have beliefs - it's healthy. Just that the more beliefs you have about people and the world, the more limited you are in the ways you can experience the world and I think that would be a good frame of reference for anyone who identifies as a sociopath as well. 

I do think this is how sociopaths probably generally see the world. It's fine for me to have in my mind a series of what I guesstimate are the probabilities that something is true -- e.g. whether or not the moon landing was real, whether or not I am real, whether or not the whole world is a simulation, whether I love my siblings, whether my religion is true. But I don't really have beliefs about most things. I know that some people are the opposite. I have a close family member who has beliefs about all sorts of things, like if you tell him a story about an issue with a co-worker he might have a belief about what really happened and why the person got upset. That belief will seem as true to him in the moment as whether or not he is was born on a particular date -- in fact maybe more so, because he doesn't remember specifically being born and so it doesn't feel as real to him as does his belief about your co-worker. And they are deeply held and he seems to identify with them at a profound level. And it does seem like it would limit you, especially if you were the type to have a strong sense of self. Because these beliefs are you, and if someone challenges your beliefs then they are challenging you and you will be defensive. Does that sound right?

It reminds me of this recent post.


Tuesday, January 27, 2015

Culpability

From a reader:

http://www.npr.org/templates/transcript/transcript.php?storyId=180096559

RAINE: You know, I mean at one level we can talk about treatment. We may come on to that a little bit later. But take that individual with all the boxes checked, all the risk factors, and their free will was constrained early in life, OK, and they commit a murder. Then let's take you, who I presume you don't have too many risk factors in your life, and then you go and kill me, you commit the same act.

You've got no excuses; the other person has. Don't we go easier on that other person and instead of either executing them or taking away their basic rights, we put them more in a safe, secure institution, which - where the regime is not as harsh, and their basic human rights are not lost?

So at one level, even before we get into treatment, I think people like this could be held in safer, more humane conditions because, you know, prisons are dangerous places to be. And, you know, we should cut them some slack. Protect society - I'm not saying let them back out on the street, because, as I say, they could be walking time bombs waiting to explode - but let's step back a bit and recognize that, you know, OK, maybe we do have free will, but some people have more free will than others.

Sunday, January 25, 2015

Feeling and thinking

This was an interesting video (from a magician of all people) about the dangers of feeling something rather than thinking about something:


Pair with this interesting thought from Krista Tippett:

Our convincing feeling is that time is absolute. Our convincing feeling is that there should be no limit to how fast you can travel. Our convincing feelings are based on our experiences because of the size that we are, literally, the speed at which we move, the fact that we evolved on a planet under a particular star. So our eyes, for instance, are at peak in their perception of yellow, which is the wave band the sun peaks at. It’s not an accident that our perceptions and our physical environment are connected. We’re limited, also, by that. That makes our intuitions excellent for ordinary things, for ordinary life. That’s how our brains evolved and our perceptions evolved, to respond to things like the Sun and the Earth and these scales. And if we were quantum particles, we would think quantum mechanics were totally intuitive. Things fluctuating in and out of existence, or not being certain of whether they’re particles or waves — these kinds of strange things that come out of quantum theory — would seem absolutely natural…

Our intuitions are based on our minds, our minds are based on our neural structures, our neural structures evolved on a planet, under a sun, with very specific conditions. We reflect the physical world that we evolved from. It’s not a miracle.
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