Tuesday, May 5, 2015

Stranger than fiction

I ran across this older than a year email and remembered again how there were some people who absolutely could not believe that the book was nonfiction. I never could understand why that was. I think this from a reader provides at least one plausible explanation (another reason why I actually like the premise of that iZombie tv show -- people really are living in such different brains from each other):

I was informed of your website and subsequently your book by a friend and former colleague.  We worked together for almost 10 years and at some point realized we had a lot of common world views and didn't understand peoples emotional attachments to supposed negative actions.

As we peeled away layers of our friendship it became clear that we had both "cheated" on boyfriends and felt nothing that would constitute shame.  That was only the tip of the iceberg.  We kept so many of each other's secrets and still do.  I get nothing out of gossip and know it serves me better to keep her secrets as much as it serves her to keep mine.

When people see us together they assume we are on our own planet.  We are very well liked individually and collectively and are two of the smartest people I'm aware of.  We often joked about how things would easier if certain people were dead.  It wasn't that we would actually kill them, but just a logical fact that it would be easier if something killed them.  What prevented us from any wrongdoing ever was not our moral bias but our awareness of the consequences.

We joked a lot about being sociopaths and started to really look into it.  Well before I came across your book, I already knew.  Here's the thing.  I've read a lot of bad reviews of the book wherein people are shocked that someone would try to pass that off as nonfiction.  I merely read it as written confirmation of everything I have ever known about the way I think.  However, it messes with their construct of a functional person.  It reads like a hoax to them when it is anything but.

Additionally, I have met others like my friend and I.  It's something subtle that I can pick up on.  Maybe they haven't figured out why they are different yet.  They're always smarter and ask questions I would have asked.  I'm drawn to them and after each and every meeting, I text that friend and say.  "I've found another.  So and so is one of us."  I tell no one.  I thrive more on keeping the secret to myself and I feel a little less alone.

You said you would tell me who you are. You know who I am.  Feel free to use any of this on your website. For all I care, you can make me the face of non-violent sociopaths.  I'll take everyone on because I like the challenge and no one is going to take me seriously anyway, much to their own demise.

Sunday, May 3, 2015

Sociopaths in literature: The Seducer's Diary

I once knew of a girl whose story forms the substance of the diary. Whether he has seduced others I do not know... we learn of his desire for something altogether arbitrary. With the help of his mental gifts he knew how to tempt a girl to draw her to him without caring to possess her in any stricter sense.

I can imagine him able to bring a girl to the point where he was sure she would sacrifice all then he would leave without a word let a lone a declaration a promise. 

The unhappy girl would retain the consciousness of it with double bitterness because there was not the slightest thing she could appeal to. She could only be constantly tossed about in a terrible witches' dance at one moment reproaching herself forgiving him at another reproaching him and then since the relationship would only have been actual in a figurative sense she would constantly have to contend with the doubt that the whole thing might only have been an imagination.

Søren Kierkegaard 

Friday, May 1, 2015

Sociopaths = utilitarians

Sometimes I get people pushing back on the idea that sociopathic are largely utilitarian (think trolley problem, etc). I was looking through some old emails, however, and found this Psychology Today article about there being an actual empirically recognized link between the two. My guess is that utilitarians are not necessarily sociopaths. My guess is, however, that it is true that sociopaths naturally default to a more utilitarian way of thinking because there almost is no other universal, sustainable basis of decision making for a sociopath to choose that would work in almost any situation without the sociopath being run out of town for outrageous selfishness. From the article:

As The Economist recently wrote, a forthcoming paper in Cognition (link is external) reports that experiment participants "who indicated greater endorsement of utilitarian solutions had higher scores on measures of Psychopathy, machiavellianism, and life meaninglessness" (from the paper abstract). 

From the Economist article in the link above:

One of the classic techniques used to measure a person's willingness to behave in a utilitarian way is known as trolleyology. The subject of the study is challenged with thought experiments involving a runaway railway trolley or train carriage. All involve choices, each of which leads to people's deaths. For example: there are five railway workmen in the path of a runaway carriage. The men will surely be killed unless the subject of the experiment, a bystander in the story, does something. The subject is told he is on a bridge over the tracks. Next to him is a big, heavy stranger. The subject is informed that his own body would be too light to stop the train, but that if he pushes the stranger onto the tracks, the stranger's large body will stop the train and save the five lives. That, unfortunately, would kill the stranger.

Dr Bartels and Dr Pizarro knew from previous research that around 90% of people refuse the utilitarian act of killing one individual to save five. What no one had previously inquired about, though, was the nature of the remaining 10%.
***
They found a strong link between utilitarian answers to moral dilemmas (push the fat guy off the bridge) and personalities that were psychopathic, Machiavellian or tended to view life as meaningless. 

Wednesday, April 29, 2015

Choosing the sociopath

A reader writes:

Just read your book, and I thought it was fascinating stuff.

I have a question about Morgan, though. You talk about her losing her job, falling into eating disorders and drug abuse. You say you can't take all the "credit" for her decline, and I know you don't feel an ounce of remorse, but do you think her decline would have occurred if you had never met?

My response:

Actually, in this case, I think it would have. You may be surprised to hear that we are still very good friends, we probably talk a few times a week on the phone. After she went to several treatment facilities and spend some time in 12 step programs, she really turned her life around and is now making six figures in a high-powered job with a side business that is her passion and that fulfills her creative outlets.

I certainly don't think that messing with her during that time somehow led her to this good result. But I do feel like as a result of our interactions she adopted a lot of my ways of thinking and looking at herself with a harsh brutality that allowed her to, finally when she was ready, look at herself with unflinching honesty and make the changes necessary -- to eliminate her personal obstructions to her success and continued growth as a person.

The thing is, and this is what I had hoped to communicate in the book but maybe was unclear on, people like that are seeking self-destruction and they will get it in any form, whether it is from me their friendly sociopath friend, or from drugs and alcohol, or from cutting, or from self sabotage of any other form that seems to appeal to them in that moment. When someone seems hellbent on self destruction, it's easy to villainize the drug dealer (or bartender? or Hostess cupcakes? or gambling establishments? or escort for hire?) or the the sociopath friend because they're a handy target but they're of course more the method than the root cause in a guns don't kill people sort of way. This may not actually be true, but I have found that people on this path to obliterate themselves or their life, at least partially and for whatever reason, will continue that way no matter what you do or how you react to them until they are ready themselves to change. I'd be very interested to hear other people's opinions about this, but am less interested in bystanders' random thoughts than from people who have actually experienced this first hand. 

(It's a little popular on this blog to take the Sam Harris side of life and say that people don't have as much choice as we often think we do, but I think when it comes to people's involvement with sociopaths I think there is often more choice and responsibility there than some would like to acknowledge. It's not like sociopaths have an otherworldly superhypnosis ability to compel people into engaging in activities that they would never do without compulsion.) 

Perhaps surprisingly, I think that because I was willing to indulge her on these activities rather being preachy, I am one of the few friends that she still has from that time period. With the other friends of that era, I believe that she either gave up on them, or they gave up on her. In fact, I know that I am one of only a few friends from longer than a couple years that she stays in regular contact with, and that she would consider me her best friend.

For some reason this reminded me of this recent comment on a not so fresh post:

My father is narcissistic. I was his favoured child, his very best billboard. Which is as much as to say I was the most codependent. 

No one can keep up with my father.

I won't labour the details other than to say I was fertile ground for the most charming of seductive sociopaths.

That whole affair woke me the fuck up. I like referring to this gentleman (with whom I still work) as our Friendly Neighbourhood Psychopath (FNP).

He gave me the red pill stuffed inside a Koko Black chocolate. Delicious. He set me free in the Matrix while everyone else dreams. I see the world in an utterly different way now; in which society is a context rather than a constraint; that rules are mere control; that morality is instinctive, a social adaptation to keep us cooperating and not excluded from our place by the campfire; that we are merely organisms in a perennial competition for resources. All that PLUS neurotypicals *are* wired for connection. And we dwindle when we don't get it (hence all the weeping socios cause). You know, I really didn't know this last point. 

I crave the FNP 'cause his games and his sex hit some dopamine high notes. Not to mention his beauty and intelligence. His intelligence and thrill seeking are - surprise, surprise - reminiscent of my father's.

Yet not even the FNP could keep pace with my narcissistic father (the food chain, the food chain, oh that is a story!) No one can. And I wonder if the rhythms my father set as the cadence of my life can ever be changed.

All this stuff about love - I learnt many things from the FNP and the best thing I learned was self-sufficiency. By this I mean integration, living in accordance with your own nature. An adult should be able to look after their own emotional needs and for a neurotypical, this involves thriving in community. Socios must live in community too and it is a tension for them.

We all have our struggles. I take my lessons from running head on into life and to be frank, it's the best way to change. Emotional and novel experiences provide fertile ground for remodelling the brain. 

I keep a vision of being integrated, adventurous and thriving... but those games, baby, are better than sex (and that's saying something!) Dear me, perhaps I still have some lessons to learn the hard way (counts down to next meeting in T - 10d while we are both obliged by the court to refrain from contacting the other)

Yeah, so that's my struggle. I do want a companion. And it's better to be honest about that lest the FNP play his pipe again to that tune. 

Tuesday, April 28, 2015

Irish journalist request

From an Irish journalist:

I'm an Irish freelance journalist, working primarily for The Irish Times newspaper and the Huffington Post. I'm looking for Irish sociopaths or people with antisocial personality disorder, whether diagnosed or self-diagnosed, to talk about their life, how they behave, how they have come to understand themselves, and so on. I'm happy to conduct interviews anonymously and to tread carefully so as not to identify any interviewees. Feel free to contact me: petemcguire@gmail.com I would hope to do get moving on this by early May if possible. Discretion assured.
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