Thursday, July 9, 2015

How do you cope?

From a reader:

I have recently come across your blog and it's given me a new perspective. It's interesting, many of your readers seem to be very high-functioning. This is not the case with me. I've had some trouble since early on being a "functional member of society", ergo I can't hold down a job, my family hates me, and I'm quite the drifter. Now don't be fooled, this does not much upset me. 

I found your blog after my psychiatrist (after some time of "therapy") informed me that I qualify for a diagnosis of Narcissistic Personality Disorder. He also told me that I have a few antisocial traits, but barely don't qualify for a diagnosis of ASPD, the closest official variant of sociopathy. Now after I received this diagnosis, I was really put off because I can't stand narcissists, so I did some digging on NPD with antisocial traits, ended up reading "Mask of Sanity" and your very own enlightening book, "Confessions of a Sociopath." I don't believe in self-diagnosis, but I believe I would fit more into Dr. Robert Hare's depiction of psychopathy.


Tuesday, July 7, 2015

Psychology Survey - MBTI

A request:

I was interested to see if there could be any correlation between any MBTI facets and sociopathy, so I created a survey to investigate.  It's only 3 short questions, so it will take about a minute.  As the experiment is looking only at sociopathy, I would ask empaths to not particpate.   I will share with you the results provided that a reasonable number of people submit answers.

Here is the survey:
https://www.surveymonkey.com/s/ZH68SNC

Here is a personality test that is generally reliable:
http://www.humanmetrics.com/cgi-win/jtypes2.asp

Sunday, July 5, 2015

Psychopaths excel at deceptive facial expressions

A reader sent me a link to the article "Would I lie to you? ‘'leakage’' in deceptive facial expressions relates to psychopathy and emotional intelligence."  In the study, researchers tested the ability of psychopaths and those with high emotional intelligence ("EI") in emotional deception.  Here are some fascinating highlights (citations omitted):
  • Emotional deception via the alteration of facial expressions can occur in three ways : simulating an expression involves adopting an expression in the absence of any real emotion; masking an emotion involves replacing a felt emotion with a different emotional expression; and neutralizing an expression involves concealing a felt emotion with a neutral face.
  • Some psychopathic individuals are chameleon-like actors and appear to use their acting skills to effectively manipulate others in various interpersonal contexts. In corporate settings, white-collar criminals with psychopathic characteristics, such as Bernard Madoff, often find easy victims by appearing trustworthy, empathetic, and kind. Psychopathic offenders can readily feign remorse and a pro-social attitude to manipulate their way into lower sentences (i.e., manslaughter rather than murder), permissions to appeal their sentences, and undeserved conditional release. Despite their much longer criminal histories and poorer conditional release histories, psychopaths are 2.5 times more likely than non-psychopaths to be released when they apply for parole . Further, these decisions are faulty; psychopathic offenders in both studies spent fewer successful days on release compared to non-psychopaths released. In fact, extended interpersonal contact with a psychopath can lead to less accurate perceptions of psychopathic traits.  
  • Despite evidence that psychopathic individuals are successful manipulators, the manner in which they deceive and manipulate others is open to question. Psychopathy arguably is associated with effective emotional deception. The psychopath’s distinctive lack of emotional experience may prevent emotional ‘‘interference’’ in feigning emotional displays. That is, because of the lack of real emotion, there may be less genuine emotion ‘‘leaking’’ onto the false face during a fabricated emotional display. In support of this prediction, Herpetz et al. (2001) found that psychopathic offenders exhibited fewer and less intense facial expressions in response to pleasant and unpleasant emotional images relative to controls. We predict that psychopathic individuals, particularly those with strong interpersonal-affective features of the disorder, will have an advantage when attempting to control their facial expressions during deception because of their lack of emotion; such individuals may express less ‘‘leakage’’ of genuine emotion during deception. However, due to emotional recognition deficits and a lack of understanding of what a sincere expression ‘‘looks like’’, these individuals will not necessarily be proficient at creating a facial expression consistent with the feigned emotion.
  • As predicted, psychopathic traits – specifically, high levels of interpersonal manipulation – were related to shorter durations of unintended emotional ‘‘leakage’’ during deceptive expressions. In contrast, the erratic lifestyle element of psychopathy predicted greater emotional inconsistency during deceptive displays.  Individuals higher in EI – specifically, the ability to perceive and express emotion – feigned emotions more convincingly than others but were not more immune to emotional leakage.
In other words, psychopaths are the best at not letting other actual emotions interfere with the feigned emotion (presumably because the psychopath does not have strong feelings to suppress), but that people with high EI did a better job mimicking actual emotion (presumably because they know better what those emotions look/feel like).

Friday, July 3, 2015

House of Cards

I've just started watching this show. I don't know why I haven't started before. I guess because I'm not really that interested at all in politics? Anyway, I'm still in the first season so I don't think these are going to be terrible spoilers, but I was a little surprised at how realistic the depiction of a high functioning sociopath seems to be for Frank Underwood.

There are the obvious things: obsessed with power, crafty, manipulative, duplicitive (spell check tells me that's not an actual word), has few intimates and the rest of his acquaintances are just pawns in his chess game. But there are also some of the less obvious things: bisexual, oddly friendly and helpful without any seeming motive and just as oddly vindictive in a way that seems to far exceed the original offense. He often does things that are generous with little hope of the good deed being reciprocated in kind, but he feels like "generosity is its own form of power". He's not delusional, but he also has random beliefs that don't seem entirely rational either, like a faith/belief in karma. If he respects you, he's not going to bullshit you, which may be nice for the open marriage he has with his wife (the marriage and love angle also seems like a pretty realistic depiction of the sort of partnership built on respect and admiration rather than love that you would expect), but he also clearly has impulse and rage problems and his crazy risks don't always pan out well for him. He's the type of person that you would love to have for a friend if you needed any of his prodigious skills, but also would need to watch yourself around, which maybe isn't that bad of a trade off?

Any way, I hope the subsequent seasons stay true to this character and for those of you who haven't seen this show yet, I would recommend it. Netflix.

Wednesday, July 1, 2015

Regret being sociopathic?

From a reader:

I consider myself neurologically atypical if not also sociopathic. I don't have any official diagnosis so I'm not sure if my self-diagnosis is useful.

I wanted to ask about regret for being sociopathic. Much of the website posts and your book resonate with me rather deeply. I see myself in many many of the different posts and comments and stories.
I read the book (having been drawn to it primarily because I have considered myself atypical since my teen years) in only a matter of days and determined that I very strongly matched enough of the factors or variables that would classify me in the socio realm.

I struggle with something of a cognitive dissonance, though. And I'm not sure other identified sociopaths would agree I am in that realm based largely on this factor. I can't fit in anywhere since I behave in manners so out of place and abnormal to the folks at large (social, work, etc.)

But I want to. I see how others act and emote and engage and connect and I get angry at myself for not understanding how to do that and not being able to. I have definitely learned how to feign it, but I find that cuts a number of relationships short because the empathic (to use book language) types try to get me to open up and be vulnerable like they are and I think they see how shallow that pool of mine is or see something else that creates a sense of unease and they remain somewhat distance.

In a few instances I've invested a lot of time and energy into a specific person to get them to convince themselves that I am more and deeper and I feel things just like them. I have in essence made some very good pawns from it. The latest addition to my collection of people is someone who I've somehow managed to totally ...glamour. They are enamored to the point where I've had to detach time and energy from them. To the point where I think I've broken them or gone too far. They adore me, they love me, they want more of me, they dream of me, they masturbate to me. I am overwhelmed that I did this.

The latest ...conquest only happened after I underwent a lengthy period of loneliness / retrospection / self-revelation. I'm in my late 20s now and I identified my last couple of years with the "blue" period from your book, where you seem to have realized just how lonely life can be, for someone who has a rather difficult disconnect from a lot of other run-of-the-mill people.

This is getting long, but ...do you, in some ways or at certain times...regret being sociopathic? Do you have desires to be 'normal?' To not have to think about yourself in these ways? To not have to watch yourself carefully and present a persona all the time? To just...be able to relax and be "yourself" and not worry about being chased up the mountain by torches and pitchforks?

M.E.: I think I definitely do feel that way. It's not necessarily that I feel dysphoria so much as a sense of meaninglessness that can started creeping up on me in my late 20s and took firm hold of my early thirties. If everything is a game, then what's the point of playing? That sort of thing. And there is a lot of effort spent just maintaining a status quo. It just didn't seem that sustainable, at least not when you looked as lasting for decades. So I've tried to expand my mental and psychological horizons, so to speak, in terms of figuring out different ways to be. I don't ever expect to cease being sociopathic entirely, but I guess I am aiming to be more bilingual. 
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