Monday, July 13, 2015

Moral objections

In Mormon world there is a woman who is Mormon-famous, largely as a blogger. She was involved in a plane crash and suffered extensive burns all over her face and body, along with her husband who was not quite as badly hurt. She relates her emotions at the time of waking from her coma to see herself for the first time post-accident as feeling like she wanted to just die, that she never wanted her children to see her that way. She later has a change of heart and became sort of an advocate and a promoter of self acceptance, among other things. Tonight I was thinking of what a drastic change that was -- from not wanting even your own children to see you, to being photographed and viewed by millions. And despite no longer being attractive by society's standards, she is widely accepted, loved, and viewed as brave, and I'm sure rightly so.  

I was thinking about my own experiences with religious or other morally driven types who have read my book and responded to me about it. Largely (as I expected from this turn-the-other-cheek crowd) Mormons tend to be amazingly supportive. But there were a few who were not, including one person that I knew personally who put it to me a little this way -- it's not the things I've done that were so problematic morally (which are, after all, relatively tame compared to the sorts of sinners that churches routinely welcome in their doors), but how I feel about those things, e.g. lack of remorse. Of course, lack of remorse happens to be a symptom of my personality disorder. Which begs the question -- in what ways am I responsible for my lack of remorse (that resulted from genetics and my disrupted childhood, neither of which I had any control over)? Under what philosophical or moral standard does that make me a morally objectionable person? How am I not like the burn victim -- ugly or distasteful society's standards, but allowed to not feel shame or self-hate about my psychological disfigurement because I suffer it through no fault of my own.

Along the same lines, this recent comment on an older post:

Hello human race. I have an unpopular opinion to share; 

Psychopaths/sociopaths are either genetic, or made via extreme trauma before the age of 3 yrs, or both! In both cases, these people have no control. They don't choose this.

I present the solution: Star Trek's Data's emotion chip. Psychopath/sociopath has complete control at all times, can choose to remove it whenever they wish, dial it up or down, or off. 

How to get them to do it? Present it as a dare, a challenge. Therapists to help them with the transition. Problem over. 

They are still people. A monster is a victim who got no help when they needed it, that's why they're monsters now. They had no choice, no control. 

Offer it to them, then. If we empaths are so much better than them, prove it. Don't hate them. Help them.


Saturday, July 11, 2015

Song: To the Shoreline

From a reader:

I'm an aspie but I'm very interesting about the subject of sociopathy and find socios fascinating.

Anyway, I was listening to some music from one of my favorite bands when I stumbled upon a song whose lyrics reminded me a lot about what I've read about relationships with sociopaths.

Maybe you'll appreciate it, so here's a link to the song (with lyrics):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K3F43IxkXio


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).

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