Sunday, April 24, 2016

Just a dick?

In what has become an impromptu series of "Sociopath, or just _____?" (e.g., sociopath, or just puberty? Sociopath, or just smart? Sociopath, or just depression? Etc., a reader wonders:

I'm well aware you get hundreds of emails from people who are desperate to become sociopaths, so they tell you how unfeeling they are and how they don't care about anybody. And after reading your blog for over a year a question began to fester in the back of my brain and I crave an answer. Why would people, at the slightest lack of empathy, jump to the conclusion that they are a sociopath? And the reason i bring this up is, i used to feel like them. At some point in my life i just decided, i love to hurt people, so i must be a sociopath. I now realize that i'm just a douche. I still enjoy seeing people crumble before me when i attack all of their insecurities at once, but I'm not a sociopath or a psychopath. But what i'm confused by is, why is it so hard for people to come to the realization that they are just dicks?

M.E.:

I think you may be confusing lack of empathy with sadism. Some people don't care about other people, but they have perfectly intact empathy. Other people know that they don't connect with people, and it looks (internally) and feels a lot more like what I would imagine autism would feel like. Their brain is not capable of processing empathy the most people's brains (apparently) do. They can pretend that those empathy and emotional connections things are going on, in fact, they can pretend so well that no one else suspects what's really going on.

Although there's certainly bound to be overlap between empathy-impaired people and dicks, a diminished capacity for empathy is different and doesn't necessarily lead to enjoying exploiting people, or even just taking a special pleasure in your own agenda at others expense. So which are you? 

Friday, April 22, 2016

Borderline stigmatized

I keep realizing just how much borderline personality disorder is also stigmatized. I wonder even between sociopaths and BPDs, whether people who have experienced both may even be more anti BPD? But the parallels between the stigmas interest me, e.g. this review of a BPD memoir:

I've read a handful of books about borderline personality disorder -- or more accurately, how to cope with all the shit you're subjected to when a borderline person is in your life -- but this is the first one I've read by someone with BPD. I'm about 80% through. It's very good. I suspect that she's glossing over or omitting some of the more awful things she's done to other people. But it's well-written. It made me feel compassion, when my first reaction to a borderline is fury. Van Gelder describes how awful it is to try for years to get help, finally getting a wishy-washy diagnosis, and then to try to read about your diagnosis... only to find all the books and online support groups are for the non-borderline people. And it doesn't help that the diagnosis is so stigmatized that any health professional trying to help you doesn't want to give you the diagnosis in the first place. She was very lucky to find a job and a place to live, and to be functional enough that she could persist in seeking help. We need a system of mental health care that doesn't rely on people who have difficulty with their daily functioning to somehow be able to advocate for themselves, as Van Gelder was, and to have family members who are able to help them as much as her stepfather did. The way our society deals with the mentally ill is either a set of unreasonable expectations (if we don't understand what we're doing) or else just inhumane (if we do understand what we're doing).

Wednesday, April 20, 2016

Quote: self-doubt

"I've never joined any organization—not even the ones I've organized myself. I prize my own independence too much. And philosophically, I could never accept any rigid dogma or ideology, whether it's Christianity or Marxism. One of the most important things in life is what Judge Learned Hand described as 'that ever-gnawing inner doubt as to whether you're right.' If you don't have that, if you think you've got an inside track to absolute truth, you become doctrinaire, humorless and intellectually constipated. The greatest crimes in history have been perpetrated by such religious and political and racial fanatics, from the persecutions of the Inquisition on down to Communist purges and Nazi genocide."

-Saul Alinsky

Sunday, April 17, 2016

Not sociopath, just smart?

From a reader:

Your blog has resonated with me for a while now. Despite not being a sociopath, getting an intuitive understanding of the illusion of free will can tend to make you more like one. Your recent post sort of illustrated the blind fact that was sitting in front of my face, why I, a fairly normal empathetic person, has no problem with manipulating people, especially if its benign.

When you see all of human desire, behavior and nature as a mechanism, even the most romanticized, idealized sensibilities start to become nothing more than  mechanisms.

At first, this might make someone depressed, as their idealistic illusions of meaning and purpose start to disintegrate. But, another thought can arise - that depression itself, that sense of emptiness, it's just a mechanism too.

Once you get there, you can start plugging into your instincts more rationally. Books like The Art of Seduction and 48 Laws of Power resonate with me. They wouldn't have in the past. My personality has become more Machiavellian, at least in the sense that I am much more keen on evaluating actions in terms of their consequences instead of ideals.

M.E.:

You sound like my friend. She sort of insists that I became the way I became because I was smart and so I naturally saw everything in terms of gears and levers to be manipulated to get what I wanted. I think it's because that's how she feels. She is probably currently in the depression state, because I think you're right, it's hard for meaning to exist at the same time that you are aware that everything can be reduced to simple mechanics. She has taken it a step further than just the belief that everything is simple mechanics, so it's even worse. Since she was a child, she's believed that she is *so* smart and *so* good at manipulating the gears and levers of people and the world that she fears that she controls everything, which because she's an empath, makes her constantly worry that she will mess everything up.

But when she says these things to me, I understand how different I am from her. Because it's not that seeing things in terms of gears and levers as a little kid made me a sociopath, it's being sociopathic made made me see the world in terms of gears and levers. So I never used to worry about things like meaning, because I never had it and then lost it. It was only after I tried to be less sociopathic that the question of meaning became a real issue for me.

Friday, April 15, 2016

Famous sociopaths: Taylor Swift (part 2)

I have never actually said that Taylor Swift is a sociopath,* but she I have said that she is a master of cultivating power. And she has been doing so since she was a teenager. So you draw your own conclusions...

A reader draws hers:

I have spent many hours on your site over the years and find it to be very informative. I was reminded of your page again (for the first time in a little while) after a discussion about Taylor Swift's behavior at last nights "Grammy's."

There is a small but growing number of people out there beginning to believe she is a sociopath. I am one of them. Would you consider doing a post about Miss Swift? I would love to hear your take on this along with any discussion in the comments.

She a complicated woman. She's often described as "calculated" which is a term she hates. Apparently she told Kanye west that she approved of a song lyric he wrote about her, only to to turn around and publicly denounce him and play the victim afterwards (this all went down last month).

I like this article: http://m.riverfronttimes.com/musicblog/2015/09/25/evidence-suggests-taylor-swift-is-a-psychopath because while it's definitely subjective and not objective fact, it does interestingly line up her words and behaviours with sociopath characteristics. Also if you google her interview with GQ magazine you can tell that the reporter throughout the interview seems to recognize these characteristics in her. 

You are definitely right, she's perfected her art! 

*And I wouldn't say anything about her other than that, honestly because she makes me a little nervous. She doesn't seem to have any boundaries as to how low she will go to get into a random fight with some nobody or shame some unsuspecting ordinary-man. She's reminds me a little of Putin in the same sense of seemingly indiscriminate life-ruining and potential for extreme pettiness? 
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