Sociopath

From what I've read, a sociopath never learns on a visceral level that other people are real. You know that moment in Home Alone when the kid tries shaving for the first time, and then does the beginner mistake of immediately applying aftershave? Remember how everyone in the audience cringed? That is what a sociopath doesn't do, not naturally. And as a result, emotionally there is no more inherently alone person on Earth. They feel (not as a conscious belief) that they are the lone human being surrounded by millions of walking mannequins. The sociopath learns to behave like a mannequin, but of course never becomes one and feels no guilt or compunction about anything done to a mannequin. Other people aren't real. They're robots. Hurting one is impossible. Damaging it has no more moral impact than breaking a lightbulb.

It is a vastly lonely and unhappy existence, especially if said sociopath is even vaguely aware on any level of what they are missing--of the full range of human interaction which humans beings are designed to experience, but which the sociopath never does.

As a psychiatrist I've had some experience. Sometimes through working with the families or children, and occassionally i come across an adolescent that's showing all the signs. I have previously worked in a secure psychiatric hospital for a short time as a junior doctor. Plenty of people with antisocial personality disorder in there.


The definition you've linked is a good one...but there is no such thing as a textbook person or personality. Everyone is a little unique. Also, every item on the checklist is a spectrum, not a yes/no answer. It's not the case that someone would either have "normal" empathy or none, they might have none, a tiny tiny bit, a little bit, some, loads, shedloads etc.

Were there any specific questions you had?

Craig

Scrawler said:

There's a definition of a sociopath here
Has anyone had experience with this type?
Not the serial killer type, but the common, every day variety.

Like this:
"Most people with a conscience find it very difficult to even imagine what it would be like to be without one. Combine this with a sociopath's efforts to blend in, and the result is that most sociopaths go undetected.
Because they go undetected, they wreak havoc on their family, on people they work with, and on anyone who tries to be their friend. A sociopath deceives, takes what he (or she) wants, and hurts people without any remorse. Sociopaths don't feel guilty. They don't feel sorry for what they've done. They go through life taking what they want and giving nothing back. They manipulate and deceive and convincingly lie without the slightest second thought. They leave a path of confusion and upset in their wake."

Click to expand...

Yes, I used to work with one... she was our group secretary. This is very accurate: "A sociopath deceives, takes what he (or she) wants, and hurts people without any remorse. Sociopaths don't feel guilty. They don't feel sorry for what they've done. They go through life taking what they want and giving nothing back. They manipulate and deceive and convincingly lie without the slightest second thought.
They leave a path of confusion and upset in their wake."

This woman was a pathological liar and manipulation/deception was her middle name. If she couldn't deceive or manipulate you she would sabotage your reputation (personally/professionally). She was known to buy people gifts to 'win them over' or convince them that she was a good person, etc. Even when caught in lies she'd keep up the charade - resorted to crying, etc. etc. etc.

We were so glad to see the back of her!!!

Yes, I knew one for years who was so smart it took knowing her closely to watch her missteps. But man were those missteps indicative of a scary, scary lack of conscience.

She was very charming, but after seeing the missteps, you could see the pure manipulation involved. There were other things I learned that she did that she did without me and would know not to tell me - things done openly if she was around more immoral folks [usually theft or cruelty].

It's like a whole other species, imho. I am certain that she would murder someone if she knew she wouldn't get caught - like those women who marry for $$ and then off the husband.

Feel free to PM me if you want anecdotes. I'm actually afraid to post them online because she is so scarily vindictive, and I'd be afraid she'd know I was talking about her!

backslashbaby said:

Feel free to PM me if you want anecdotes. I'm actually afraid to post them online because she is so scarily vindictive, and I'd be afraid she'd know I was talking about her!

Click to expand...

But what if one of us... IS HER?

I once read that emergency service workers (police, soldiers, firefighters, paramedics, emergency room doctors and nurses, etc.) display some signs of sociopathy in their interactions with victims of injury or tragedy. The author seemed unsure whether the profession caused the mindset, or if borderline sociopaths sought out such employment.

I don't believe it, though. Like all pat explanations, it falls apart on further examination.

Quote:
Originally Posted by backslashbaby
Feel free to PM me if you want anecdotes. I'm actually afraid to post them online because she is so scarily vindictive, and I'd be afraid she'd know I was talking about her!

But what if one of us... IS HER?

Click to expand...

Nooooo! It's you, isn't it?

*runs screaming far away from AW*

smcc360 said:

I once read that emergency service workers (police, soldiers, firefighters, paramedics, emergency room doctors and nurses, etc.) display some signs of sociopathy in their interactions with victims of injury or tragedy. The author seemed unsure whether the profession caused the mindset, or if borderline sociopaths sought out such employment.

I don't believe it, though. Like all pat explanations, it falls apart on further examination.

Click to expand...

That sends shivers down my spine. The three sociopaths I had/have the misfortune to know and barely survive were an operating room nurse, a dental assistant, and a firefighter/paramedic. I know plenty of great people in those jobs who are sane, loving humanitarians--but that trio makes me want to seek the relative soft fuzzy comfort within a feeding frenzy of sharks.

The part about them not having a work ethic may be the penchant of some, but that doesn't stop the most clever of them from charming their way through schools and employment on the Peter Principle.

While you are any kind of subordinate, a co-worker, or his/her immediate superior, your life will be a virtual hell . . . and everyone around will fully believe it's all your fault.

smcc360 said:

But what if one of us... IS HER?

I once read that emergency service workers (police, soldiers, firefighters, paramedics, emergency room doctors and nurses, etc.) display some signs of sociopathy in their interactions with victims of injury or tragedy. The author seemed unsure whether the profession caused the mindset, or if borderline sociopaths sought out such employment.

I don't believe it, though. Like all pat explanations, it falls apart on further examination.

Click to expand...

It's good to question that statement. There's a necessary degree of detachment that's needed if you're going to deal with someone in a dreadful state....a certain mindset.

Sometimes you need a confidence bordering on arrogance. You have to believe you're doing the right thing and that it's for the best. You can't let yourself get too caught up in sympathy (which is close to empathy), you do what you have to do.

My own experience of this is more to do with surgeons. They can be some of the most arrogant people you'll ever meet, but there are people who'll carry this detachment on when the crisis is over, and those who'll collapse back to normality as soon as they're behind closed door in the mess.

My own story of this, the time most people would have thought i was an arrogant arsehole was during my time as a junior physician. We had a crash call on a gynaecological ward at about 3am on the busiest weekend near christmas that i've ever worked. The hospital was so full that any patient who needed a bed was wherever a bed was...the gynae ward had every type of illness you could imagine on it...including an elderly paranoid woman who was delirious.

This woman thought the crash team had come to get her. She started running around the ward screaming and throwing things at us wile we were trying to do CPR. She kept bursting through the curtains and it was dangerous....but this woman was about as scared as anyone i'd ever seen. We had a small team at the crash with gynae nurses who hadn't done a real crash in ages. We didn't have the staff to calm the elderly woman and run a successful crash.

I bet we looked like a bunch of sociopathic idiots. The only way through that was complete detachment and stopping the danger this woman posed with the minimum number of staff. We had a nurse march this lady into a side room and keep her there, doing her best to calm her but knowing that stopping her interfering was the immediate life or death problem and had to override the calm and reassuring nursing care that she needed.

There have been other times when i've stepped over a man who was lying on the floor of a psychiatric ward knowing that he was faking being in pain and believing that the only way to help him was for him to learn that he could get the reassurance he wanted by talking to us and he wouldn't get it by rolling around on the floor. another sociopathic doctor moment to any observer.

I guess my point is that no one moment defines an antisocial personality. it's a pattern that repeats over and over, and it's the domiant pattern for that person. Anyone at all is capable of having a sociopathic moment in the right circumstances....and those circumstances would usually be stressful to the point where overthinking them would harm your ability to function.

Craig

OK, I can probably safely tell one anecdote to illustrate the kinds of things I mean.

She told me, laughing about it the whole time, about how clever she was as a little girl. Her much older *relative* moved in because he lost his job in another state. She said that he took away all of the attention from her. But she thought he was funny and liked him.

Still, after a couple of months, she told her parents that he had molested her and tried to get her to do drugs. He got kicked out. She got more attention than before. Win, win, yes?

Chills went up my spine, seriously. I knew that the parents had been estranged from the person for years but didn't know why.

There's a very readable book on sociopaths in the workplace called Snakes in Suits by Robert D. Hare and Paul Babiak.

I would suggest not depending on lay diagnoses of personality disorders.

True.

And if anyone in the know wondered about Histrionic, Borderline, etc., with the anecdote I gave, yes, I would think the girl had more than just Antisocial PD... y'all'd have to tell me. I have an undergrad degree in Psychology that included Abnormal Psych, of course, but I am definitely not a clinician.

The craving for attention is not a symptom of APD, as far as I know. That is important to point out, imho, now that I think about it. Of course, please correct me if I'm wrong on anything [any time] - I'm totally for being corrected, really

DavidZahir said:

From what I've read, a sociopath never learns on a visceral level that other people are real.

Click to expand...

Very well said! That's one of the core characteristics of the sociopath/psychopath. Many feel that it is a result of their lack of attachments during infancy and early childhood. It is through the process of attachment to parents or other caretakers that we get pulled out of our original self-involved state and cross the bridge to the world of other people, whom we start to experience as separate thinking and feeling beings and not merely as extensions of ourselves.

Sociopaths tend to experience others as falling into two groups: schmucks and others. "Others" are those whom the sociopath can't con; schmucks are those on whom the sociopath can get over. Sociopaths try to make everybody into a schmuck. They very often succeed, because they are skilled at manipulation and deception. They have an uncanny ability to size up a situation and see how far they can go. They can read others with remarkable skill. They never accept blame and always deny, minimize, and distort to exculpate themselves.

Does therapy help? Not only does it not help, it has the opposite effect. In a Canadian study, researcher Marnie Rice and others examined sociopaths (psychopaths) who had received therapy in prison vs. those who had not. Therapy actually increased the recidivism rate. The explanation was that the sociopaths who got therapy simply learned what to say in order to be a more convincing manipulator and criminal, and so committed more crimes, eventually getting caught. They did not come to appreciate their fellow huiman beings more as a result of therapy; they only appeared to.

--RAMHALite

Sociopathy and psychopathy are either two names for the same thing, or two names covering things that overlap very closely. I'd like to talk about psychopathy here, because it's recognisable as a common human trait, while people don't normally describe sociopathy that way. Hopefully it will add some insight.

Everyone has the capacity for psychopathy. It's within all of us to see the world as objects. It's a predatory talent if you will, to withdraw our empathy, exploit a situation for our own ends and to work without remorse. You can actually induce psychopathy in people just by telling them certain stories.

It's also an asset for certain tasks. A previous poster mentioned areas like trauma. It's also an asset in military command, policing, parenting, emergency services, self-defence, and in my industry, project managers often demonstrate high levels of psychopathy.

But... most people can't live their lives that way. If we're psychopathic for too long it grows uncomfortable. We want to extend empathy, redefine ourselves in connection to other people, reconnect with our family and tribe, check how other people are seeing us. If we don't, our compassion evaporates and our morality crumbles.

A pathological psychopath typically can extend empathy but never feels that he must. The self-doubt and conscience nagging that causes us to reconnect with other people simply doesn't afflict him. This is why therapy doesn't work. Therapy becomes a learning experience -- how do others see me, and how can I use that?

The amorality and lack of empathy in sociopathy derive from this sort of thinking. It's easy to lie if you have no empathy. You just have to believe in yourself -- and if yourself is all there is, why wouldn't you?

Psychopaths don't necessarily want attention but they do need to feel that they're in control. As long as the world follows their expectations they're happy. When they lose power they'll ruthlessly try and reclaim it -- or else they'll redefine reality so that it doesn't matter any more. Psychopaths have extraordinary levels of belief, and often attract neurotic and borderline personalities who need such belief to feel secure. They'll frequently manipulate such people to maintain their sense of power, and some are happy to be manipulated.

In my work I encounter a lot of psychopaths. Some surveys indicate that the incidence is around 5% for men and 3% for women. But in the workplace they tend to cluster around where the power is -- and that's where I tend to work, so I meet far more than 3-5%. I can usually tell when I'm near a psychopath's lair from the concentration of neurotic and borderline personalities nearby. I sometimes think of a vampire with entranced victims.

Hope that helps.

Yep; it helps me

And she was so exciting and wild and fun and charming at a time where that was the #1 thing I was looking for - fun, reckless times with someone with ooomph.

Oh, she was reckless alright!

PS - and it's fine if I'd have to be neurotic. I certainly was neurotic - I was an anorexic/bulimic cutter at the time, yes. It was years ago...

I sometimes wonder about my sister-in-law...

Ruv Draba said:

You can actually induce psychopathy in people just by telling them certain stories.


Hope that helps.

Click to expand...

You can't.

You can create a situation where someone's actions to an observer may appear to be lacking empathy, or you can temporarily stress them to a point where their normal way of dealing with something goes out the window.

You could create a situation where someone believed it was ok to act in a way they normally wouldn't. The experiments where volunteers were paid to administer electric shocks to people when they answered a question incorrectly comes to mind. The actors recieving the shocks were told to act as though in great pain and the volunteers giving the shocks often carried on giving them as it was all "an experiment" and so ok.

You could pay someone so much that they'd do something the didn't believe in, or you could make an action the lesser or two evils and allow them to justify an action that way. you could even make them feel they had no choice, for example by threatening a loved one.

What you can't easily do is change someone's personality or core beliefs, and one isolated action does not a psychopath make.

Either term you used really applies to a personality type, not an action.

Craig

Wiskel said:

What you can't easily do is change someone's personality or core beliefs, and one isolated action does not a psychopath make.

Click to expand...

Psychopathy is a function of mind, and we all have unacknowledged inner psychopathy. Whatever inner psychopathy we have can be brought out.

If you doubt this, I suggest that you look at the creation of child warriors in Africa. Would you consider children cannibalising their weakest and torturing their own families to be fair examples of psychopathy?

If we also have empathy and sympathy then that can be brought out too.

Ruv Draba said:

Psychopathy is a function of mind, and we all have unacknowledged inner psychopathy. Whatever inner psychopathy we have can be brought out.

If you doubt this, I suggest that you look at the creation of child warriors in Africa. Would you consider children cannibalising their weakest and torturing their own families to be fair examples of psychopathy?

If we also have empathy and sympathy then that can be brought out too.

Click to expand...

I think we're only disagreeing on semantics, not human nature. I wouldn't use the word psychopathy in the way you do.

I would disagree that psychopathy is a function of mind. I would say it is a deficit in other functions of mind, such as empathy.

Almost all of us have inner cruelty, inner callousness.....or any number of similar traits. They can be drawn out as you describe.

Psychopathy, in the context of psychopathic personality disorder, is describing the absence of empathy, not the presence of cruelty. I don't think you can bring out "the absence of empathy" in someone who is empathetic, but you can bring out cruelty, callousness, or any one of a hundred other unpleasant things in just about anyone.


I wouldn't consider judging anyone as a psychopath based only on their actions. A child warrior who tortures their own family may indeed be a psychopath, or they may be a child capable of empathy who is in a terrifying situation they can't control. In that case you could call them cruel and callous and dangerous, but I wouldn't label them as a psychopath.

Craig

Wiskel said:

I would disagree that psychopathy is a function of mind. I would say it is a deficit in other functions of mind, such as empathy.

Click to expand...

Psychopaths have been demonstrated to have empathy. For instance, they can read emotions on others' faces just as well as anyone else. They simply don't use their empathy when making decisions.

And yes, any of us can be induced to do the same.

It's not what we'd like to believe, but alas, it's still true.

When I was an undergrad I read a book called The Mask of Sanity that had a lot of interesting anecdotes about non-violent sociopaths. A couple months ago I tracked down a PDF of a later edition from the author's web site, but I haven't read it yet.

Question for the professionals though--do I remember that the book was discredited for some reason? Or controversial or something?

Scrawler said:

I think my questions are just about someone's interaction with this type of person. My experience has been that they are masters at deception and have most people convinced they're "nice people".
I appreciate your replies!

Click to expand...

IMHO, the mistake most of us make when thinking about psychology is to put things in categories of right and wrong. What I mean is that we define 'normal' by what the majority does and not so much by what is right or wrong.

Sociopaths just happen to have viewpoints and or a mindset that differs from the majority. And thus, their actions will be a logical extension of their beliefs.

When you say 'deception' that implies a certain amount of 'wrongness'. Instead of 'deception' I would say 'adaptation'.

If you were going to write a sociopath. If you do it from the standpoint that they are 'wrong' then IMHO you may fail to capture the true essence of the character and instead deliver a caricature.

But if you write the sociopath as 'right' since each of us believe we are 'right' then the character should come across as more 3-d and real.

THere is a popular story/riddle that gives some insight into the mind of a sociopath. I'm probably going to screw this up but I'll do my best from memory.

Susan attends a funeral of her friend, Ralph. At the funeral she meets a wonderful man who is the Ralph's brother. They talk and she discovers that she likes him, he is funny, sexy, intelligent, etc. etc. Of course during the funeral she makes the rounds, meeting the family, friends, and other guests.

One week later, Susan kills Ralph's sister. Why did she do it?

Most normal people when faced with this story/riddle guess a variety of reasons. Perhaps Susan was in the will, perhaps Susan hated Ralph's sister. Perhaps someone paid Susan to do it, etc. etc. Of course, the most common answer is 'this question makes no sense.'

Most serial killers give the same or similar answer highlighted below.

Susan liked Ralph and wished to see him again, thus, she would be able to interact with him at another funeral.
Now, the above answer doesn't make any sense to normal people, but it makes perfect sense to a serial killer. There are probably better examples, but my point being, it isn't so much a matter of right or wrong as it is about an alien mind. A mind that differs from the norm. The bigger the difference, the more 'alien' its logic. But there will still be a logic there. Just from a different point of reference.

Of course, I am NOT a psychologist so take my opinions with a grain of salt.

Mel...

I understand the logic. And I think it's wrong.

My antagonist is a sociopath. And I got deeper in his head than any other character. I left value judgments up to the reader. But just because the character thinks he's entirely justified doesn't mean he is. Lack of empathy is not merely another way of looking at the world. It's pathological.

Yeah, I know I'm old-fashioned, but I think relative morality is a crock. A very dangerous crock.