Are/were sociopaths overrepresented in the gay community

Great Debates
21

Right, my point is that those researchers who are pushing the “Dark Triad” and other melodramatic labels and findings are doing junk research.

You’ll pardon me if I await some further confirmation before accepting the results of the “Great British Psychopath Survey,” though it has been conducted by an Oxford psychiatrist. This seems a little bit in the vein of the Leary-esque (a Harvard psychologist, do recall) phenomenon of blending pop science with bona fide credentials for a little profitable hucksterism. Jonah Lehrer (another Harvardian) does the same thing.

The upshot is that these folks use their credentials to justify ascientific proprositions that the general public would like to believe, quite apart from what the scientific evidence says. So we have pop evo-psychologists explaining, “Don’t feel bad about cadding around, it’s what nature wants.”

Or, your successful boss, who makes lots of money and is well-regarded in his field isn’t just an asshole. He’s a clinical asshole.

Quite simply, it doesn’t make sense to call behavior which is not maladaptive a mental illness. It does not make sense to say: you have a satisfying career, success in your education, so on and so forth but you are also mentally ill.

When “high-functioning” is said in regard to some proposed illness, it means “high-functioning” only in a very limited set of contexts. Or it means that there is high-functioning, but also dependence on a substance which is working real-deal physiological damage. (So it makes sense to talk about a high-functioning alcoholic if they are consuming enough alcohol to do anatomical damage). If these bad outcomes are not happening, then high-functioning just means you’re fine.

So, again, I find this “Dark Triad” malarkey all very pulpy, and note that the criteria are pretty open-ended and conform to terms that we traditionally use to remark upon people’s characters (narcissism, manipulativeness, psychopathy).

Whenever you see this set up: gauzy, pop psychology terminology that corresponds to ways we throw shade at each other, you do not have science, you have a science selling pop psychology so that he can make a fast buck. See Learly, Jonah Lehrer, Malcolm Gladwell, Dr. Phil, etc. etc.

22

As erez noted, I believe the most common personality disorder diagnosed in gays is Borderline. A study done by Pride Institute in Eden Prairie, MN also found Obsessive-Compulsive and Avoidant.

I would have WAG Narcissistic.

It should be recognized that this study was done with people who had substance abuse problems and that the gay community , as a whole, has about a three times higher percentage of substance abuse than the general population.

That is going to skew the results of testing, I believe. So diagnosing any personality disorder under the circumstances is probably better reserved for some time further into recovery.

Perhaps there are any number of people, in both the gay and heterosexual populations, who present as sociopathic for personal reasons?

23

Kimmy, I understand what you are saying in regards to high-functioning but using alcoholism as a comparison may not be the best choice.

If, indeed, a person is alcoholic and high-functioning it means "at this present time. That’s because true alcoholism is a progressive disease, not apt to abate unless consumption of alcohol is terminated.

In fact, the damage is sometimes being done, as in smokers, without being apparent until a later date.

Personality disorders. Are they progressive?

This is just an aside and I don’t mean to derail focus on the topic at hand.

24

Yes, I think this is right. To my mind, there are really only two ways in which “high-functioning” does not defeat a diagnosis of a mental illness.

(1) The high-functioning domain is limited in scope. I.e., somebody whose alcohol abuse does not interfere with their work performance, but family life may be extremely strained.

(2) The person is high-functioning in all domains, but there are real physiological consequences to the behavior (such as with substance dependence).

I suppose I might add a third: (3) The person is high-functioning in all domains, no physical health problems result from the behavior, but the person experiences significant distress in connection with their predilection to perform the behavior.

Personality disorders, by definition, represent long-term characteristics that are part of the, well, personality of the patient. I think they may be thought to wax and wane within a relatively narrow band of severity, but I don’t think they are usually seen as progressive (as say, schizophrenia from prodrome to full-blown psychosis).

In general, I think lay people vastly overestimate how frequently mental health professionals use the Axis II (personality disorders and/or MR) diagnoses. I’ve seen hundred psych evals of people whose functioning ranges from minimally to mildly deficient to moderately severe. In perhaps 80% of those, there is no Axis II diagnosis. When they are present, it’s usually “antisocial traits” or “personality disorder, NOS”. One never sees the PDOs that are so popular among lay people (narcissistic personality disorder, histrionic personality disorder, even borderline personality disorder).

In general, I think the mental health profession is moving away from personality disorders, which look a lot more like character assessments than a disspassionate identification of a cluster of signs and symptoms that seem to have a common causal mechanism and good responsiveness to known treatments.

That is, when you have a diagnosis that (1) is vague and open-ended, (2) employs terminology that tends to be more normative than descriptive, and (3) is of limited utility in pointing to potential research or treatment programs, you don’t really have a diagnosis (in the sense of identifying a real syndrome that can be scientifically studied and treated), you just have an elaborate way of commenting on someone’s personality (without any real therapeutic value).

25

Thanks for that, Kimmy. Useful observations.

26

A high-functioning person with bipolar who’s medicated and has no averse effects from their condition can’t be diagnosed with a mental illness? Kay…

Cite?

I have read no such research.
Cite?

Nor are the traits under discussion anywhere near as generic as you’re making them out. A complete absence of conscience and remorse; a complete absence of regard for consensus morality; an absence of the fear response as most people know it, instead often finding fear exciting/pleasurable; a complete and total lack of empathy, etc… It most certainly isn’t just a description of your average, run of the mill jerk. Nor am I aware of any psychologists who’ve argued that anti-social behavior is okay just because someone has ASPD.

On this point we seem to be in agreement, as functional sociopaths do not, in my opinion, suffer from any “illness”. Although it would be fitting to call it a “mental condition”, I think.

27

I know you love the point-by-point approach, I do not, so I’m not going to address each one of these individually…

This is actually a decent point. In saying high-functioning, I mean without treatment. But the boundaries between treatment and non-treatment isn’t always clear.

A daily dose of Geodon is treatment, obviously. So too might be weekly milieu therapy. But what about self-taught mindfulness habits? Is that treatment or a good habit of mind?

To maybe make it more clear, take diabetes. Instead of maladaptive behavior, we have insulin resistance. Suppose someone manages their insulin resistance by adopting better eating and exercise habits. Treatment? After the initial diagnosis of DM, we tend to call it that. But before DM is diagnosed, we call it prevention.

So I am inclined to say the bipolar sufferer who is high-functioning because of compliance with medication doesn’t count because we consider the ability to be high-functioning outside of active treatment. But I will grant that “active treatment” is not so clear-cut a category as we might first imagine it to be.

Cites for Dark Triad as junk science? I am giving an assessment, that is the conclusion (i.e., I think it is just the sort of catchy nomenclature with fast-and-loose treatment of the science that plays into lay people’s preconceived notions that almost always signals someone trying to sell a book). So, to coin a phrase, my post is my cite. That is, the post where I wrote that explains why I came to the conclusions that I reached. You can take it or leave it, I guess.

I know no psychologist using antisocial PDO as grounds for permitting antisocial behavior (permission isn’t up to them anyhow, and they don’t really want the responsibility). I’m not sure I agree that adding “a complete absence for …” to the diagnostic criteria makes them any clearer.

I mean, the PDOs are still in the DSM-V, so if you think they’re useful, you’re far from the only one. I don’t (and I don’t think that’s totally a fringe position), and it seems to me that people believe that the PDOs are encountered much more frequently in clinical practice than they actually are.

28

So, to clarify, you are unable or unwilling to cite anything, at all, written by psychologists researching the issue: peer reviewed or otherwise. You still maintain that it’s “junk science”. Based on a review of literature you will not or can not present in a debate. But you’ve got your conclusion, and by gum you’re stickin’ to it.

Noted.

Hrmm, Kimmy. Let’s see what **Kimmy **has to say about that.

Damn, Kimmy seems to be at odds with ya.

Anyways, you should go find a cite.