I knew a woman who was married to one of the most sociopathic (IMHO) people I ever heard about. He made a living by picking up hookers, having sex with them, beating them up and robbing them! When she met him, he was in prison beause a pimp to some of the hookers had challenged him in a bar, they went outside, he came back in and the pimp’s body was in the alleyway. He had been stabbed to death. Of course, her husband didn’t do it–He left the pimp and someone else came by and killed him.
He got out of prison, went through $300,000 of her money, wrecked four cars, and was sent back to prison for robbing and beating hookers–five of them banded together and filed charges and he plea bargained. His wife claimed the hookers were lying–her husband might have beat them up and robbed them, but he would NEVER have sex with them. The last I heard, he had dumped her and latched onto someone with money, after he took all of hers.
I have a younger half-sister I don’t talk about and haven’t seen in 15 years. I don’t know if you’d call her psychopathic, but she takes great delight in putting others down for their bad luck, and ditching their good luck. She stomped out of my life when I started getting better and turning my own life around. If you told her you found a hundred dollar bill, she’d say “Must be fake.” You won the lottery and had proof? “It was probably rigged.” A real downer.
Frankly, I think more psychopaths go into politics or advertising than prison.
Seriously, while your standard psychopath feels no remore or empathy, he does understand punishment. So he’ll avoid running people over in the street because the pleasure it causes him is outweighed by the aggravation he’ll have to face.
But the problem comes in when the psychopath also has a streak of sadism, or or sexual compulsivity. Then often the reward for acting out far outweighs the perceived punishment. Those types are trouble. It’s hard to consider those people human when I read their casefiles about what they’ve done to others.
Sociopathy, to me, is different from psychopathy. Sociopaths have empathy and feel bonds, they just assign them to different groups than we consider appropriate. They may feel no remorse about actions they take against their community or family or nation, but feel a tight bond with fellow members of their gang, or profession (rare but it happens) or even their particular religious sect. And they can feel great guilt and shame when they run into conflicts with the people and values of that group.
Have you seen ‘a brilliant mind’? That is what schizophrenia was like for me (I never heard voices or anything, just had delusions), all it means is your understanding of yourself, your environment and things like that are different from the cultural norms. It has nothing to do with violence. Assuming a schizophrenic is prone to violence because his views on himself and the world are different is like assuming (to me at least) that someone with weird political or religious views is violent. However several of the situations I experienced during my psychosis left me very bitter and I am capable of extreme violence, but only against a small group of people who I won’t commit violence against due to the legal retributions. What i’m trying to say is the insanity didn’t make me violent, it made me stupid and the stupidity made me angry, which may lead to violence.
I don’t harm others for the same reason i’ve never harmed others (who I feel didn’t deserve it). I am not that kind of person. While I was insane I was very unempathetic, but I was never maliciously unempathetic.
When I say unempathetic what I mean is I was unable to understand what effects my acts had on others. However, I could still empathize with others suffering, I was just too oblivious to understand when I was causing it in others by acting weird. I never did anything like kidnap or torture people, but I was unaware of what I was putting my family through or what I was putting random strangers through while I was schizophrenic.
Actually, according to the link I thought I posted, sociopaths who come from families of wealth and privlidge are often able to “eek out a living in business or politics”. The link said that
The difference is in their behavior. A sociopath appears completely normal while a psychopath is often angry and erratic. Scott Peterson would be a sociopath while Charles Manson would be a psychopath.
Sorry, I’ve got to disagree with your link. It gives much good and valid data, but I do not go along with the divisions it (and the current DSM) draw vis-a-vis sociopathy, psychopathy, and antisocial personality disorder. I think eventually the DSM will be revised again to make much more clear the difference between sociopathy and psychopathy, and there won’t be so much overlap with the “antisocial personality disorder” diagnosis. AND the DSM will actually recognize that psychopathy is a separate disorder.
I always wondered what her “magic” was, how she got away with the crap she did. It’s comforting to know that the saps who fell for it were being hoodwinked by a sociopath. Suckers.
This stuck out at me because people with Autism or Aspbergers have similar problems. Aspbergers patients may have a large vocabulary and may appear intelligent or well-educated, but on closer inspection they don’t understand the true meaning of many of the words they use. Both types also find it difficult or impossible to infer another person’s emotional state based on spoken and body language, which can lead to rage and lack of empathy. I wonder if psychopathy lies somewhere on the ADHD/Autism spectrum, or if it just shares these particular traits.
I’m not really sure where the idea comes from but I’ve always had a feeling or an IMHO that guys who rant and rave the most about “what ought to be done with those perverts” are likely to be doing it themselves or at least attracted to it. Like I say, it’s an IMHO but I’ve always had a suspicion of this.
right. i would not say a person that is delusional is equivalent to someone who cannot empathize.
not to say someone who is insane for an extended period of time will not sometimes appear sociopathic. that is the consequence of the illusions and hallucinations. for such people, the entire world can seem subtly malign. they can still comprehend empathy. an individual without a conscience must be incapable of that.
I had a student who I think was sociopathic in the sense that Qadgop used. This kid was a violent rapist–I worked with one of his victims as well–and had absolutely no concern about the well-being of most other people. Girls, women, other men, animals–anyone and anything could be a target for his violent streak.
He loved me, though, and was quite protective of me. It blew me away, because even though I knew how violent he was, I wasn’t at all afraid of him. Eventually, I spoke to my assistant principal about it, asking him what was wrong with me, that I could be so comfortable with someone so dangerous.
And he nailed it for me when he responded, “Of course you feel safe with him. You’re his territory.”
Ick ick ICK. But it was true. He would’ve probably stood and watched his own mother burn, but he would’ve laid down his life for me.
I’m pretty blunt with most people I know, but you know how there are some people you just don’t broach certain subjects with? I would sooner discuss hot anal action with a 78 year old woman (and let’s be clear about this, I would certainly NOT want to do that) than discuss the nature of his peculiarities with him. There’s never been an instance that I could point to that said “Bad Idea,” but I just have this instinct that screams “Leave It Alone!” We haven’t had much to do with each other except for an e-mail exchange about every 4 months–they start out genial enough but they end badly.
The only mental illness discussions we’ve had are about him treating for depression. He seemed completely at a loss for why antidepressants allowed him now quarter from his restlessness/depression/inner torment/whatever; but the antipsychotic his doc prescribed seemed to make him comfortable–less inclined to start fights, drive furiously, etc.
I’ve made him blush. I have a very dark sense of humor and sometimes we try to gross each other out with, shall we say, extremely antisocial jokes. I can outdo him, but I wonder if I don’t hit too close to home sometimes and if the laughter isn’t merely nervous.
Is this teaching at the juvenile facility or something? It wouldn’t make sense if you were referring to a ‘free’ school like college or K-12, to have a serial rapist walking around.
