One nearly constant about sociopathy is a lack of empathy, whether for people or animals. It sounds more as if you have some kind of trauma or insecurity about dealing with people, who can be very judgmental and complex, versus animals, which are unreserved and generally unconditional about their affection. Plus, domesticated animals are evolved (or bred, in the case of dogs and some other “pet” species) to demonstrate neotenic features and behavior that make them baby-like. The behavior you describe may be somewhat narcissistic, i.e. desiring unconditional affection and attention, but unless you are prone to self-victimization and a total lack of concern for the well-being of others, it isn’t pathaological.
Strictly speaking, this isn’t true. Sociopaths are often conscious that they are “different” than other people in regard to the level of empathy they express. It is just that (for the most part) they don’t care, or in some cases revel in this lack as an advantage. Some sociopaths develop a sort of artificial guilt, a sense that, while they don’t feel remorse for what they have done, a sense that they should be regretful, and an interior conflict that creates an even more dissociative character, i.e. an external persona that appears to be superfically empathic and an interior persona that watches the behavior with clinical detachment. It is a mistake to classify all sociopaths as being malicious and destructive, although obviously the lack of empathy makes such behavior unconflicted or at least easy to self-justify.
I have rarely known a sociopath to cry except for attention. If you did it spontaneously, not calculating how you could manipulate others, then you most likely aren’t one.
I agree that the numbness from depression and/or trauma seem more likely. And, unlike a sociopath, you actually the recognition to do something about it. I definitely think you should see someone about this and at least see if you can have a happier life.
I don’t think so. Dr. Hare is Canadian and a professor emeritus at the University of British Columbia, and the bulk of his work deals directly with psychopathy.
I just wanted to step in and say that Stranger is right on with his description. My ex has (undiagnosed) ASPD and our son has been diagnosed with it too. Its hard to believe anyone can be as deceptive and self serving as Stranger describes but it is all too true.
It really is all about what they can get from you and when the well runs dry they move on. It really is true that therapy is wasted on them - at most I have observed my son manipulate counselors to bring them round where he wants them. Usually this means my son plays the victim and is willfully blind to his behavior. The counselors would then help him by making it about how others misunderstood his intentions or some such. This just made counseling worthless and sometimes even enabling. The ex did it too.
Luckily I recently found him a counselor who specialises in personality disorders so at least he isnt able to play games with her.
Meds do little if anything though we have had some success with Lithium to help control the rages. Getting him to take them is sometimes tough and you have to make sure he actually swallowed them. He has been given Lexapro for depression and it does seem to help with that. I have learned that depression can be co-morbid with ASPD. But there is nothing to treat the ASPD itself.
If I as just a mom and not a professional can recommend a book try “Bad Boys; Bad Men” by Donald Black. Pretty easy to read and not super technical but very interesting and as far as I can tell accurate.
This is from back in college (ca. 20 years ago), but what my professor said is that most APD men tend to “age out” of the most apparent behaviors. It was suggested, only half-jokingly, that the preferred treatment would be to lock them up until they were 40.
I’m not sure this would apply to the more aggrevated syndromes outlined elsewhere in this thread, however.
My perception is that sociopaths (or whatever) can’t be cured because objectively speaking, there’s nothing wrong with them. It’s us “normal” people who are burdened with such psychological baggage as empathy, compassion, morals and other illogical forms of behavior. Compared to us, sociopaths are perfectly logical, perfectly sane.
This “illogical” (i.e. apparently altruistic or cooperative) behavior is what allows the so-called social contract to function with trust that people will behave in a manner consistent with the long term benefit to all parties as a preferred conclusion. Sociopaths are only interested in short term gain, and most are incapable of genuinely long term planning. There is an argument, albeit without clinical backing, that opportunistic investment and executive magnates such as Al Dunlap and Bernie Madoff demonstrate a pretty distinct pattern of sociopathic behavior that includes blunt dishonesty and planned deception without any realizable long term goal. I don’t think one can make any kind of objective or credible argument that such behavior is logical or sane; it is purely opportunistic and ultimately destructive.
The Snakes in Suits mentioned above discusses some of the manifestations of psychopathy in the workplace, and focuses a lot on the middle and upper management behaviors that seem to embody the condition.
I remember either hearing or reading about Ken Lay’s testimony in his sentencing trial, in which he sobbed on the stand about how difficult the entire trial process had been.
For him.
How it had ruined his life, he’d never be the same, etc. No remorse, no acknowledgment of his destruction of people’s lives. Nothing.
I am not a fan of distance diagnosing at all, but I must admit that my immediate response was “that man is a psychopath.”
Several here have mentioned that the best option when dealing with a sociopath is to run away. What happens to the sociopath after everyone has fled? Do they just spend their lives alone? Or are they clever enough to move on to a new set of victims (for lack of a better word)?
I’ve never known anyone like the descriptions in this thread.
Saying that most sociopaths don’t make long-term plans is misleading - most human beings don’t make long-term plans, period. In this sense, sociopaths are no different. As to the social contract, sociopaths certainly prefer to act in a society in which all people but them act in a manner consistent with the long term benefit to all parties; after all, it makes things easier for them. The way they see it, a wolf is much better off living among sheep.
In other words, assuming that self-interest is the sole interest (and so long as all of society doesn’t think that way, why shouldn’t it be?) sociopaths are perfectly logical. Say you instruct a hypothetical superintelligent computer to act solely in its own self-interest - wouldn’t that computer act exactly like a sociopath?
Also correct, by the way - the proposed DSM-V criteria for “personality disorder antisocial/psychopathic type” include more consideration of internal character traits rather than the external behaviors that the current DSM IV-TR criteria for antisocial personality disorder tends to focus on. The distinction and the reasoning behind it is subtle, but important.
When the DSM III was being drafted in the late 70’s/very early 80’s, it included “antisocial personality disorder” which was intended to be the new term for what everybody had been previously calling psychopathy and sociopathy (and the DSM IV-TR still claims that all three are supposed to be synonyms), but there was a disagreement in the comittee as to how to best draw up the criteria. Dr. Hare advocated the inclusion of character traits that he was including in his psychopathy checklist, such as callousness, grandiosity, lack of empathy, etc., his idea being that evaluating psychopathy wasn’t just seeing what a person did but gaining insight into how that person thinks. Others thought that those concepts were too “squishy” to be reliably evaluated and insisted that the criteria consist of more overt behaviors that could be more easily measured, such as repeated arrests, repeated assaultive behavior or fights, consistent failure to honor financial obligations, etc. The latter camp more or less won out, but the end result was that a lot of garden variety criminals will meet criteria for antisocial personality disorder - they may not be very nice guys, but they aren’t actually cold-blooded, remorseless psychopaths. Estimates usually say that around 80% of the prison population will meet the criteria for antisocial personality disorder, but only 20% or so will be true, full blown psychopaths. The past few decades have sort of proven Hare right, so there’s a push to include more inferred character traits into the DSM V model along with overt behaviors.
Is it possible for a psychopath to care about some people, but not others? Does anyone with the personality of “Dexter” really exist? Can a person like Bernie Madoff, who presumably has absolutely no care at all for the damage he is doing to normal people, actually honestly care about his children or wife, and want to protect them from harm in the way that normal men would care about their own families?
No. A true psychopath can only “care” about people in a possessive way. Like if you get mud on my shoes, I’m going to get pissed because you’re muddying something that belongs to me, not because I have empathy for the footwear.
If someone like Madoff turns out to genuinely care for someone, it indicates to me that he’s a normal person who did really horrible things, not that he’s a psychopath who cares for certain people.
I can think of at least one psychopath I know who has an excellent relationship with his mother, who has always stood by his side, bailed him out on numerous occasions, paid his many probation fines and legal fees, and who will do anything to protect her baby boy from all those vicious, lying young women who made up all those terrible lies about him and got him sent to prison for no reason. All in all, a very useful person for a psychopath to have around.
People can display some antisocial or psychopathic personality traits and still have some ability to care for other people (stunted or deficient sometimes, but present), but with a true psychopath it seems that they “care” about some people in the same way that I care about a houseplant or a car - I enjoy it because it’s a neat and/or useful thing to have around, but even if I talk to it and appear to like it I don’t actually share any true human empathy with it. Their relationships with their families and loved ones tends to be parasitic rather than mutually loving.
