Well, I just got a long essay from my ex childhood friend, the psychopath. He’s been in jail most of our adult lives for a variety of reasons, from scamming to drug running, to endangerment of a minor, to petty theft, to dodging child support.
He wants to show that after 35 days in solitary that he’s done some reflecting and personal growth.
It’s transparent he wants to butter me so he can try and crash with me once he’s out (in about a year’s time).
He had his mother courier the essay to me. I told her if he wants to talk to me, he’ll have to come find me, because if I ever see him again, it’ll be too soon. He’s dead to me, and I hope once he’s out, he leaves me alone.
Is it possible to get preemptive restraining orders? Just in case?
It might be worth stating, that, while his mother completely understands that he’s a full-blown psychopath, she still believes that it’s her duty as his adoptive mother to protect and help him in any socially acceptable way she can. She knows I want nothing to do with the psychopath, but she thinks he’s turned a corner.
I know better.
I know psychopaths aren’t really people in the way that I know people. I know that psychopaths are at best, shitty, incomplete, undeveloped humans who lack basic modules of humanity that allow normal people to interact with societies. And giving them an inch of rope just gives them one more inch to hang me with.
They don’t have attachments, like normal people. They don’t experience a fear of failure. They don’t feel sadness in any appreciable way beyond their own goals not being met. They don’t feel remorse. I’ve never once in over ten years seen this one apologize for anything. Even the most egregious failures or harm. He’s a complete psychopath.
He can rot in a grave. That the best place for him. I hope it happens soon, because he has nothing to offer to humanity, but his entire essence is taking the best shit from everyone for himself, no matter the cost, both to himself and others. I hope he’s killed or dies soon.
I watched him grow up abusing his brother. And amazingly, his brother managed to grow up to be a decent human being. Because his brother has a complete brain. Not a brain missing all modules related to empathy and fear of failure. His brother is a real human. The psychopath isn’t. The psychopath is a shark among dolphins.
Oh man, she needs some therapy… he’s got her totally under his thrall (literally like a vampire).
Obviously not your job to help but I hope she has someone close to her that can help her.
And good for you. Don’t get sucked in. There’s too many good people in the world to waste your time on vampires.
It’s not so much making assumptions as it is standing by them at the expense of the truth and the relationship. It’s about ego, run amok. Unchecked and beyond reproach.
The thing that really bothers me about this is that it’s the same narrative that people use to talk about the other side in a war. They have no sense of morality. You cannot negotiate with them. They are fundamentally guided by rage and want to destroy you. There’s no point trying to understand them or reason with them, they are incapable of this.
As you point out, autistic people get the same thing. I’ve read a lot of comments from women who think that people with high functioning autism are fundamentally incapable of feeling or expressing love, that they are controlling emotional vampires, that they have no concept of the other person’s thoughts or willingness to work with them. I know this is not true. I don’t blame these women: this may well be their perspective and I’m sorry for their pain and all the effort they went through without feeling that their needs were being met at all. It may be that they were never going to see a change, whatever they did. However, there are often clear signs that they did not understand how the autistic mind works. My parents still sometimes ask me what went wrong with their style of parenting, why I acted in ways they didn’t understand, why I managed to succeed in studies, work and relationships etc. when they couldn’t motivate me to do it. They could not get me to respond appropriately, and they called it rebellion. They called me stubborn while they stuck to their own rigid assumptions.
Whatever the neurological issues, psychopaths/sociopaths and autistic people are moulded by cultural assumptions and values, like anyone else. Where the culture teaches certain attitudes, those without natural empathy may well take these attitudes to extremes. Where we don’t liquidate our social capital and society is framed in a more human-oriented way where people have inherent value, I am more confident of a better outcome between those with low empathy and others. Narcissism and sociopathy are learned rather than innate, and they are enabled by the culture. I still don’t believe that it isn’t possible to negotiate with a sociopath on a cultural level, although I don’t think an individual relationship provides enough pressure at all.
When you see how Imperial Japan treated Chinese people, Nazi Germany treated Jewish people or America treated black people fairly recently, you cannot claim that all of these people were innately sociopathic. Look at the same populations today, and you often see very different behaviour that is influenced by a different philosophy. It is clear that neurotypical people are fully capable of seeing others as less than human, and treating them accordingly. Men are very capable of doing this to women they are in a relationship with. People are capable of ignoring everyone else’s needs or rights but their own. I really am not that concerned about sociopaths, autistic people, men or any other group as those who are essentially incapable of functioning in society. I am very worried about individualism and narratives that other different groups and present them as less worthy of our empathy. You are not a dolphin. They are not a shark. Or maybe look at it this way - dolphins are jerks, while sharks are misunderstood.
I’m not denying cognitive differences, just saying that everybody is dangerous. I don’t like certain attitudes that other people and act like they are evil robots while the rest of us are good (or at least have free will). Autistic people and sociopaths are different, but the amount of nonsense that is assumed about them both is incredible. There can be a real neurological issue and also a tribalistic/simplistic failure to see people’s complexity or potential, or a lack of awareness of the interaction between neurological issues and cultural values. Basing an assessment on observation of behaviour rather than underlying differences can hide people who have the same neurological issues without the corresponding behaviour, and give the impression that the behaviour is inevitable in people with these neurological issues. I have had distinct personalities at different points in my life, but with the same underlying issues. Clinical definitions should not lead us to give people overly rigid profiles.
I think you’re reacting to words that have not been spoken. No one here is talking about autism. And no one is relating autism to psychopathy. Someone is talking about their lived experience with someone who (in their opinion) is a psychopath. In your rush to defend yourself and other autists you have dismissed the true and real feelings and experience of someone who was very obviously wounded by someone close to them growing up. How is that fair?
Edit to add (because it always bothers me!) Sociopath =/= psychopath. While they both fall under the heading “Antisocial Personality Disorder” there is controversy over whether they are the same or not… and I agree with this article, they are not the same, not fully. https://www.psychologytoday.com/conditions/antisocial-personality-disorder
I’m not defending anyone or denying that these people exist or have harmed people on this thread. It’s just that I dislike reducing people to a pattern of behaviour. It’s getting very common to pathologise people and presume that they can’t change, but this has nothing to do with individual experiences. I didn’t dismiss anyone’s feelings, just the assumption that the man had necessarily targeted his mother because that’s just his nature and that he wasn’t a real person. I just don’t think you can assume that he can’t change based on America’s correctional system, which is crap. (Put him in solitary for over a month - that will teach him empathy). I do share the lack of confidence that meeting up with him would be a good idea though.
There may well be real underlying genetic causes for narcissism, but it’s also learned:
Narcissistic individuals feel superior to others, fantasize about personal successes, and believe they deserve special treatment. When they feel humiliated, they often lash out aggressively or even violently. Unfortunately, little is known about the origins of narcissism. Such knowledge is important for designing interventions to curtail narcissistic development. We demonstrate that narcissism in children is cultivated by parental overvaluation: parents believing their child to be more special and more entitled than others. In contrast, high self-esteem in children is cultivated by parental warmth: parents expressing affection and appreciation toward their child. These findings show that narcissism is partly rooted in early socialization experiences, and suggest that parent-training interventions can help curtail narcissistic development and reduce its costs for society.
Sociopathy is also less innate than psychopathy:
Research suggests that, “psychopaths are a stable proportion of any population, can be from any segment of society, may constitute a distinct taxonomical class forged by frequency-dependent natural selection, and that the muting of the social emotions is the proximate mechanism that enables psychopaths to pursue their self-centered goals without felling the pangs of guilt. Sociopaths are more the products of adverse environmental experiences that affect autonomic nervous system and neurological development that may lead to physiological responses similar to those of psychopaths. Antisocial personality disorder is a legal/clinical label that may be applied to both psychopaths and sociopaths” (Walsh & Wu, 2008).
The reason I bring up autism is partly from my own experience and partly because both share a deficit of empathy, albeit in different areas. I know that this deficit does not stop autists from having fulfilling relationships, although it can be a significant problem if untreated or unrecognised. I’m not suggesting that anyone linked the two or implicated autists in a criticism of sociopaths.
ETA: Even if someone is a born psychopath, this does not necessarily predict behaviour. James Fallon is an example of someone with the “warrior gene” associated with violence, A PET scan with an inactive orbital cortex and a family history of criminal activity. He had a good upbringing though, and doesn’t show the harmful behaviour associated with psychopathy. It just isn’t that predictive.
One issue is, “who is trying to treat these personality disorders?” There are many reasons somebody could fail to see improvement. Ask 100 wives how successful they’ve been in treating their husbands’ flaws. It’s nigh impossible, and you’ll probably make it worse if you don’t have his cooperation. Even if you do, some behavioural ruts are pretty deep and there’s less brain plasticity when you’re older. People often don’t change as much as we’d like them to, especially if they feel that they are being held to a standard they didn’t agree to. It’s even more difficult if they feel superior (smarter, mentally stronger etc.) than the person trying to change them. Where this is encouraged by society or there are other confounding factors, it’s even more difficult. But this does not mean that they can’t change, or that they were inevitably going to end up in that rut. Sometimes the methods that we use to try to change people make things much worse.
For example, a common way that relationships between husbands with ADHD and their wives develop is for the wife to start treating the husband like a child. This makes the wife frustrated because she feels completely unsupported, but it also makes the husband frustrated because she is always nagging and there’s always a negative environment. He also never learns to own his issues, because she’s always there to nag him. The ADHD can be a problem, but this can often be because of flaws in the way people interact rather than the neurological issue itself, and it’s not because someone with a particular issue is incapable of having a healthy relationship. In the same way, narcissism is reinforced by people who support the idea that the person is special and doesn’t have to consider other people’s needs. It may not go away, but not allowing people to escape reality reduces the power of underlying issues.
However, thinking in this way implicates all of us rather than just the monsters who attack us.
As for the DSM, it’s an important document, but there are serious problems with its approach and that of many health professionals. Not that I have this wonderful alternative, but I really don’t think it should be considered established science.
