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Doso's avatar

I nave a complementary (albeit speculative) hypothesis to your proposed sociopathic enlargement of the amigdala, which I refer to as the reversal of the moral compass.

I suspect this situation could unfold as a defensive mechanism for people who go through extended periods of intense emotional pain - they become so consumed by affective suffering... they simply learn to enjoy it, for self-protection.

They especially enjoy to provoke it in others, as a sort of misguided attempt to foot the emotional bill. At the same time, they start to regard happinness as a prelude to pain (everything that rises must fall) so begin to shudder at it.

This reversal of the moral compass could make up for the malignant layer in NPD and ASPD. Its malignancy doesn't necessarily manifest explicitly as a criminal type, and sometimes seems to express more subtly as the miserable type of person who absolutely loves making other miserable - a sadistic temper, simply put. The very antithesis to emotional empathy, this makes the person prone to "feeling against" rather than "feeling with".

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Sheez's avatar

"The hypothesis that I have is that sadistic psychopaths were horrifically abused, which caused their amygdala to become slightly larger than that of a normal psychopath. In that transition, and with the rest of the emotional processing not available, and as a response to the abuse (psychopaths don’t internalize abuse, we externalize it) they become sadistic..."

I believe this could very well be the case. As childrens brains are still developing it is very possible for the brain to make adjustments.

I was also thinking, being that psychopathy is on a scale, like everything else, that some may naturally have a small unnoteable amount is empathy, due to a slightly larger amygdala, naturally, then add abuse to that and you could have a very dangerous person. Idk, what do think?

I agree that you'd have to have empathy to be sadistic, just because what else would motivate such action?

I also wonder if he was including secondary psychopaths in this study, or do we know?

As always, well written and interesting.

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