Athena, can a person not be a psychopath but still possess psychopathic traits? I have heard (from a psychiatrist) that one might not have, for instance, BPD but have BPD traits. Would it be possible for a person to be unable to bond/feel love, have remorse but still feel jealousy?
Yes. All humans have psychopathic traits to some degree or another. They are part of being human. However, what makes them psychopathic traits by definition is their origin, which is genetic wiring, and persistence.
Where most people will have the presence of these traits in their lives to some degree or another based on their environment and where they are at emotionally, they tend to be passing, they come and go. In psychopathy they are inherent, and constant.
No wonder psychopaths gets such a bad rep then given that lots of people (at some level) probably believes or accept as truth things they see on tv. I already knew the pictures from Hollywood are unrealistic, but wasn't sure weather or not the "liking to cause pain thing" was actually true or not.. Thanks for clearing that up :-)
Liking to cause pain is sadism, which interestingly they have done brain scans of sadists and psychopaths, and found that sadism actually requires emotional empathy which psychopaths lack entirely. If you are interested in the study, you can find an overview here;
I think that there certainly is more of a chance for it in society currently, with so many parents not parenting any longer. Handing a psychopathic child a screen, and expecting them to figure it out on their own is not going to produce good results.
I was referring to your link , just in case you weren't sure. I should have been more clear. Sometimes my brain moves to fast and I tend to skip by things.
Hi great explanations! Thank you. Just a few questions: Can a psychopath cry? If so what would cause that response? And: (just watching this tv serie now (The Soceity) One of the characters (Campbell) is exposed as a psychopath.
He cried one time when his girlfriend confessed having tried to kill him. Not sure if it was because he was offended, fascinated or just trying to manipulate etc.. He also liked to hurt his girlfriend or watching her having pain etc..
He killed a dog, and cut off his birds feet for fun, and so on.. I just wonder does this have any root in reality? Is a psychopath likely to enjoy seeing someone in pain, or inflict pain? Like get off by it or get a thrill? Likewise from cutting the birds legs off.. Is this character more likely to be a sosciopath?
What you are describing is not anything other than a very poorly constructed Hollywood stereotype, down to the debunked animal torture nonsense. Nothing that you described is like a psychopath at all, just a bad script writer that didn't do any research.
I can cry when I have to, such as a funeral because it is socially expected, or when in excruciating pain, as I apparently did when I had meningitis. Never from emotion.
Thank you for this piece, and also for the links to the other ones. The 2017 one has a ton in it; stuff that drives me nuts (us autistics can be driven nuts!) but I am fascinated to learn that most people with psychopathy are not locked up. Perhaps "passing"? Then, I wonder how accurate the estimates on prevalence of psychopathy are; has there ever been a truly random sampling of a human population for this brain variant?
I didn't know anything about any of these issues, whether w.r.t. psychopathy or autism -- before about 2016. I began to read and learn how the psychiatry profession is truly messing up the lives of so many... that when I was ostensibly N.T., my strong interests were great things, but the second I was diagnosed they were... overly restricted interests. Disordered.
Athena -- re. your comment that (paraphrasing) you're not sure how 'low self esteem' could have evolved; I have been wondering if it is connected to improving survival chances for less-(strong) individuals of social species. Using that word "strong" very loosely. If individuals keep trying to rise to the top of some hierarchy and failing, each new failure could have some risk to long-term survival. So if the individual stops trying to win conflicts of various sorts, they might be making the best of a non-optimal situation.
Some people assume that all these emotions have clear, perceivable causes for individuals; from an evolutionary perspective, I don't think that has to be the case. The experience of "love" can get mating to happen. More offspring might survive if they are "loved" and cared for well too. "Love" isn't the only emotion or mental process that could cause this to happen, but it's the one lots of mammals seem to have! I think "low self-esteem" is similar, possibly depression too in certain circumstances. That doesn't mean we have to treasure it, it's aversive...
I have many many non-complimentary thoughts about the mental processes of some of these psychiatrists and their mammal dominance-related brain circuits manifesting in their "science" too. Lots of other similar neurotypical behaviors are not fully understood by them imo; it might be easier for people with differences to see certain things in each other. Maybe that's part of why these different neurotypes exist in our very social species?
I would guess that there is some amount of accuracy to the prevalence estimation For every psychopath missed, it is likely that someone is deemed psychopathic, when in fact they have something else going on. There is probably some aspect of it balancing itself out.
I agree that likely low self esteem is about social acceptance, and tribalistic living. If you upset the group and are ousted from it, you have a lower rate of survival, so having lower self esteem helps establish and maintain a pecking order.
I think that there is definitely a reason that different neurotypes exist, but find it very difficult to have a rational conversation with many people that are invested financially and egotistically in their "treatment" as opposed to the understanding of them.
NTs believe that they are highly empathetic, but this to me only appears to make sense if you are seeing it from a position of like for like. They may appear to be highly empathetic, but that is only because they are the dominant type of neuro-functioning in the world. They can understand someone that thinks as they do, so they have empathy.
Often however, if a person of a different neuro-functioning is presented to them, their empathy fails them entirely. Without being practiced in cognitive empathy, suddenly they become very different people in terms of how they think of someone different from them, and what treatment they feel is appropriate for that difference. It is a serious flaw in the empathy system, but no matter how many times it is mentioned, researchers tend to substitute a reasonable concern for their own assumptions.
p.s. In no way did I mean to imply that all people with a particular neurotype should be "locked up" -- just reread what I wrote, sorry.
I reacted that way mostly because the prevalence estimates for autistics have been so very wrong, especially for females. We apparently typically "mask" or "camouflage" more, or "better", than many male autistics. This has only recently been noticed by autism researchers in peer-reviewed stuff...
So the ratio of 10 male autistics to every female is now 3:1, with some saying 1:1 is likely. The brain patterns in fMRIs are also looking pretty different in females vs. males, amongst diagnosed autistics.
So perhaps something similar has happened with psychopathy? If researchers are looking using the wrong template, at the wrong population, and continually just reinforcing their wrong theories with those wrong results, they are generally (gasp)... WRONG.
They don't really look at the brain scans for diagnostics, as they are experimental only. This isn't helped by the assumption that psychopathy in females is actually BPD, which is a nonsense proposal set forth by people that clearly know nothing about BPD or psychopathy.
Trying to sort out the brain scans of female to male psychopaths would first have to rely on an understanding of what psychopathy is as a baseline, before they could even try to identify it in males versus females, but so long as we have individuals making ridiculous claims like female psychopathy is BPD, there is no chance of this happening.
Jeez. I didn't realize that psychopathy in females is another of the many differences/conditions/issues that get misdiagnosed as BPD. Let's see, now we have psychopathy, PTSD, autism... seems to be the latest version of a "wandering uterus". Maybe it could be simplified to... females who are not smiling.
It's amazing to me that they have a description of BPD, they know what it is, what it looks like, that it is diagnosable in men as well with very similar symptom profiles, but somehow in the minds of these people they suddenly decide that something that is completely opposite of psychopathy is going to be the female version of psychopathy for... reasons.
Instead of recognizing that female psychopaths exist, similar to men but with some differences like aggression not being as turned up, they just invent the notion that female psychopathy has to do with highly experienced, and dysregulated emotional patterns., despite that flying in the face of the definition of psychopathy.
Hopefully this is a small subset of the clinicians and researchers but... Is that the opinion of that guy you mentioned, who dominates the defining of psychopathy?
I strongly agree about the empathy issue! There are a few researchers who seem pretty willing to think about it w.r.t. autism... the term being used is the "double empathy problem".
Here is a link that hopefully could show you a few recent articles on it. Some of the most cited researchers on autism continue ignoring this concept... like you mention...
Athena, can a person not be a psychopath but still possess psychopathic traits? I have heard (from a psychiatrist) that one might not have, for instance, BPD but have BPD traits. Would it be possible for a person to be unable to bond/feel love, have remorse but still feel jealousy?
Yes. All humans have psychopathic traits to some degree or another. They are part of being human. However, what makes them psychopathic traits by definition is their origin, which is genetic wiring, and persistence.
Where most people will have the presence of these traits in their lives to some degree or another based on their environment and where they are at emotionally, they tend to be passing, they come and go. In psychopathy they are inherent, and constant.
No wonder psychopaths gets such a bad rep then given that lots of people (at some level) probably believes or accept as truth things they see on tv. I already knew the pictures from Hollywood are unrealistic, but wasn't sure weather or not the "liking to cause pain thing" was actually true or not.. Thanks for clearing that up :-)
Liking to cause pain is sadism, which interestingly they have done brain scans of sadists and psychopaths, and found that sadism actually requires emotional empathy which psychopaths lack entirely. If you are interested in the study, you can find an overview here;
http://healthland.time.com/2012/05/14/understanding-the-psychopathic-mind/
Thank you, very interesting!
You are quite welcome
Would you say then that it is easier that a psychopath grows up to be antisocial?
Do you think it needs more effort to raise psychopaths to be well adjusted members of society that for a NT?
Great post as usual.
I think that there certainly is more of a chance for it in society currently, with so many parents not parenting any longer. Handing a psychopathic child a screen, and expecting them to figure it out on their own is not going to produce good results.
Yes that was a long read. I felt like I was back in collage, lol.
Understandable
I was referring to your link , just in case you weren't sure. I should have been more clear. Sometimes my brain moves to fast and I tend to skip by things.
Hi great explanations! Thank you. Just a few questions: Can a psychopath cry? If so what would cause that response? And: (just watching this tv serie now (The Soceity) One of the characters (Campbell) is exposed as a psychopath.
He cried one time when his girlfriend confessed having tried to kill him. Not sure if it was because he was offended, fascinated or just trying to manipulate etc.. He also liked to hurt his girlfriend or watching her having pain etc..
He killed a dog, and cut off his birds feet for fun, and so on.. I just wonder does this have any root in reality? Is a psychopath likely to enjoy seeing someone in pain, or inflict pain? Like get off by it or get a thrill? Likewise from cutting the birds legs off.. Is this character more likely to be a sosciopath?
What you are describing is not anything other than a very poorly constructed Hollywood stereotype, down to the debunked animal torture nonsense. Nothing that you described is like a psychopath at all, just a bad script writer that didn't do any research.
I can cry when I have to, such as a funeral because it is socially expected, or when in excruciating pain, as I apparently did when I had meningitis. Never from emotion.
Thank you for this piece, and also for the links to the other ones. The 2017 one has a ton in it; stuff that drives me nuts (us autistics can be driven nuts!) but I am fascinated to learn that most people with psychopathy are not locked up. Perhaps "passing"? Then, I wonder how accurate the estimates on prevalence of psychopathy are; has there ever been a truly random sampling of a human population for this brain variant?
I didn't know anything about any of these issues, whether w.r.t. psychopathy or autism -- before about 2016. I began to read and learn how the psychiatry profession is truly messing up the lives of so many... that when I was ostensibly N.T., my strong interests were great things, but the second I was diagnosed they were... overly restricted interests. Disordered.
Athena -- re. your comment that (paraphrasing) you're not sure how 'low self esteem' could have evolved; I have been wondering if it is connected to improving survival chances for less-(strong) individuals of social species. Using that word "strong" very loosely. If individuals keep trying to rise to the top of some hierarchy and failing, each new failure could have some risk to long-term survival. So if the individual stops trying to win conflicts of various sorts, they might be making the best of a non-optimal situation.
Some people assume that all these emotions have clear, perceivable causes for individuals; from an evolutionary perspective, I don't think that has to be the case. The experience of "love" can get mating to happen. More offspring might survive if they are "loved" and cared for well too. "Love" isn't the only emotion or mental process that could cause this to happen, but it's the one lots of mammals seem to have! I think "low self-esteem" is similar, possibly depression too in certain circumstances. That doesn't mean we have to treasure it, it's aversive...
I have many many non-complimentary thoughts about the mental processes of some of these psychiatrists and their mammal dominance-related brain circuits manifesting in their "science" too. Lots of other similar neurotypical behaviors are not fully understood by them imo; it might be easier for people with differences to see certain things in each other. Maybe that's part of why these different neurotypes exist in our very social species?
I would guess that there is some amount of accuracy to the prevalence estimation For every psychopath missed, it is likely that someone is deemed psychopathic, when in fact they have something else going on. There is probably some aspect of it balancing itself out.
I agree that likely low self esteem is about social acceptance, and tribalistic living. If you upset the group and are ousted from it, you have a lower rate of survival, so having lower self esteem helps establish and maintain a pecking order.
I think that there is definitely a reason that different neurotypes exist, but find it very difficult to have a rational conversation with many people that are invested financially and egotistically in their "treatment" as opposed to the understanding of them.
NTs believe that they are highly empathetic, but this to me only appears to make sense if you are seeing it from a position of like for like. They may appear to be highly empathetic, but that is only because they are the dominant type of neuro-functioning in the world. They can understand someone that thinks as they do, so they have empathy.
Often however, if a person of a different neuro-functioning is presented to them, their empathy fails them entirely. Without being practiced in cognitive empathy, suddenly they become very different people in terms of how they think of someone different from them, and what treatment they feel is appropriate for that difference. It is a serious flaw in the empathy system, but no matter how many times it is mentioned, researchers tend to substitute a reasonable concern for their own assumptions.
p.s. In no way did I mean to imply that all people with a particular neurotype should be "locked up" -- just reread what I wrote, sorry.
I reacted that way mostly because the prevalence estimates for autistics have been so very wrong, especially for females. We apparently typically "mask" or "camouflage" more, or "better", than many male autistics. This has only recently been noticed by autism researchers in peer-reviewed stuff...
So the ratio of 10 male autistics to every female is now 3:1, with some saying 1:1 is likely. The brain patterns in fMRIs are also looking pretty different in females vs. males, amongst diagnosed autistics.
So perhaps something similar has happened with psychopathy? If researchers are looking using the wrong template, at the wrong population, and continually just reinforcing their wrong theories with those wrong results, they are generally (gasp)... WRONG.
They don't really look at the brain scans for diagnostics, as they are experimental only. This isn't helped by the assumption that psychopathy in females is actually BPD, which is a nonsense proposal set forth by people that clearly know nothing about BPD or psychopathy.
Trying to sort out the brain scans of female to male psychopaths would first have to rely on an understanding of what psychopathy is as a baseline, before they could even try to identify it in males versus females, but so long as we have individuals making ridiculous claims like female psychopathy is BPD, there is no chance of this happening.
Jeez. I didn't realize that psychopathy in females is another of the many differences/conditions/issues that get misdiagnosed as BPD. Let's see, now we have psychopathy, PTSD, autism... seems to be the latest version of a "wandering uterus". Maybe it could be simplified to... females who are not smiling.
https://www.wired.com/2014/05/fantastically-wrong-wandering-womb/
It's amazing to me that they have a description of BPD, they know what it is, what it looks like, that it is diagnosable in men as well with very similar symptom profiles, but somehow in the minds of these people they suddenly decide that something that is completely opposite of psychopathy is going to be the female version of psychopathy for... reasons.
Instead of recognizing that female psychopaths exist, similar to men but with some differences like aggression not being as turned up, they just invent the notion that female psychopathy has to do with highly experienced, and dysregulated emotional patterns., despite that flying in the face of the definition of psychopathy.
Hopefully this is a small subset of the clinicians and researchers but... Is that the opinion of that guy you mentioned, who dominates the defining of psychopathy?
I strongly agree about the empathy issue! There are a few researchers who seem pretty willing to think about it w.r.t. autism... the term being used is the "double empathy problem".
Here is a link that hopefully could show you a few recent articles on it. Some of the most cited researchers on autism continue ignoring this concept... like you mention...
https://scholar.google.com/scholar?as_ylo=2020&q=double+empathy+problem&hl=en&as_sdt=0,40
Thank you for the link. I will definitely read it.
Very well written! Even someone with zero understanding could get this.
Thank you, Sheez
Your welcome Athena