The Tangled Understanding Of Psychopathy And Sociopathy

Yet another reason that there is so much misinformation...

Photo by Angel Luciano on Unsplash

In fairness, this really isn’t confined to the understanding of psychopathy, but rather many different things. Recently someone asked me if I was keeping up on the Johnny Depp vs Amber Heard trial. I’m not, I informed them. I don't keep up with celebrities. That was fine, they just wanted to ask me about one of the experts on the stand.

Apparently, the defense put up some “expert” that then waxed poetically about how much of a narcissist Johnny Depp is. The problem? He never examined Mr. Depp. He drew his conclusions on… get this… his character in Pirates of the Caribbean…

Seriously dude? Actually no, seriously defense attorneys? All of them should be taken behind the woodshed for a reminder of what ethics are. Also, I think that at least the psychiatrist needs to have his own head examined. There has never been a point in time that I watched a JD movie and thought to myself,

“Huh, I wonder how he sleeps with scissors for hands?”

Why have I never asked that? Because that’s a character, in a movie, it isn’t real, and I’m not an idiot, but apparently, JD is a pirate that happens to be on land at the moment. Did he get mutinied out of the Pearl again?

That “expert” should have his license reexamined. The only reason he is getting called out for this is that it was on video in front of tons of people that have been glued to this trial. Think of how many times he has done this in private practice.

There is a habit, and it is a nasty one, of certain individuals within the realm of psychology that believe that they can determine a diagnosis in someone that they have never met. I spoke about Robert Hare doing exactly this in my three-part series discussing my issues with his work and behavior. Here is that story for a quick reminder:

Bob was spending Saturday night at Heathrow—a stop-over between Sweden and Vancouver: he spends his life crisscrossing the planet to teach people how to use his PCL-R Checklist— and did I want to meet him at his hotel for a drink?

When I arrived, there was no sign of him in the foyer. The queue for the front desk was long, a lot of tired, unhappy-looking business travelers checking in late. I couldn’t see the house phone. Then I had a brainwave. The concierge’s desk was unoccupied. His phone was sitting there. I could dial zero, go straight through to the front desk (callers to hotel front desks invariably get to jump the queue: we, as a people, seem to be more enticed by mysterious callers than we are by actual people standing in front of us) and ask to be put through to Bob’s room.

But I only got as far as picking up the phone before I saw the concierge marching fast towards me.

“Put down my phone!” He barked.

“Just give me a second!” I cheerfully mouthed.

He grabbed the phone from my hand and slammed it down.

Bob appeared. I made a big, suave show in front of the concierge of greeting him.

“Bob!” I said.

We were two courteous business travelers meeting for important reasons in a hotel late in the evening. I made sure the concierge saw that.

“Will we go to the third floor executive bar?” Bob said.

“Yes,” I said, shooting the concierge a glance. “The executive bar.”

We walked across the lobby together.

“You will never believe what just happened,” I said in a startled whisper.

“What?” said Bob.

“The concierge just manhandled me.”

“In what way?”

“I was using the phone to try and call you, and when he saw me, he grabbed the phone out of my hand and slammed it down,” I said. “It was totally uncalled for, and actually quite shocking. Why would he want to do that?”

“Well, he’s one,” said Bob.

I looked at Bob.

“A psychopath?” I said.

I narrowed my eyes and glanced over at the concierge. He was helping someone into the elevator with her bags.

“Is he?” I said?

“A lot of psychopaths become gatekeepers,” said Bob. “concierges, security guards, masters of their own domains.”

“He did seems to have a lack of empathy,” I said. “And poor behavioral controls.”

“You should put that in your book,” said Bob.

“I will,” I said.

Then I peered at Bob.

“Was that a little trigger happy?” I thought. “Maybe the guy has just had a long, bad day. Maybe he’s been ordered by his bosses not to let guests use his phone. Why did neither Bob nor I think about that?”

We got the elevator to the executive floor.

Why is this important? Well, for starters, the behavior is unethical. In particular, in the JDvsAH trial, there is a rule that forbids this behavior. I have spoken about it before on Quora, it’s called the Goldwater Rule. It came to be due to events that took place when Arizona Senator Barry Goldwater, a conservative Republican, ran against, President Lyndon Johnson in the 1964 presidential race. There was a concerted effort to smear Mr. Goldwater to make people not want to vote for him.

How did they do this? Well, Fact Magazine, and yes that was the most ridiculous name for this publication due to how they decided to discredit Mr. Goldwater, ran a cover story claiming:

“1,189 Psychiatrists Say Goldwater Is Psychologically Unfit to Be President.”

They failed to mention just a few “facts” about this so-called proclamation.

1. They actually asked 12,356 psychiatrists, and only 2,417 responded.

2. Of those that responded, 1,189 said no, 657 said yes, and 571 said they didn’t know enough about the matter to have an opinion.

3. Fact Magazine was warned not to publish the opinions of people that had never examined Mr. Goldwater.

So why was Mr. Goldwater unfit for office?

Let’s see, they claimed that he was:

1. A homosexual that hated his wife.

2. Had the heart of a mass murderer

3. One stated, “I believe Goldwater has the same pathological make-up as Hitler, Castro, Stalin, and other known schizophrenic leaders,”

4. Another said, “It is my feeling that Senator Goldwater appeals to the unconscious sadism and hostility in the average human being.”

5. “he is a mass murderer at heart,”

6. “It is apparent that Goldwater hates and fears his wife.”

When he lost the election, and of course he did, who would vote for someone who has all these accusations about him made by “reputable” psychiatrists, Mr. Goldwater sued and won. That lawsuit ushered in the Goldwater Rule that disallows making claims about celebrities or public people (including politicians) without first having examined them.

This is exactly what the so-called expert did in the JDvsAH trial, but is not, not by a long shot, the only person that indulges in this sort of behavior. People get away with this on a regular basis because the people that they make claims about are neither celebrities, nor public people. It is unfortunately common. In fact, there is a book written called, The Sociopath Nextdoor, written by Martha Stout. Do you think that she bothered interviewing sociopaths and writing about their experiences in order to present an accurate writing regarding them?

No, of course she didn’t do that. Instead, she decided that she could diagnose her patients’ partners, or ex-partners, simply based on what her client told her. This is not how you build information regarding any subject. Second-hand knowledge, which certainly is going to be sanitized of her client’s own wrongdoing in a likely toxic relationship, is not how you understand something.

Don’t get me wrong, I get it, it is financially beneficial to her to appeal to people in an emotional way so they want to buy her book. her description for the book states:

Is it your lying, cheating ex-husband?
Your sadistic high school gym teacher?
Your boss who loves to humiliate people in meetings?
The colleague who stole your idea and passed it off as her own?

From the back cover:

Who is the devil "you know?
Is it your lying, cheating ex-husband?
Your sadistic high school gym teacher?
Your boss who loves to humiliate people in meetings?
The colleague who stole your idea and passed it off as her own?
In the pages of "The Sociopath Next Door, you will realize that your ex was not just misunderstood. He's a sociopath. And your boss, teacher, and colleague? They may be sociopaths too.

We are accustomed to think of sociopaths as violent criminals, but in "The Sociopath Next Door, Harvard psychologist Martha Stout reveals that a shocking 4 percent of ordinary people--one in twenty-five--has an often undetected mental disorder, the chief symptom of which is that that person possesses no conscience. He or she has no ability whatsoever to feel shame, guilt, or remorse. One in twenty-five everyday Americans, therefore, is secretly a sociopath. They could be your colleague, your neighbor, even family. And they can do literally anything at all and feel absolutely no guilt."

How do we recognize the remorseless? One of their chief characteristics is a kind of glow or charisma that makes sociopaths more charming or interesting than the other people around them. They're more spontaneous, more intense, more complex, or even sexier than everyone else, making them tricky to identify and leaving us easily seduced. Fundamentally, sociopaths are different because they cannot love. Sociopaths learn early on to show sham emotion, but underneath they are indifferent to others' suffering. They live to dominate and thrill to win.
The fact is, we all almost certainly know at least one or more sociopaths already. Part of the urgency in reading "TheSociopath Next Door is the moment when we suddenly recognize that someone we know--someone we worked for, or were involved with, or voted for--is a sociopath. But what do we do with that knowledge? To arm us against the sociopath, Dr. Stout teaches us to question authority, suspect flattery, and beware the pity play. Above all, she writes, when a sociopath is beckoning, do not join the game.

It is the ruthless versus the rest of us, and "The Sociopath Next Door will show you how to recognize and defeat the devil you know.

Who is this woman?

Martha Stout, Ph.D., a clinical psychologist in private practice, served on the faculty in psychology in the department of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School for twenty-five years. She is also the author of "The Myth of Sanity" and "The Paranoia Switch."

All right, her bonafides seem to give the impression that she would want to be as accurate as possible, and yet, she didn’t bother interviewing a single person that this book is based on. Even better than that? She has a habit of calling sociopaths ‘it’, as you can see from this review:

I am currently a psychology major and had originally purchased this book for a research project on the representation of antisocial personality disorder in the media. As it is written by a clinical psychologist, I was excited about the portrayal and explanation of the disorder from someone who understood on a higher level. I can confidently say that I am disappointed and frankly distraught at the language Stout uses throughout the writing. As a clinical psychologist, it is expected that she be a representative of the psychology community and all that comes with it. Her writing is clearly biased (her primary patients are those who have been psychologically traumatized at the hands of other people) and she talks about those diagnosed with antisocial personality disorder as if they are not people, calling them "ice people" and "it," and stating that the high level of people with this diagnosis in the community is a burden to "the rest of us that must live on this planet, too." Although the abusive language may be due to her outdated education as she attended college in the 70s, her writing only contributes to the negative stigma and misconceptions about mental health in general. As a fellow participant in the psychology community, I am disappointed in Stout's failure to accurately represent and educate those who do not understand. I hope that these stigmas will eventually be dissolved and society will realize that mental illness is not something to take lightly.

Her book is widely purchased, and is thought of to be a good representation of sociopaths by people that don’t know any better. There are a ton of reviews that take her word as gospel, because they have no idea that her book and research have as much value as grabbing a diagnosis out of a crackerjack box.

Why is this important? Well, for a few reasons, not the least of which is how stunningly common this behavior is. It doesn’t matter if the Goldwater Rule applies only to celebrities and public figures, that is not the only place this habit causes extreme danger. I expect it from trash websites like Love Fraud or Psychopath Free, but to see it from people that should absolutely know better is very unfortunate.

This sort of thing is done for a few reasons I believe.

1. It is a sure-fire way to sell a book. Sensationalism sells, and that is all this is.

2. It is easy to take advantage of people’s emotions. You see this in a variety of places, but I think it is particularly egregious coming from the mental health field.

3. It is easy. No work had to be done shy of imagining in her mind what a “sociopath” looks like, and from there just write stories that aren’t true, and go to market.

4. Hubris. I see this a lot in Ph.D. holders. They think that they have already done school, and they believe that they know better than anyone else, so they should absolutely capitalize on people’s belief that the alphabet after their names make them qualified to define the reality of people they have never met.

5. No one can counter them. So what if she writes a ton of nonsense about sociopathy, no one can call her a liar. That is, not after people like her have made it a point to define things like sociopathy and psychopathy with terms like “pathological liars”. The response from these so-called “experts” when someone who is actually a sociopath disagrees with their assertions is to dismiss them, reminding everyone that they are a natural-born liar.

6. It’s very profitable. For as many people that are not sold on the emotional manipulation and need to label everyone in their life as a sociopath, there are ten more that think this sort of book is a bible. Thus you get a review like this:
   
   ”THIS IS A MUST READ FOR EVERYONE (except for the sociopaths around us.) Please do not refer this book to anyone until after you have read this book from cover to cover. Personally, I discovered that my ex-husband and possibly my son are sociopaths. I have an eye out on my older grandson, who is somewhat cold and calculating. Whereas, his younger brother is a real sweetheart. I feel like my daughter-in-Law might get an unexpected phone call from me when I am certain the other two are gone. She needs to protect her second son immediately.”

Seventy-one percent of the people that read this book gave it five stars. Seventy-one percent of 3,170 total thought that this was the best damn thing ever. 2,250 people believe what she wrote, and will tell other people that it’s true. They then go out, diagnose people that they don’t like as a sociopath, and then tell the world about how evil they are.

They are manufacturing a bunch of emotionally drunk people that believe that they are informed now. If you tell them the problems with this sort of book, or someone like Robert Hare, they will tune you out. They have heard from an “expert” and you are an idiot that doesn’t understand the “truth”.

People are fallible, and inherently self-interested. Not some people, all people. Robert Hare and Martha Stout are just like everyone else. They want stuff for them, and they make mistakes. However, building your career on mistakes is something that can only be done in a situation like this, and the only reason that they get away with it is the alphabet after their names. Let me assure you, this would not happen with a structural engineer. The alphabet has no value if the buildings they create fall, and kill everyone inside.

Nope, the only type of place this can occur is when the people that you are misinforming have no choice but to trust that alphabet soup because psychology insists on being a rather nebulous place. They can say anything that they want to. Most people do not feel comfortable reading studies, they do not know how to look at them and see their glaring flaws that negate all of the supposed “findings”, they don’t know that most of the research is done by grad students that do not have the training necessary to do so.

People don’t know how easy it is to make things up and sell them on the market to thousands, without there being even a little bit of consequence coming back to them. They have no idea, but the people that write this sort of thing? They do know, and they don’t care. They are either writing what they know to be false information, or they have convinced themselves that they are somehow different, and can glean from the ether who is a psychopath, who is a sociopath, who is a narcissist, despite everything in their training that states this isn’t possible.