Favorite quote (so far, need to read this again) is, "this was behind a paywall, so in true psychopathic form, I went around their expectations to read it without them getting a dime."
My understanding of identity, at least in terms of gender, is that it ISN’T a choice. It is something you have, and the only reason your gender identity changes is because as you learn more, you understand what you are better.
If they mean ‘identify’ like that, I don’t see a problem with it being used.
Reading you suddenly complaining about Grammarly is kind of amusing.
I don’t know enough about sociopathy to make an opinion on whether or not the woman in the article is one, and honestly even if I did I wouldn’t even attempt to prove or disprove her.
I know that in online autistic spaces, many creators will get accused of “faking” autism. Even content creators who have an official diagnosis will get accused of faking autism.
An example I can think of was this behavioural therapist, who worked with young autistic children, accused a full grown woman, who created TikTok videos, of faking autism because she didn’t behave the same way her young clients behaved.
The content creator ended up calling her out by empathizing the fact that her videos are highly edited. The therapist ended up losing her job because parents found out about her behaviour online and didn’t want her working with their kids anymore.
There is no doubt there are people who fake whatever condition they’re trying to say they have, but accusing people of faking a disorder doesn’t help.
What I think of the woman in the article? I believe the experiences she describes are real and that she associates those experiences with sociopathy. Nature does not make hard distinctions between things so I can understand why people may adopt a label or two during the process of self discovery.
It seems to me Athena, absurd that this person uses the term “identify with a sociopath.”
It’s ridiculous. It’s also pointless why the person writing that book, cares so much about the label, but yet simultaneously rambles on about masking.
In my experience, the most obvious indication that one has the traits of sociopathy (or secondary psychopathy) although it’s clearly very different and probably shouldn’t be labelled psychopathy at all…
Is zero capacity for guilt. It’s much the same for fear. It’s absent.
People have this absurd notion that having no guilt = wishing harm.
This is nonsense. The two are not linked and unless the person is a vindictive individual; you do not need guilt (or even regret) to act with the best intent you know how.
I can feel emotions but there’s no division or conflict in any emotion I feel.
There’s never a rationalisation about the past. It has no connection to the present.
When I’m happy I’m happy.
When I’m sad I’m sad.
When I’m angry I’m angry.
When I’m content I’m content.
When I’m bored I’m bored.
People project into me and each other constantly and I find it unfathomable how emotionally invested they are in the past.
It doesn’t exist.
Tbh I don’t even have the inclination to write about sociopathy any more.
It gets boring.
I think there’s a lot of very interesting and talented individuals who were probably sociopaths.
It doesn’t make a person immune to creativity if you happen to be a creative person.
If anything I think it enhanced the ability to be creative.
Although it certainly hasn’t done me any favours writing about it and as a result I don’t any more.
That’s my opinion from my experience anyway Athena!
This led me to consider what living in the moment with the full emotional spectrum available must be like. It seems that there is the ability for a sociopath to feel everything even if they do not, but coupling that with lack of emotional coding for memories and it makes sociopathy vs psychopath even more interesting.
I'm not sure if it's possible to live in the present with the full emotional spectrum.
Many emotions have their roots in the past - regret, guilt, offense, shame and numerous other defensive emotional reactions.
For me, living in the present was nearly simultaneous with the loss of defensive emotions. It was sudden, the result of a deep realization. Then, everything settled & my mind felt really different. Took a couple years to get used to my "new" mind, though. Didn't understand the full ramifications or everything that had changed.
Even though I'm speaking from a certain type of experience, I can't imagine how one could live in the present & maintain the full emotional capacity. Defensive emotions tie people to their past.
Question - are non-subscribers limited in the number of characters in a comment? I had to delete several sentences before my other comment was posted in full.
I am still looking to find this as a setting, but even with Google searches I can't find anything that addresses this issue. I can't even find a place that gives comment length cutoffs as an option. Maybe it's a glitch? I will keep looking, but let me know if this continues to be an issue.
One thing that caught my attention was her description of the lack of bonding with her newborn. That sounded like a touch of post partum right there.
The poor impulse control is totally alien to me as I can't ever recall having the impulse to just do something violent to let off steam or whatever it was that provoked it.
I don't know enough about post partum depression to be able to speak about it, so I just take her at her word. I don't know if it has to do with oxytocin or not, but it sounds similar to my own experience.
No, I never did either. It seems like such a waste to me. It makes me wonder where that originates from.
I thought about you after my SO sent the article to me. I had a hunch that someone you knew would bring it to your attention. It's full of misinformation. I was especially galled by the "identifying as" a sociopath, and not any backstory of the child abuse or trauma that caused it.
I thought sociopaths, or secondary psychopaths were born neurotypical, but due to severe child abuse or trauma, no longer were?
You should ditch Grammarly. Spell check is all you need.
So far there isn't any concrete evidence that there are brain changes in sociopathy, though my hypothesis is that there are through synaptic pruning. However, no one is investigating that, or any other hypothesis regarding sociopathy, as far as I am aware.
I’m sure you’ve been asked this before but I’m not sure how many articles I’d have to look back through to find an answer: what exactly is counted as neurodivergence? Is the difference a diagnosis that’s literally caused by a difference in brain structure versus one that’s purely environmental?
I’ve seen people with ADHD and Autism use neurodivergence to refer to themselves & I assumed it was just the new, socially acceptable term for mental, developmental and neurodevelopmental conditions. I wasn’t aware it actually meant a specific type of brain structure.
Neurodivergent is applied to brains that are structured or operate in a way that isn't normal. In people with autism, for instance, they have synapses in the brain that have far more connections than a neurotypical does. I am sure that there are other differences as well, but these are hard differences that can be looked at on an imaging scan or functional imaging scan. I am not certain if they require this aspect, but in my mind they should, these differences should be present from birth in order to be considered neurodivergent.
I don’t know Grammerly, but it did allow the misspelling of ‘societal’ as ‘sociatal.’ My take on her ‘vanilla’ example wasn’t that she had an emotional response with “I’m stealing it next time” but ‘OK, I paid this time for spoiled something, so next time I get a pass on paying for the same thing.”
Hmm, Sociopaths _might_ be neurodivergent, at least in the case of narcissistic sociopaths. In answering a question on Quora (placed in bad faith) about comorbidity of narcissists and psychopaths, I researched brain structures and activities of psychopaths and narcissists and provided that in the answer which the querent then replied that I had told him nothing new (never mind that narcissists have emotions in 3D brilliant color). Ah well, Quora is behind me. Anyway, here is the article about narcissists https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10605183/. In that abstract, certain similarities in the networking of signals between narcissists and psychopaths were identified; however, they did not make an issue of dissimilar sizes of the amygdala or other areas of gray matter and white matter between the two.
Brain research is difficult in the best of cases. Subjects need to be measured in many areas and their activity in those areas, as measured by glucose-burning or electrical activity may evoke a number of explanations. To be realistic we are like a blind man grasping a stick. We don't know its length, its shape outside the area f grasp, or even if it is the same stick we grasped last time. And the folk we are measuring are operationally defined as being X range of scores on test Y.
With all of that said, some learned heads do postulate the existence of narcissistic sociopaths, and if in fact these exist, then we have a sociopath who is neurodivergent. Buddhist sects do seem to describe narcissists rather well, and assign them to various hells or realms to which people may be reborn or assigned for the purpose of learning by suffering... Indian Buddhism calls them Hungry Ghosts, Tibetan Buddhism calls them Jealous Gods, and some of the Japanese Buddhists recognize a mental state (one of more than 35,000) which people may live through and learn from, in the space of a few seconds to several lifetimes.
My personal experience with what I believed to be narcissists is that they have a unique terror which turns them away from self-examination, despite my exposing them to case histories of fearful people who lived through it and gained more control over their lives. Obviously, when encountering such a level of fear, I refuse to practice hypnotherapy with them for practical and ethical reasons. (Those ethics are part of my personal code of conduct which I follow by choice.)
While reddit may have many tales of entitled people who behave like narcissists, that may be storytellers making up Karens and Kevins. Good luck taking census on narcissists, let alone the possibly mythical narcissistic sociopath.
Athena, you have my endorsement for taking on such a task with a self-admitted sociopath wh may be something else. I am just amazed that so many folk dance on wet ice while trying to honestly learn and more than a few trying to pontificate for self-serving goals. Your judgments usually meet my gold standard because you seem honest in these efforts.
Thank you for the study link. I am working on the second half of the Twin Flames post still, which led me down an absolute rabbit hole about cults and cult leaders. I think that many cult leaders may be excellent examples of malignant narcissists. The one I was most recently researching was Jim Jones, and his need for attention and absolute loyalty was pretty profound. This study on the brains of narcissists might be excellent insight to what drives a person like Jones to do the things that he did.
This part of the comment:
"My personal experience with what I believed to be narcissists is that they have a unique terror which turns them away from self-examination, despite my exposing them to case histories of fearful people who lived through it and gained more control over their lives."
rings especially true for Jones. He was incapable of self-examination and I wonder if his need to monologue for literally hours to his followers on a daily basis might have been an outgrowth of that unique terror.
There are a couple of episodes of Leah Remini's series on Scientology, that look closely at L Ron Hubbard as a person, and it's pretty much the exact same thing as you described with Jones - the need for absolute control and absolute loyalty, to the point where it was church policy to attack and harass so called 'suppressive persons', as they were considered 'fair game', eg their disloyalty to the church justified literally any form of retaliation, including violence, and cutting them off from their entire family and friends for the rest of their lives! Sadly I think there are some people in this world who are so badly wounded, and feel so badly about themselves, that they will do literally ANYTHING to avoid any kind of self reflection, including retreating into a world of complete delusion and fantasy, and detachment from reality - it's just a shame that they tend to take so many other people down with them as they go...
I can't recall which cult leader it was, but I think it might have been Jones (though it could have been Manson) sent some of his followers to study at the Scientology headquarters in England. I know Manson took one hundred and fifty hours of scientology courses however. It seems it is just a common part of cult leading.
Oh Jesus, I had no idea that that kind of cross-contamination goes on between cults - they tend to be so insular and inward looking, such self-contained units, that it never occurred to me they might be actively comparing notes in that way! Often their beliefs are so odd and so specific that you wouldn't think they'd have much to say to each other, but of course the details don't really matter - the underlying pathology is basically the same from cult to cult, in both leaders and followers, as are the methods they use to maintain control...
Absolutely - if you haven't seen it I highly recommend Wild Wild Country on Netflix, about an Indian guru who set up a kind of commune in rural Oregon in the 80s - it's fascinating and highly entertaining - and in places quite unbelievable, to the point that I really couldn't understand how it was possible that I'd never heard about it before!
The Rajneeshees. Yes, they are absolutely interesting, though I think Sheila might have been the most interesting of the group when it came to cult leadership. Rajneesh seemed to be less aggressive than she was.
Yes Sheila is the one I remember, way more than Rajneesh. I was literally watching most of it with my jaw on the floor every time she was on screen, it seemed like every single human interaction was just part of one long endless power struggle to her. If I had to put a label on her I'd say definitely some form of narcissist, probably the malignant kind. I'm not sure I've ever come across a human quite like her before or since!
I’m the person who mentioned the article to you. Thanks for your commentary; it’s exactly the kind of analysis I was hoping you would give. I still haven’t gone back to read the entire article, so I’m glad you are writing about this in two parts.
I wrote to you earlier that my impression was that she’s probably neither a psychopath nor a sociopath—but displays the kind of psychopathic behavior that comes from coping with her repressed explosive emotions. Your comments reinforced that impression. If she had suffered some trauma in her youth, that might explain why she was diagnosed as a sociopath. But she didn’t share that.
I suspect that, like all types of neurodivergent traits, psychopathic behaviors exist in people who fall within the neurotypical range. There’s likely a continuum rather than a sharp line between a neurotypical with some neurodivergent traits and a neurodivergent with some neurotypical traits.
Pathological narcissists, for instance, behave like psychopaths in some ways, but instead of being comfortable in their own skin, as you are, they feel absolutely horrible about themselves. They experience unbearable hurt and insecurity and anger and jealousy and vengeance, and they will do anything to block those feelings. I suspect that behaving as if they feel none of that helps them suppress all those uncontrollable feelings. They block out all the shame by denying they feel guilt.
The woman in the article seems to fall somewhere between a psychopath and a pathological narcissist.
(My thesis advisor in the 80’s was a pathological narcissist, so I have spent my entire adult life thinking about personality disorders—particularly pathological narcissism.)
That's super interesting. I would imagine having an advisor who was narcissistic would be very annoying, but then again, it could make them very easy to get a good grade out of as well.
There is another article written by this same person that deals with her relationship with her partner. I am considering doing commentary on that one as well.
Narcissists really don't act like psychopaths. Their behavior is vastly different than ours. There is too much emotion and emotional motivation for me to grant any similarity.
It was a PhD program so there weren’t any grades. But I did figure out that if I soothed my advisers ego, he treated me very well.
I realize that my advisor’s response to praise and approval doesn’t resemble how a psychopath like yourself would response; I assume that praise has little to no affect on you on a deep level.
But a lack of empathy towards others is characteristic of both personality types, so their outward behavior can “appear” similar, even though the etiology of that lack of empathy is vastly different. The major difference is that the pathological narcissist is quite capable of feeling empathy but 100% of it is directed at themselves. Consequently, they are no more capable of feeling empathy for others than a psychopath can. But, as you noted, the rest of their behavior is quite different. Narcissists are deeply insecure, filled with self-loathing and emotionally volatile, whereas psychopaths are the total opposite.
This is a question I've been pondering for a while now too - whilst I fully understand that true psychopathy is born not made, could it nevertheless be possible for a baby born neurotypical to develop into something very similar to a psychopath, a kind of 'pseudo-psychopath' if you like, due to extreme emotional neglect at a very young age?
In a similar way to how childhood abuse and neglect can take a neurotypical brain and make it sociopathic, due to the child learning extreme emotional repression as a survival strategy, whilst also having huge amounts of suppressed rage and anger that burst out explosively from time to time.... what if that same neurotypical brain had experienced no active abuse or physical neglect (eg they weren't hurt and their physical needs were met), but did experience extreme emotional neglect from birth, eg caregivers that didn't talk to them, smile at them, play with them, make eye contact etc - for example a mother with severe depression. If the child wasn't actively hurt or abused there may be nothing to create any significant suppressed anger, or tendency towards violence, but this kind of parenting could potentially create very low emotionality, empathy, attachment etc, simply as a result of having no role model for normal human emotions.
I think for this scenario to create anything remotely close to the behaviour and traits of true psychopathy, the emotional neglect would have to be very extreme and from a very early age (say 0-6 months). It may also be very rare, because the likelihood of a parent being that emotionally neglectful but also somehow able to meet the child's physical needs and not be abusive is pretty remote - but in theory it could happen, especially if there were other adults in the child's life able to ensure their physical needs were met, but their main caregiver that they spent most of their time with was very distant and detached.
I appreciate that if this third category does exist, it's probably not at all helpful to refer to it as any type of psychopathy, since the underlying cause is so different ('tertiary psychopath' anyone?!). But it could still mimic psychopathy quite closely, if we're measuring things purely by behaviour alone (brain scans or genetic testing wouldn't have any trouble telling them apart, obviously).
I wonder about this because of the number of violent criminals in prison who are supposedly psychopathic - I find it hard to believe that many true psychopaths end up involved in violent crime, because the emotions that normally drive violent behaviour are so muted or absent. Which makes me wonder if there's another category of people, who are not true psychopaths (eg can process oxytocin), but have still developed psychopath-like traits due to not having any role model for the full range of human emotions, and are behaviourally similar enough to have been falsely diagnosed as psychopathic on the basic of a checklist alone?
That would be a sociopath, and because they still have the wiring for emotions those emotions aren't totally absent, just reduced in terms of how often they show up. However, according to other sociopaths that I have read about and from some of their own writings, their emotions, when they do appear, are very intense and they are prone to acting on them sometimes to the extreme.
Another adaptation that might appear in these circumstances would be RAD or Reactive Attachment Disorder. Neither of these things is like psychopathy though. In appearance and cause they are very removed.
As for psychopaths and violent crime, violence is a means to an end, and if that is the pathway that psychopath finds the fastest resolution to whatever issue they are addressing, they will use it. These tend to be criminal psychopaths. Chances are they were raised in that environment so they see it as a reasonable choice, and they have been involved in criminal activity for some time. I see no issue with utilizing violence if it is necessary, however, it causes more problems than it solves generally, so it isn't my first choice. The difference would be having no emotion toward that violence. It is simply a tool that is wielded to get results, not something used in anger.
I'm sure you're right, what I'm describing is more like a form of sociopathy than a form of psychopathy, because the capacity for normal levels of emotion is still there, it's just suppressed. It's maybe just a form of sociopathy that's a bit heavier on the emotional detachment and less heavy on the repressed anger, compared to the 'classic' sociopath.
I'm just curious about whether it's possible to take a neurotypical brain and (unintentionally) create something behaviourally similar to psychopathy, even though it's not actually psychopathy at all - because I wonder about all those people diagnosed as psychopaths in the 50s/60s/70s/80s on the basis of behavioural checklists alone, and wonder how many of them weren't actually psychopaths at all, but sociopaths of one kind or another. Maybe people who were very emotionally detached, including low levels of guilt/remorse etc, but didn't have the levels of explosive anger normally associated with sociopathy, might have got lumped into the 'psychopath' bucket when they weren't really psychopaths at all.
It might be another reason why criminality came to be part of the definition of a psychopath, when it's now clear that it really isn't - if we had high rates of sociopaths being diagnosed as psychopaths in those days, then the lines between the two conditions would have naturally got very blurred.
Although totally accept your argument that studying psychopaths only in prisons really didn't help, and nor did Hare with his crazy checklist. In their defence I guess they didn't have alot to go on back then, but that's no excuse for clinging on to those old out-of-date ideas now, when we have the information and knowledge to do better. Defining psychological conditions purely on the basis of behaviour alone, without understanding of the underlying causes, was always going to be a recipe for confusion!
I would say that if something along those lines occur in later life, it should be named something specific that encompassed all of the traits that come along with it. A person having that sort of change later in life is bound to have significant emotional shadowing to how they think and behave, which would make it its own thing.
I suspect there are multiple environmental conditions that can take a seemingly neurotypical infant and turn them into a sociopath. In other words, the etiology of sociopathy is not limited to overt or extreme forms of physical and emotional abuse.
Here are some ideas I have that together explain why I suspect that there are many environmental conditions that could trigger sociopathy:
From my knowledge of molecular and evolutionary genetics, I have come to understand that the interaction between nature and nurture is constant, creating a never-ending feedback loop (maintained through epigenetic changes in gene expression) that is unique to each individual. So someone without the structural defects in the brain of a psychopath, and without having experienced the extreme abuse that is normally associated with sociopathy, they may still be genetically predisposed to shutting down parts of their neural network. Therefore, I suspect that even the kind of neglect you describe could cause the shutdown of emotions normally associated with a lack of conscience or moral compass.
It’s worth considering that the concept of neurodivergence applies to many traits other than psychopathy. It’s an all-encompassing term that has yet to be properly defined; in fact, most people possess some level of some type of neurodivergence, but compensate so effectively that the outward manifestations are of no consequence. So while someone may not be divergent in the ways a psychopath is, they may have other types of neurodivergent brain wiring that makes them hyper-sensitive to what seems like only mild abuse or neglect.
What’s also worth considering is that the human species is extremely neurodiverse. For instance, there is great diversity in the level of tolerance one has to either physical or emotional pain or both. If someone is genetically wired to find any level of emotional pain or neglect utterly intolerable, they will have no choice but to shut down the neural pathways that create that unbearable response—leaving them with no more capacity to feel guilt or remorse or empathy as a psychopath.
With all that said, I suspect that more often hyper-sensitive people who are predisposed to acquiring sociopathic traits end up with a collection of traits that more closely align with pathological or malignant narcissists. Since the interactions between one’s genetics and environment is unique in each individual, there must be countless differing permutations of psychopathic traits among the community of people who get diagnosed with either psychopathy or sociopathy.
What I’ve learned from Athena’s perspective is that a “complete” psychopath doesn’t feel emotions like anger, revenge and self-doubt any more than they feel guilt and remorse. So, it follows that a “complete” sociopath is someone who was so horrifically traumatized that—in order to survive—they had to completely shut down all the same emotions missing in a psychopath. (I myself chose to use the word “complete;” if you can think of a better word, please share it with me.)
But there are psychopaths and sociopaths who still end up with those diagnoses even though their brain alterations are not “complete.” For instance, someone diagnosed as a psychopath might have an inherited brain defect less severe than a “complete” psychopath. And someone diagnosed as a sociopath may have shut down most of the neural pathways structurally missing in a “complete” psychopath, but still have the human need to be validated and loved. And that’s why they are volatile and vengeful—traits that are more closely associated with pathological narcissists (like Trump).
When you consider the countless number of permutations there must be of certain genetic and environmental triggers of psychopathy and sociopathy—it’s difficult not to imagine that there is a spectrum of various types of people with various psychopathic traits but who don’t fit neatly into the diagnosis of a psychopath or sociopath.
Diagnosticians are the ones to who draw the lines between different mental illnesses and different personality disorders. Considering how neurodiverse we are, the lines they draw exist simply for the purpose of diagnosing people. The labels therefore don’t have as much meaning as people give them. Some diagnostician labeled the woman who is the subject of the NYT article as a sociopath. She is clearly not what I am calling a “complete” sociopath or a “complete” psychopath. That’s why I thought this woman was neither.
There were orphanages (I believe in Romania in Soviet times) where the children received adequate physical care but no emotional care. This was from infancy onwards. These children developed severe problems relating to other people. It's possible these were examples of Reactive Attachment Disorder, I don't know. I would guess that such experience would affect brain development and therefore the degree of neurotypicality or divergence thereof.
I'm also reminded of the experiments with baby monkeys in cages where some were raised with "wire frame" pseudo mothers and others where the frames were covered with fuzzy/furry fabric. And there were behavioral differences as the monkeys grew. I learned about this roughly 50 years ago, so the experiments are dated. It's kinda horrifying that anyone would consider these sorts of experiments to be morally okay.
I also echo Athena's comment below that if a psychopath is raised in a violent environment, that would teach the psychopath that violence is "a reasonable option", so they would be more likely to use it when it seems like the straightest path to whatever they desire in the moment. And it might be harder for that person to assess the likelihood of getting caught for that violence -- and therefore paying a price for it.
The Romanian situation definitely would qualify as "severe neglect" which is one of the prequalifiers of sociopathy. I would guess that different children have different reactions to certain things.
Copy the link of the article you want to read, go to Archive.is, paste, and it should bring it up without issue. Rarely it doesn't work, but nearly always does.
You say you don’t want to pay to accede to the article, so you understand those who choose not to pledge their support? What do you think of those who do?
So glad you are writing this in two parts.
Favorite quote (so far, need to read this again) is, "this was behind a paywall, so in true psychopathic form, I went around their expectations to read it without them getting a dime."
Nice.
About the use of ‘identifies as:’
My understanding of identity, at least in terms of gender, is that it ISN’T a choice. It is something you have, and the only reason your gender identity changes is because as you learn more, you understand what you are better.
If they mean ‘identify’ like that, I don’t see a problem with it being used.
Reading you suddenly complaining about Grammarly is kind of amusing.
The identity label can also be used for labels that we can choose. Political and religious identities come to mind.
Then again it can be argued that beliefs aren’t a choice, rather we have to be convinced that our beliefs are true or morally right.
True.
So I guess its accuracy in the article depends on how it is being used.
I don’t know enough about sociopathy to make an opinion on whether or not the woman in the article is one, and honestly even if I did I wouldn’t even attempt to prove or disprove her.
I know that in online autistic spaces, many creators will get accused of “faking” autism. Even content creators who have an official diagnosis will get accused of faking autism.
An example I can think of was this behavioural therapist, who worked with young autistic children, accused a full grown woman, who created TikTok videos, of faking autism because she didn’t behave the same way her young clients behaved.
The content creator ended up calling her out by empathizing the fact that her videos are highly edited. The therapist ended up losing her job because parents found out about her behaviour online and didn’t want her working with their kids anymore.
There is no doubt there are people who fake whatever condition they’re trying to say they have, but accusing people of faking a disorder doesn’t help.
What I think of the woman in the article? I believe the experiences she describes are real and that she associates those experiences with sociopathy. Nature does not make hard distinctions between things so I can understand why people may adopt a label or two during the process of self discovery.
Yes, I agree
It seems to me Athena, absurd that this person uses the term “identify with a sociopath.”
It’s ridiculous. It’s also pointless why the person writing that book, cares so much about the label, but yet simultaneously rambles on about masking.
In my experience, the most obvious indication that one has the traits of sociopathy (or secondary psychopathy) although it’s clearly very different and probably shouldn’t be labelled psychopathy at all…
Is zero capacity for guilt. It’s much the same for fear. It’s absent.
People have this absurd notion that having no guilt = wishing harm.
This is nonsense. The two are not linked and unless the person is a vindictive individual; you do not need guilt (or even regret) to act with the best intent you know how.
I can feel emotions but there’s no division or conflict in any emotion I feel.
There’s never a rationalisation about the past. It has no connection to the present.
When I’m happy I’m happy.
When I’m sad I’m sad.
When I’m angry I’m angry.
When I’m content I’m content.
When I’m bored I’m bored.
People project into me and each other constantly and I find it unfathomable how emotionally invested they are in the past.
It doesn’t exist.
Tbh I don’t even have the inclination to write about sociopathy any more.
It gets boring.
I think there’s a lot of very interesting and talented individuals who were probably sociopaths.
It doesn’t make a person immune to creativity if you happen to be a creative person.
If anything I think it enhanced the ability to be creative.
Although it certainly hasn’t done me any favours writing about it and as a result I don’t any more.
That’s my opinion from my experience anyway Athena!
Keep well and all the best,
Martin
This led me to consider what living in the moment with the full emotional spectrum available must be like. It seems that there is the ability for a sociopath to feel everything even if they do not, but coupling that with lack of emotional coding for memories and it makes sociopathy vs psychopath even more interesting.
I'm not sure if it's possible to live in the present with the full emotional spectrum.
Many emotions have their roots in the past - regret, guilt, offense, shame and numerous other defensive emotional reactions.
For me, living in the present was nearly simultaneous with the loss of defensive emotions. It was sudden, the result of a deep realization. Then, everything settled & my mind felt really different. Took a couple years to get used to my "new" mind, though. Didn't understand the full ramifications or everything that had changed.
Even though I'm speaking from a certain type of experience, I can't imagine how one could live in the present & maintain the full emotional capacity. Defensive emotions tie people to their past.
That's an interesting way to think about it
Question - are non-subscribers limited in the number of characters in a comment? I had to delete several sentences before my other comment was posted in full.
They shouldn't be. It isn't something that I have come across in the settings features, but I will look again
Thanks, Athena. Tried editing my other comment in this thread & anything over an additional ~30 characters gets chopped off.
I've been real chatty in the past, so this is new. But I can always break my comments into 2 parts if it's unsolvable.
I am still looking to find this as a setting, but even with Google searches I can't find anything that addresses this issue. I can't even find a place that gives comment length cutoffs as an option. Maybe it's a glitch? I will keep looking, but let me know if this continues to be an issue.
Thanks. It's really strange if no one else is reporting it. It maxes out at the number of characters that are there right now.
Or wait...do you see lines of x's, y's, & z's in my other comment? If so, it's only my display that's affected.
I will try to figure it out so you don't have to
It's fixed. I can see my lines of x's, y's & z's in my other comment.
One thing that caught my attention was her description of the lack of bonding with her newborn. That sounded like a touch of post partum right there.
The poor impulse control is totally alien to me as I can't ever recall having the impulse to just do something violent to let off steam or whatever it was that provoked it.
I don't know enough about post partum depression to be able to speak about it, so I just take her at her word. I don't know if it has to do with oxytocin or not, but it sounds similar to my own experience.
No, I never did either. It seems like such a waste to me. It makes me wonder where that originates from.
I thought about you after my SO sent the article to me. I had a hunch that someone you knew would bring it to your attention. It's full of misinformation. I was especially galled by the "identifying as" a sociopath, and not any backstory of the child abuse or trauma that caused it.
I thought sociopaths, or secondary psychopaths were born neurotypical, but due to severe child abuse or trauma, no longer were?
You should ditch Grammarly. Spell check is all you need.
So far there isn't any concrete evidence that there are brain changes in sociopathy, though my hypothesis is that there are through synaptic pruning. However, no one is investigating that, or any other hypothesis regarding sociopathy, as far as I am aware.
I’m sure you’ve been asked this before but I’m not sure how many articles I’d have to look back through to find an answer: what exactly is counted as neurodivergence? Is the difference a diagnosis that’s literally caused by a difference in brain structure versus one that’s purely environmental?
I’ve seen people with ADHD and Autism use neurodivergence to refer to themselves & I assumed it was just the new, socially acceptable term for mental, developmental and neurodevelopmental conditions. I wasn’t aware it actually meant a specific type of brain structure.
Neurodivergent is applied to brains that are structured or operate in a way that isn't normal. In people with autism, for instance, they have synapses in the brain that have far more connections than a neurotypical does. I am sure that there are other differences as well, but these are hard differences that can be looked at on an imaging scan or functional imaging scan. I am not certain if they require this aspect, but in my mind they should, these differences should be present from birth in order to be considered neurodivergent.
I don’t know Grammerly, but it did allow the misspelling of ‘societal’ as ‘sociatal.’ My take on her ‘vanilla’ example wasn’t that she had an emotional response with “I’m stealing it next time” but ‘OK, I paid this time for spoiled something, so next time I get a pass on paying for the same thing.”
Fair point, and Grammarly is evil.
Hmm, Sociopaths _might_ be neurodivergent, at least in the case of narcissistic sociopaths. In answering a question on Quora (placed in bad faith) about comorbidity of narcissists and psychopaths, I researched brain structures and activities of psychopaths and narcissists and provided that in the answer which the querent then replied that I had told him nothing new (never mind that narcissists have emotions in 3D brilliant color). Ah well, Quora is behind me. Anyway, here is the article about narcissists https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10605183/. In that abstract, certain similarities in the networking of signals between narcissists and psychopaths were identified; however, they did not make an issue of dissimilar sizes of the amygdala or other areas of gray matter and white matter between the two.
Brain research is difficult in the best of cases. Subjects need to be measured in many areas and their activity in those areas, as measured by glucose-burning or electrical activity may evoke a number of explanations. To be realistic we are like a blind man grasping a stick. We don't know its length, its shape outside the area f grasp, or even if it is the same stick we grasped last time. And the folk we are measuring are operationally defined as being X range of scores on test Y.
With all of that said, some learned heads do postulate the existence of narcissistic sociopaths, and if in fact these exist, then we have a sociopath who is neurodivergent. Buddhist sects do seem to describe narcissists rather well, and assign them to various hells or realms to which people may be reborn or assigned for the purpose of learning by suffering... Indian Buddhism calls them Hungry Ghosts, Tibetan Buddhism calls them Jealous Gods, and some of the Japanese Buddhists recognize a mental state (one of more than 35,000) which people may live through and learn from, in the space of a few seconds to several lifetimes.
My personal experience with what I believed to be narcissists is that they have a unique terror which turns them away from self-examination, despite my exposing them to case histories of fearful people who lived through it and gained more control over their lives. Obviously, when encountering such a level of fear, I refuse to practice hypnotherapy with them for practical and ethical reasons. (Those ethics are part of my personal code of conduct which I follow by choice.)
While reddit may have many tales of entitled people who behave like narcissists, that may be storytellers making up Karens and Kevins. Good luck taking census on narcissists, let alone the possibly mythical narcissistic sociopath.
Athena, you have my endorsement for taking on such a task with a self-admitted sociopath wh may be something else. I am just amazed that so many folk dance on wet ice while trying to honestly learn and more than a few trying to pontificate for self-serving goals. Your judgments usually meet my gold standard because you seem honest in these efforts.
Thank you for the study link. I am working on the second half of the Twin Flames post still, which led me down an absolute rabbit hole about cults and cult leaders. I think that many cult leaders may be excellent examples of malignant narcissists. The one I was most recently researching was Jim Jones, and his need for attention and absolute loyalty was pretty profound. This study on the brains of narcissists might be excellent insight to what drives a person like Jones to do the things that he did.
This part of the comment:
"My personal experience with what I believed to be narcissists is that they have a unique terror which turns them away from self-examination, despite my exposing them to case histories of fearful people who lived through it and gained more control over their lives."
rings especially true for Jones. He was incapable of self-examination and I wonder if his need to monologue for literally hours to his followers on a daily basis might have been an outgrowth of that unique terror.
There are a couple of episodes of Leah Remini's series on Scientology, that look closely at L Ron Hubbard as a person, and it's pretty much the exact same thing as you described with Jones - the need for absolute control and absolute loyalty, to the point where it was church policy to attack and harass so called 'suppressive persons', as they were considered 'fair game', eg their disloyalty to the church justified literally any form of retaliation, including violence, and cutting them off from their entire family and friends for the rest of their lives! Sadly I think there are some people in this world who are so badly wounded, and feel so badly about themselves, that they will do literally ANYTHING to avoid any kind of self reflection, including retreating into a world of complete delusion and fantasy, and detachment from reality - it's just a shame that they tend to take so many other people down with them as they go...
I can't recall which cult leader it was, but I think it might have been Jones (though it could have been Manson) sent some of his followers to study at the Scientology headquarters in England. I know Manson took one hundred and fifty hours of scientology courses however. It seems it is just a common part of cult leading.
Oh Jesus, I had no idea that that kind of cross-contamination goes on between cults - they tend to be so insular and inward looking, such self-contained units, that it never occurred to me they might be actively comparing notes in that way! Often their beliefs are so odd and so specific that you wouldn't think they'd have much to say to each other, but of course the details don't really matter - the underlying pathology is basically the same from cult to cult, in both leaders and followers, as are the methods they use to maintain control...
Cults really are an excellent example of what happens when the narcissistic personality interacts with NT social instincts.
Absolutely - if you haven't seen it I highly recommend Wild Wild Country on Netflix, about an Indian guru who set up a kind of commune in rural Oregon in the 80s - it's fascinating and highly entertaining - and in places quite unbelievable, to the point that I really couldn't understand how it was possible that I'd never heard about it before!
The Rajneeshees. Yes, they are absolutely interesting, though I think Sheila might have been the most interesting of the group when it came to cult leadership. Rajneesh seemed to be less aggressive than she was.
Yes Sheila is the one I remember, way more than Rajneesh. I was literally watching most of it with my jaw on the floor every time she was on screen, it seemed like every single human interaction was just part of one long endless power struggle to her. If I had to put a label on her I'd say definitely some form of narcissist, probably the malignant kind. I'm not sure I've ever come across a human quite like her before or since!
Hi Athena,
I’m the person who mentioned the article to you. Thanks for your commentary; it’s exactly the kind of analysis I was hoping you would give. I still haven’t gone back to read the entire article, so I’m glad you are writing about this in two parts.
I wrote to you earlier that my impression was that she’s probably neither a psychopath nor a sociopath—but displays the kind of psychopathic behavior that comes from coping with her repressed explosive emotions. Your comments reinforced that impression. If she had suffered some trauma in her youth, that might explain why she was diagnosed as a sociopath. But she didn’t share that.
I suspect that, like all types of neurodivergent traits, psychopathic behaviors exist in people who fall within the neurotypical range. There’s likely a continuum rather than a sharp line between a neurotypical with some neurodivergent traits and a neurodivergent with some neurotypical traits.
Pathological narcissists, for instance, behave like psychopaths in some ways, but instead of being comfortable in their own skin, as you are, they feel absolutely horrible about themselves. They experience unbearable hurt and insecurity and anger and jealousy and vengeance, and they will do anything to block those feelings. I suspect that behaving as if they feel none of that helps them suppress all those uncontrollable feelings. They block out all the shame by denying they feel guilt.
The woman in the article seems to fall somewhere between a psychopath and a pathological narcissist.
(My thesis advisor in the 80’s was a pathological narcissist, so I have spent my entire adult life thinking about personality disorders—particularly pathological narcissism.)
That's super interesting. I would imagine having an advisor who was narcissistic would be very annoying, but then again, it could make them very easy to get a good grade out of as well.
There is another article written by this same person that deals with her relationship with her partner. I am considering doing commentary on that one as well.
https://archive.is/Y7KF1
It might make for an interesting post.
Narcissists really don't act like psychopaths. Their behavior is vastly different than ours. There is too much emotion and emotional motivation for me to grant any similarity.
It was a PhD program so there weren’t any grades. But I did figure out that if I soothed my advisers ego, he treated me very well.
I realize that my advisor’s response to praise and approval doesn’t resemble how a psychopath like yourself would response; I assume that praise has little to no affect on you on a deep level.
But a lack of empathy towards others is characteristic of both personality types, so their outward behavior can “appear” similar, even though the etiology of that lack of empathy is vastly different. The major difference is that the pathological narcissist is quite capable of feeling empathy but 100% of it is directed at themselves. Consequently, they are no more capable of feeling empathy for others than a psychopath can. But, as you noted, the rest of their behavior is quite different. Narcissists are deeply insecure, filled with self-loathing and emotionally volatile, whereas psychopaths are the total opposite.
You are correct. Praise and approval makes me suspicious of a person's motivations. In my mind, they must want something out of me.
This is a question I've been pondering for a while now too - whilst I fully understand that true psychopathy is born not made, could it nevertheless be possible for a baby born neurotypical to develop into something very similar to a psychopath, a kind of 'pseudo-psychopath' if you like, due to extreme emotional neglect at a very young age?
In a similar way to how childhood abuse and neglect can take a neurotypical brain and make it sociopathic, due to the child learning extreme emotional repression as a survival strategy, whilst also having huge amounts of suppressed rage and anger that burst out explosively from time to time.... what if that same neurotypical brain had experienced no active abuse or physical neglect (eg they weren't hurt and their physical needs were met), but did experience extreme emotional neglect from birth, eg caregivers that didn't talk to them, smile at them, play with them, make eye contact etc - for example a mother with severe depression. If the child wasn't actively hurt or abused there may be nothing to create any significant suppressed anger, or tendency towards violence, but this kind of parenting could potentially create very low emotionality, empathy, attachment etc, simply as a result of having no role model for normal human emotions.
I think for this scenario to create anything remotely close to the behaviour and traits of true psychopathy, the emotional neglect would have to be very extreme and from a very early age (say 0-6 months). It may also be very rare, because the likelihood of a parent being that emotionally neglectful but also somehow able to meet the child's physical needs and not be abusive is pretty remote - but in theory it could happen, especially if there were other adults in the child's life able to ensure their physical needs were met, but their main caregiver that they spent most of their time with was very distant and detached.
I appreciate that if this third category does exist, it's probably not at all helpful to refer to it as any type of psychopathy, since the underlying cause is so different ('tertiary psychopath' anyone?!). But it could still mimic psychopathy quite closely, if we're measuring things purely by behaviour alone (brain scans or genetic testing wouldn't have any trouble telling them apart, obviously).
I wonder about this because of the number of violent criminals in prison who are supposedly psychopathic - I find it hard to believe that many true psychopaths end up involved in violent crime, because the emotions that normally drive violent behaviour are so muted or absent. Which makes me wonder if there's another category of people, who are not true psychopaths (eg can process oxytocin), but have still developed psychopath-like traits due to not having any role model for the full range of human emotions, and are behaviourally similar enough to have been falsely diagnosed as psychopathic on the basic of a checklist alone?
That would be a sociopath, and because they still have the wiring for emotions those emotions aren't totally absent, just reduced in terms of how often they show up. However, according to other sociopaths that I have read about and from some of their own writings, their emotions, when they do appear, are very intense and they are prone to acting on them sometimes to the extreme.
Another adaptation that might appear in these circumstances would be RAD or Reactive Attachment Disorder. Neither of these things is like psychopathy though. In appearance and cause they are very removed.
As for psychopaths and violent crime, violence is a means to an end, and if that is the pathway that psychopath finds the fastest resolution to whatever issue they are addressing, they will use it. These tend to be criminal psychopaths. Chances are they were raised in that environment so they see it as a reasonable choice, and they have been involved in criminal activity for some time. I see no issue with utilizing violence if it is necessary, however, it causes more problems than it solves generally, so it isn't my first choice. The difference would be having no emotion toward that violence. It is simply a tool that is wielded to get results, not something used in anger.
I'm sure you're right, what I'm describing is more like a form of sociopathy than a form of psychopathy, because the capacity for normal levels of emotion is still there, it's just suppressed. It's maybe just a form of sociopathy that's a bit heavier on the emotional detachment and less heavy on the repressed anger, compared to the 'classic' sociopath.
I'm just curious about whether it's possible to take a neurotypical brain and (unintentionally) create something behaviourally similar to psychopathy, even though it's not actually psychopathy at all - because I wonder about all those people diagnosed as psychopaths in the 50s/60s/70s/80s on the basis of behavioural checklists alone, and wonder how many of them weren't actually psychopaths at all, but sociopaths of one kind or another. Maybe people who were very emotionally detached, including low levels of guilt/remorse etc, but didn't have the levels of explosive anger normally associated with sociopathy, might have got lumped into the 'psychopath' bucket when they weren't really psychopaths at all.
It might be another reason why criminality came to be part of the definition of a psychopath, when it's now clear that it really isn't - if we had high rates of sociopaths being diagnosed as psychopaths in those days, then the lines between the two conditions would have naturally got very blurred.
Although totally accept your argument that studying psychopaths only in prisons really didn't help, and nor did Hare with his crazy checklist. In their defence I guess they didn't have alot to go on back then, but that's no excuse for clinging on to those old out-of-date ideas now, when we have the information and knowledge to do better. Defining psychological conditions purely on the basis of behaviour alone, without understanding of the underlying causes, was always going to be a recipe for confusion!
I would say that if something along those lines occur in later life, it should be named something specific that encompassed all of the traits that come along with it. A person having that sort of change later in life is bound to have significant emotional shadowing to how they think and behave, which would make it its own thing.
I suspect there are multiple environmental conditions that can take a seemingly neurotypical infant and turn them into a sociopath. In other words, the etiology of sociopathy is not limited to overt or extreme forms of physical and emotional abuse.
Here are some ideas I have that together explain why I suspect that there are many environmental conditions that could trigger sociopathy:
From my knowledge of molecular and evolutionary genetics, I have come to understand that the interaction between nature and nurture is constant, creating a never-ending feedback loop (maintained through epigenetic changes in gene expression) that is unique to each individual. So someone without the structural defects in the brain of a psychopath, and without having experienced the extreme abuse that is normally associated with sociopathy, they may still be genetically predisposed to shutting down parts of their neural network. Therefore, I suspect that even the kind of neglect you describe could cause the shutdown of emotions normally associated with a lack of conscience or moral compass.
It’s worth considering that the concept of neurodivergence applies to many traits other than psychopathy. It’s an all-encompassing term that has yet to be properly defined; in fact, most people possess some level of some type of neurodivergence, but compensate so effectively that the outward manifestations are of no consequence. So while someone may not be divergent in the ways a psychopath is, they may have other types of neurodivergent brain wiring that makes them hyper-sensitive to what seems like only mild abuse or neglect.
What’s also worth considering is that the human species is extremely neurodiverse. For instance, there is great diversity in the level of tolerance one has to either physical or emotional pain or both. If someone is genetically wired to find any level of emotional pain or neglect utterly intolerable, they will have no choice but to shut down the neural pathways that create that unbearable response—leaving them with no more capacity to feel guilt or remorse or empathy as a psychopath.
With all that said, I suspect that more often hyper-sensitive people who are predisposed to acquiring sociopathic traits end up with a collection of traits that more closely align with pathological or malignant narcissists. Since the interactions between one’s genetics and environment is unique in each individual, there must be countless differing permutations of psychopathic traits among the community of people who get diagnosed with either psychopathy or sociopathy.
What I’ve learned from Athena’s perspective is that a “complete” psychopath doesn’t feel emotions like anger, revenge and self-doubt any more than they feel guilt and remorse. So, it follows that a “complete” sociopath is someone who was so horrifically traumatized that—in order to survive—they had to completely shut down all the same emotions missing in a psychopath. (I myself chose to use the word “complete;” if you can think of a better word, please share it with me.)
But there are psychopaths and sociopaths who still end up with those diagnoses even though their brain alterations are not “complete.” For instance, someone diagnosed as a psychopath might have an inherited brain defect less severe than a “complete” psychopath. And someone diagnosed as a sociopath may have shut down most of the neural pathways structurally missing in a “complete” psychopath, but still have the human need to be validated and loved. And that’s why they are volatile and vengeful—traits that are more closely associated with pathological narcissists (like Trump).
When you consider the countless number of permutations there must be of certain genetic and environmental triggers of psychopathy and sociopathy—it’s difficult not to imagine that there is a spectrum of various types of people with various psychopathic traits but who don’t fit neatly into the diagnosis of a psychopath or sociopath.
Diagnosticians are the ones to who draw the lines between different mental illnesses and different personality disorders. Considering how neurodiverse we are, the lines they draw exist simply for the purpose of diagnosing people. The labels therefore don’t have as much meaning as people give them. Some diagnostician labeled the woman who is the subject of the NYT article as a sociopath. She is clearly not what I am calling a “complete” sociopath or a “complete” psychopath. That’s why I thought this woman was neither.
There were orphanages (I believe in Romania in Soviet times) where the children received adequate physical care but no emotional care. This was from infancy onwards. These children developed severe problems relating to other people. It's possible these were examples of Reactive Attachment Disorder, I don't know. I would guess that such experience would affect brain development and therefore the degree of neurotypicality or divergence thereof.
I'm also reminded of the experiments with baby monkeys in cages where some were raised with "wire frame" pseudo mothers and others where the frames were covered with fuzzy/furry fabric. And there were behavioral differences as the monkeys grew. I learned about this roughly 50 years ago, so the experiments are dated. It's kinda horrifying that anyone would consider these sorts of experiments to be morally okay.
I also echo Athena's comment below that if a psychopath is raised in a violent environment, that would teach the psychopath that violence is "a reasonable option", so they would be more likely to use it when it seems like the straightest path to whatever they desire in the moment. And it might be harder for that person to assess the likelihood of getting caught for that violence -- and therefore paying a price for it.
The Romanian situation definitely would qualify as "severe neglect" which is one of the prequalifiers of sociopathy. I would guess that different children have different reactions to certain things.
How did you read that New York post without paying?
Archive.is.
Copy the link of the article you want to read, go to Archive.is, paste, and it should bring it up without issue. Rarely it doesn't work, but nearly always does.
How did you know about such a useful hack?
Someone that I watch on YouTube does it quite often so I copied him
You say you don’t want to pay to accede to the article, so you understand those who choose not to pledge their support? What do you think of those who do?
If someone chooses to offer their support, that is very kind of them, but they are under no obligation to do so
One vote for kicking Grammerly to the curb.
I did. It outlived its welcome
Not to say I’m endorsing it. But that was my read on her.