There are so many uneducated people who like to toss out mental health diagnosis in the course of everyday conversation. I have noticed an increase in references to “ The Dark Triad” . Machiavellian is a philosophical position which most notably the Italian Mafia relies on and according to some sources “The Prince “ is required reading at some level of success. I don’t get why people don’t wish to concede that some mental health issues and different states of the brain are mutually exclusive
Because it interferes with what makes them comfortable. I got this comment yesterday:
"The ONLY people who stalk have personality disorders. That is the ONE common thread ALL stalkers have. I have personally been stalked by psychopaths. What's more, EVERY psychopath has NPD. That in itself means psychopaths care a lot about other people, just not in any healthy way."
For this person to accept that they have no idea what they are talking about would invalidate their fantasy about being stalked and obsessed after by NPD psychopaths. That would be too much of a reality shift, and they don't want that.
Yep, and they say we are the crazy ones. I have exes, and they always called me and said gross crap, meanwhile, I'm trying to find a way to find a new address, just cause I don't care that much about the ex or the apartment, and I'd rather just spread my little birdie wings and fly away. I can't imagine how much emotional investment you need to have to stalk someone, but I bet it's a lot. As psychopaths, we both know full and well, no one like us is going to do that, what a waste of time and energy. There a much greater chance I will cheat, lie and manipulate and enjoy every moment of it than ever stalking. I doubt a narcissist would because where is all the emotional gratification from all that rejection. I think most stalkers probably are emotionally dependant and a little delusional. I do really believe deep down inside that people like us are actually normal and that regular humanity are the bad fuckers. I'll go to my grave believing that . I don't know many people and as I get older, year by year, I want them less . I'm glad I came across your writings . It's helped me more than all the shrinks I've wasted time and money on! I await your next article!
I imagine that the amount of emotional investment required to stalk someone is insane. Interestingly, I have had stalkers, and I just can't be bothered enough by them to really try to understand their thinking. I just find them annoying and ignore them. If the cops have to be involved, so be it. That's their problem, not mine.
Bang On Athena, thanks for an excellent article. Psychopaths can't be narcissists because Narcism is driven by unmet emotional needs from childhood that seem to follow some people around all their lives. It must be hell. Pschopathy is not hell, trust me, except for those who have been around me a lot.i have a good life. I had good parents and family , I treated them, and still do, quite badly , I suppose. I just don't care that much about anyone. I love them, in my own distant way, but I don't care what the think of me and in the end, even their suffering is their own, to own. That's how I feel about everyone, maybe even myself. Life goes on. One of the things I love most about life is my lack of attachment and concern. It must be awful to care about people's opinions, when they are almost all, so damn Uninformed. I don't think I even what God thinks of me, whomever She may be.
it seems strange because what is the point? I think it's completely irrational. Liking and disliking people in general seems a waste energy. I guess i can say i accept certain people based on their conduct and others I don't, for the same reason. I'm glad to be the way I am, i would not want to be controlled by other peoples opinions. I like being free, jail sucks so that's a good reason to be good. that's all i know.
I dislike people when I know that how they think or behave is going to create problems for me. There are some people, I am simply not willing to deal with them and their nonsense.
My psychopath friend, when very young, thought that anarchy would be a decent government because he figured most people were rational actors. Cooperate when you need to, disengage when you don't, eliminate obviously bad actors, etc. Turns out that most people decidedly are not rational and the closet people we have to hyper-rational, the psychopath, scare people and cause them to write endless articles about them.
Hi Anthea, I have a request for you to write about this aspect of psychopathy, from your article above: ..."It also affects facial memory and facial, recognition, though not to the point of facial blindness" this is a big thing with me, I find it very difficult to impossible to picture / recall a face, any face, if the owner is not near me. It could be my partner or kid or father or someone I haven't seen for a long time, it's kind of a blurred generic face without features. My recognition is excellent, but I really can't picture anyone's face if they are not in my presence. Is this why we don't bond or make connections chemically? Also, not sure if this is a thing for psychopaths, but I personally have a very poor sense of smell and I suspect this is why I can't get disgusted. Even if I walk on a not flush toilet, I'm gonna flush and make a rude joke about it. Nothing disgusts me. Should have been a pathologist, would have more money than I do now, LoL! I'd love to see an article about those two aspects of psychopathy, if smell is a thing too. Thanks for the well researched accurate articles.
The smell thing is a myth. What that comes down to is memory coding. There is no emotional coding to memories for a psychopath, so the smell of something that you would experience around Christmas, such as chestnuts, or eggnog, doesn't get the emotional coding that neurotypicals lay into their memories. So, when they smell that smell, it reminds them of Christmas, and that association gives them the neural pathways needed to code that smell into their heads. It is a Christmas smell, and they smell it when this particular thing occurs, and they can therefore recall it.
Psychopaths lack this coding, so instead what happens is there is no coding to the memories unless that coding is intentionally added. For instance, taking a deep breath of garlic, and telling the brain, that is the smell of garlic. If this is done, then the smell will be coded and can be recalled. I would guess the sense of smell has other aspects as well, making the variation of ability to vary from psychopath to psychopath, but so long as I intentionally code memories, I have an excellent sense of smell. I can write about this in a bit more detail, but it would largely deal with the nonsensical way they arrived at the conclusion that psychopaths have a poor sense of smell and a longer version of psychopaths and memory coding.
I can also do one on facial recognition, but no, it isn't why we don't bond with people. It is another side effect of the reason we cannot bond, and that is lack of oxytocin processing. Oxytocin is responsible for many things, one of which is emotional bonding, and another aspect is facial recognition, and facial memory. Having poor facial memory, and facial recognition, is not what creates the lack of bonding. It is the same chemical that is responsible for both.
There are so many uneducated people who like to toss out mental health diagnosis in the course of everyday conversation. I have noticed an increase in references to “ The Dark Triad” . Machiavellian is a philosophical position which most notably the Italian Mafia relies on and according to some sources “The Prince “ is required reading at some level of success. I don’t get why people don’t wish to concede that some mental health issues and different states of the brain are mutually exclusive
Because it interferes with what makes them comfortable. I got this comment yesterday:
"The ONLY people who stalk have personality disorders. That is the ONE common thread ALL stalkers have. I have personally been stalked by psychopaths. What's more, EVERY psychopath has NPD. That in itself means psychopaths care a lot about other people, just not in any healthy way."
For this person to accept that they have no idea what they are talking about would invalidate their fantasy about being stalked and obsessed after by NPD psychopaths. That would be too much of a reality shift, and they don't want that.
Yep, and they say we are the crazy ones. I have exes, and they always called me and said gross crap, meanwhile, I'm trying to find a way to find a new address, just cause I don't care that much about the ex or the apartment, and I'd rather just spread my little birdie wings and fly away. I can't imagine how much emotional investment you need to have to stalk someone, but I bet it's a lot. As psychopaths, we both know full and well, no one like us is going to do that, what a waste of time and energy. There a much greater chance I will cheat, lie and manipulate and enjoy every moment of it than ever stalking. I doubt a narcissist would because where is all the emotional gratification from all that rejection. I think most stalkers probably are emotionally dependant and a little delusional. I do really believe deep down inside that people like us are actually normal and that regular humanity are the bad fuckers. I'll go to my grave believing that . I don't know many people and as I get older, year by year, I want them less . I'm glad I came across your writings . It's helped me more than all the shrinks I've wasted time and money on! I await your next article!
I imagine that the amount of emotional investment required to stalk someone is insane. Interestingly, I have had stalkers, and I just can't be bothered enough by them to really try to understand their thinking. I just find them annoying and ignore them. If the cops have to be involved, so be it. That's their problem, not mine.
Bang On Athena, thanks for an excellent article. Psychopaths can't be narcissists because Narcism is driven by unmet emotional needs from childhood that seem to follow some people around all their lives. It must be hell. Pschopathy is not hell, trust me, except for those who have been around me a lot.i have a good life. I had good parents and family , I treated them, and still do, quite badly , I suppose. I just don't care that much about anyone. I love them, in my own distant way, but I don't care what the think of me and in the end, even their suffering is their own, to own. That's how I feel about everyone, maybe even myself. Life goes on. One of the things I love most about life is my lack of attachment and concern. It must be awful to care about people's opinions, when they are almost all, so damn Uninformed. I don't think I even what God thinks of me, whomever She may be.
I have often wondered what that is like. Not only thinking about what other people think, but getting bothered by it. It seems so strange to me.
it seems strange because what is the point? I think it's completely irrational. Liking and disliking people in general seems a waste energy. I guess i can say i accept certain people based on their conduct and others I don't, for the same reason. I'm glad to be the way I am, i would not want to be controlled by other peoples opinions. I like being free, jail sucks so that's a good reason to be good. that's all i know.
I dislike people when I know that how they think or behave is going to create problems for me. There are some people, I am simply not willing to deal with them and their nonsense.
My psychopath friend, when very young, thought that anarchy would be a decent government because he figured most people were rational actors. Cooperate when you need to, disengage when you don't, eliminate obviously bad actors, etc. Turns out that most people decidedly are not rational and the closet people we have to hyper-rational, the psychopath, scare people and cause them to write endless articles about them.
Exactly
Dave, truly funny! Thanks!!
NPD sounds like a wounded soul.
I thought narcissists would be the type to want to domineer others, not someone with a deep insecurity
I would suggest reading Elinor Greenberg's work regarding NPD. It is very enlightening as to how it forms and functions.
Hi Anthea, I have a request for you to write about this aspect of psychopathy, from your article above: ..."It also affects facial memory and facial, recognition, though not to the point of facial blindness" this is a big thing with me, I find it very difficult to impossible to picture / recall a face, any face, if the owner is not near me. It could be my partner or kid or father or someone I haven't seen for a long time, it's kind of a blurred generic face without features. My recognition is excellent, but I really can't picture anyone's face if they are not in my presence. Is this why we don't bond or make connections chemically? Also, not sure if this is a thing for psychopaths, but I personally have a very poor sense of smell and I suspect this is why I can't get disgusted. Even if I walk on a not flush toilet, I'm gonna flush and make a rude joke about it. Nothing disgusts me. Should have been a pathologist, would have more money than I do now, LoL! I'd love to see an article about those two aspects of psychopathy, if smell is a thing too. Thanks for the well researched accurate articles.
The smell thing is a myth. What that comes down to is memory coding. There is no emotional coding to memories for a psychopath, so the smell of something that you would experience around Christmas, such as chestnuts, or eggnog, doesn't get the emotional coding that neurotypicals lay into their memories. So, when they smell that smell, it reminds them of Christmas, and that association gives them the neural pathways needed to code that smell into their heads. It is a Christmas smell, and they smell it when this particular thing occurs, and they can therefore recall it.
Psychopaths lack this coding, so instead what happens is there is no coding to the memories unless that coding is intentionally added. For instance, taking a deep breath of garlic, and telling the brain, that is the smell of garlic. If this is done, then the smell will be coded and can be recalled. I would guess the sense of smell has other aspects as well, making the variation of ability to vary from psychopath to psychopath, but so long as I intentionally code memories, I have an excellent sense of smell. I can write about this in a bit more detail, but it would largely deal with the nonsensical way they arrived at the conclusion that psychopaths have a poor sense of smell and a longer version of psychopaths and memory coding.
I can also do one on facial recognition, but no, it isn't why we don't bond with people. It is another side effect of the reason we cannot bond, and that is lack of oxytocin processing. Oxytocin is responsible for many things, one of which is emotional bonding, and another aspect is facial recognition, and facial memory. Having poor facial memory, and facial recognition, is not what creates the lack of bonding. It is the same chemical that is responsible for both.
Agreed