Editor’s note: A reader who identified himself as a sociopath recently posted this comment on the Lovefraud Blog, and sent it to me in an email. I am posting this piece because it provides a good description of how sociopaths view themselves, and explains why they are quite comfortable taking advantage of the rest of us. Be sure to read the question I asked him, and his response, at the end.
We are uniquely gifted
“Sociopath” is a misleading word: it implies a disorder, something wrong and unnatural with the person, and this couldn’t be further from the truth. We, the people you refer to as sociopaths, have nothing wrong with us. We are instead, the uniquely gifted. Our gifts have been mischaracterized and maligned and it’s time someone set the record straight.
What the experts call superficial charm, I call having a natural ability to win friends and influence people. What experts call manipulative and conning, I call an affinity for persuasion based upon an innate ability to pinpoint others personality strengths and weaknesses. What the experts decry as a lack of compassion, I call pragmatism and clarity. What experts call a “problem with authority”, I call embracing personal power and celebrating the independent spirit. What experts call “delusions of grandeur”, I call self confidence and optimism. What experts call “shallow emotional affect,” I call freedom from the tyranny of irrational emotions. And finally, while the experts say that guiltlessness is a disorder (because it is the lack of guilt that separates the sociopath, psychopath and Machiavellian from the general population), I say it is the enhanced ability to do the things that build civilizations and keep societies going, the very things that the guilt afflicted shy away from. It is no coincidence that our lack of guilt so often comes with abnormally high intelligence and charisma.
We are born to lead and many of our traits support this conclusion. We are born knowing this and the rest of you know it when you see us. It is these very traits that make us necessary for the survival and success of the human species, especially since the dawn of civilization. It’s why you elect us, follow us, and often give your very lives by our command. Though we are found disproportionally in prisons we are found with even greater frequency in your governments, your corporations, your military. Who else but someone devoid of conscience could order thousands of soldiers to die, regardless of how noble the cause? Who can fire hundreds of workers to save a company from bankruptcy and then sleep peacefully that night? Who can so elegantly tell the lies that must be told, to protect the very people to whom the lies are told? It takes one of us to make those calls, the calls that the rest of humanity cannot make.
And yet a distressing number of us become the very thing you fear us all to be; criminals and abusers. This creates a cycle of ignorance, as all the “sociopaths” identified by the news are killers or wife-beaters, and so we identify this collection of gifts as evil, as pathological, and thus those of us in our proper roles feel the need to disguise ourselves for fear of being labeled evil. A similar cycle of ignorance has kept homosexuals oppressed for decades; homosexuality has been associated with child molesters and perverts, drug use and disease, and it was called “evil” for this.
We are not evil; you simply do not recognize the “good” ones as the same phenomena. Google “sociopath” and all you find are ways to recover from contact with a sociopath, information advising you to run from relationships with sociopaths, and misinformation that will claim that “sociopaths cannot feel love” or that we “cannot think of others as human beings” or that we are “parasitic”.
It is very distressing to discover, for a child who has always known that he was different, that he is a monster… that he is doomed to live a loveless life and become a criminal, that he will never be able to hold a job or raise a family. Indeed, one must wonder how often do one of us accepts the mischaracterization of our abilities and instincts as things to be repressed and rejected due to ignorance? How often do the young among our frequently demonized minority discover what he is, buys into the paranoid misinformation and simply does what he is expected to do, withholding from society the very qualities it needs and secretly wants to maintain itself and imprisoning himself in a state of confusion and needless pain as a result?
What is the so called sociopath? A sociopath is one of your potential leaders, labeled by the fearful and unreasoning masses as something sick and evil. “Sociopath” is a negative label which only serves to further alienate people who simply need to be allowed to embrace their gifts. Getting rid of this misleading term should be the first step towards fully understanding who we are and the role we play in this world. We are not the embodiment of a pathology. On the contrary; we are instead the uniquely gifted.
Editor’s note: I sent the author this question: “How do you justify lying and deception?” His reply:
Justify? Did you forget the “no guilt, no remorse” part already? We have no need to justify the lying, as we don’t see anything inherently wrong with it. Deception is merely a means to an end. Nor is it necessarily malevolent. We simply act in our own self-interest. We know what we want and the easiest way to get it. It’s a gift.
Survivor, yep, they turn on the charm because they have to WIN. They have to be the dump-ER not the dump-EE, but just be FIRM and no excuses, “This just isn’t working for me and I don’t want to try to make it work, bye bye”
I figured that out with him and actually was the dumper. It was easy in that case and actually gave me GREAT pleasure after everything he’d done. With someone that actually has feelings and is not a monster, it’s a lot more difficult. But firm and to the point is the way to go. You’re correct. Thanks!
silvermoon, what a gorgeous piece of writing! We don’t see everything exactly the same way, but who cares. I love the way you think and talk.
Here’s a quibble: Regarding the snake story. We make mistakes and sometimes we die of them, but not usually, and as you say, we learn. But buying into something that turns out to be a mistake has nothing to do with being fair, unless you’re buying into someone’s gaslighting involving your supposed fairness or unfairness.
Being fair, in my mind, is not reducing an complex individual to a single concept that reflects what you don’t like about them or something they did that hurt you. I wouldn’t like being characterized like that, and part of my integrity is trying not to do this to other people. Sometimes it’s hard, because when I’m feeling hurt or angry, it’s all I see about them. But my long-term objective with every traumatic memory is to use it to grow and flourish, and if I succeed in that, I see them in a different way. I don’t need to understand them any more than that, because every traumatic memory I bring to this conclusion also finishes the tyranny of that particular vulnerability.
Another thing about your snake story, I think, is your girl knew without being bitten that it was dangerous, because it was common knowledge. So she had to choose between conventional wisdom and her own inclination to help. The choice she made was true to herself. If she survived, she lost some innocence and became a much more interesting person with a great story for dinner parties. It might even be the beginning of a fabulous career. If she accepted the conventional wisdom, she wouldn’t be hurt by the snake and that opportunity would pass. Of course, another would show up, because they always do. Life is like that.
So what I’m saying, I guess, is that whole snake story, or scorpion or whatever version it is, is about something that is very important to a certain level of processing, and not so important to others. The moral is that you can expect certain behaviors from certain types. Think about that. Do you like that moral? Where does it stop? With people of a red hair. Or people who drive Mustangs? Or people with holes in their shoes? It makes life pretty simple, but like many things that make life safe and simple, it also makes acceptability pretty rigidly defined.
Which is why I like the method of tapping my deep inner knowledge, as expressed through my feelings, as a more vibrant and adaptive method of survival. Of course, I have the benefit of once being an incested kid, which gave me early cynicism about the quality of conventional wisdom. Like most of those kids, I also developed an early belief in a spiritual guide (at the time a guardian angel) that kept me whole and safe in an unsafe world. So you can see how this thinking evolved. I’m a radical, evolutionary mystic who, at this time of my life, am mastering power (which has a lot to do which learning how to transform anger into into elegant and disciplined freedom of spirit). The conventional wisdom I still have is the stuff I haven’t found and questioned yet. And yes, thank you, menopause is wonderful.
So back to the other quibble: what you said about the charismatic characters after your vote or your support or whatever. I disagree that they are empty suits. Rather they probably are heroes in many ways (who else would want the kind of leadership that totally destroys your life in exchange for wealth and power that diminishes most people into slavery to the wealth and power). The problem is that they do get corrupted by the processes of the roles they’ve chosen.
So what I’m saying is that it’s not them, or perhaps that their weaknesses are not as important as the problems with the structure and the processes. To me, it’s a waste of time to judge these people. The process turns them into cartoons, and the cartoons are designed to appeal to the lowest part of our characters. And if we get engaged with loving or hating them it’s the equivalent of watching professional wrestling. We need to fix the process, so that these over-achievers have something meaningful to do, once they cold-turkey from the lunacy of institutionalized inertia.
And finally, I am totally on the same page with you regarding attention. I think it is the single most powerful think we own. And perhaps the only thing that we truly own. The way we use our attention shapes our lives, and if we want, it changes the world. Withholding our attention, or shifting it away is how we make things wither in our world.
I’ve been drifting in and out of the post. As usual it’s longer than I intended. In my next life, I’ll be concise.
Kathy
Which brings me to the answer survivor3’s question.
“This doesn’t work for me” is sufficient. To be nice about it, you could say, “You’re a great person, but this doesn’t work for me.”
And that’s all you have to say. If they press for reasons, even if they do it the smart way and ask for feedback so they learn something, decline to engage. “Really, this is about me, not you. It just doesn’t work for me.”
And if they manage to pull something of you that they can argue with, this should work, “I’ve made up my mind, and I don’t appreciate you trying to change it. Please respect my decision. It’s who I am. I hope you find who you’re looking for, but I’m not that person.”
I can tell you that it almost doesn’t matter what you say, except that, for your own benefit, you don’t want to say anything that will extend the conversation. The only thing that they are hearing is “yes” or “no.”
No matter how much courteous blather you wrap around a “no,” the only thing they hear is no.
Your job is to convince them it’s not worth continuing to try. I’ve given you the flat words. They need to be accompanied by actions. You can smile nicely when you walk away, but you need to walk away. Don’t answer his calls. Don’t respond to texts. Look at it as making it easy for him to understand you’re serious.
And as far as dating goes, the more clear and honest you become, the more likely you are to attract someone who is look for a woman who is emotionally mature and interested is a real human being.
These guys you describe are not that, or they’re not behaving like that. Being respectful means respecting you, the way your mind works, and your need to take care of yourself. If you’re not getting that, then this isn’t a guy who can relate in the way you need to be related to.
It’s unkind for you to play with them. I realize that sounds weird, given the question to asked. But remember the yes and no thing. As long as you’re engaging, they think they’ve got a chance. Stop giving them that delusion. Nicely but firmly. It’s a no.
Good luck with finding a great guy.
Kathy
I see I just repeated Oxy’s answer, taking a dozen more paragraphs as usual.
Hi Oxy, I’m just passing through. But it’s nice to connect again. I hope all is good for you.
Love —
Kathy
Hi
I thought this article pertinent to the above poster.
http://psychopathyawareness.wordpress.com/2012/02/29/the-psychopath-as-self-proclaimed-maverick/
STJ
xxx
I come back to this site whenever I have a downer, like the downer I’m having right now, because yes, I’ve spent the past 2 1/2 years recovering from a relationship with a psycho/sociopath. Most recently I did a round of EMDR, through which I came to this conclusion:
I am, for lack of a better word, an empath. On the spectrum of emotional responses to stimuli, I lie pretty close to the far left end, while my ex-, like the writer of this post, lies on the far right end (where there is no emotional response whatsoever, and where emotional responses are belittled as “stupid.”)
I really think that throughout human history, people at all ends of this spectrum have existed, and the sociopaths have looked upon empathic shores with desire (because they are intrigued by the idea of a feeling) and the empaths have yearned for a little bit of the the ways of the sociopath, because we keep getting hurt when we feel too much. Life is, after all, often a bitter pill to swallow, one where emotions can be debilitating. Because of this desire to try out the other side, our twains have met, over and over, with disastrous results.
. . . . and stories have been told: Cinderella, Beauty and the Beast. . . stories where love and emotional engagement have prevailed. I’m not putting these down; I love those stories too. I firmly believe love and goodness can and should prevail. Like in Star Wars. These are the stories that have created the ethics of our history.
As several of the people commenting have hinted, the evolution of American business and government have added new stories, wherein blood thirsty power, insatiable sexuality, lying, falsehood, and even murder have been valorized, and thus the allure of the sociopath has increased. Because of these new stories (available on TV regularly, I think of the Charlie Sheen phenomenon and The Apprentice), and because of the general crappyiness in the world today, more and more people have found a certain amount of credibility in arguments like the one we have featured here.
I am a teacher, and I am finding that young people today seem to valorize cruelty, and find love and goodness to be an unsuitable solution to their life’s problems. Is this because we are seeing the rise of a collective sociopathy?
As I read people’s responses to this article, I can’t help but think there are two solutions: yes, as one of the readers say, we could put all our sociopaths on a deserted island together, and that may solve the problem — until you have a child and realize your child has these traits too.
Or we can learn to live with them, to collaborate with them fruitfully, but in ways where we, the lovers and the empaths of the world, recognize our boundaries and walk away when the pain gets too great.
EMDR, by the way, is a great therapy, but I’m finding that the therapy I’ve received so far wasn’t quite enough to deal with that seering pain that I still have when I venture into love again, and the wall that I built in my heart to protect myself. I may write more about this on the “When Love Isn’t Real” posting.
Thanks for listening — this column has helped me remember precisely what it was in my ex’s personality that was both alluring and alarming.
silvermoon, that last post of mine is the product of time I should have been asleep. It’s not on point, as least in the part about politics, and I apologize.
What I was really trying to say is that these noisy people who try to recruit us to their leadership may or may not have started out with the right impulses (to make things better), but everyone gets co-opted by the system. I had one little experience with electoral politics — running for mayor — and though I was committed to a “clean race,” the influence of established money and power made it virtually impossible. There was no way to get through that process without making unwanted and counterproductive commitments to money and power, if I wanted to win. Obviously, I was naive going in, imagining that all I had to do was get the vote, and not realizing that being outspent and out-endorsed could make me virtually disappear as a viable campaigner.
It was a tiny town, and I was good at PR even then, so I came so close to winning that I actually shook up the power structure and forced the local government to become more responsive to citizen concerns. So I accomplished something good, even losing. But I came out of it with a new understanding of how things worked, and how established money and power maintained its ability influence government that is supposedly “by the people and for the people”.
I could go on a long rant here about this topic, but I won’t. In fact, if I even say one more thing about it, I will show how angry I am about our institutional failure to ensure that children and families are supported in ways that reduce crime, violence, poverty, mental illness and the self-perpetuating cultural “affect disorders” that enable us to exist in denial about the influence of corporate money on our political system, legal system and economy. So I’ll shut up now, except to repeat that, in looking at this, the individual politicians increasingly concern me less than the process.
This is nothing new in the world. But we are smarter now, and getting smarter all the time, thanks largely to the internet and it way it enables us to share information. LoveFraud is a amazing example of this. My fervent hope is that the growing numbers of smarter people who can see and understand how processes not only don’t work, but actually harm us will eventually lead to change.
I’m really stopping here. I don’t know if this makes any more sense, or if the link to sociopathy is made. But it’s probably a book that someone has already written, and I need to get back to work.
Kathy, yes, it does make sense and you are right on!
Thanks, Oxy. I know it’s possible to connect the dots if you just look at this through this lens. Just follow the money in campaigns, regulatory actions and enforcement (or lack of it, the FDA is a scandal right now), judicial and executive sector appointments, bill presentment processes in the legislative houses and ask who gains from this? And maybe more pointedly, does this help real people or is this really all about corporate interests?
It’s so hard and so frustrating to try to find facts that aren’t tainted and spun by corporate interests. And I know I’m starting to sound paranoid, but after a lifetime of feeling sort of like this, the financial crisis and my work (as someone who works with the financial sector and should be able to do this) to figure that mess out, and the dawning realization that the financial sector had completely abandoned any semblance of social responsibility in the pursuit of profit. It sort of shook me out of my dream state. And then I started looking around at food, energy, the environment, and then social welfare programs, education, prisons.
Philosophically, I know that it’s more than governmental issues. There are cultural structures that are equally good at keeping the rich and the poor in their places. And I know that intolerance and bigotry are part of the history of this country — the Pilgrims didn’t come here to create a free society, quite the contrary. It might have been the the first American melting pot, the Dutch colony in Manhattan, that counterbalanced that Pilgrim influence and resulted in some of the revolutionary and forward-looking aspects of our Declaration of Independence, Constitution and Bill of Rights that made the US a beacon of freedom for the rest of the world for so long. (There is an riveting book, called “The lsland in the Center of the World” about the early Manhattan colony, which are just now being translated from the old Dutch.)
I continue to believe that bigotry and classism and all the ways we separate ourselves from each other’s fortunes is not the true American spirit. Nor the original spirit of anyone. And here is where I leave again.
But with a deep bow to LouiseGolem who teaches children. And who is, however frustrating it may be, an influence for the good. Thank you for doing this.
Kathy