A reader asked the following question this week:
Recently, I’ve started doing more research into sociopaths and have run into a condition with which I’m unfamiliar: dissociation. Do you know if sociopaths/psychopaths have been considered to have this disorder, or if it is part of what makes them who they are?
The term dissociation has two distinct meanings in psychology. These two uses of the same word do not necessarily reflect a similar process operating in each.
The first kind of dissociation is a response to stress, and peritraumatic dissociation (dissociation during a traumatic event) appears to be a risk factor for stress-related illness. Symptoms of this kind of dissociation include disturbed experience of reality related to time, memory and nearly every sensation. For example, during trauma, time may stand still and people report that things do not seem real. Male sex hormones or androgens (that women also have in lower levels) protect against this kind of dissociation. For a good but technical article about peritraumatic dissociation read, Symptoms of Dissociation in Humans Experiencing Acute, Uncontrollable Stress: A Prospective Investigation.
The second kind of dissociation relates to the observation that the mind is modular. That means we don’t use our entire brain circuitry all the time, and during different behavioral and emotional states, different circuits are activated. Testosterone is hypothesized to disrupt the connection between the cerebral cortex and the limbic system, and so enhances this kind of dissociation.
This increase in mind modularity has been related to sociopathy/psychopathy by some experts. In a previous blog I reviewed Psychopaths in Everyday Life, a book by Robert Rieber. There is a great quote from the book that relates to your question. It is,
The true psychopath compels the psychiatric observer to ask the perplexing and largely unanswered question: Why doesn’t that person have the common decency to go crazy?
So why don’t psychopaths have the common decency to go crazy? Dr. Rieber explains, “Since psychopaths act as if they were perfectly normal, i.e. sane, they must be skilled in a cunning manner to dissociate any real guilt that they should feel about their antisocial behavior.” He also says that since psychopaths dissociate, they don’t go crazy. He believes dissociation prevents them from experiencing guilt. He also says that many psychopaths do have some level of guilt they are dissociated from.
So there may be a connection between sociopathy/psychopathy and dissociation, but the connection depends on your definition of the word.
Zen, not only do they lack a conscience, they don’t experience fear and anxiety the way the rest of us do…and from what I understand this is a very real physiological difference in their brains. That being said, I believe they always have an ulterior plan and motive up their sleaves, so that when the bottom drops out, as it surely will, they needn’t stress at all, because they’ve very carefully planned an out…
They know damn well they’re using us up, and at some point the s#$t will hit the fan, but by the time it does they’re already gone.
Nothing phazed my X. No fear no anxiety. I used to comment about it and he’d laugh, saying that He’d been told that all his life. He was very proud of it. He didn’t fear eviction, arrest, being w/o electricity, being hungry simply because he had a plan. He’d leave me in the dust, reeling, dealing with the wreckage, but for him…no stress at all.
When I’d recover, get back on my feet, well…look who’d reappear. Oh, Lord I feel a rant coming on….
x
kim, That does make sense. To the casual observer one would think she was an optimist but it is strange how removed she is. Well not exactly removed as she will depict herself to the person she’s exploiting as very upset but to me she acts as if she has not a care in the world.
One question, are there any physical mannerisms that are exhibited in these people? I am not of course sure this person is a sociopath but based on behavior that is what it seems to be. In doing searches online to understand what was going on I found this site.
Well Zen I would see a very real red flag if she is acting one way in some situations and another in others…this is a display of disception, or at least hipocracy. One cliche you may be interested in is: those involved with psychopaths either end up as victims or accompices….Be careful that she’s not pulling you into her scheams. I would worry that she shows you the unconcerned part of herself. Do you feel that she sees you as a kindred spirit in the situation, and so can reveal her true colors to you?
Be very careful. Stay true to your convictions. Do not trust tis person. Only my perceptions.
Thank you, Liane, for bringing up this topic. I think it’s really relevant to sociopaths and to us, who have been involved with them. I’ve been digging into it for the last few months, because I’m interested in sorting out some of my residual issues that are a lot like what other people here have been describing as being stuck.
I’m reading a book now, called “Haunted Self: Structural Dissociation and the Treatment of Chronic Traumatization.” It’s written for professionals, and is a little academic, but it provides some very good basic insights into how dissociation works. (I’m also learning to spell it “dissociation,” rather than disassociation, because that’s apparently the right way.)
In my own healing work, I knew I that I had a fractured psyche as a result of my incest background. When that began, I both dissociated from the experience (leaving my body when it happened) and also made conscious decisions to compartmentalize the memories and the emotional reactions, because I wanted to have a “normal” life. What I didn’t understand at the time was that, by doing that, I was essentially burying a part of myself. Or rather making it unacceptable to my “daylight” self.
This compartmentalization had started earlier in my life. Because I was very young when I learned that it was a punishable offense to have my own opinions, desires, plans, etc., and that my survival in that household depended on me being cooperative and acquiescent, and certainly never expressing anger, there were whole chunks of my emotional spectrum that were not directly expressed. (I say directly, because I could not get angry at the source of my anger, but like everyone else in my family, I diffused my anger through sarcasm and sabotage toward the world at large, as well as myself.)
And as an adult, my external personality reflected all that training, while there were significant other parts of me that were not exhibited to anyone else in the world. Most people saw me as insecure. They didn’t know that I was boiling internally with resentments, and constantly struggling with internal conflicts between what I “should” do or be and ideas I had about doing the “unthinkable.”
My relationship with the sociopath provided the benefit for me of really illuminating these issues. There was a part of me that wanted him, and didn’t care what it cost me. I’ve never been in such a battle in my life, as I experienced with him. The sensible daylight me went into the blackest despair as I lost one thing after another — money, self-esteem, feelings of control over my life — while this other part that saw him as the answer to everything would not let go of me. I couldn’t repress it, shut it up, talk it out it, or stop it from doing everything in its power to make him love me.
A lot of this healing path, for me, has been to recover the lost parts of me. Especially the capacity to feel and express anger, so that I could begin to express and then develop a life that was about what I wanted, rather than what everyone else expected from me.
So that is a relatively straightforward expression of dissociation — a picture of separated parts of me, caused by reaction to trauma, that didn’t die, but took on compartmentalized lives that didn’t interact very well. And getting better was recovering them and getting them to work together again.
As far as sociopaths go, the emotional background of their pathology is — according to my theories, which are backed up by a lot of other social research and other people’s similar theories — is that they split off and compartmentalize other capabilities. I mentioned in an earlier post about Temple Grandin’s identification of panic as a primary emotion that is related to the withdrawal of a key resource. I think this is relevant to the development of the sociopathic disorder.
My best example is my ex’s story. He was born to a single mother who gave him up for adoption, when he was old enough that he still has a single memory of her face. He was an early toddler, probably about a year old, and he spent a year in an orphanage before he was adopted. In terms of child development, this is a disastrous scenario, enforced separation from “the source” before the child has naturally moved through through the process with his mother. And it was made worse by the institutional conditions, where attention was sporadic and not particularly nurturing.
The result is what could be called “affective disorder,” a common condition among adopted children, in which they cannot bond with the new family and develop symptoms of anti-social tendencies. Which is why I’ve called sociopathy an affective disorder in my writings here. But more to the point, what happened is a reaction to panic, in Temple Grandin’s terms. In M.L. Gallagher’s recent post about “Dancing in the Arms of Love,” she talks about waiting and waiting for the person who will be everything. This is an exact replica of the experience of this child. (And sociopaths do replicate their essential dramas with us, as we replicate our essential dramas with them.)
So what is the child’s reaction when the source never comes? Or comes infrequently, and not in direct response to its needs?
Small children are survival machines. All of us are, but they are undeveloped emotionally and intellectually, so they don’t have a lot of resources, beyond this will to survive. And I believe that in order to survive this situation, they compartmentalize the expectations, the disappointment, the fear and pain, and they start making do, depending on themselves and becoming emotionally independent at an age where they have to literally do violence to their nature to do it. They no longer trust in any kind of safety, reliability or spiritual value in human interaction. Their dealings with people become defined by whether they do or do not get what they need or want, rather than mutual caring and support.
There is a lot of good information about treatment of affective disorder in adoptive children. Sometimes intervention can help. Sometimes the pattern is set too firmly, and there is just no way to break through. Because the loss of trust is a kind of death knell for normal human interactivity. It’s a wall that is impenetrable.
In terms of disassociation, the child that existed before this happened still exists, but in a compartmentalized state. Which is why sociopaths can be so tragic (and so good at the pity ploy). The new “shell” of complete emotional self-sufficiency is a part of self that is completely separated from the needy, emotionally or physically abandoned child that has been compartmentalized as weak, helpless, inadequate, a source of pain, and in identity terms, unworthy of love or nurture. The sociopathic shell is a defense against that reality, and is imbued by an essential feeling of being angry, ripped off and determined be paid back by the world. But the buried child often bleeds through, and we see it in their neediness for acceptance, for love (even though the shell doesn’t believe in it), and the grievous stories they tell and believe. This is also why we are so often astonished at the childishness of their “best” impulses. Their social capacities are literally stalled at the age of the psychic separation. Although they may learn intellectually what they should feel (and mime it to get along socially), what they really feel is a combination of the angry shell and the starving child.
And just in case, this makes anyone imagine that they can help them, you can’t. There are cases of narcissists being treated, if they are willing to experiment with living “as if” trust was safe. But that is rare. The damage these people do is what we live with. But what they live with is the effect of the inability to trust. Nothing can get through that. And they are condemned to this split life of the undeveloping child and the angry, predatory shell.
My ex’s story is a textbook case. However there is a great deal of research indicating that the failure of nurture or the failure of emotional security can have the same effect at later ages. A huge study was done in England — I believe it was almost 100 years ago — looking at the impact on children of domestic violence in the home, as well as poverty conditions and other major disruptions to their sense of safety or ability to depend on their parents. The emergence of anti-social tendencies was statistically very significant. And again, I think that Grandin’s concept of panic is a really good way of looking at this particular issue. Children will endure it to a point, and then they “switch over” to a coping mechanism that may be hard to reverse.
Why some people will go to the codependent strategy and other’s will go to the anti-social strategy is a function, I think, of several issues. One is the developmental stage at which the stresses occur. Another is the requirements presented by the environment (such as an environment where any independence is heavily punished). Another may be whether or not strong supportive or nurturing influences exist outside the home. For example, I had one grandmother who I now credit with saving my life, in psychological terms, and later some teachers who recognized that I was in trouble and took the time to talk with me and encourage me. They didn’t save me from developing as a really self-destructive codependent, but their influence helped me maintain some kind of belief in myself through all my craziness.
So this is a very long post, and a lot of theorizing about personality structure. Having separate and relatively independent personality “modules” is perfectly normal. Simply being socialized to navigate the communal world involves us learning to control some parts of ourself, often through feelings of guilt or shame, and those parts continue to exist and have their say in our psyches. And as I’ve been talking about here, they also have their purposes. Our “inner sociopaths” are really sets of capacities that may be more or less “acceptable” to us, as perhaps too-well-trained social beings. Ideally, as we mature, we recognize what they’re good for, rather than simply denying them, and integrate them into our personalities.
The fact that I responded to a sociopath, in terms of having a long term relationship with someone who had such a dramatically broken psyche of two major personality modules, was directly related, I think, to the fact that I was similarly broken. Just in reverse. On the surface, he was everything I was not and vice versa. But in the background, the same was also true. His dark secret was the the tragic baby, Mine was the furiously angry, impulsive, demanding and self-interested self that mostly bled through in addictive behaviors, because my “outside” self wouldn’t allow it to emerge otherwise.
I hope that some of this makes sense.
Kathy
CAmom (((((hug)))))
I am so glad you are here at this site.
I am so sorry you had to go through any of this,
as a little girl, as an adult.
Your father is such a sick SOB,
he set you up to be with an S, you didn’t know anything else.
You are amazing to be able to write about it now.
You said your therapists said you would not be able to recover
all your memories, to me, that might be a good thing,
how do you feel about that?
I should probably add here that this whole theory doesn’t mention the impact of genetics. My personal belief about this is that genetics provide certain temperamental characteristics, or types of nervous system capacities or neurological structures, that naturally support certain psychic capacities.
I’ve mentioned my own family in relationship to this. There is a trend in my father’s side of the family toward aggressive, competitive, independent and emotionally high-strung types. It’s hard for me to know how much of this is genetic and how much of it is the result of growing up in the family. But when these people “switch over,” they become much more like the N/P/S spectrum than codependents in their dealing with people, though they would describe themselves as victims. (Sound familiar?)
However, in better circumstances, they are highly intelligent, highly focussed, social leaders, would have been excellent hunters in hunter-gatherer times, and are extremely competent at a variety of things. They also have been diagnosed variously as ADHD, OCD, and most recently, Aspergers.
I think that all of us who have been involved with sociopaths have been particularly struck by their huge potential, that has been warped by their disorder. I understand that not all sociopaths are intelligent, but I personally have never met one that wasn’t striking in his or her alertness to the environment, ability to manufacture some kind of plan even in the most unpromising circumstances, and ability to focus on their objectives.
I know that a lot of us are dealing with children with anti-social behaviors. And I don’t mean to make any of this the fault of the parents. It may be that some children have the cards stacked against them in genetic terms, and it takes very little for them to switch over. Or it may be that simply growing up in certain types of environments (like my family) puts them in the way of certain types of stresses, no matter what we do to try to protect them.
One thing I have come to think from my own healing process and the studying I’ve done is that we overestimate the resiliency of children. Yes, they cope, because they are survival machines. But the accumulation of stresses has its effect. Which is why I am so convinced that one of the prime responsibilities of parenting is to provide an emotionally safe atmosphere and as much supportive influence as we can gather around. No parent should be alone in trying to support the emotional health of a child. It’s too much to ask. And if I could do my own period of motherhood over again, I would have worked harder to surround my son with supportive influences.
Kathy, it makes a lot of sense, and I believe it is what I am starting to experience–trying to mend the pieces. The difference is that I also have a genuinely caring side as well, that I credit to the years of work I’ve already done. But I notice when I’m with my therapist, a part of me wants to cooperate and “trust” her, while another part just wants to get angry at her. One day I was just pissed off at her for no reason. Everything she said just pissed me off. Fortunately, it’s okay to be that way in there. It felt really good to just be myself because I can’t really do that anywhere else. She says it’s because I’m afraid to go back to some of those old memories. I say I AM doing what I need to do when I get angry. I don’t know which one of us is right. I mean, I’m the one in charge of my own body, right? But she’s the one I’ve entrusted to lead the way. I wonder if I’ll always have one foot out the door with every therapist, wondering if they know what they’re doing.
Then I remember reading some literature years ago about energy work and borderline personalities. It said that a borderline personality can be healed in 3 months, rather than many years, by simply breathing and bringing the energy up to the heart and breathing it out. So I go home and I work with this. I breathe and start to feel all of this anger and fear and pain to see what happens to it. Sometimes it really does shift and change and I don’t feel as angry. When that happens, I ask myself if I should trust this wonderful therapist who genuinely seems to care about me, or if I should trust the years of meditation and energy work I’ve done and just breathe out all of this anger and pain. I honestly don’t know the answer. The selfish part just wants to rage at the therapist. The caring part wants the therapist to feel like I am a safe person for her to be around because I genuinely care about her. Is it co-dependent to place another person’s needs as equal to my own? And of course these are the “perceived” needs. In reality, she’s probably waiting for me to get really angry at her. I think she knows deep down I’m really enraged at my mother. And she’s probably right. But is it necessary to rage at her?
I really feel like I’m in the midst of this huge identity crisis. I honestly don’t know who I am, and I feel like I’m making it up as I go along.
Kathy, if you think you weren’t making sense, I imagine I must sound completely nuts!
Star, I read your post on the other thread, and now this one. I have a thought, for what it’s worth.
In a therapeutic relationship, the therapist expects us to project our stuff on them. And more than that, the therapist inevitably becomes a kind of parental figure. That’s what a guide is, in broad terms. They are facilitating us through some developmental processes that we didn’t get done in our early years, or that we didn’t get done in the wake of some later trauma.
So this is not a normal relationship. You are paying her to help you. The fact that you don’t trust her is something that she is going to take into account as a part of your projection on her. And is probably going to assume that you have trust issues with parental or authority figures. I would if I were her.
But that is just a symptom. If you have trust issues, there’s a reason for that. And that is what she’s trying to help you uncover.
If you have BPD, I have a theory about that too, if you want to hear it. I think that BPDs have experienced a similar experience to one I described above with my ex. A severe lack of nurture, but either at a developmental time or in an environment that didn’t completely destroy their ability to believe in the potential for human interactions to meet their needs. Rather they go off in the other direction, and maintain an idea of the perfect relationship in which all their needs are met. I call it their “emotional home,” because it is a kind of ultimate psychic shelter. And then their intimate relationships become huge dramas reflecting whether the relationship is or is not performing as that perfect shelter.
A former lover is a recovering BPD, diagnosed after we broke up. When I found out and begin to study BPD, it made a lot of sense of what we went through. This is pretty fundamental stuff, deep-seated and old, but you can work through it. However, my understanding of it is that, at least in the early stages, the most effective work is more in the line of cognitive behavioral training. That is, understanding that you have choices about where you go emotionally and learning how to change your self-talk. That might make sense of your dream.
There are identity issues. Certainly the question of whether you deserve to be loved for yourself. And if you’re in a big identity crisis right now, that’s probably a good thing. Because if you’re anything like my friend, you’ve probably identified yourself by your relationships and been working way too hard at taking care of everyone else in order to earn your perfect shelter. And if you’re beginning to re-think that life strategy, you may be wondering what you have left. Like how are you supposed to behave now, if you’re not “doing everything.” And what a good relationship might look like.
Well, one thing is that a good relationship is one that allows you to express your feelings, including getting mad. And if you get mad with your therapist, maybe you two can work together on doing anger more effectively. And also if you let this out, you may also find out that what’s behind the anger is a real need to be recognized as a valuable person, without you have to do a big song and dance to keep everyone else happy. And she could help you explore that.
BPDs, in my knowledge, have a terrible fear of abandonment that permeates everything. And not a very secure sense of their ability to be their own source of acknowledgement and appreciation. So she can help you with all that too.
I know what a smart and commited person you are, as well as compassionate and kind. I also can see in your writing how far you’ve come from when I first saw you writing here. You don’t sound nuts at all. You sound like you’re on the path, and feeling your way along. I’m really glad you have a therapist. And though she’s stimulating feelings in you, I also have a feeling that you trust her more than you know. Or at least feel reasonably comfortable about continuing the relationship. Even though you’re not perfectly controlled with her, and she’s not doing everything you want her to do to make you comfortable.
All that sounds pretty good to me.
Kathy
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