Editor's note: Steve Becker has a very dry sense of humor, and the following post is written tongue-in-cheek. If you have a humorous story about a sociopath, feel free to add it as a comment. Well, thanks to the Investigation Discovery Channel, the latest estimates are that 85% of the general population is sociopathic, and likely to commit a horrific, calculated exploitation of another human being within the next three weeks. Even leading researchers on psychopathy laud this cable channel (which, admittedly, is absolutely riveting) for getting their own estimates properly realigned. Only in the last two months, just on my street alone, two of my neighbors killed a spouse (one for …
The mind of the mass killer
Take someone who is mentally ill/unhinged, add rage, and paranoia, then weaponize this individual, and you've got a murderer/mass murderer on your hands. The “rage + paranoia” is a highly incendiary combination. In these mass murders it strikes me that "paranoia" is almost surely present and necessary—the murderous individual believes that it's “him against a world” that has "screwed him over," the world (and everyone in it) becoming a global, generalized “object” and "target" of his violent contempt and rage. His is a worldview in which he is the “outsider” and everyone else is "on the inside;” in his paranoia, immaturity and narcissism, he has divided the world into these rigid categori …
Critiquing “The Wisdom of Psychopaths,” by Kevin Dutton, Ph.D.
Kevin Dutton's “The Wisdom of Psychopaths” is a strange, ultimately disconcerting book. Dutton is erudite and obviously fascinated with his subject—psychopaths. He references some cutting edge research and had access to many heavy hitters in the field of psychopathy experts. Yet in the end, I find his book very troubling. His thesis is basically what the book's subversive title suggests—that psychopaths have qualities of “wisdom.” That is, psychopaths, he asserts, have certain admirable, enviable and distinguishing qualities in greater volumes than non-psychopaths, qualities the non-psychopath could benefit from in greater quantity so long as (unlike psychopaths) the non-psychopath can r …
Critiquing “The Wisdom of Psychopaths,” by Kevin Dutton, Ph.D.Read More
Loving the sociopath who’s spared you
(This article is copyrighted © 2012 by Steve Becker, LCSW. My use of male gender pronouns is for convenience's sake and not to suggest that females aren't capable of the behaviors and attitudes discussed.) It can be hard to hate or despise even the most terrible human being so long as he's inflicted his cruelty on others, but spared you. Take a sociopathic relative, even a close one. If somehow he compartmentalized his life, lived a “double life—”in any case, if you learned that he treated you (retrospectively even) with an exceptional, aberrant mercy that he denied his victims, you might very possibly remain “loyal” to him. You might still even “love” him. Various defenses are pertine …
The sociopath’s “loyalty” deficiency
(This article is copyrighted (c) 2012 by Steve Becker, LCSW. The use of male gender pronouns is strictly for convenience's sake and not to suggest that females aren't capable of the behaviors and attitudes discussed.) “Loyalty” and “the sociopath” are incompatible terms. We've discussed many traits of the exploitive personality, but let's not minimize a very vital one: deficient loyalty. Clearly, deficient loyalty is a sociopathic characteristic. A deficiency of loyalty can be disguised very well by clever, self-serving rationalizations. But you will not find the case of a true sociopath about whom you will ever be able to say: he (or she) was really, through and through, truly loyal. L …
The overdiagnosis of sociopaths
(The following article is copyrighted © 2012 by Steve Becker, LCSW. My use of male gender pronouns is strictly for convenience's sake and not to suggest that females aren't capable of the attitudes and behaviors discussed.) Let's be honest. The term “sociopath” has become so commonplace, a very good thing (reflecting the increasingly spacious public awareness of exploiters), that it sometimes seems that pretty much every jerk we confront we're tempted to call a “sociopath.” Now, there's way more “upside” to this than “downside.” And I'd say this applies to terms like “abusive” as well. And thank goodness the concept of “abuse” is now much more widely understood—it's wider public reach, al …
Sociopathic tendencies or full-blown sociopath?
(The article below is copyrighted © 2012 by Steve Becker, LCSW. My use of male gender pronouns is for convenience's sake and not meant to imply that females aren't capable of exhibiting the attitudes and behaviors discussed.) What does it mean to say that someone has sociopathic tendencies, versus full-blown sociopathy, and does the difference even matter? The simple answer is that someone with sociopathic tendencies will exhibit sociopathic behaviors and attitudes sometimes, while elsewhere he may seem to possess (and, in fact, may possess) a somewhat genuine (if limited and unreliable) capacity and desire to respect others. In contrast, the full-blown sociopath's respect for others, …
Revisiting prevailing myths about sociopaths
As I work with partners and other victims of sociopaths, I see regularly the persistence of certain myths about these destructive individuals. These myths can retard the process by which partners fully recognize the sociopath for who he is. They can protect him by supporting his “mask” or, at the very least, supporting the “rationalizations” his partners and victims sometimes use to “cut him the slack” he surely doesn't deserve. For instance, commonly I hear the position, “Well, he's not always like this. He doesn't always act like this.” This supports the notion that sociopaths are continuously flaunting their disorder. But this just isn't the case. To begin with, we know that many soc …
Are clinical “continuums” silly?
The narcissistic continuum? The psychopathic continuum? The sociopath explained as being someone located at the apex of the narcissistic continuum? Are clinical continuums silly? Maybe they are. How “nice” are you? Well, maybe you're somewhere on a continuum of “niceness.” At the apex, you are a super-nice individual; in the middle, sometimes very nice, sometimes less so; at the nadir, you are just an incredibly “un-nice” (or “mean”) person. Hmmm. Wow. Somehow this doesn't seem like a newsflash. How sloppy are you? Well, couldn't Robert Hare have developed clinically a “sloppiness” (versus a psychopathic) measure that places all of us somewhere on a “sloppiness” continuum. Wit …
Domestic violence and the high-risk personality disorders
Certain personality types are at high risk of perpetrating domestic violence. I want to emphasize physical domestic violence here. As in my last article, the borderline, narcissistic and sociopathic personalities lead the risk pack here. Let's look first at the borderline personality. The borderline personality is a powder-keg of rage prone to detonate at any experience of a perceived wound, insult, threat of abandonment or (as a less appreciated match to their rage), threat to their malignant pride. Sound pretty narcissistic? Welcome to the synergy between these two personality types. The borderline personality, much like many narcissists, is littered with “rage mines” that can “tr …
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