Contrary to a prevailing myth, sociopaths are really no smarter than the average individual”¦probably dumber. Sure, a good one can dupe you, but as I’ve written elswhere, this is no great shakes, as most of us can dupe each other if that’s our goal.
That’s because we enter relationships risking trust and faith in each other, which makes the exploitation of our trust and faith really easy. It takes no genius or particularly smart, crafty person to exploit this trust and faith. It’s as easy to do as it’s wrong.
And so, most sociopaths aren’t really that clever, or ingeniously bright. Most make messes not only of others’ lives, but their own too. Many end up in jail, and those who don’t are often finding trouble in other areas, exercising poor judgement all over the map, squandering friendships, family, and all sorts of meaningful opportunities.
By most standards of a successful life, sociopaths live lives of abject failure, accomplishing little more, at the end of the day, than having produced plenty of havoc and pain. None of this indicates that, as a group, sociopaths are smart.
Sometimes the media sensationalizes the sociopath as the dark, brilliantly predatory monster, especially in classic cases of psychopaths like Ted Bundy. But Ted Bundy wasn’t so smart. In the end, he was nothing but a vicious, sadistic murderer who managed to lure young, naïve girls sufficiently into his proximity to then viciously murder them.
How much of an accomplishment was this? To be able to lure naïve girls near enough to his car to then kidnap and kill them? Otherwise, OJ Simpson style, Bundy was ambushing dormitories at night and butchering innocent, sleeping college kids. Not exactly a genius, or courageous guy, at work here. Just a perverse, murderously violent, cowardly man.
Sure, Bundy was reputedly charming and articulate (video of him bears this out). But this didn’t make him “smart.” He was, clearly, adept at “masking” himself. But again, effective maskers aren’t smart; they’re just good maskers. And nonsociopaths routinely are good maskers.
Good masking, good self-disguising is a type of social skill, and not the purview of sociopaths exclusively. Also, many sociopaths are terrible maskers, just as many nonsociopaths are.
My point is that the “mask” is not an indication of “smartness.” It’s merely the case that some sociopaths, and some nonsociopaths, can mask aspects of themselves and their agendas effectively; but bear in mind, just as many do this very poorly.
In the end, sociopaths, as a group, have a poor track record of living effective lives. Rather, they live disruptive, unsatisfying lives”¦fraught with pathological attitudes and empathic deficits that bring misery to others and, correspondingly, much trouble and, at best, empty satisfaction, to themselves.
Sociopaths simply are not successful people. They may (or may not) skate along under the radar for some stretch of time, but this is not a “game” that smart people play, and that smart people get off on.
Only dumb people play this game. Only really dumb people live this way. Only really really dumb people derive satisfaction, for however long they can swing it, from pulling the wool over others’ eyes.
It’s just no great shakes to do this, and it doesn’t make you smart.
zim, you need a new decent stud too and forget the manias of the old one or you’ll lose your head after damaging other several heads.
Most alchies (especially the men) that I know, have “addictive personalities” .. usually have more than one addiction, and usually one of the other addictions is SEX ADDICTION. I have seen this over and over again, throughout my life. I think my ex just substituted one addiction for another. I also noticed that, at most of his extended family gatherings, there was plenty of hooch imbibed, and his youngest sister’s son had that florid complexion that alcoholics get. His youngest (of five sisters, he was the only boy) sister was the one he told me let him watch while she masturbated, when he was a minor. Just sick. But yes, I suspect his genes of alcoholism were inherited (I’ll wager, from his father.)
My ex also told me about that sister’s daughter (who’s desire was to become an actor) .. said that her daughter, took, without permission, a video camera, from her mother’s brother-in-law, who, to me, was a decent guy, even brilliant, a professor. Possibly “stealing” was in the genes, too??? … seems like he was always telling me about the “crimes” & “mishaps” of others to DEFLECT his own flaws, which seemed like the only way he would want the LIMELIGHT off him.
His oldest sister of the five, was a brilliant/kind woman. She, apparently, had some (genetic?) joint condition .. possibly some kind of rumatoid arthritis, that left her afflicted, and she had to be tended (this is what he told me) by his mother & oldest sister, which, I think if that happened, took major attention away from the Baby Boy of The Family. Yet, despite her disability, she succeeded well in life, became a successful lawyer. This was the sister he said helped him pay off the lawyer who handled his 2nd divorce. Seems to me now, that he was “milking” her for her $ and playing on her “guilt” (hoping she’d be guilty for taking away from him the attention he apparently did not get from his own mother.)
I know this much..if I had to be out in the miserable dating market again, I would NEVER AGAIN choose to date an “only boy” in a family of all female siblings.
correction to my post just above this..should have been ..”she had to be tended (this is what he told me) by his mother & by the sister just under the age of his ailing sister .. his next-to-oldest sister”
..and that next-to-oldest sister was the one who lent him $17K, under legal agreement that if he ever went bankrupt, he would not be able to write off his debt to her if he went bankrupt (yep. I saw the document) …so, I’m guessing that he probably “milked” her for her “guilt” about something or other, to get that $ she lent him.
He also admitted to being dyslexic, and yes, I noticed, in some of his handwriting samples, that he switched letters in words, but he also alternated, using small case and capital letters (capitals here & there, in the middle of the words), in his printing. Wonder what a handwriting analyst would have to say about his personality?
One book I like is “The Celestine Prophecy” by James Redfield. I think he “captures” or described the sociopathic mindset very well, in his book. Just a couple of excerpts cited, within Fair Use:
“Your way of controlling people and situations [ ] in order to get energy coming your way, is to create this drama in your mind during which you withdraw and look mysterious and secretive. You tell yourself hat you’re being cautious but what you’re really doing is hoping someone will be pulled into this drama and will try to figure out what’s going on with you. When someone does, you remain vague, forcing them to struggle and dig and try to discern your true feelings” (p126)
About “insights,” Redfield described the Fourth Insight: “[It] exposes the human tendency to steal energy from other humans by controlling them, taking over their minds, a crime in which we engage because we so often feel depleted of energy, and cut off. This shortage of energy can be remedied, of course, when we connect with the higher source. The universe can provide all we need if we can only open up to it. That is the revelation of the Fifth Insight” (pp199, 120)
Probably, better passages are in same source, about how evil ones suck the energies out of the good ones, almost to the point you can see the “aura” of goodness being sucked out of them by the parasites, but I’m off to cooking dinner, so can’t find them now. Good book, though.
That first passage of Redfield’s seems to describe how the spath pretends to be intelligent, when he really hopes to suck the intelligence from his victim (VAMPIRE!)
I’m probably on the wrong lovefraud blog link for this (should be on the one about movies about spaths), but, I saw, recently, the film, “Adam Resurrected” .. about a brilliant guy tortured by a Nazi, during the Holocaust, made to behave like a dog. Well, he escapes the camp, finds his way to Israel, ends up in a mental institution, where the therapists think he has superior mental capacities, despite being mentally “damaged” by his holocaust experience. He has an affair with the head nurse in the institution. She becomes his “dog” (just as he had been made by the Nazi commandant, to behave like a dog!) .. I get that he is TRANSFERRING what abuse he had experienced, onto this nurse/woman/female.. RE-ENACTING those abuse experience ONTO HER! What this film illuminated for me, was what I felt my ex had done to me (try to “re-live” or “re-activate” abuse he had supposedly experienced from his gay male cousin, by way of “seduction” .. by trying to CONFUSE my own sexual identity, as I think HIS was confused, by his cousin, and probably has done so to more of his adult sexual partners than just me..his first wife, for example) .. every film I’ve seen, lately, about SPATHS (or about mentally ill persons, with, I guess PTSD) .. seem to have similar themes. I think they are meant to teach us something..that possibly we ARE NOT IMAGINING that these spaths are TRANSFERRING their aggression onto us..want to make us feel how THEY felt. Really, if so, they only use us as TEMPORARY VESSELS/CONDUITS, that this is ONLY A TEMPORARY FIX that never gets relieved. The spaths must do it AGAIN and AGAIN, for the “relief” it supposedly brings for them, is only temporary.