Sociopathy, many experts agree, is a deficits disorder.
The sociopath, in this view, is missing something—things like empathy, remorse, and basic respect for the boundaries of others.
When you think of a deficit—something missing—you don’t necessarily think dire consequences.
You may think, instead, things like less”¦incomplete”¦limited.
For instance, the idea of intellectual deficit might spark the association, mental retardation.
Instead of invoking fear, this tends to elicit our understanding, even empathy. The mentally retarded individual is missing something that most of us have—a normal intellectual capacity. You think, this is unfortunate, for that person.
When you think of kids with attentional deficits, you’re likely to bring some extra patience toward the challenges their condition presents. Your accomodation is based on recognizing their behaviors as originating in a deficit.
When dealing with the Asperger’s Syndrome population, you understand their social inaptitude as arising from a neurologic difference. And so in responding to the Asperger individual’s peculiarities, you allow that he or she, on a social level, is operating with less than a full deck.
In general, when speaking of disorders of deficits, we tend, or at least try, not to take the consequences arising from the disorder personally. We recognize the deficit as something the person doesn’t ask for and, at best, struggles to control.
This isn’t to deny, or minimize, the impact of the individual’s difficult behaviors. But in locating that impact in a deficit, we can potentially experience it as less personally injurious.
Sociopathy, however, presents an interesting challenge in this regard. Research increasingly implicates brain differences in sociopaths. Sociopaths, we are learning, fail to experience and process certain emotions like nonsociopaths. Their capacity to learn from aversive consequences appears to be compromised. And they show evidence of certain enduring forms of attentional pathology, involving defective inhibitory and impulse control.
The sociopath, in a word, appears to be a psychologically handicapped individual.
Yet it’s hard to empathize with the sociopath, who himself lacks empathy. And how not to personalize his actions—actions that can cause so much personal pain? And how not to personalize that pain, even if it results from the sociopath’s deficits?
It brings to mind the concept of processing a vicious dog attack. The dog is vicious. It attacks you. It knows it is attacking you. We can even imagine that it knows, on a primitive level, that it is wounding you. The dog needs to be leashed, kept away from others. Improperly secured, it sees you walking down the street, primitively registering your vulnerability. And then it attacks, remorselessly.
While it’s true that we can ascribe to sociopaths (and not dogs) a capacity to evaluate their prey and plot their means of attack, we run the risk, I think, of giving the sociopath too much credit.
After all, if the sociopath’s deficits destine him to interpersonal exploitation, does his exploitation become personal simply by virtue of his capacity to plot it?
Sure, the vicious dog, unlike the sociopath, may lack calculation and plotting skills. But for all intents and purposes, unless locked-up, both will inevitably attack and/or violate. The vicious dog, if it doesn’t attack you, will attack someone else. And if you are lucky enough to escape the sociopath’s transgressions, someone else won’t be.
From this perspective, the sociopath’s deficits will take forms of interpersonal exploitation just as surely as the child with ADHD can be expected to obnoxiously disrupt others, heedless of their boundaries.
From this angle, it’s possible to construe the sociopath’s aggression as tantamount to a hurricane’s damaging your house. The wreckage may be great, and traumatic; but it is the wreckage, ultimately, of an irrepressibly violent, impersonal force.
Arguably, this defines the sociopath: an irrepressibly [interpersonally] violent, impersonal force.
We hope, through our awareness, prudence, and luck, never to suffer its destructiveness. But if less lucky, we can remind ourselves that the sociopath, in the final analysis, is about as pointless, worthless, and arbitrary as a natural disaster.
(My use of “he” in this article was for consistency’s sake, not to suggest that men have a patent on sociopathy. This article is copyrighted (c) 2008 by Steve Becker, LCSW.)
I’ve got a huge quarrel with the “culture of dysfuntionalism”. It is extremely tiresome to see every deviation from dead center of the normal curve labeled as a disease. All the so called “Asperger’s Syndrome” individuals I’ve ever been made aware of have simply been smarter and more individualistic in thought than average. This is a disease? I think not! God help us all if brains and individuality become marginalized. We used to treat the absent minded professor with a mixture of appreciation for his gifts and good humor. Now we look down our noses at him with supercilious pity. This is not a wise choice.
Sociopaths, Psychopaths and Narcissists may have an empathy deficit, but they have a charisma surplus. They are able to lead whole herds of average people around by the noses, and make them enjoy the degradation 99.9% of the time. Deficient? I think not.
By the current definition of deficient, we all qualify or none of us do. Who’s more handicapped, the Narcissist leading the herd or the herd? How about the “asperger’s syndrome patients” watching the herd’s antics in puzzled bemusement? What if none of the people are deficient? What if the group is simply diverse?
We are social animals. We have substantial deviations from the norm within our population because our thrivancy depends on the mutually beneficial interactions of individuals with different strengths. (Boy are we making a bad choice when we marginalize people with “Asperger’s” and “ADHD”. These are some of the most capable people we have, and we need to learn to appreciate what they offer.)
Criminal behaviors should be prosecuted, unhealthy relationships should be avoided, and everybody should work hard to develop their strengths and correcting their shortcomings. What energy that’s left over is well spent encouraging and helping others and building a good life. This is how things work in a “culture of personal responsibility”, and work they do. This is how individuals, organizations and cultures maximize their potential.
Labels that identify capable people as deficient should be used very, very sparingly. Each careless label projects characteristics onto the subject that cannot possibly be accurate, leading to considerable confusion in relationships and harm to the individual. This is not good for the community as a whole. In the end, it’s a mutual appreciation of our strengths and a willingness to work on our shortcomings that makes us well.
I’ve dealt with sociopaths and narcissists, and I’m pretty sure I’ve dealt with a psychopath too, although I decided not to hang around long enough to confirm my suspicions with respect to the P. No two ways about it, these folks were exploitive. They were WRONG to treat me the way they did. Not just pitiably sick, but culpably wrong. That being said, I was a doormat and a patsy. I should not have put up with these people for as long as I did. I own that half of the problem, and I’ll be darned if I’m willing to scapegoat them for my errors as well as theirs. If I do, I won’t stand a snowball’s chance in H#ll of doing better the next time around.
Elizabeth Conley: What you wrote is thought provoking. May I add, that this idiotic competition theory engrained so deep in our society’s fabric needs to stop. Our country is past it’s infancy stage where competition was necessary to build a new world. Now it’s built, and collapsing at the same time due to the old ideas of competition. Compassion, respect and individual creativity(s) should be the new norms set forth in society as we rebuild our infrastructure and get away from the negativities of the old competitive spirit is the only way to go.
Peace.
I don’t believe they have an empathy defiict- I believe they choose to be callous and cruel. If they did have such a deficit, they wouldn’t understand how/why the “pity ploy”, a hallmark of psychopaths, works.
An aside- my psycho claimed to have aspies and adhd at different times- both ploys for pity. And at the same time exhibited loads of charm, sex appeal and even admitted his manipulativeness.
I have blogged on the diff between aspies and psychos.
http://holywatersalt.blogspot.com/
This is Hardly worth a debate anymore!
These people are imoral non-everything! In the old days these people where disposed of because that is what needed to be done with them! They detract from the mutual good of the group or Society! It sounds cruel but hey life is not fair! I could have been a perfect angel and be run over by a truck ! Oooops sorrry about your luck!
Having said that I will Totally Blow your minds with I want them to be Healed! but that is not a possibility at this time In our existance! Only God heals these things! LOVE JJ
WINIBAGO YOU HAVE MALE
holywatersalt: Yes, they have been conditioning themselves from a very young age to be what they turned out as adults to be. Making said decisions at such a tender age, not realizing their way, was not the way to go.
Hey, what can you expect when they thought more than their elders that warned and reprimanded them along the way.
If you don’t use compassion, you loose it. If you don’t use anything, you loose it.
What I mean by loosing it is actually, going dormant.
Peace.
Dear Wini,
I’m one of those odd birds referred to as a “Libertarian”. This doesn’t mean I believe the same things the other Libertarians do, it just means we’ve all agreed that we don’t have to agree on very many things in order to coexist peacefully.
So I’m wary of a movement to reject competition and idealize compassion. If someone is willing to assume the risk of going into business for himself in order to produce a better product, is he a vilely competitive person out to win at the expense of others? I don’t think so. I suspect you don’t either. It was the idealization of cooperation over competition that led to the collapse of the Soviet Union’s economy. Competition is healthy, at least within a legal system intended to protect the rights of all.
Compassion is often taken to far. Compassionate people are often unconsciously arrogant, and act with contempt for the rights of others. They are so sure they know what is best for the unwashed masses that they trample individual rights in the process of “helping” people. It is very compassionate to let career criminals go free to re-offend, but it can only be done at great risk to the rest of us. It is very compassionate to tax at a high rate in order to rebuild the beach front condominiums of hurricane “victims”, but it’s hardly fair to those who build their homes in sensible places. Compassion, like competition, can be taken too far.
For better or worse, I advocate a culture that respects human rights and holds individuals responsible for choosing to violate the rights of others. It doesn’t make for a perfect society, but it does foster health in an imperfect one.
Elisabeth
We bankrupted the soviets by forceing them to try to compeet on a Global scale Star wars or their suspecion that we could survive a first strike! Hello we Bluffed and they took the Hook so we won! after all we are the Psycopath nation what have we to lose ?? nothing
PS – I was once party to a discussion among friends as to whether it would be a good idea to put up a political candidate for a city office. After a feasibility study, we concluded that we had only one really big problem with the plan. None of us wanted to be the candidate. We discussed our various shortcomings for the position of candidate, and why each of us was both ill suited and unwilling. Finally we agreed that we’d need a Narcissist, Sociopath or Psychopath for the job. We’d have to find the subject, groom the subject and find a way to set boundaries for him/her. This seemed rather unpleasant and unethical to us, so we abandoned the plan.
From what I’ve observed, I must conclude that many other committes have come to the same conclusion about the qualifications of a candidate. Unlike us, they decided they were willing to follow through with an S, P or N candidate. Mostly N I think, a few Ps. An S would be the hardest to handle without constant risk.
When push to shove, I don’t think it’s just that Ns, Ps and Ss want to be the apparent heads of various movements and organizations. It may also be that very few other people earnestly desire to make the sacrifices necessary to be in the limelight.
Indigoblue,
If you want to consider our nation to be psychopathic, you go right ahead. Personally, I think we’re more like a big, dumb, exuberant, wet golden retriever bouncing through the nudist colony summer picnic, but what do I know?!
Perhaps the effect is the same, although I maintain the intent is different.