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.)
Oxy, It’s obvious that your son’s judgment is clouded by earthly pursuits … believing himself to be of this earth, not just a visitor.
And his not being humble in the first place, made him decide on his selfish decisions which got him incarcerated.
All you can do Oxy is pray to God for your son’s soul. Pray to God that he makes his way back to our Lord.
Peace.
Katalyst
Awsome!
He said I am with you always , into the fire , There where three men , They where to be put to death by Fire for their Faith Into the fire they where put! And to the amazement of their captors who looked into the Fire! There where not Three but Four in The Fire! To Trust God is to leave This World behind and realize that what we percieve is only an Illusion of what is really REAL! Foot Steps! Through your Pain and suffering when you needed me most , That My Precious Precious Child Is when I carried you! Those are my Foot steps! Thank You ! LORD! LOVE JJ
Yes OxD I feel Exactly the same way that it is a rebirth of the joy of life and knowing you are intouch with the Creator who brought you through this for a reason as difficult as It may have been It was for His purpose to make you into the person He wants you to be! LOVE JJ
Just a quick comment on JaneSmith’s comment that I’ll get over loving my sociopath.
I believe that love can be “informed,” just as all our other positive emotions can include other awareness. We can look at a fabulous sunset and know that part of its cause is air pollution, but still celebrate the colors and the moment. We can give to charity and know that human hands will distribute that money, and probably some of it is going to fancy dinners or private pockets, but we giving knowing that some of it will get where we want it to go.
My sociopath triggered the most dramatic change in my life. Part of it happened because the relationship aligned with damage I already carried, and it gave me the opportunity to finally understand and heal it. And part of it was because there were aspects to his personality that I wanted to be like. Despite the other aspects in his personality that represent the broken and deficient side of him, I continue to honor and love what originally attracted me to him. That, too, is real.
Part of this is honoring myself. I was not completely stupid to get involved with him. What he offered was exactly what I needed at that time in my life.
However, despite seeing evidence of strange values and dealings with other people, even early on, I didn’t understand how broken he was. I understood, even early on that there was a kind of split in him. But I didn’t grasp the importance of it. I thought he was just emotionally immature in some way, or blocked emotionally. I was right about that, but wrong in thinking that there was anything I could do to fix it.
Now, years later, after there is very little left in my life that I would hate him for, I’m left with a fairly objective view of him and the dynamics of our relationship. And at the end, I consider myself fortunate to have known him. I thought he was what I needed at that time in my life, and it turned out that I was right. Though if I had know how hard and expensive it would be to acquire those characteristics of his that I admired, I probably would not have signed up for that particular class in living.
Could I have gone through this learning process another way? I don’t know. But knowing myself as I do today, I don’t really think so. I needed to fall in love with my teacher. I needed to be really turned around and shown the results of the way I was living. His not caring about me was the greatest lesson of my life in the results of me not caring for myself. All my previous relationships had been with people who did care about me, or seemed to care about me, and I used them to continue to give myself away and demand all sorts of emotional service from them to ease my insecurities and the anxious pain that I lived with.
He made it very clear that I was responsible for myself. My life was my own creation. That if I didn’t change the rules I lived by, it was never going to change and could get a lot worse.
He didn’t just do that by hurting me. He also did that by showing me his life, the life of a person who took himself so seriously that no one else was even close to being as important as his schemes and dreams. He was like a superman of self-involvement. I was horrified, disbelieving that anyone could be like that. But I also saw that he accomplished things that I could never accomplish. He was a writer, as I wanted to be, and everything in his life was about that. My role in his life was making that possible. I didn’t like his values or his tactics. But I also saw that there was something to this business of taking himself seriously.
Like many people on this blog, I was incested and watched my siblings being destroyed by my father. My life coping mechanism was to become the wonderful person who would be safe because I surrounded myself with people who needed me for one reason or another. I was the perfect codependent, and like all codependents, I had a non-wavering demand that I be rewarded in return for caring about them by them taking care of my emotional needs. If they weren’t good enough at reading my mind about my emotional needs, they were gotten rid of. In tears, of course, because they didn’t “really love me” and I was so hurt. But this was the pattern of my relationships.
I look back now and just roll my eyes at myself. I understand why I was like that. I don’t hate myself for it. I have lots of regrets for pain I caused or messes I left. I have even more regrets for the time I wasted in my life with this endless maneuvering for safety by getting other people to behave the way I wanted.
There’s a piece of psychological opinion that has been helpful to me. It’s that sociopaths are less fortunate than codependents, because the codependents can learn to become self-actuating, but the sociopaths can’t learn to love or trust. That is, we can get to the middle ground where we have choices to act self-serving or compassionate, depending on what we want or the meaning we assign to a situation. Sociopaths, because of the particular way they’re broken, the particular coping path they took after their traumatic breaks, can’t get back to center.
I hope that’s not true. I hope there is a means to break down that sociopathic wall against trust and compassion that some brilliant clinician develops someday. but in the meantime, I have to face the fact that I had a long dance with a kind of superman of self-involvement. And he did it with style. His charisma was not only seductive but funny. His efforts to involve me and other people in his schemes were endlessly creative. In his lack of caring about anything but himself and his own plans, he did things that never would have occurred to me in a million years.
While it was going on, I was struggling with the role of being his source. It was dehumanizing, humiliating and debilitating. He had absolutely no qualms about what it did to me. And since I was busy taking care of him, in the deluded idea that it would eventually pay off for me, he also was busy taking care of him. And I became depleted financially, socially, ethically and emotionally. It was nothing new in my life, but it was at a scale that threatened my survival.
It was only at the end of it, when I was so depleted that I just couldn’t find the strength to keep on investing in the relationship, that I started to act and feel on my own behalf. I got snappish with him. I questioned why I had to put up with any of it. He saw that I was losing my usefulness and he very quickly replaced me with another incest survivor who couldn’t believe her luck at attracting this fabulous guy.
How can I say I love him? Maybe because I’m finally getting my sense of humor back. About myself, but he comes under that umbrella. One of his sayings is never sleep in a crazy person’s bed or wear his clothes. But we both did that. We were both equally crazy. Sometimes I think he was crazier than me, but just as often I think I was the crazier one. But I always think that I was the luckier one, because he only wanted money and sex and a bunch of possessions, but I got a new life out of it. And for that I honor his presence in my life and him too, for being the kind of crazy that made him that charismatic, funny, infinitely creative superman of self-involvement.
It doesn’t mean I want him back. It is possible to love from a distance — over time as well as miles. It is also possible to love, appreciating the good and accepting the bad as the flip side of the good, and knowing that they were part of the same thing. There are three pivotal relationships in my life, and this was one of them. All of them challenged me. All of them caused me to open my mind and my life. I don’t need to talk with them about it. or work anything out with them. They don’t have anything else that I need or want. Likewise, I don’t owe them anything. Everything is complete as it is. But they helped make me who I am today, and there’s no reason now not to feel love.
So, no, I won’t get over it. I think I’m right where I want to be with it. It doesn’t make me any less smart about what happened. And it doesn’t mean I wouldn’t gladly help another one of his girlfriends get away from him or get over over it, if they asked. But from my perspective, sooner or later, I had to come to this. Someone else might not call this love, but I think that’s the word for it.
Katalist
Taht was wonderfull Thank you! LOVE JJ
Dear Khatalyst,
We all “cope” in different ways, I think I understand what you are saying about “loving” him. I cope with the “loss” of my P-son by remembering the young wonderful child that I enjoyed so much as being “dead.” I love and miss that child but that child is GONE, and the “Man” who received his “organs” is just a stranger to me, a violent and malignant one that I don’t know. Don’t want to know. That may sound “strange” to anyone but me, but FOR ME “it works.” I can think about the good child that he was, the fun, bright and interesting kid. Just like I think about my late husband with joy in the memories, I think about the joy in the memories of my “lost son.” The memories of my husband’s death scene no longer cause me pain, and the memories I have of the “Man” no longer cause me pain. It is like describing the plot of some movie I saw once, but not painful emotions tacked on to the plot. I’m not sure that makes any sense to anyone but me, but to me it does, and if your situation works for you, MORE POWER TO YOU! (((HUGS))))
Khatalyst,
Ok, I understand. Thank you, again, for sharing what I’m sure is still very painful, such as the childhood trauma you suffered. So damn sorry for what you endured. Just not fair the damage some really rotten, vile “parents” inflict upon wee children. I’ll never be able to NOT be horrified, outraged, and flatout furious when I read or hear about these experiences.
I still remember a line from the movie-Parenthood-when Keanu Reeve is discussing the abuse his father caused him. He says..”You know, Mrs. Buckman, you need a license to buy a dog, to drive a car – hell, you even need a license to catch a fish. But they’ll let any a**hole be a father.” Sad, but tragically true.
Dear Katalyst! Thank you so much for your wonderful posts. You put MY feelings far better in words than I ever could in these blogs. I felt so miserably today, but you lifted my spirits a lot. You made my day. I wish you all a peaceful evening and a successful week.
Oxy: I for one understand you completely about not wanting to know the monster adult in your son versus remembering the loving child instead.
There are people that I know from childhood … that I saw the child versus the monsters they are today.
It’s their egos having a grip on them … believing their own ego instead of any logic of a higher power or a more positive way of looking at any situation …thinking they know what is really going on and that their way of thinking is the only way to think … and the rest of us are foolish … all this peace and love and harmony stuff. No matter how much I try to explain that their glass is half empty … that it’s their mindset that does this to them … they don’t believe me …
I just get to point and say “just shut up, stop listening to your own big ego and then you can learn other things in life … better hurry … cause we don’t have many years to live down on earth … are you going to waste your life with these evil mindset, cause it does you no good and of course, your negativity does no one else any good” … and the (sigh) saga continues…. I don’t know what I’m talking about cause I’m a goody two shoes … and they, they, they know better.
Live and learn … peace!
Did I miss something? I don’t recall ever getting to the angry phase.
Hurt, confusion, walking on eggshells, trying to figure out what I was dealing with and the resulting atmospheric insanity…I suppose when he began to imply that I was the problem, or would turn things on me, I became questioning, which was interpreted as outright defiance, but I don’t remember feeling angry.
Maybe it’s yet to come.
He was never able to convince me that it was me keeping him agitated.
I didn’t excuse his behaviour, well I did at first, not realizing it’s origin. Then, as time went on, I gingerly stood up to him; asking why it was okay for him to treat me the way he did…and so began the horrors of tip-toeing around him all the time – being constantly on edge.
Most of the folks on this site appear to have been dealing with financial parasites, whereas it was the opposite for me. I stumbled across this yesterday, and it finally makes sense. I feel so sorry for his daughter.
http://samvak.tripod.com/msla3to4.html NARCISSIST – MALIGNANT SELF LOVE A narcissist can roam the streets for hours, looking for an address, before conceding his inferiority by asking a passer-by for guidance. He suffers physical pain, hunger and fear, rather than ask for help. The mere ability to help is considered proof of superiority and the mere need for help ”“ a despicable state of inferiority and weakness. This is precisely why narcissists appear, at times, to be outstanding altruists. They enjoy the sense of power which goes with giving. They feel superior when they are needed. They encourage dependence of any kind. They know ”“ sometimes, intuitively ”“ that help is the most addictive drug and that relying on someone dependable fast becomes an indispensable habit. Their exhibitionistic and “saintly” altruism disguises their thirst for admiration and accolades, and their propensity to play God. They pretend that they are interested only in the well-being of the happy recipients of their unconditional giving. But this kind of representation is patently untrue and misleading. No other kind of giving comes with more strings attached. The narcissist gives only if and when he receives adulation and attention. If not applauded or adulated by the beneficiaries of his largesse, the narcissist loses interest, or deceives himself into believing that he is, in fact, revered. Mostly, the narcissist prefers to be feared or admired rather than loved. He describes himself as a “strong, no nonsense” man, who is able to successfully weather extraordinary losses and exceptional defeats and to recuperate. He expects other people to respect this image that he projects. Thus, the beneficiaries are objects, silent witnesses to the narcissist’s grandiosity and magnanimity, the audience in his one-man show. He is inhuman in that he needs no one and nothing ”“ and he is superhuman in that he showers and shares the cornucopia of his wealth or talents abundantly and unconditionally. Even the narcissist’s charity reflects his sickness. Even so, the narcissist is more likely to donate what he considers to be the greatest gift of all ”“ himself, his time, his presence. Where other altruists contribute money ”“ he avails of his time and of his knowledge. He needs to be in personal touch with those aided by him, so as to be immediately rewarded (narcissistically) for his efforts. When the narcissist volunteers he is at his best. He is often cherished as a pillar of civic behaviour and a contributor to community life. Thus, he is able to act, win applause, and reap Narcissistic Supply ”“ and all with full legitimacy.