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.)
write on lol!!!!
new world view: The reason they are confusing is that they mirror us. So naturally, we think they are on the same level as us … and hence, the relationship (so we assume) begins.
We don’t have ulterior motives in doing anything we do in life. They are the complete opposite of us. They have ulterior motives for everything they do in life. They keep plotting and plotting and plotting to get what they want, from anyone they want. It’s second nature for them to plot as it is second nature for us NOT to plot.
They can’t experience any of God’s virtues in life because here is the opposite again … they are focused on the vices in life.
How would you expect them to know and experience love if they aren’t focused on love for the reason being involved with us? They are focused on a free ride, getting what they can get, from anyone they can get it from. Period.
I can go on and on about the opposites, but you get my drift.
Peace.
there is a tv series 48 hrs…48 hrs mystery and 48 hrs id investigation discovery…..all they focus on are the sociopaths in society….the thing is not many viewers make the connection that all these creatures have sociopathy in common ….i wish there was a way to draw attn to this or spend more time drawing attn to the commonalities of those portrayed
new world view: Yes, great shows on that channel, Most Evil I believe is on that channel too.
Note all the terminology used when deducting down the reasonings of why any of those criminals committed their evil deed (e.g., murder, but, not just murder, reasonings why the person(s) murdered … aka due to greed, lust … any of the other vices).
Look at all the shows explaining in detail the new way spouses/dating relationships start due to pure evil … deducting the reasoning again … dated or married this person due to greed, jealousy … other vices, not out of love. Never love. What happened to love these days (LOL). I must be old fashion.
They should be nominated for some serious awards … if not, we are in big trouble with the fools sprouting up all over this world… always taking the easy way out.
Peace.
Dear NWV,
I’ve seen that program and I like it very much, but they don’t focus enough on the fact that these people are psychopaths/sociopaths or whatever term you want to use. It seems to me that the program focuses on the Ted Bundy or other more outrageous criminals, and the public would not think the “wife beater” would be a “psychopath” because he hasn’t killed 6 people.
I sat down once to make a list of the people I know or have known in my life who I would say qualified as psychopaths by the PCL-R, and the list is quite long really. Of course I wasn’t intimately involved with all these people by any means, but still it is an amazingly long list. Or maybe I am over reacting and just “noticing” them more than other people. I’m not sure you and I as former victims can NOT notice them when we see someone who has some or all of the characteristics.
I know this is an obvious thing to say, but a dangerous aspect of a relationship with someone with personality disorder, is the invisibility of their intentions, their thoughts, of their disorder. Many people are well entrenched in relationships until they cotton on. When one is communicating for the first time with someone who has say, learning difficulties, it is fairly obvious by their demeanour, they way they speak that they are different in some aspect. The worrying thing about getting involved with someone with personality disorder, is that they are so skilled at covering up, of projecting their success, intelligence that it is easy to fall for what they project. I see now, more than ever, the importance of having boundaries and heeding the early warning signals and NOT taking people at face value.
Dear NEWWORLDVIEW and Others, I feel a clarification of my post is in order. First of all nowhere in my post do I suggest that the sociopath, on the basis of his or her disorder, should be held any less accountable for antisocial behaviors. I made the point that just as we need protection from vicious dogs, which need to be leashed and kept away from innocent people and other animals, so we need protection from the sociopath, who ideally must be kept away from the population at large. However we don’t live in a perfect world and unfortunately sociopaths, and vicious dogs, sometimes roam free to wreak their havoc. Let me be clear: I don’t feel compassion for the sociopath, any more than I do for a vicious dog. I suppose it’s possible to feel compassion for a sociopath, or vicious dog, but I generally don’t. I do feel compassion, always, for the sociopaths’ victims. However, and I won’t retract the basic thesis of my post, sociopathy is a disorder of the personality. Sociopaths may be capable of selection in their exploitation, but I disagree with you, NEWWORLDVIEW (and any number of other responders) that the sociopath ultimately chooses to be the slimeball he or she is. He or she is a slimeball; that is what makes him or her a sociopath. One doesn’t choose to be a sociopath. Can the sociopath modulate to some extent his or her pathology? Can he or she calculate and choose, as I suggest in my post, when, and against whom, to transgress? To some extent, absolutely. However this doesn’t mean that he or she chooses to have sociopathy, which is a personality disorder. The sociopath is missing something (hence the concept of deficit) that otherwise deters the normal individual from perpetrating a lifetime of exploitive behaviors often with shocking blitheness and callousness. This disorder doesn’t exculpate him or her from the harm of these behaviors; but it seems to explain the pattern, and deviance, of the personality. I wasn’t suggesting that the impact of these behaviors on victims is experienced, in any way at all, as impersonal; rather that, like a hurricane, the fully formed sociopath, in my view, is a sort of predestined, violent, twisted force of human nature. We can disagree on these points, respectfully, but I wanted, at least, to make my position a bit more clear.
Steve Becker: I believe the sociopath missed the good spanking over the knees from the parental figure if they saw that they were lying. “Spare the rod, spoil the child” theory … But, since most people naturally assume another is telling the truth … these little tots as children started their own pathological thinking … lying, scheming doesn’t do good for a person’s character, now does it. How would a child know not to continue down this avenue … since, after all he/she is getting their own selfish way as they smile to everyone’s faces and say “I didn’t do it”. There are examples of children with deformed brain stems that can never could grow normally … and the feeling of love, touch and compassion from the caregiver was the only thing that kept them alive. Once that caregiver was taken away, this child withered and died. This said a lot to me reading these histories.
Peace.
Beverly: I think it’s right to say … that it’s OK not to go down with a sinking ship.
Peace.
Wini, from my view I don’t see “sparing the rod” as a principal, causal factor of sociopathy. Where “sparing the rod” is an element of more global parental neglect, then I agree with you that we may be onto something; that is, surely a loveless, neglectful parental/family climate that provides no discipline or structure may reinforce or encourage a predisposition to sociopathy. But as an isolated factor, I personally wouldn’t give much credence to “sparing the rod” as the reason children become sociopaths.