Is sociopathy a perversion? If yes, a perversion of what? And if it is a perversion, does this compel us to revisit the sociopaths’ culpability for his transgressions? After all, perversions imply antisocial, irrepressible impulses. If an impulse is irrepressible, or unsuppressible, how culpable is its expresser?
I think a good case can be made that sociopathy is a perversion—a perversion of personality characterized by the unsuppressible tendency to exploit others.
It’s not so much a question of the sociopath’s sanity: most sociopaths, by criminal standards, are sane. Then again, so are most kleptomaniacs.
When I refer to the sociopath’s unsuppressible tendency to exploit, I mean unsuppressible in a characterological, more than compulsive, sense. The sociopath, that is, appears characterologically to be driven to perpetrate incursions against others’ space and security.
While I think that sociopaths, like most transgressors, can exercise, on a case by case basis, some selective choice in determining when next, and whom, to violate, I do not think that sociopaths, in the bigger picture, can control their exploitive tendencies any more than saints can control their beneficent tendencies.
I regard it as inevitable that the sociopath will violate others and, unless stopped, violate repeatedly.
In my view, many wrongly interpret the sociopath’s capacity for situational self-restraint as suggestive of what ought, therefore, to be the sociopath’s capacity to cease his exploitation more broadly.
But I stress—while it’s true that most sane individuals, including sociopaths, can exercise some suppressive control over the expression, timing and direction of their antisocial tendencies in the short-term, it does not follow that they can maintain their self-regulation in the long-term.
The sociopath’s peculiar and profound self-centeredness, along with his inability to genuinely care about the harm he inflicts on others, explain why his exploitive tendencies, in the long-term at least, will demand expression.
Yet one often hear variations on the theme, “You know, when he’s not being cruel, deceptive and self-centered, he’s really a good guy.”
Or, “When she’s not scamming seniors out of their life savings, she’s got really good instincts.”
Carrying this logic a step further, it’s like saying, “You know, when he’s not raping women, he can be a quite tender, trusting lover.”
I commonly work with clients who see the refractory period separating the antisocial displays of their partners as tantalizing evidence of the latters’ “real personality;” of their “true potential” as partners/parents/friends; of how they’d be “all the time if they could just work through their demons.”
This is “enabling” thinking, steeped in denial and fantasy. It reflects the desperation to want to believe in the underlying goodness of the antisocial mate. One insists that with just a little more time, a little more forgiveness, a little more patience, one’s partner will recognize, finally, what he or she has been jeopardizing, and will finally properly value his or her mate, family and blessings.
Sometimes religious/spiritual individuals, for whom faith and forgiveness are integral to their identity, are especially prone to this self-delusive thinking. Their endurance of countless lies, deceptions and betrayals feels less about self-compromise than the fulfillment of their higher values.
They may harbor the hope, and faith, that their travails, if endured uncomplainingly and for long enough, will result finally in vindication—for instance, this will be the time he really sees the light!
I call this “reform-aholoc” thinking—that is, believing with a kind of blind faith in the antisocial partner’s capacity for reformation.
(This article is copyrighted (c) 2009 by Steve Becker, LCSW.)
Yes that’s true and I think many S’s are visible by then. Also, imo, there is a huge arrested development aspect to S-ness.
holywatersalt and pathwhisperer:
I am not sure if we can apply the age of 8 as a blanket, because I think there are certain exceptions where the concept of reason is not fully developed with 8 year olds. That said, I do believe that there are enough basic cognitive pieces in place that sociopaths are already visible by then.
A memory that is indelibly etched in my brain is the glee S derived from telling me that when he was 6 or so, he realized that his mother was pregnant with his older brother at the time his parents got married. The look on his face as he recounted telling his brother “at least I was wanted” was chilling to say the least. He then told me that his mother asked him “why did you say that? Why are you so mean to your brother?” His response? “I just looked at when you got married and when he was born and figured it out.”
Cold. Calculating. At the age of 6.
Definetely; most hoarders are not p or s.
My mother is a hoarder, she has BPD but I can safely say she is not a p or s.
Hoarding seems to be a symptom of a bigger problem, almost like it’s just the tip of the iceberg. For my mother it’s a coping mechanism against loss, change and perceived abandonment.
She did not start visibly hoarding until my sister and I left the house, which I think is fairly common. She exhibited some signs of fixation and collecting objects when we were young, but it was dismissed as eccentric then.
My sister and I can no longer have holidays without trying to make space to sit and sleep. Two years ago we had to clean newspaper for an hour in the living room to make space for the x-mas tree, while mom was freaking out in the background, trying to get stuff back out of the garbage bags.
I know that there are ways of managing hoarding. There are people who help hoarders get rid of stuff and clean, but it is pain staking process, because the hoarder needs to give permission to be thrown away for each item.
I was just curious what holywatersalt found on the frequency of sociopaths that had hoarding tendencies.
The s I was with hoarded urine, toy guns, pens, and various building material and machinery parts he found in the dumpster. He also pressured me to throw away some of my stuff claiming I had too much. I am actually opposite to a hoarder. My stuff is minimal. I am very vigilant about throwing everything away that I do not use or need. Ironically the s wanted me to throw out paintings that I painted and things that were personal. Meanwhile he would have broken engines, soda bottles filled with urine, cans and cans of misc stuff, filling up 2 floors….
I once saw a bird at my house go bonkers building a nest, putting so much material into it that it fell down, repeatedly. Did it have some kind of hoarding disorder?
I think birds are compelled to build nests partly from hatchling memory, partly because they learn that they love doing it. I’m not sure if there’s a hardwired blueprint like a ROM chip or something in their brains. One way to check might be to raise chicks in an alien environment, then observe them at nesting time.
Ideally, the same thing could be done with potential psychopaths to see how much nature plays a role.
SOS, are you volunteering to raise these “potential psychopaths” in your home? I have seen parents with “conduct disordered” children afraid to go to sleep at night, afraid that the child will burn the house down on their head, and some of these kids are 8-12 years old. Some, but not all, of these children are adopted….and today most NON-disordered women who would have, in the past, given up their child for adoption keep their children since a “bastard child” is not a stigma like it used to be. There IS a pattern now recognized even by most psychologists and psychiatrists that children are NOT a “blank slate” at birth upon which parenting writes. Many of the genetically healthy babies available today come from China and are female, because of the one-child rule and parents wanting male children due to the social structure in China. I know quite a few people who have adopted Chinese female children with great success as far as the children are concerned. They are bright and very sweet. Doesn’t mean there might not be a “ringer” in there but the ones I am aware of did very well.
For a while we had a mother blogging here whose daughter was apparently a “conduct disordered” child who was cruel and dangerous to her younger sibling and this mother was having a great deal of trauma trying to place this child in some kind of facility in order to protect her younger child.
Having had one P son and one “normal” son (with a conscience) I realize that I neglected the needs of my normal child in his early teen-aged years while I was frantically dealing with my P-son’s adolescent behavior (they were very close in age) Fortunately, my non-P son turned out okay and is a loving man today, but I do believe his brother’s behavior deprived him of support he could have used from me.
The damage these kids can do to the family structure and to their siblings is or can be devastating at an early age. My P son’s BIG acting out didn’t begin until he was in high school and seemed to come on suddenly, with only ONE sign at age 11 that he was disordered. At the time, I didn’t see that his lying in the face of being caught red handed in a theft was a clinical sign. If every kid who ever told a lie was a P, I think 99.9% of us would be “labeled” as Ps, so I didn’t pick up on it at the time. ONly in retrospect and in light of HOW HE LIED IN THE FACE OF EVIDENCE, HOW ENRAGED HE BECAME, how he is still mad at me to this day for catching him at age 11. (He is 38 now) so he has held a grudge against me for 27 years, almost 3/4 of his life.
My P-sperm donor was seriously acting out by age 8, and was uncontrollable by 12, and literally on his own, because he kept running away. My own P-son fled the nest by age 17 and for the most part has been housed in prisons or jails since that age, with less than one year total “time” outside of a prison since that age.
Though he has never in any way “succeeded” at anything since he left school, and even in crime, he has usually been caught and arrested, he still considers himself a “success” in all of life’s skills, and because of his arrogance about his superior intelligence (he is in the 99th percentile) he thinks that nothing can permanently stop him or control him.
He can be very charming and can “quote scripture with the best of them” or philosphy, whatever rings your chimes and convinces you he is “wonderful.” However, the truth is, that even as a criminal he has been totally UNsuccessful, but that is not how he views himself. His sense of entitlement is also absolute.
There are studies on bird behavior and inherited genes. For instance there is a particular gene that is responsible for song learning. When the scientist turned off this gene, the young birds could not learn the songs from the adult parents. They made sounds, but it was garbled, had no pattern.
I believe this study was done on Zebra Finches. I wonder if nesting is also dependent on genes, or at least the ability to learn how to build one.
SOS, are you volunteering to raise these “potential psychopaths” in your home?
Uh, no. As the rest of it, I’m not gonna debate. I’ve seen enough with sub-clinical above average intelligence adult P’s to know how bad it can get. In childhood I experienced a P neighbor girl who was ’bookended’ by normal sisters younger and older. She was (at that time, inexplicably) nasty from age 4 or so.
Very interesting how different your own boys were. Same environment, opposite result.
Steve,
In my case, its true that the P is seen as the kindest, sweetest, sort of down on his luck type of guy. NOONE other than me would believe the terrible things he did. If I hadn’t had letters and other proof, the judge would not have believed it either.
I keep thinking of that woman from California whose husband was convicted of killing her and her unborn child, what was her name….
But, I know what it is like to look into the eyes of a person who has just done something awful to you, and how he acted when he thought I was unconscious, and I can say that his eyes were flat and unemotionless, he wasn’t even breathing hard, he didn’t touch me, just calmly leaned over to check if I was breathing. Like an actor playing a part. cold.
Dear SOS,
It IS very interesting to me how different, even from BIRTH, my kids are. My oldest (non-P) is ADHD, but was never a behavior problem, just active. The P younger son wasn’t a behavior problem as a young child either and except for that one instance of theft, at age 11, was an “ideal” child as far as I could tell, sought positive reinforcement, did well in school, was kind and played well with other kids. Very “mature” thinking it seemed for his age.
I have seen other groups of sibs too, where 1 or 2 would be Ps and the others very nice kids, and good adults, even though raised in terrible abuse by P parents.
Then in his teenaged years my P-son, Jekly/Hyde switcher-roony, totally definant, sneaky, criminal behavior, liar delux.
My P-sperm donor had a normally nice full sib, and a half sib that was very nice, and a half sib that was mentally ill, but I’m not really sure what her diagnosis would have been, it was sudden onset after adulthood. She was a physician at the time she “had a nervous breakdown” and never worked or lived independently again.
My egg donor had a P-brother, my Uncle Monster, and she is a toxic enabler, which I term a “psychopath by proxy,” since she does the bidding and manuvering and supplyiing of my P-son, all of course to “save” him from being “abused” by his mother (me). Uncle Monster’s 3 children are all emotionally scarred by having him for a father, but none of them are Ps.
My thoughts are that it is some COMBINATION of genes rather than 1 or 2 dominant, or 2 recessive genes. But with the human “race” so mixed up, you never know what kind of genes even you yourself are harboring. I obviously have some of the genes or couldn’t have passed them on to my P-son. My non-P son has no children and has chosen to not ever have any biological children due to the possibility of passing the genes on. I know now, that I would have elected to have stayed childless if I had known what I would have given birth to. (even though that would have meant my “good” son would never have been born, had I made that decision).
I sit here and shake my head and wonder how the human race has come as far as we have, given the predators that walk among us and look just like the rest of us, except they are TOXIC.
I always thought P babies made head nurses speak up: “leave this one alone… he’s bad to the bone.”
One of my HS friends transformed from a cardigan wearing golfer and tennis team player to a large operation dope peddling scumbag and wound up in jail, taking some other guys he’d conned into being partners with him.
On the flip side:
I have a cousin who was a nasty piece of work as a kid – daring, mean and promiscuous until she hit college. Then poof! She wound up working in academia. In her internet pic she’s wearing a conservative hairstyle and suit and sensible shoes with as many accreditations as Dr Leedom. And no lawsuits or restraining orders!
Now I’m curious about genes turning on or off in adolescence… Or later in life?