Editor’s note: Last week Lovefraud published an article written by a reader who posts as “Natalia20” called, “The sociopathic singer and his many women.” Today, I’ll address another of her questions, “Are there harmless sociopaths?”
Of course, sociopaths usually have some agenda … exploiting, want a control, etc. But are there people who have no empathy and conscience but live their lives “normally” without having any victims – just not having emotions?
I give you an example: My friend Kat. She earns a lot of money but she is super stingy, and always a freeloader but I don´t think she would use someone in order to gain (but she doesn´t feel embarrassed about asking for guest lists and often gives second-hand birthday presents like an open parfum that she didn´t like).
She is helpful when I go through something unpleasant but somehow it feels like she just gives me “templated” answers such as, “sorry, you have to go through this/he doesn´t deserve you/you deserve much better…” She comes across as someone who doesn´t have empathy (she just cancels me last minute or goes to the party of someone who didn´t invite me when we had plans together (although they know both of us on the same level and she is not close with them) and she just tells it to my face without any discomfort on her side, any idea how it makes me feel…
Once she went like this somewhere and I said in a joking way that she is a traitor and she said: “but she has a swimming pool and I want to try it”…! like no guilt, nothing, although she tells me often how much she loves me and that I´m her best friend!!
I find it strange that she NEVER talks about herself. She is never happy/sad/upset/anything … she never has anything personal/emotional/work-related to discuss! She is just one straight line and is often bored and finds everyone else boring, so when she goes out she gets super drunk and later says she did it because she was bored.
I sometimes have the feeling she has NO emotions, really like a robot. Once she told me she used to be very sensitive but decided she doesn´t want to be sensitive anymore cos she was often upset, so she decided not to be … (is there a button for it? I´m suspicious she just invented this story to provide an explanation).
And the last thing, majority of people don’t even know about sociopaths until they meet one who turns their life upside down – and just THEN they dig into this theme! (Your books are super helpful btw, thank you).
So when I told this friend of mine about my EX being a sociopath, she said she read a lot of books about sociopaths just “cos she was curious”… I just wonder now if she wasn´t wondering herself she might be one … she also lies easily into people´s faces (nothing major as far as I know)… but in general she doesn´t hurt anyone in some nasty way (or I´m not aware of it) and loves animals… she can go on holidays to Spain, where she is from, and I ask if she is going to visit family too and she will say she already saw them over Xmas (now is August for example and her parents are in their 80s!…you know what I mean, like being a robot)….
So, can there be sociopaths who are “just” selfish people and emotionless without empathy but are not “dangerous” for others to be around? Or maybe she is not a sociopath…?
Donna Andersen responds to, “Are there harmless sociopaths?”
People, even people with personality disorders, are not all the same. There are multiple types of personality disorders, and wide variations in traits, and the degrees to which any particular person has the traits.
Lovefraud, as I’ve said many times, uses the word “sociopath” as an umbrella term for multiple diagnoses — antisocial, narcissistic, borderline, histrionic and psychopathic personality disorders. All of these disorders have specific diagnostic criteria. How are they alike? The people who have these disorders exploit and manipulate the rest of us.
People can have more than one disorder — this is called “comorbidity.” There may also be overlap with other disorders and conditions. Some sociopaths, for example, are also bipolar. Some are also schizophrenic — psychopathy and schizophrenia is a dangerous combination.
Sociopaths can exhibit traits to greater and lesser degrees, and those who fall in the low- to mid-range can be particularly difficult to spot. Why? Because they often see normal. Natalia20’s friend, Kat, does seem to exhibit traits of disorder, even though she may not be actively conning people. Remember, lying shallow emotions, boredom and a lack of remorse are traits of psychopathy. A lack of empathy is a classic trait of narcissism. So it seems that Kat has some characteristics of disorder, but perhaps not enough to be diagnosed as having a full disorder.
As a friend, she is not harmless
Maybe Kat isn’t stealing, gaslighting or controlling, but she doesn’t seem to be a very good friend. Kat has no qualms about canceling plans with Natalia20 if a better offer comes along. She is incapable of empathy. She can return to her home country without bothering to visit her elderly parents. She sees nothing wrong with her behavior.
Kat can’t be trusted or relied upon. For a friend, that is harmful behavior. So, in answer to the question, “are there harmless sociopaths?” I believe the answer is no. But there are greater and lesser degrees of harm.
The sociopathic singer and his many women
I agree with this assesment of “Kat”…unfortunately I have known a ‘friend’ like this…believe me, looking back..she was NO true friend..anyone she was friends with..had better not have any other friends..she was intensely jealous of anyone else..who wanted to be friends with HER friend…I found myself being pushed out, pushed away..mistreated..and nothing was HER fault..ever..she could be as sweet as could be..and then turn mean, nasty., hateful..without warning..Of course, she was a wonderful “christian’…who often turned off people with her behaviors. and then couldnt figure out why someone was angry with her. Sad, to say, I had to learn to keep her at a safe distance, mentally, socially…she now has dementia and is in a care faciilty..I have little desire to see her or visit her..too many difficult memories.
No.
Are there “harmless” sociopaths? Well, the very concept of a “harmless sociopath” is virtually an oxymoron, a contradiction in terms. Certainly this “Kat” female can be hurtful.
At the same time, that’s only because you expect too much of her. She’s not willing to “give,” out of love, empathy, or obligation. In that respect, she disappoints your reasonable expectations. Yet she doesn’t “take” either, except for what’s offered to her–like a party, say. I haven’t heard that she deliberately harms people “just for fun,” or that she’s predatory, possibly not even parasitical, not in the sense of manipulating or forcing people to give her what she wants. She can’t be trusted to keep her word about an appointment, true; but does she keep her word about paying back financial debts for instance? Is she a thief, a con artist? She’s not a good friend, to be sure, though that’s because we expect mutual caring from a friend, and she doesn’t give it. She may not be “dangerous” the way some people are, and may be OK to have around as an entertaining acquaintance at times, but she’ll never be a true “friend.”
The question in my own mind is more general. Can a psychopath be “pro-social” and a friend, without true empathy as we know it? (I avoid the use of “sociopath” as an umbrella term for abusers, because borderlines and others have different motivations–and there are other kinds of abusers who don’t fall into the “Cluster B” category, but can be just as dangerous.)
I suspect it’s possible, even if uncommon. What about James Fallon, for instance? What kind of a guy is he really? Some in his life have said “he’s a bit of a sociopath” at times, yet he seems honest about himself, and far from evil, not wishing to harm others. He claims that the positive experiences of his childhood neutralized whatever impulses he might otherwise have had toward criminality or other other antisocial behaviors.
I’m not convinced that a drive to “power” and “dominance”–let alone the desire to do evil for the sake of it–is central to psychopathy. Nobody doubts that “power drive” exists, and is especially observable among psychopaths. But I have four objections to overemphasizing “dominance” and the like as a defining features of psychopathy.
First, “power” is only a means to an end: the capacity to achieve something, or to “get what we want” as humans, psychopathic or normal. What do psychopaths really want? Is it power and dominance over other people for the sake of it?
I doubt whether this is necessarily true. I suspect, rather, that what psychopaths want, just like the rest of us–is whatever they happen to want! Money? Sex? Company? Entertainment? Fireworks in the sky? A place to live? A car that’s fun to drive? The esteem of fellow humans? And a host of other things too numerous to list. They’re not “all the same,” just as we’re not “all the same.” Their central problem is their lack of conscience and empathy, of any caring for others, our rights and feelings, of any “brakes” on their behavior that leave them riding roughshod over the victims they exploit to “get what they want”–as the rest of us don’t do. This is why that great pioneer researcher, Dr. Robert Hare, insightfully titled his memorable book, not “Power Hungry,’ but simply “Without Conscience.”
Second, I’m sure it’s true that many psychopaths do seek dominance and “power over others” for its own sake. But this is also a variable human trait. As I discovered long ago, our drives can vary, especially among three predominant “needs” theorized by the psychologist David McClelland: “Power,” “Achievement,” and “Affiliation”. People have different mixtures of these needs. I’m more “Achievement” myself. I like to succeed and get things done. Others seek “affiliation” above everything else: connection and relationships with other humans. And some especially crave “power” over others. They’re not all bad–Jack Kennedy was one of many–but he had human ideals, and a conscience. If they happen to be psychopaths in addition, like Hitler, they’ll let nothing stand in their way to get it. No doubt they’re the worst kinds of psychopaths who characterize the breed, including serial killers and the like; but is every psychopath “power hungry” for the sake of power and dominance?
Third, I suspect there’s much subjectivity in the perception of psychopaths as “power driven,” since much of it comes from victims they’ve so ruthlessly exploited. The perception of a victim is that “I’ve been overpowered.” But how much of that is because the psychopath is so power-driven, or possessed of so much “power”–and how much due to the imbalance of “power” between psychopaths and victims who are exceptionally vulnerable to their manipulations and predations, for many reasons ranging from naivety to circumstances to previous conditioning? I recall for instance a notorious murderer and parasite upon women about whom it was said he had “little eyes that seemed to rob you of your will.” This of course is the infamous “predatory stare” of some psychopaths. But to credit it with some magical “hypnotic power” to conquer others is in my view a gross exaggeration. Some people are more vulnerable to these tactics than others, that’s all. And whether the “predatory stare” is a conscious technique of conquest or a “natural feature” of psychopathy, it’s just another technique to get whatever they want.
Fourth and finally, do we really comprehend how psychopaths think?–and feel, or fail to feel? I can’t help believing that psychopaths must see us the way we see objects. It’s the closest way of thinking I can comprehend. I know it’s not a perfect parallel. I realize psychopaths do see a difference between “people” and “objects.” Just the same, it helps to understand how psychopaths can treat us the way they do, just as we treat objects the way we do. We don’t even think about objects having “feelings”! If we’ve got a cold, blow our nose on a tissue, and toss it into a bin, we don’t consider for a moment what that tissue might “feel.” “I was a loyal and dependable friend to you. I was there in the box when you needed me. I let you use me when you wanted me. But afterwards, you threw me away as if I meant nothing to you.”
Isn’t this exactly what people feel when psychopaths and other abusers “use” them? Apart from that, we ourselves “play” with objects and manipulate them according to our will, without ever imagining what an object might “feel” about that. If a piece of wood is too long, or an ear of corn needs shucking, we chop a piece off the end, or strip the husk off, without imagining how a human might feel if we chopped their legs off or peeled the skin off their bodies. And if we want entertainment, we’ll poke and prod any object to see how it “behaves” in response–and laugh at it, no matter how the object might “feel” about being treated that way. We enjoy power. We like to watch fireworks, or to see something “blown” up and falling to pieces just for the fun of it–just like that poisonous female from “Sociopath World” who frankly confessed here that she enjoys “ruining” people.
We assume a perfect right to do anything we want with objects, whether they’d feel “hurt” or not, and nobody challenges it. I imagine this is much the same in the mind of a psychopath. Are they necessarily “obsessed with power”? If I put a screw into a hole it never occurs to me that I’m “exerting power” over this thing, whether or not it “wants” to go! It’s just a natural right to “manipulate” objects this way, and make them do what I want–unless of course it “won’t go,” or “gets stuck,” in which case I’m naturally frustrated. Just like anyone trying to thread a needle and finding it “won’t go in,” or that jar lid that needs a wrench taken to it to get the contents out. Although we’d never treat other humans this way, this is how we naturally treat objects. Psychopaths treat us the same.
Yet is this the only way we treat objects? We have treasured objects that we’re careful with, that we would never wish to harm, to spoil their beauty, or lose their value to us. We take care of them, polish our cars, cultivate our gardens, oil our machines, paint our houses, do “maintenance” on them to keep them free of rust and pests, pristine and beautiful and functioning.
Is it impossible that certain psychopaths might see other humans the same way? To be worth treating well for the sake of functioning well together? For the sake of our value and beauty? Might James Fallon think this way, for instance?
Just as important, might someone treat us well by default, simply for the lack of any special wish to do harm? Whether I’m wrong or right, I’m bugged by a theme I keep wanting to write about, yet I’m hesitant to do so for more than one reason. It’s called “The Abuser Considered as a Runaway Train.” If that title “rings a bell” with anybody–“bells” are perfectly appropriate on the topic of trains–or for other reasons either, I’m not surprised. Not that I’m a “railroad buff” or anything. It’s just that a very simple idea has grown into a huge topic in my mind, “decorated” with everything else that’s grown around it like so much vegetation, or can be associated with it.
On the one hand it’s a daunting exercise to write it all up, and would take time. And on the other hand, who the heck wants to read my maunderings anyway? Is it helpful to anyone, especially those in pain, or even entertaining? Who wants to know about a crazy Frenchman on absinthe who lived in a weird apartment and wrote wacky plays? Or an unusually “literary” writer of science fiction, or a man blessed with the remarkable name of “Try Slaughter”–who thankfully never became a killer in spite of it? Or forgotten popular songs of decades before we were born–or men who raced too hard to meet a deadline? And the story, not the happy and inspiring one of the “Little Engine that Could,” but the tragic and terrible one of the “Little Engine that couldn’t quite!” And the lessons learned from it, though none of it involved “psychopathy”; only the faults of human nature.
Would the junk in my mind interest anyone? I wonder. Often I think “yes,” and sometimes I think “no.” Yet when I think “no,” I also think with supreme appreciation of what a woman told others on another site dealing with abusive relationships, years ago. It stuck in my mind. She said “There are more things in life than not being abused.”
I’m sorry to say, inevitable as it is, that some people are so “bogged down” in being abused that their first focus must necessarily be on escaping from it. I confess I was one of the lucky ones. I never had to do that. But “escaping” from abuse, when necessary, is only the first stage. The next stage is learning to enjoy life, to join the normal human community. To “have fun” and explore the world, whatever it may mean, comic or tragic.
Apart from my reluctance to write about my theme–because it takes a lot of work, and readers might not be interested or find it helpful anyway–I’d hate to spoil it by “giving the game away” about the simplicity of it all, illustrated only by the different nature of railroad disasters. Were they caused by “too much steam”?–or “not enough brakes”?
Needless to say, it’s often a mixture of the two; with humans as well. Yet I can’t help thinking how the problem with psychopaths (as opposed to other kinds of abusers) is not “too much steam,” but “not enough brakes.” How one little bump from an engine, a hundred and forty years ago, sent a trainful of children down a hill to death and disaster, under nothing but the natural forces of gravity that surround us all. Just because they didn’t have enough brakes.
Just as we’re all surrounded by our natural urges, potentially destructive to others if we ever let them loose. We’re only held in check by the brakes of our empathy, bonds of love and identification with other humans, who are not “mere objects” to us to be used and exploited at will.
Any vehicle “without brakes” is dangerous. Who’d want to ride a bike down a hill without brakes? But is it possible that some psychopaths, if they never got that “push” down the hill in the first place, if they were free in childhood and later life of abuse and cruelty (which most are not, I’m sure, considering the families they were born into), with no hatred or resentment against a world that treated them that way, would have no cause to take any anger out on others. and would want to behave in a mutually functional way among others despite a profound lack of empathy, to conduct their lives as “art for art’s sake”? Could someone like James Fallon be one of these, however imperfectly he’s succeeded at it?–just as we humans are imperfect, even though we’re not “psychopathic”? A man who never got that “push” down the hill toward cruelty and exploitation?
I confess to being a romantic, wishful thinking in occasional ways, though not in others. Still, I’d like to think so.
Redwald – I SO enjoy your posts – full of insights and amazing meanderings and rabbit holes that so artfully lead back to the surface.. I for one would read your book in a flash – probably stay up all night to do so. You have a fascinating mind and a skillful way of getting points across. Your posts always leave me with more questions, wanting more details. I am intrigued by the “runaway train” theory of abusers and evil in general. ‘More steam, less brakes’ – what a concept! It sure rings true in my experiences with those types who have been in my life. I have known people who seem to have no conscious or empathy – ones who struggle to conform to society and ones who delight in their “power”. Those on the struggling end of the spectrum try hard to do no harm – sometimes they are described as having no social skills – they often come across as brash, rude, thoughtless. Individuals on the other end of the spectrum – well those are the ones we read about here. It would be interesting to delve into their upbringing, influences, childhood traumas and hurts to pinpoint what creates the difference between the extremes. I do agree – there are no harmless sociopaths – but there is a great deal of disparity in the harm they cause.
Thanks, Emilie, I sure appreciate that!