Five and a half years ago I started a quest to understand sociopathy/psychopathy and antisocial behavior. Long before that, in 1981, I attended a lecture by Dr. Sarnoff Medick at USC. During that lecture, he presented the results of his research. His research on adopted children indicates that antisocial behavior has a strong measurable genetic basis. His studies did not single out anyone “diagnosed” a sociopath/psychopath they only examined antisocial behavior in parents and their biologic and adopted offspring.
Remembering these studies, I read them again and found many others demonstrating the genetic basis for antisocial behavior and sociopathy/psychopathy. Also at the beginning of my quest, I read Without Conscience by Dr. Robert Hare. (If you have not read it, I strongly recommend you do so.) That book teaches us about a category of people “psychopaths” who are without conscience and are antisocial. According to Without Conscience, psychopathy can only be diagnosed by professionals who using the PCL-R find a person scores over a certain cut-off. That book also makes reference to the genetic basis for “psychopathy.”
Questions about antisocial behavior, sociopaths and psychopaths
Reading all this material, I immediately questioned if psychopaths are a separate category of antisocial people. Many experts say “psychopaths” represent 1% of the general population and 25% of the prison population. I also wondered what the other 75% of the prison population would be considered. To my dismay I found several studies showing that many maximum security, very antisocial and violent criminals would not be considered “psychopaths” according to the PCL-R.
Three things about the research reports troubled me then, and also now. First of all what good is it to tell people there are a category of dangerous “psychopaths” out there and then in the next sentence to say that only trained professionals can tell who “they” are? Second of all, there are many very antisocial and violent individuals who “professionals” say are not “psychopaths.” In fact, studies of pedophiles indicate they are less likely to be “psychopaths” than other sexual offenders. What? Excuse me? Thirdly, while saying psychopathy is genetic, scientists imply that it is 100% genetic and that is simply not true. No study has found the disorder is 100% genetic.
These 3 issues lead me to focus on antisocial behavior again as opposed to a specific category of people, psychopaths or sociopaths. If we focus on antisocial behavior we can clearly identify people who commit a large number of antisocial acts. For these people harming others has become a way of life and is not something they do only occasionally. It does not take a professional to identify antisocial behavior or harm.
The focus should be first on antisocial behavior, then the personality traits of those who show a lot of it
Many experts agree with the idea that our focus should be on antisocial behavior first, then we should try to understand what characteristics very antisocial people have in common. In their book The Psychology of Criminal Conduct, Drs. Andrews and Bonta state, “A general Antisocial Personality Pattern may be more relevant than psychopathological models of antisocial personality. If we limit ourselves to the personality traits and behavioral patterns of highly antisocial persons, then we have little need for concepts such as APD (sociopathy) and Psychopathy.”
Dr. Hare also states in a recent paper, “In any case, the use of a threshold or cut score for “diagnosing” psychopathy is problematical, given recent taxometric evidence that the PCL-R (Guay, Ruscio, Knight, & Hare, 2007) and its derivatives (Edens, Marcus, Lilienfeld, & Poythress, 2006; Walters et al., 2007) measure a dimensional construct. Cut scores are useful for communication among researchers, but of necessity are somewhat arbitrary when used for diagnostic purposes. The real issue is not how difficult it may be to reach a given “threshold” but how variations in the psychopathy dimensions relate to variables of interest, including normal range personality processes (Hare & Neumann, 2008; Lynam & Widiger, 2007).
In other words, in his scientific writings, Dr. Hare says that the best use of the PCL-R is to describe the personality traits of people we have otherwise categorized. Using it to “diagnose” psychopathy is “problematical.”
Where do we go from here and is sociopathy/psychopathy still a relevant concept?
Sociopathy (antisocial behavior) and psychopathy, or the cluster of personality traits that those with antisocial behavior have, are still very important to understand. First most people do not habitually engage in harmful antisocial behavior. It is important for us to understand all the factors, from personality to social circumstance that contribute to habitual antisocial behavior, or sociopathy.
Psychopathy represents a cluster of personality traits that are commonly found in very antisocial people (sociopaths). There is no cut-off score for determining “a psychopath.” It is more correct to say that high scores on measures of psychopathy indicate the presence of psychopathic personality traits to an extreme degree.
Let’s go ahead and call a spade a spade and categorize sociopaths
Is there any way to categorize sociopaths? Yes I say there is. There are distinct categories that people who are very psychopathic fall into, obvious examples include: con artists, rapists, child molesters and career criminals. Less obvious examples include: pathologic liars, unscrupulous sales people, and the perpetrators of domestic violence.
Your basic bad relationship choice
I also want to point out that most individuals who are your basic “bad relationship choice” are more psychopathic than the average person. So it is OK to call them psychopaths for the sake of convenience. The category, “bad relationship choice” includes people who repeatedly cheat on their mates, lie to them, and manipulate them. Hear me if your lover cheats on you, lies to you all the time, tries to destroy your reputation, takes your money, manipulates you and/or tries to control you, he or she is very psychopathic. That is not normal behavior. People who love one another are supposed to take special care of each other. Get away from that psychopath now before you are destroyed!
The good news
Did you make a “bad relationship choice”? Do you know a pathological liar? If you answer yes to these questions you do not need me or any specially trained expert to tell you the person you know is very psychopathic- a psychopath and a sociopath. If you want to review the set of personality traits that pathological liars, “bad relationship choices,” con artists, rapists, pedophiles, and career criminals have in common, see What is a sociopath? and Dr. Robert Hare’s symptoms of psychopaths. Use the list of personality traits to decide for yourself just how psychopathic that person you know is.
Henry: We are ALL stepping stones to them. That’s all anyone can be. They can’t feel … that’s why what we perceive as them “USING US” is no big deal to them … they have no clue what they do or don’t do to us. Yeah, they’ll come back and access the damage … for their knowledge of how we reacted to them … not that it really matters to them. When they laugh and make fun of us … it’s learned behavior from grade school. Little kids laughing at someone who peed their pats or something. They learned as a kid they should laugh at someone. That’s about the jest of it. That’s why they laugh and smirk and smile and do things that aren’t appropriate for the moment. Cause they just don’t know. Henry, do you really think your ex or my ex are analyzing our relationships? No way. Not even thinking about us. They are off and about with maybe 2 or 3 people after the person they left us for. We’re all shirts on a huge shirt rack to them … everyone is the same. But, they do show up again … just because they know us now. That met us, they lived with us. It could be 20 years down the road … and he’ll show up saying “HI Henry, how are you”. No big deal to them … it’s just another day, they were in the neighborhood, knew where you lived … stopped in to see you. NO BIG DEAL. They aren’t thinking all these mind boggling things about us or as we as a couple or anything. It just is what it is. Period.
The only reason my bosses and their cronies planned all this diabolical stuff was because I filed a suit. Other than that … they used what they saw on TV or at the movies … there was nothing creative about what they did. It was all done and devised by someone else … the author of the book, the screenwriter, the movie director, the actors … all what they saw in the movies and used against me to have me go away or drop my suit.
To this day, do you think they correlate their leaving the company was because of me? No way. My best friend ran into my boss and she told her that the reason she lost her job was another boss sold her out.
Peace. I told you … they are not creative. Except to put other people’s ideas together and make it something new… different.
Henry: Profit in a box. I get it. I watched the show.
As far as them working … it’s so sad. Yes, they go to work because they have to work (and I’m not talking about just like us). But, they can’t feel their work. They don’t get excited or get a new inspiration because you did this or that and now, you can do this because you figured it out. It’s all the same for them, day in and day out … all the same. I can’t imagine going my entire life not feeling anything. We use our feelings for so many thing making a decision, whether it feels right or if this person or that person would be affected by the decision we are making. We can see all angles to life. They can’t. They don’t have a gut instinct about anything. They only have those first few hours of butterflies when they meet us (or someone new) for the very first time… then, as soon as they see we are human … not this illusion they perceived us to be, they are gone. Maybe not physically at that very moment, but they are gone. In their minds they are off … then the actual physical self is gone.
So Henry and everyone else on this blog, yes, cry … cry for them and pray for them and, heal yourselves from this deep, deep, deep wound. For a wound of the heart it is.
Peace.
Dear henry,
Thanks, sweetie! I DO remember the FEAR. I am sure that son D does too. I didn’t know it at the time, but he was staying up all night GUARDING me from dark until daylight and then he would go to sleep, and then I couldn’t understand why I couldn’t get him awake in the mornings! It was only after we had left that he told me that.
I was only sleeping about every other night. I would stay up all night and then be like a zombie the next day and then that night I would sleep, and the next night I wouldn’t be able to sleep, so I guess I was getting about 8 hrs every 48. I knew I needed to leave but I just couldn’t make myself do it. But I finally got sense enough to know I couldn’t live here safely with him just across the field. So I left the first of June, bought the RV and set it up “secretly” so that the Trojan Horse P and even son C didn’t know I was even gone until on the “last load of stuff” I took the dogs. (about 2 weeks from when I left) Until I got all my stuff (during the day time) I had left the dogs in their pens and the Great Pyr loose by the house so he would not know I was gone until I took the dogs.
After that every time I would come back in the day to check on the big stock (which is a good thing I did) because he had locked up my donkeys in a tiny pen without food or water in horrible heat. Anyway, when I would come back it literally made me sick to my stomach, it was like there was an EVIL cloud over the entire farm. The DIL and the Trojan Horse P were arrested the first week of August, but even then I couldn’t bring myself to move back til the week before Cristmas, (Mom didn’t even know I was back until nearly the end of March) The RV is out of sight from her house and mostly from the side road that leads to my house. One of the neighbors told her I was home. She made up an excuse to come over here to “check” to make sure I really was here. LOL
Ever since my husband and I first built the house and moved here this has been our little SANCTUARY in the woods, where I felt entirely at peace and safe, and the P-son and the Trojan HOrse P did “trauma to my sanctuary”—I can’t remember where I read the term “sanctuary trauma,” but it hit me so hard, that’s exactly what it was.
I know your home has been your little “piece of heaven” and your sanctuary too, and I think you may understand what I am talking about. Every plant, every tree, every shrub is my “friend” it has some meaning, “I set that tree out back the year we xxxxxx” or “I got those iris bulbs out of the ground where my grandmoather’s house used to be” etc. He invaded that sanctuary. It almost felt like I had personally been violated in my own body.
I worried for a while that they would just burn the house if they couldn’t find me. But later, when I read the letters that P-son had written to the Trojan horse P I realized that they wouldn’t have done that, because even though the house is on the “trust” property, if they had burned it, I would have gotten the insurqance payments, and they were trying to find ways to bankrupt me, AND they wanted the house so if they had burned it, I would have gotten money and they would have lost the house if they did get me. They were even trying to get in touch with my step kids to get them to fight me about their dad’s estate in an effort to bankrupt me. Fortunately, that never happened, and I have a great rapore with my step kids.
You are right, though, it IS MY HOUSE, and I’m living here again! Thanks for reminding me of that@.......! Love, Oxy
wini The humor in the cardboard boxes – I have often said he could put his life possesions in a few cardborad boxes. Which he did several time’s when I would kick him out or he would get mad and leave – he always had a handy supply of carboard boxes…… Ya know wini I dont cry anymore about him – I get down and have bad days and good days – but I dont cry anymore havent in a long time – but I do recommend it!!!!!!
Henry: If we didn’t cry over them, who will? They don’t cry over what they do. They have no clue how to cry … except to mimic it. They are so sad. Really. All of them. They break my heart knowing they can never love, never seeing the whole of the universe and all that it means … never dreaming … never having these phenomenal thoughts coming into their minds. Never having that great sigh of relief or of excitement or how love fills you up … all flat lined ….zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz throughout their entire lives. No ups, no downs … all flatliners. That’s why they have so many partners in their lives. They feel that love at first site over and over and over again. That few minutes or days of feeling love. They seek it everywhere they go … they jump from person to person just to feel that feeling. That brief love at first site feeling. That’s all they have. It never goes past that first time they see you. There’s no depth to that first time … love can’t grow from there … they have no clue why some people can live 50 or 60 years in the same marriage and love every day like it was the first day they met. They think this is a fairy tale … that no one experiences that … but they want it. They just don’t/can’t know what it is. And if there life isn’t a life lived in pure hell. I don’t know what is.
Peace.
wini it is our perception of life compared too theirs, we know what they are missing but they don’t know it – so they are not living a life in pure hell they are just going on with business as always – they get satisfaction from what they do – they may not have the gift of The Light as we do – but they don’t know they are missing anything – but they are not living in hell – not yet anyway
Hi there !
Wini your last post made me cry, its all so true! My ex S occasionally feined grief and crying but I eventually saw that this was all false and I couldnt understand why. I believe from my experiences with him that yes, they are shallow and dont ask all the big questions that keep the rest of us going, and dont wonder at the beauty of nature or what is out there in the universe and other big stuff. This is so sad, and I thought it was just because he was quiet and was keeping his thoughts to himself, but you know I dont reckon he ever had them, after all HE was the centre of the universe! In the matter of relationships, I do think he had occasional glimpses of what is possible, he said to me once “Look at J and O over there, they have a good marriage…..” and I replied that it was because they understood each others worries and problems and were supportive of each other on Life’s path. He could not see what I was banging on about! This is so sad, so I do think they have a limited understanding of what can be in a relationship. The thing is, they are addicted to narcissitic supply and are scared they wont get enough. The easiest way to get it is, in his case “saving a business” after it had gone into bankrupcy, and putting £45,000 of money from the sale of his house into it, a move I thought was absolutely crackpot, but I suppose in his eyes he would get a lot of supply if he succeeded and he just needed to work very hard to get it on its feet (workaholic) . It was my questioning of his putting the money in which was supposed to have gone towards a new house for both of us, which I think made him “scared” to come home and therefore he stayed away.He had no logical reason to do what he did and had not even told me he was going to do it, so that was the start of the end for us. He showed no empathy for my feelings on the subject and destroyed any relationship we had left. So in a nutshell, impulsive, reckless, lack of empathy, lack of responsibility, shallow (or no) emotion, does this list get a familiar feel about it?
Another thought – materialistic? What is that all about???
He bought so much audio equipment with money he didnt have, and he used some of it, and some did go to London to the business, but I am still left with a garage full of really quite expensive equipment. (oh and a nice car!) I have told him dates when the stuff is all going but have had no reply. So they will appear on ebay soon. BUT WHAT IS GOING ON HERE?
These people seem to buy loads of stuff when they get an interest, but then without consideration for the value, just leave it. Do they have an obsessive interest in buying stuff, is that a source of narcissistic supply to them, others will see how much they can afford? Why then just leave it after they have bought it I just dont get it….is he scared to reply, to come and get it or what is it? Do any of you lovely bloggers have answers to this point? I am tearing my hair out over this, but if I make money out of the sorry affair then I suppose thats good ( charities will benefit!), after all he took a lot more than himself out of my life, but he did leave me a lot wiser and determined to re-make a life for myself with many new friends who I would not have met otherwise.Sorry to bang on guys, I know you all have problems too…….and I would love to help in my own small way….Wini love your term “flatliners” it SO sums up their emotional life, thanks for that gift…hope to be back in a while, but computer probs at present!! bye …
Bird – just read a blog from a while ago where you said “My ex sociopath used to talk of lucid dreaming. I think it is the dream state where you are partially awake and can control the dream. Brain studies of the sociopaths brain waves show that they function slightly above the sleep state but below the normal brain waves of functioning adults. It must of felt that his waking life was a dream. ”
That could explain why my ex S was never “quite there” . When I asked him what he wanted to do today “Dont know really…..”, how was his week, how’s the business “dont know really….” and I took this as complete disinterest in interacting with me….maybe it WAS because of this trance like state they are in, just below full consciousness but above sleep state?
Looking forward to your comments when you wake up, my American fellow bloggers………….Sorry for hogging the forum but I reckoned you were all asleep and its 12 noon here!