Many who have been hurt by sociopaths develop a general distrust of others. This distrust is understandable given how difficult it often is to tell if another person is a sociopath. However, going through life with distrust is not a pleasant way to live. Victims naturally then want to know in detail what sociopaths are about so they can identify the untrustables, and go back to trusting everyone else.
One of the purposes of this website is to describe sociopaths and teach people to identify them. Sociopaths are pathological liars who like to talk as experts on many topics. They manipulate others and generally have a high opinion of themselves. They also lack remorse for their actions and don’t seem to care about the pain they cause others. In fact they seem to enjoy inflicting all types pain (harm) on others.
The enjoyment of hurting another person is called sadism. Sadism usually refers to enjoying another’s physical pain. However, sociopaths enjoy inflicting all manner of pain on others including financial, emotional, psychological and social.
To sum it up sociopaths are in the business of reducing people to nothing and then taking glory in their accomplishment.
I have just described the most important “traits” of sociopaths. Many of you are saying, “Yes right on, that described mine exactly.” But are you satisfied?
You probably do not feel satisfied because you are left with wondering why. Why would someone do that? If you discover the answer to the “why question” you can go back to trusting everyone else again because you would understand the sick motives of sociopaths.
Normal people don’t enjoy watching other people suffer do they?
Here is where some get stuck, because many people secretly and not so secretly hope they live long enough to see the sociopath finally suffer. Well, if you can enjoy another’s suffering what makes you different from the sociopath?
If we examine the reasons why we would take pleasure in a sociopath’s suffering, we see there are two basic reasons. One is revenge and the other is our ability to consider the sociopath as “inhuman.” If a sociopath is not really human, then it is OK to enjoy that private moment of our imagined revenge.
There are therefore two basic routes to sadism. The first is through the power motive. Revenge is about reasserting power over someone who has robbed us of power. The power motive is also called the social dominance drive.
I am grateful to Caesar Milan the dog whisperer, for educating the public about dominance. We all know that a dominant dog has no problem inflicting pain on underlings to assert his dominance.
The second route to sadism is called “compartmentalization” by psychologists. A person who compartmentalizes has a motive (drive) to inflict pain on someone and so rationalizes it by saying that the other person is inhuman or “deserves it.”
Interestingly, both routes to sadism operate in sociopaths. Jack Levin and others have written a great deal about compartmentalization in sociopaths. Sociopaths are also ruled by the power motive and so enjoy hurting because it is confirmation they are achieving power.
That gets me to warped empathy. Many, including Jack Levin, have pointed to the faulty logic behind the idea that sociopaths lack empathy. If sociopaths lack empathy then how can they enjoy another’s suffering? If they can’t identify other’s emotions how can they know they are inflicting pain and so get enjoyment? Is there any question that the sociopath that hurt you knew you were suffering?
Most of us have seen clearly the sadism of sociopaths, so we know they must have some kind of warped empathy. Empathy should lead to sympathy with another’s suffering not pleasure in another’s suffering.
In 1982, while reporting the results of a very well done study in which he found that violent sociopaths of normal to high intelligence actually have increased empathy, Heilburn* made the following statement:
“One way to interpret these results would be in terms of a sadistic, effective-processing psychopathic model of violence in which inflicting pain or distress upon another is arousing and reinforcing (pleasurable). Such a model would assume that acts inflicting pain are more intentional than impulsive and that empathic skills promote arousal and sadistic reinforcement (pleasure) by enhancing the psychopath’s awareness of the pain and distress being experienced by the victim.”
Now in 2008 researchers have obtained results that confirm Heilburn’s theory.
Researcher Jean Decety from the University of Chicago found that young sociopath’s brains light up with pleasure when they experience another’s suffering. In this study, the pleasure was especially present when the suffering was being inflicted by another person. How did the researchers demonstrate this? They showed violent movie clips to sociopaths and non-sociopaths then used fMRI to scan their brains.
Most importantly, the study showed no abnormality of the brain pathways involved in empathy. Sociopath’s empathy centers appeared to function just fine.
So how can I help you feel comfortable trusting the 90% of the rest of humanity who are not significantly sociopathic when I have already said that that most people can be sadistic under certain circumstances?
The answer is found again with motives, specifically the power motive. Learn to recognize the signs of excessive power orientation. It is OK to want a certain amount of power, but the pursuit of interpersonal power should not occupy a person’s every waking moment.
Well balanced people enjoy love and affection more than they enjoy power and control. I encourage you to learn to tune into love motives in others. I have found that consciously choosing to notice loving behavior in others has also helped me better recognize the power motive.
Avoid people who dehumanize others because whether or not one who dehumanizes is a sociopath, this compartmentalization is an important contributor to man’s inhumanity to man.
Lastly, I encourage you to stop supporting violent entertainment with your consumer dollar. Such “entertainment” fosters the development of sociopathy in at-risk youth. It also brings out the worst in everyone else.
*Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology 1982, Vol. 50, No. 4, 546-557
This is a topic I am, sadly, familar with and even recently commented on a person talking about her sadistic ex.
Law enforcement has done some good studies on this topic and from an FBI journal research article there is this piece in a sadists own words:
One sexual sadist defined sadism in the following way: Sadism: The wish to inflict pain on others is not the essence of sadism. One essential impulse: to have complete mastery over another person, to make him-her a helpless object of our will, to become her God, to do with her as one pleases. To humiliate her, to enslave her are means to this end, and the most important radical aid is to make her suffer since there is no greater power over another person than that of inflicting pain on her to force her to undergo suffering without her being able to defend herself. The pleasure in the complete domination over another person is the very essence of the sadistic drive.
The line that says “The pleasure in the complete domination over another person is the very essence of the sadistic drive.” is key. The FBI study found that this state of ‘complete domination over another person’ is a goal to which the sexual sadist strives throughout all aspects of his intimate relationships.
Compartmentalization itself is not a bad thing or a good thing. Treatment professionals, doctors, firefighters, and others often use this to help them deal with a situation in real time. Doing surgery on a person and cutting them open is one example of when it is used in a positive manner.
I also agree with the warped empathy theory. To make someone suffer you have to understand what hurts and how.
Ex FBI Agent Roy Hazelwood stated this:
“A sexual sadist,” says Hazelwood, “is an individual who is aroused by the suffering of another person. It is not the infliction of pain that’s arousing, it’s the victim’s suffering. He may use pain – physical or psychological – as a tool to elicit the suffering, but it’s the suffering that’s most important to him. One thing that’s confused with sexual sadism is cruelty committed during a crime. A lot of crimes are extremely cruel, but very few crimes are called sexual sadism. We’ve overused the term, sadism, in our society. In my opinion, sexual sadism counts for no more than 7-10% of sexual crimes committed. But the sexual sadist is the great white shark of sexual crimes. He’s the premier predator.”
I agree with him that to often cruelty is often confused with sadism. Not that it matters to the person on the receiving end of course.
I also think that there is a range of psychopaths and this type of psychopath is the absolute worst in all ways.
BloggerT7165: I would put all our EXs in this same category. Mental and emotional abuse after the fact of knowing what we were really dealing with. On a scale from 1 to 10, 10 being the physical cruelty involved with the likes of them.
I still think my EX hasn’t resolved conflicts with his mother from when he was a child. I know my EXs mom never took sides with the children. She always stood by her husband (their father) side … and he doled out the punishment in the family when it was warranted. How, he could figure out what was necessary as punishment is beyond me … since he was at work during the times an (offense) occurred. When he arrived home after work he’d have his wife’s version of the offense and who was the offender?
If my mom ever not opened her mouth and spoke her mind … I believe I’d be rather miffed. Thank God all the women in my family are very strong willed, opinionated and are not wall flowers what-so-ever. Same with the men in my family. None of them had a problem speaking their minds and saying it like they saw it.
Peace.
1. (Excessive Power Orientation is huge danger signal) “The answer is found again with motives, specifically the power motive. Learn to recognize the signs of excessive power orientation. It is OK to want a certain amount of power, but the pursuit of interpersonal power should not occupy a person’s every waking moment. ”
2. (Healthy expressions of love are not about power and control.) “Well balanced people enjoy love and affection more than they enjoy power and control. I encourage you to learn to tune into love motives in others. I have found that consciously choosing to notice loving behavior in others has also helped me better recognize the power motive.”
3. (Compartmentalization facilitates man’s inhumanity to man.)” Avoid people who dehumanize others because whether or not one who dehumanizes is a sociopath, this compartmentalization is an important contributor to man’s inhumanity to man.”
These three points Dr. Leedom made are important aspects of emotional intelligence I wasn’t born with and wish I’d been trained in from the cradle. I’m working on my kids, because I want to bully-proof them for life.
1. Excessive Power Orientation in an individual or organization can be detected very early, if you know enough to pay attention.
2. You can largely relax around people who consistently tend to build others up. These people care about others in a genuine sense. Healthy people express their love by empowering others, and avoid controlling behaviors. The absence of efforts to empower others or build them up warrants caution and deeper observation.
3. Whenever I’ve seen Narcissism in an organization, a we-they mindset has been endemic. Whenever I’ve seen dupes of Sociopaths, Psychopaths or Narcissists torment the personality disordered person’s target, compartmentalization has been at work. The N, P or S has managed to persuade his/her dupes and/or sycophants that the target is part of a special class that deserves persecution, shunning or gaslighting. The N, P or S has then been able to sit back and let emotionally unaware but otherwise innocent people do his/her dirty work.
We’re about to begin the exhausting and frustrating process of looking for a local church with good youth ministries for the kids to participate in. Our current church is small and growing smaller, due to a pervasive pattern of dysfuntional behaviors in its core leadership. While I intend to keep my ties with the friends I have there, I need to provide my children with a more wholesome environment. We won’t be looking for a “perfect” church, but we will be looking for a church where people in key leadership positions are reasonably self-aware. I’ve had it up to my eyeballs with watching “cluster B’s” run ministries into the ground.
I don’t know if my ex would be considered a sadist or not, but he certainly had a cruel streak and seemed to enjoy inflicting physical and emotional pain. For ex. he liked to “accidentally” hit me in the face with his elbow immediately after going to bed–after this happened two nights in a row, I learned to always position myself in bed with my head turned away from him. Also liked to pull my hair during sex in spite of my telling him to stop that it hurt, and I am not talking the gentle kind like you might see in the movies. Once, I had a toe I stumped and it was bleeding with the nail barely hanging on. I was sitting in a chair and actually had a tv tray at an angle in front of me while i was bent over examining my toe and he managed to ram his workboot into my toe (accidentally on purpose of course while walking to the door) and rip the rest of the toenail right off. And that is just a few examples.
On the emotional end, he liked to point out some flaw in me in front of a group. For ex. at a condo beach party one time, he suddenly blurted out “Look at how ugly her feet are, at that thickened ugly toenail” and laughed. You could see the shock on the others faces and coulda heard a pin drop, but then one man very smoothly started talking about his own feet and how he solved the problem and then steered the conversation in another direction. God bless him.
He called one time while with another woman and then asked her if she wanted to talk to me and I could hear her saying no, then he told me “X says she doesn’t wanna talk to you, that you’re old enough to be her Mama.” And then there was the driving by with other women, then calling and leaving graphic voicemails with sexual content and telling me how much better they were than me. And, then there was the time he stole my hanging baskets from my front porch, gave them to the girl that runs the store next door to where I went to buy cigarettes everyday. He then called to tell me he did it and if I wanted to see my plants I could look at them there cause she had them hanging out on her store porch.
And then there was all the threats of burning down my place (which he has a history of actually doing that to someone), killing my dog, putting snakes in my outbuilding where my washer/dryer was located so “When you go wash you better be careful…”, f**cking up my car (which he actually did), of hiring somebody to rape me (So, you better watch your back…), and then there was the actual threats to kill me—the list goes on and on. He wasn’t really sexually sadistic, but he did favor one God awful contortion of a postion, in spite of the fact that was the one that killed my freakin back and he knew it. Even when he was a young child, his Mother said he would say really mean things to her, like for example taunt her about how fat she was. So he definitely has a cruel streak.
Dear Blogger T7165
“Compartmentalization itself is not a bad thing or a good thing. Treatment professionals, doctors, firefighters, and others often use this to help them deal with a situation in real time. Doing surgery on a person and cutting them open is one example of when it is used in a positive manner.”
I can relate very well to your statement, and it makes a lot sense to me. I often wondered why I became a doctor dealing with cancer patients and inflicting lots of emotional pain by telling them that they have to die in forseeable time. For one I think now I had to “accomplish” a wish of my N-mother who wanted to become a doctor herself but had no opportunity to do so and became a doctor’s aid instead. She always wanted me to become a plastic surgeon so I could “fix her” in old age (I NEVER EVER treat family or friends!!).
And the other aspect is to be emotionally very close to people, to have “a relationship”. I had a big crisis at age 22 when I discovered my difficulties with relationships in general and my neediness of being loved and respected and and I discovered that I was “using weak people” i.e. patients, as I felt all my life of being no use and I wanted to do something useful with my life. I then read a book about “the helper’s syndrome” and as a result I came up with the imagination of being a kind of a guide in rough terrain like a scout in the mountains, with special skills. That thought kept me in the profession as I would not have been able to continue with the imagination of “using” people to please my hidden agenda, and it helps also keeping my healthy boundaries even being very close to the patients. The patient is in the lead of HIS life, I am the consultant, and he is in command. So I try not to dominate him/her, and I must not be offended if they do not consider my advice as helpful at the moment. I can’t prevent them to fail either, I have them keep the full responsibility over their own lives.
I often have to be emotionally detached when I have to tell patients that they have for instance end stage cancer and that they will die quite soon of it when not something else is happening meanwhile. Last week it happened a lot, unfortunately, and my own coping skills were kind of wearing out. Thanks to you all I did not call my x-P with whom just 12 months ago the “honeymoonphase” started. The fog and the changing of the color of the leaves brought bittersweet memories back. I read every day here at Love fraud and it helped really a lot!
Sometimes I really think I am in a S/M-business, being both in the same time, really weird, inflicting emotional and physical pain day after day, trying to be detached and in the same time finding great satisfaction and consolation for myself, I laugh a lot, earning money out of it, and being admired by all the people to whom just the thought of doing my job is unbearable. I also experience great consolation when I can alleviate someone’s suffering or open a door to enlightment. The greatest joy is when I see them realizing being “captain of their own ship” again, that they can manage difficult situations, that they do not need me anymore.
In the last weeks and months I even thought of being “kind of S myself” finding fulfilment in my job. This post was REALLY very helpful putting all into perspective.
Thank you all so much, and have a peaceful weekend!
I’m not confident that all N’s S’s and P’s are Sadistic.
I’ve read that there was once a separate catagory for sadism in the DSM-III.
http://www.ptypes.com/sadisticpd.html
This makes sense to me. I can easily see how the conditions could be co-morbid, and this would be a very, very bad thing.
From what I’ve noticed, many N’s, P’s and S’s want their own way regardless of who gets hurt, or are oblivious to what others feel. I doubt all or even most care about the pain of others.
I doubt all or even most care about the pain of others.
I agree Elizabeth.
Libelle I find that it is a needed tool for some occupations. Plus many things that are often seen in a negative light are really neutral. It is what you do with these traits that matters rather than the traits themselves.
After both hearing about (from his family) and watching my ex P’s interactions with others and also me, and then reading the definiton given on the link Elizabeth provided, my ex meets every single one of the criteria provided, and only 4 are required. So, I guess he falls into the sadistic category.
In a study done by Meloy and Gacono, it was found that psychopaths produced significantly more SM responses to the Rorschach than nonpsychopaths. That 41% of P’s produced at least one SM response. I wonder how that compares to the general population scores.
Libelle also try to remember that it is not the inflicting of pain it is the complete domination with pain just being a tool to accomplish it. Doctors often inflict pain but not as a tool to gain complete domination over someone.
BloggerT7165, Jen2008, and Elizabeth Conley: I wasn’t referring to sadistic in the true sense of the world, i.e. inflicting physical pain … emotional pain of knowing they have no intension of being in a relationship for the benefit of both parties involved, only what was in it for them … is sadistic enough for me to consider they belong in this category … so maybe they are at the low end of the spectrum from 1 to 10, they still are on the scale, the way I am looking at them.
I say, we pull our pennies together, buy them an island … surround it with sharks (they’d probably would make pets of them, who knows) … and let them all live on an island together. Happily conning and lying to each other … wouldn’t I love to be a fly on the wall to witness them all in action. Now that is HELL on earth … trying to con other cons (LOL). Then they’d really have something to b*tch about, now wouldn’t they. Want to see a psycho cry and really whine about life?
Peace.