A 24-year-old guy described himself in an Internet forum: He doesn’t feel emotion, is an excellent liar, becomes bored quickly, and experiences an adrenalin rush when deceiving or angering someone else. He asks, is he a sociopath?
I’d answer yes. The post is an interesting insight into how a disordered young man perceives himself and others.
Read Self-diagnosing sociopathy on the Dr. Robert forum.
Donna – I haven’t read Dr. Robert’s home page yet. Curious as to what his motivation is in providing the forum. He is attracting some spaths, and others who are saying, ‘go for it, be as spathy as you need to be’, and giving the young man council as to what career would best suit him – like the army and police work. Sigh; kust what WE need, more spathy cops, and just what the army needs, more rouges.
Donna;
Please post!
One;
The proverb means that people who are calm, relaxed and inviting on the exterior may be inside the mind be quite ugly.
This is certainly the case with my x-spath. For his calm, polite, charming and “guy next door” appearance, he has pornographic/sexual interests that are about as vile as you can imagine.
The thought that as a flight attendant he serves people food makes me sick.
http://www.askdrrobert.dr-robert.com/Am%20I%20a%20Psychopath.html
Here’s another link from the Ask Dr. Robert forum, someone asked a question about “am I a psychopath?” some of the bloggers answer her.
Here’s another post from the above link….Element-X (I) replied with this 5 days ago, 3 days later, 4 days after the original post[Top] #1,348
If you are a sociopath, you wouldn’t be posting here. Whats wrong with being a sociopath? We fight wars on the front lines, we run highly successful companies, we are teachers, the list goes on and on. An intelligent sociopath or as health practitioners now like to coin it, a person with APD, can be a highly motivated and successful person. If in fact you get diagnosed with APD, embrace it and relish your new found energy. Accepting yourself for who you are and not what society expects you to be, is key. The world needs sociopaths, but no one is brave enough to admit it.
dr-robert (you) (H) replied with this 4 days ago, 7 hours later, 4 days after the original post[Top] #1,360
> The world needs sociopaths, but no one is brave enough to admit it.I have said as much on my website.
“THE WORLD NEEDS SOCIOPATHS BUT NO ONE IS BRAVE ENOUGH TO ADMIT IT. I HAVE SAID AS MUCH ON MY WEBSITE”
WTF???? If I am reading that right, “Dr. Robert” is a nut job if he says such a thing.
A lot of the posts there are more or less a bunch of “word salad” in my opinion, including a great many from people I would consider disordered themselves.
Oxy,
thanks for posting that link. VERY interesting.
The discussion goes around the idea that sociopaths are smarter because they don’t react emotionally to a normal person’s emotions, since they have no empathy. That may be true and I’ve certainly learned how unwise it is to fall for the pity ploy and the lovebomb, or even the rage tantrum. I will no longer respond with emotions when I’m confronted by an emotional display. This doesn’t mean I lack empathy, it means I will control it. So it IS a choice.
Socipaths say they have no emotions, and it may be true that they have shallow emotions, but they are all narcissists so they do respond with emotions FOR THEMSELVES. They are susceptible to the love-bomb, they love to be flattered and placed on a pedestal. They get very happy when they think they’ve snared someone through their emotions. So in that sense, they ARE responding to our emotional displays, but they are responding with the WRONG emotions. They feel happiness instead of sadness when they see a sad or hurt person. They feel envy when they see a happy person. Everything is BACKWARD on them. No wonder they’re called mirrors.
What these sociopaths are not addressing is their addiction to our emotional responses and to drama. THEY are the ones who start the drama because they seem to need it from us. They may have no emotional responses but they never talk about why they need it so badly from us. They say they feel nothing, but they must be acting on SOME kind of feeling which compels their senseless behavior.
Sky,
I think it is difficult for us to really understand what they do or do NOT feel in the way of emotions….just like we THINK we can understand the emotions of a dog or a cat….but actually, I’m not sure we can do so completely. Since we are FILTERING our ideas through our own emotions.
Very few languages can be “translated” word for word and make sense in another language and I think Emotions are the same way. But because of the empathy failure in psychopaths they never quite can understand us, and because we have empathy (sometimes too much!) we will never fully understand them either.
The important part isn’t the fine-tuning, it is that we are ABLE to SPOT someone who is NOT GENUINE, spot someone who is a CON, so that they are NOT able to con us either emotionally or financially.
Since many psychopaths POSE as “victims” when in fact, they were just bested by another psychopath in a con of some kind, we (empaths) tend to feel sorry for them (pity) and want to “help” them recover, so when they have our pity we are in a perfect spot to be used and abused.
So I think that when my little “tests” for HONESTY, KINDNESS, COMPASSION AND RESPONSIBILITY are used, they will flunk one of those things before too long unless they are genuine. Since I NO LONGER FULLY GIVE MY trust TO anyone who is not honest, kind, compassionate and responsible, over an EXTENDED PERIOD OF TIME, I can eliminate MOST OF the people who might be abusers or users. I won’t say I can eliminate ALL of the users/abusers because One thing I have definitely learned is that there are some pretty sharp cookies out there in psychopath-land, and while I have learned a LOT, I think anyone can be fooled from time to time.
One of the things that made me enjoy LF so much and get so much out of it is that most of the posters here are some SHARP COOKIES…and I figure if they can be fooled, or fooled more than once, I am at least in good company!
Oxy, sorry, I apologize, i saw your name above and didn’t look high enough. BBE was writing to you and not you writing re larger proportion of gay people who are spaths.
BBE – Thanks for clarification re russion proverb.
re: higher incidence of spathy in gay folk. I stand by my assertion that this is incorrect and is misinformation. Higher ‘narcissism’, yes I can understand that, given the club/ youth culture, but I don’t think it is necessarily TRUE narcissim, but rather a social construct (persona) that is equal parts internalized hompohobia, social conditioning and the response/ insistence of an oppressed class to act in variation from what is normative. spathy? nope, sorry don’t agree.
I have known one lesbian who I would suspect was a spath. I have certainly known my fair share of ‘n type’ gay men, but never met any gay folk who i would say are spaths. Your life experience and mine, are of course, different. I am, I suspect, at least 15-20 years older than you. I have spent a whole lot of time around SM gay/ lesbian sex parties/clubs. The only bareback action going on was consensual.
Sky – good post at 1:28
Oxy – it’s such an odd site. it’s like a lovefraud for spaths. LOL.