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.
PS all of his profile name end with “boy” or “lad”.
His sister still refers to him as “her baby brother.” I wonder if his behavior supports this view of him by her.
OxDrover;
You are spot on about rage. It, or perhaps being more general impulsiveness, is the the one thing they cannot control.
They can you their charm and manipulations to hide their true nature, but when something hits at their core, generally something they are trying to hide, they respond with rage, anger or impulsiveness.
I did not see true “rage” with my x-spath. Part of his mask is to act very “chill.” However, I did experience over-reactions to little things which lead to these “WTF” moments.
Oxy,
The first place I read about this emotionally arrested development theory, was in the book, “Why is it always about you? The seven deadly sins of narcissism.”
I gave the book away (and wish I hadn’t) but you can now read part of it online! yay!
http://www.amazon.com/Why-Always-About-You-Narcissism/dp/0743214285#reader_0743214285
And then decide for yourself if it seems like a good read.
Please read the forward which explains about the references and research material for the book. The amazing part about this book, is how it takes what would normally be very boring dry information about psychology and makes it a very easy to read and interesting subject.
It appears that James Masterson was the source of much of the info, and he has his own books out. I’d love to read them too.
I’m so glad that I read that book early on because it laid the foundation for understanding some other books that I read which are not about narcissism, exactly, but more about how NORMAL humans can go back and forth between being mature and being infantile throughout the day, depending on the environment.
Like when you are tired and cocooning at home, your emotions revert more toward infantile needs of being taken care of and fed, while resting. During this time relationships can suffer, if both partners are feeling infantile and needy. Of course, this is a different book and it was about relationships between normal people, not spaths, but it made sense because I had the other frame of reference.
Edit: I got off track and forgot to address the rest of the question.
Rage, is an infantile emotion. We have seen the infant rage, it wails and turns red. It exhibits real rage at the frustration it feels from not feeling good.
The ability to hide their evil intents, I think, uses their intellect. But we have also seen that children do lie very easily. My observance of spaths is that they create stories and actually believe their own stories while simultaneously knowing it’s a lie. This is what makes them such believable liars. They manipulate their shallow emotions easily BECAUSE they are so shallow. So they add a touch of “emotion” to give it more “truthiness”.
Sky, I am going past the “emotionally arrested development theory,” department and reading the studies themselves that people who write books are basing their opinions on….I also read the books like this and Barbara Oakley’s books, but am going back and reading the studies themselves they mention that they based their opinions on…..interesting stuff, and like I said, doesn’t always come out like you think it might, but sometimes it does.
My grandparents and their generation and their parents as well already “knew” that mental illness tends to “run in families” and would advise “not to marry into that family” because of it. But they knew it from OBSERVATION not research…it is only now a hundred or more years later that medical science is coming up to knowing from RESEARCH what my grandparents and their parents knew about the inheritance of some kinds of mental illness. Or what farmers knew about the tendency toward aggression of various lines of cattle, horses, hogs and dogs being inherited.
Sometimes observation is accurate and sometimes it isn’t but good research will tell the difference….and of course you have to have a THEORY and a hypothesis before you start your research. There was a long time when “conventional medicine” thought a baby was born a “blank slate” and that everything we became was based ENTIRELY on our environment. Parents were blamed 100% if their kids had mental illness or became criminals—and the “evidence” that more adopted kids turned out ‘bad’ was blamed on the kids who were adopted deciding that they should rebel against society because their birth parents gave them away. Eventually someone decided that maybe there were some genetics involved and started researching it….and what do you know….many kids who are given up for adoption these days do come from very dysfunctional parents who are high in P traits or have mental illness of various kinds. Guess what, more of those kids DO have mental illness and P-traits, but not because they were adopted but because of heredity + environment.
The studies done with twins, identical and non identical are also very interesting when those twins are raised in different homes with different environments (but evne though the genes are identical 100% even if identical twins are raised in the same home the environment is not totally “identical” even in the womb.)
But the research on the complexity of the human psyche and behavior is finally I think taking a more reasonable approach in looking at both environment and heredity. IT is VERY COMPLEX though.
BBE:
I was also with mine only for a short time. About three months, but you are right…it sure was enough time to cast his spell on me. I have to say that I was head over heels…absolutely adored and loved him, but I did not feel that way immediately. He is not even my type and when we first started talking, I really didn’t think much of anything. So I have no idea when I “crossed over,” but I wish I never had. So don’t feel bad about the timeframe of it. I used to feel silly about that, but I don’t anymore. I know it was long enough to know if you love someone or not. I was aware that things were moving very quickly because I even told him so…told him that I thought things were moving a bit fast. It was pretty obvious he was pushing for things to happen. I think he was trying to fit me in before he went back to his wife. So yeah, I was aware, but he obviously is so good at what he does, I fell for it. And I do NOT fall easy. I am just not that type of woman so it goes to show how good he is at being a spath.
I bought three books the other day and am waiting on them to arrive. The Betrayal Bond, The Gift of Betrayal and People of the Lie.
Good observations. For my part, my husband could control his rage. He CHOSE when to release it. But he did NEED to release it. I think I was the ONLY person who has seen the real him, and only b/c I lived 24/7. Otherwise I think he could have hidden it forever, b/c his exceptions are always excused. People just could never fathom that the man they see as calm, cool, and collected is in reality cold, calloused and unfeeling unless they had experienced that aspect with someone else in their life.
I do think we are experts about our spaths, but that does not make us experts about other peoples spaths.
Oxy,
there is certainly a genetic component from my observation as well. For example, my P-neighbor told me she was adopted and when she met her birth mother, she found her “very disappointing” (I think she’s a crack ho).
But in my mind, I can connect the genetic and the emotionally arrested development very easily. It’s possible that genetics and/or brain injury can cause a person to be emotionally arrested.
Observe the common dog or cat. They are bred to be parasites on humans. (BTW I love dogs and cats) They certainly use charm and pity to get us to be their servants and to provide for them, even to scoop up their feces! They are, in effect, infantalized versions of their wild counterparts. They aren’t adept at taking care of themselves the way the wild counterparts do, so they become adept at manipulating emotions so that people will take responsibility for them.
Luckily, they don’t have much brain intellect and they aren’t evil (except for chairman mao, of course). I did have a black german shepard once, who knew that he wasn’t supposed to eat the cat food. Spath and I would pretend we were leaving, make stomping noises on the stairs and sneak back to catch him make a bee-line for the catfood as soon as he thought we were gone. LOL. So even animals can be sneaky and deceptive.
Anyway, it’s an interesting thought, that genetically a person can be more or less predisposed to being emotionally infantile.
Louise;
I would second the comment about not falling easily. My best explanation is that a “perfect storm” of circumstances made me needy and vulnerable to manipulation. In addition, his being British allowed me to explain away behaviors I would have not otherwise tolerated.
Let me give you a mirroring example and its powerful effect. The one “big” thing we had in common was us both liking to travel. Thus we talked a lot about place we had been. I mentioned to him that of all the place I had been so far, the one place I would recommend seeing above all others is Yellowstone National Park. He quickly replied that as a boy, his dream was to see Old Faithful and that maybe one day I could show him Yellowstone Park…
When I was in Russia, I went to a bookstore with Nicky, this Russian guy I had met there. Walking thru the store, I noticed a picture book about Yellowstone. I picked it up, showed it to Nicky and told him that I had been there. Nicky did not make any comment other than it was very beautiful.
I know Nicky appreciates nature much more than the x-spath. In fact, I don’t think the x-spath has many interests besides “boys, beer and fooling around,” to use his own words. However, to seem connected with me, the x-spath took a place I like above anyplace else, and made me feel he felt the same way about it.
Louise;
I have got to get Betrayal Bond because betrayal is really the core of my issue.