Downton Abbey was on TV last night, and Terry and I are among the millions of fans. Last night’s episode (Season 3, Episode 4) ended in tragedy because of behavior that looked so familiar to me.
(Spoiler Alert: The following description gives away the story.)
Lord Grantham’s daughter, Lady Sybil, is about to give birth. Rather than depend on the local country doctor, Dr. Clarkson, Lord Grantham has imported a more socially acceptable obstetrician, Sir Philip Tapsell, to deliver the baby. As the birth approaches, both doctors are in attendance at the estate.
Lady Sybil starts acting incoherently. Dr Clarkson fears that she may be toxemic. He recommends that they rush to the hospital so the baby can be delivered immediately by C-section. Sir Philip insists that nothing is wrong—Lady Sybil is experiencing a normal childbirth. The two doctors argue in front of the entire family and the nature of the argument is why I’m describing the show.
Dr. Clarkson worries that Lady Sybil may be in grave danger, but admits that he doesn’t know for sure. Sir Philip, on the other hand, is totally confident that nothing is wrong. He never wavers. He is pompous in his confidence. He practically sneers at the country bumpkin doctor for being an alarmist, and actually tells him to shut up.
Lord Grantham notes that Dr. Clarkson isn’t sure about the possible danger, whereas Sir Philip is 100% confident that everything is fine. He sides with Sir Philip, and they do not go to the hospital.
Lady Sybil goes into labor and the baby is born. But a short time later, she goes into convulsions and dies.
Argued like a sociopath
Dr. Clarkson was right all along. But Sir Philip spoke with unshakeable self-confidence, unwaveringly certain that he knew best. He argued like a sociopath.
I am not saying that the Sir Philip character is a sociopath. But I am saying that his extreme confidence, his self-righteousness and his hubris are all traits that sociopaths display when they are pushing to get their way.
I write about this in my book, Red Flags of Love Fraud:
How do they do it? How do sociopaths convince you to go along with their agendas, even to your own detriment?
They command it. This is a function of their charisma because they command unflinchingly, with complete self-confidence, they get results. Now, this doesn’t mean sociopaths are always barking orders. Often the commands are delivered on cushions of sweetness, or camouflaged as appeals for sympathy. But in their minds, whatever sociopaths want, they are totally entitled to have. Therefore, when they make their desires known, they show no doubt, only certainty. Compliance is demanded, and targets respond.
Those of us who are not disordered usually aren’t as adamant in expressing our views, opinions or desires. We may think we’re right, but recognize that we could be wrong. We may know what we want, but we’re willing to compromise. So when we come across people who communicate vociferously and forcefully well, we tend to be bowled over. Because of the sheer force of their words, we tell ourselves that they must know what they’re talking about, they’re telling the truth, and they’re right.
My ex-husband’s convincing lies
I’m soon going to be on another TV show I’ll tell you all more when I have details. The producer asked me if I had any more video or audio of my ex, James Montgomery. Well, I found some tapes that I had forgotten about recordings of voice mails, and a recording of our first telephone conversation when I arrived home after leaving him. The tapes illustrate the steamroller tactics with which he argued even when he was lying.
Let me set the scene. James Montgomery swept into my life, portraying himself as a successful entrepreneur. He invited me to be part of his business plans, which, if I could help him get started, were sure to make us fabulously wealthy. He pressured me to lease a car for him it was in my name, and I made all the payments. To feed his unending need for money, I drained my savings and loaded about $60,000 in debt to my previously zero-balance credit cards.
Montgomery also told me he was a member of the Australian military who had heroically served in Vietnam, and still acted as a consultant, particularly on terrorism. He often flew to Florida, telling me he was stopping by MacDill Air Force base in Tampa, home of the Special Operations Command. While there, he was able to get around by borrowing the cars of other military members that were parked at the base.
In December 1998, Montgomery dragged me to Florida, saying he had a contract to open a Titanic show in Orlando. We spent money we didn’t have to move down there. A few weeks later Montgomery admitted he never had a contract. Then, while he was flying to yet another business meeting, I discovered that he had fathered a child with another woman during our marriage. I left Florida, and took the car that he had been driving.
So, here’s part of my conversation with James Montgomery when I was back at my home in New Jersey. (Warning: Contains some profanity.)
Here’s what I know now that I didn’t know during the conversation. My entire marriage was a financial scam. James Montgomery was never in the military. When he travelled to Florida, he was visiting other women including, but not limited to, the mother of the child., who probably owned the car he drove.
Yet listen to how he argued about the car. I was wrong for taking the car back to New Jersey, which inconvenienced him. I was wrong about him using cars from the base. And I was stupidly ignorant about the policy for using military cars. Montgomery was adamant and self-righteous in his argument even though everything he said was a lie.
At the time, the conversation was terribly upsetting. He threw many more accusations and threats at me, which, because of the conviction of his words, made me wonder if he was right.
Later, I discovered that everything he said that day, and practically everything he said during our marriage, was a lie no matter how convincingly the words were stated.
I didn’t know someone could lie with such confidence and conviction. And that’s how I got into the entire mess.
Skylar,
MY SCHISOPHRENIC COUSIN AND HER AUTISTIC SON
Regarding the connection of schizophrenia and autism. I had a cousin who had schizophrenia (diagnozed as a late teen). She used to beat my aunt. Anyway, at some point she got to live by herself and had a boyfriend, who worked in a protective workhouse (for his limited mental abilities- and who was an alcoholic on top of that. She then tried to shop around in fertility hospitals for artificial insemination to get a child, because apparently the bf was not all too fertile. Of course, and wisely so, she never passed the psychiatric requirements of the hospitals to be allowed in a fertility program. By some fluke chance she was “lucky” to get preggers anyway by her “infertile” bf. She was then 43. She kept her pregnancy a secret to my aunt and uncle and her bf, until she was 4-5 months pregnant, well beyond the limit of the legal possibility of abortion. My aunt tried to convince me into becoming my cousin’s legal guardian (my aunt who was nearing 70 would have been too old). But there was no way I wanted to become the guardian of a cousin older than myself, who’d resent me for it big time.
Anyway the baby was born, a son, and she was never allowed to take him home. Again a very wise decision by child court and the hospital. They did have her stay with her baby for 2 weeks in the hospital, to monitor, to try and establish a bond. And she was very proud of being a mother and the baby. I do believe that. I remember her sitting in the bed like a queen. But she simply did not have capacity for affection, for bonding with the baby. And she certainly did not have the skills to take care of a baby. Doctors too suspected that something might have been amiss with him.
He was placed under state guardianship and taken into a state home as they started to look for a good foster match. My cousin was allowed visitation, but not unsupervised. My aunt was allowed visitation, without supervision. My cousin was trying to fight the court decisions, claiming entitlement to her child. But rightly so, for the sake of the child, she got nowhere.
The state searched thoroughly for a foster match, and when he was nearly a year old they found one. Before he was fostered though, my cousin died of a hemmorhage in her intestines or stomach (she was very overweight). She died quickly, luckily for her. And in a way we all felt relieved by it: at least her son would have a chance of growing up with his foster family without his real mother fighting a losing battle against the state and the foster parents. He was still too young to remember her much, and it might be less painful for him to know his real mother died when he was but a year old, than the knowledge that she could never truly care for him as he should be cared for.
A year later, his father died as well. So, by then an orphan he was adopted by his foster family. He was tested for autism around the same time and the tests were positive. I think they always suspected a high risk for autism in him, because the foster mother (now his adoptive mother) that got him (and there had been other volunteers who were denied fosterage by the state, because of not being a good match) is a very strict, consequential woman. I wouldn’t regard her as my favourite person to socioalise with: not because she’s a bad person, but she’s very rigid. And that may be one of the best persons to raise him.
So, my cousin was a schizophrenic and her son is autistic. He went to special school kindergarten, but he goes to normal elementary school now. He’s intelligent (math is no prob), but he lags severely socioally behind. At first reading was not that much of a problem, but lately that started to lag too. Not so surprising: the first few years writing and reading is a pure technical issue; now it becomes a comprehensive issue, an issue of understanding and meaning.
ON AUTISM
Last week I had an enormous super duper seminar on autism with my teacher colleagues on a teacher seminar day. A spokesperson of the autism center of Belgium was to give us a talk “how to work with autistic children”. She did not just give us a list of instructions… actually she hardly gave one at all. But instead she helped us to get into the mind of autistic people. She made us look through their eyes. And she explained the chore issue, the root, the cause of what autism really is.
She warned us that Asperger will be out of the DSM V. It’s not a broad spectrum anymore. People either are autistic or they’re not… There are of course intelligent autistic people, with a normal level of intelligence or even higher… and then there are autistic people who do are impaired on the intelligence. She explained that the intelligence does not make a person less autistic, but it does give them the mental capacity to learn tricks and workarounds their autism.
CONTEXTUAL BLINDNESS
So what was autism according to the speaker we had? The root issue is that autistic people are “context blind”. They see a situation, but they cannot make meaning out of it. The reason is that they are unable to make concepts in their mind. When we hear the word ‘dog’ or read it, we have some vague general mental image of a dog (unless you own a dog, and might first think of your own when hearing the word ‘dog’). That vague general mental image is a ‘concept’. Normal people can group objects and situations into a box of ‘similar’ and label it with a concept. Autistic people cannot do this. Every object, every situation, every person is unique and has a unique meanng.
An example: imagine you get to see a picture of a chicken and above the chicken it says “the chicken and the …”. You are show a next slide. Which one would you expect to see? Let’s say the next slide is a rooster and above it is written “the rooster and the …” The next slide is an egg (actually a broken egg, but in black and white). She used this example from a real event. Everybody recognized it to be an egg, because of the conceptual connotation. However, the autistic child in the classroom who got to see those slides said “Mickey Mouse” to the broken egg… and when we saw the slide, we could see why the child would think so: the yoke looked like a nose, and the eggshell halves looked like Mickey Mouse’s big ears.
For the autistic mind the world is perfect if a certain word, or a certain object implies and connects to just one specific event or meaning. If there is but one-to-one relation, connection. The speaker gave the example of a teaspoon. For an autistic person the teaspoon would relate to one specific action. Let’s pretend that action would be “stir coffee”. But that’s not how our world works at all. The teaspoon can mean and relate to MANY situations: taking medicine, eating cake, yoghurt, chocolate mousse. How do we usually know the meaning of the teaspoon? We will look at the whole situation and derive the use of the teaspoon at that moment depending on the other elements in the environment. If there’s a cough syrupe standing next to it: we KNOW the teaspoon is gonna be used for medicine. If there’s a chocolate mousse standing beside it, we KNOW the teaspoon is to be used to enjoy a sinful delicious dessert. An autistic person will see the chocolate mousse, but will not automatically use that information, but instead might expect and prefer coffee.
The advantage of those with this context disability and who are intelligent is that instead of concepts they can make “lists”… they memorize lists of possibilities that go with something else. So they can be thought that a teaspoon might be used for different purposes. And while this may seem the same as a concept and solve the problem, it’s not really the same mental connection. It takes much more mental energy to memorize and run through a list of possibilities, than to function with concepts. When intelligent autistic people get under great stress, they might not have the energy left anymore to run through the memorized lists, and that’s usually when they start to behave more profoundly autistic. The more stress they are under, the less they are able to fall back on tricks and lapse back to their autistic nature of one-to-one meanings. And the autistic people of low intelligence, can never memorize such a list. The sole solution then is to use a green teaspoon for coffee, a red one for medicine, a yellow one for yoghurt, etc.
This memorizing goes really far, and even for what we think of easy and simple. For example recognizing a person can be quite difficult for an autistic person. Let’s say you wear glasses. If you buy a new set of glasses, it doesn’t prevent others from recognizing you, even though they may say “You look different somehow”. An autistic person might actually not recognize you anymore, because you’re not wearing the right glasses anymore. Especially recognizing women is difficult: they wear different clothes, change their haircuts constantly, change make-up, variate their perfume, etc… The only thing that might be constant with women is their voice: so an autistic person may try to memorize who you are by your voice.
She told us that for example how for a while people tried to help autistic people with reading facial expressions by using these templates of happy, sad, angry, etc. faces. But is everyone who sheds tears sad? We may shed tears from laughing, from being emotionally touched and awed by an event, when we are sentimental, etc… And not everyone who cries can turn their corners of their mouth down. It’s actually hard even for us to decide whether someone is happy or sad if we just got a picture of eyes or a mouth or even just the whole face shoved under our nouse. We would need to see a bigger picture that shows us a context, perhaps a whole scene to realize whether someone is smiling or crying and what for. The speaker told us of an autistic child who was worried because of those pics… she couldn’t get her mouth corners to drop when she was sad herself.
NO IMAGINATION
The second root and main issue with autism is “imagination”. They can’t imagine things. That’s one of the reasons that an autistic person CANNOT lie. In order to lie, one must have imagination. It’s also the reason they cannot manipulate, or realize the consequences of their behaviour. It requires imagination to realize the effect their actions may have on somebody else. It’s not that they wish to hurt someone… they just cannot imagine to project the consequences in other people. It’s also why they CANNOT plan ahead. Even if you give them a plan it is preferably very detailed -step by step. They just cannot look ahead, because they do not have the imagination. This even is true too towards the past. And because of being unable to imagine the past, they CANNOT truly learn from past situations, cannot make and create those concepts, and will make the same mistake after same mistake. So, while they can be taught to use a plan independently, they’ll forever need help with someone normal to create a plan for them.
The inability to imagine together with context blindness is also the reason why autistic people cannot understand subtle humor, such as irony. They can understand humor, but it would need to be very blatant and grotesque almost. Double entendre jokes would be quite impossible for them to get.
PHYSICAL SENSITIVITY
Another issue is that autists will be HYPERSENSITIVE as well as UNDERSENSITIVE on some motoric issue. For example some autists are super sensitive about what touches their skin. If one of our socks is not on exactly as it should be, we might feel it and be annoyed by it for a few minutes, but under pressure of time and tasks will completely forget about it. Only when we arrive back home by the evening, do we suddenly realize again that the damned sock was not put on right. An autistic person who’s hypersensitive to the skin cannot forget at all… the skin sensors simply never forget. But at the same time, the skin hypersensitivity is usually combined with an undersensitivity of the tendons and muscles and bones. So they seek very tight hugs. It’s not a need for hugs on an emotional level, but they have a muscle hunger. This type of sensitivity actions will become more obious in times of stress. They might dig their nails into their skin and scratch it, to overpower the sensitive itching (like someone who’s hypersensitive to unpredictable outside noises may try to lessen the intrusion by starting to sing themselves). Or they might bang their head against the wall to stimulate what is undersensitive. Some are balance hypersensitive or undersensitive… Just walking may feel to them like being on rough sea, or absolutely the opposite. The balance undersensitives will tend to jump and climb stuff all the time to challenge their balance sensations.
CONCLUSION
I know this was a very long post. But from the moment I had the seminar I had a great wish to share it here on LF.
People have brought up asperger and autism for several reasons in the past, sometimes even doubting whether someone was an asperger or a sociopath, and even if someone can be a combination of it. When you read this description and examples of the root issues of autistic people it becomes immediately clear that autism and sociopathy are mutually exclusive. Autism and sociopathy cannot be comorbid into one mind.
It is true, that autists are egocentric, because they do not have the capacity to imagine the life of someone else; but they are not narcistic. Autists can end up challenging rules and testing boundaries. This is because they do know that most normal people often make exceptions to their self proclaimed rules (because it depends on the situation, to which an autistic person is blind). For them this is confusing. If a sign says “no chewing gum” they might end up eating a sandwich or a candybar in class. If they go swimming with someone who tells them they’ll leave the pool at 2, they might try to beg to stay in longer to test whether that person truly is rigidly consequential. They might try to postpone leaving the pool at 2 several times. When that person makes no exception to this, then they can start to trust that person. It makes life easier for them.
So while some of their behaviour may be hurtful, annoying, testing, and blind to the needs of others, it has totally different root causes, and those roots of both disorders are mututally exclusive. A sociopath cannot be a succesful sociopath without imagination, conceptual thinking, planning and instant recognition of situations and using it to their advantage… exactly everything an autistic person is incapable of, no matter how intelligent they are.
The seminar was great because it enabled me to start to imagine and understand the autistic mind the way it works, just like LF has helped me understand how a spath thinks.
Seems like DSM is making a huge mistake. “Either you are autistic or you’re not” is not grey thinking, it’s not an Escher print, it’s a dichotomy of black and white. Leaves no room for the multitudes of people I know who see Asperger’s in themselves. The above descriptions don’t match them well. Some things sort of, like degrees of face blindness. I am so opposite so many of those characteristics that in this black and white set up I would not even be an Aspie. Which apparently allows for the possibility that I am a sociopath.
One thing up there sticks out for me. From my own arrogant standpoint I would change the language and say I am opposed to context-indulgence. Mostly, context is obvious, but when a person says something one place and something conflicting another place, I am likely to notice, especially if the first statement was an attack on me or some person or group I regard as undeserving. I often run afoul who people who think and speak in cliches they barely understand — or very much seem to, and such people can be found anywhere. When they have criticized/attacked/expressed even veiled swipes, and then contradited those pronouncements and moral posture elsewhere, they are what look arrogant and ridiculous to me. Even here, a person can pick up some jargon or ideas, or from therapy, and still be full of it. I apparently look like this to some people. Others look like that to me.
The other thing is math. I interact with a lot of math people, studied math in college. Many of us excelled in other areas. The self-suspected Aspies I interact with might resemble stuff in that autism description more than I, but a great many don’t.
In math, I think there is a hazard of letting the discipline affect your sense of reality and life by thinking of there being only one truth to things. Often there IS an absolute truth: suffering feels bad, genocide is wrong, molesting a child is wrong. Or here are the figures from this regression I ran on this data. But the mindset can make people too rigid imo. Intolerant. Gore Vidal denounced monotheism itself for the same reasons. The theoretical or stereotypical mindset of an engineer however is more open: here is one solution, but here is another: I’ll save space but sacrifice in speed… or I could do this third thing… hmmmm how to choose… of course in practice/work an engineer can also be a robot.
I think it becomes even more hazardous when someone is not bicultural/bilingual or multi. The boss my ex duped has these exact limitations. He, btw, is a guy’s guy, quite biased against the uncharismatic or neuro-atypicals. Though he probably doesn’t know that word.
Even worse is when the same person has lived life relatively protected from adversity. The problem there is very few people see themselves that way and bristle at having that suggested about them.
Obviously skin issues jump out. The people I know don’t typically have complaints, except for the mantra of not getting laid with some frequency being a drag. I do have a sensitive nose. Some people complain about perfume. i don’t know if it’s more than average.
****How do they do it? How do sociopaths convince you to go along with their agendas, even to your own detriment?
They command it. This is a function of their charisma because they command unflinchingly, with complete self-confidence, they get results. Now, this doesn’t mean sociopaths are always barking orders. Often the commands are delivered on cushions of sweetness, or camouflaged as appeals for sympathy. But in their minds, whatever sociopaths want, they are totally entitled to have. Therefore, when they make their desires known, they show no doubt, only certainty. Compliance is demanded, and targets respond.****
This is so true. My expath used subtle and not so subtle threats (mainly about custody) to command my compliance. It worked for 12 horrendous years.
Darwinsmom,
thanks for taking the time to post what you learned about autism. It was very thorough and I do agree with most of it. Though I disagree that a person with autism is incapable of lying.
For example, MiLo’s Gran, diagnosed as aspergers, did manage to fool several people regarding why he was suspended from playing in a basketball game. He manipulated MiLo into believing he was being treated unfairly. So he not only manipulated her beliefs, but also her emotions.
I have to say that from my own experience, aspergers people are not the “best” liars, though!
It’s unfortunate that autism is no longer thought of as a spectrum because it appears to me that there is a spectrum, but I guess I can see the point that underlying all of it is a certain rigidity or a tendency toward rigidity.
The thing is, though, that this rigidity does not, IMO, come from how they think, but how they FEEL about things. Then the thinking is influenced by that. For example, one aspergers person I know says, “If I ruled the world, there would only be ONE size for all nuts and bolts.” As an engineer, he KNOWS that this would be impractical, but he FEELS that a one size world, would be more comfortable for him. He makes statements to that effect all the time, about other things. He isn’t dumb enough to think that it would work, yet he wishes that it would work because life would be more pleasant for him. He doesn’t like variety about anything and this includes people. I think he would be happiest if everyone were a white male. This ego-centricity is most definitely a narcissistic trait.
So anyway, I think your description is a good baseline for getting an understanding of autistic thinking. From there, we find variations in some people.
This is similar to what we see in spaths. My ex-spath is such a poster child for the PD, that I would say he is a pure, primary psychopath in every sense of the word, even as far as body build. In addition, I’ve known spaths who have variations in the levels of spath traits and spaths who also have other PD’s. The baseline for spaths though is still going to be lack of trust, pathological envy and bypassed shame.
Thanks darwinsmom, interesting re: the DSM changes. My friend is high(ish) functioning, but profoundly autistic in many of the ways you outline. He’s French. I found a group that meet in Paris monthly (the leading French aspie organisation host it) and I’m going with him soon, should be interesting.
I broke the NC rule after 8 months. This really hurts although, I don’t feel like I am starting totally over. We will see. I read that things pick right back up where they would have been. I’m sure they did. More devaluing than ever. Back to NC.
kmillercats,
I’m sorry you fell off the wagon. 🙁
What do you think caused you to break NC? Do you have a plan to resist next time?
Try to remember, if you feel tempted again, to come here and blog. Tell someone who will help you resist.
((hugs))
sky,
She did tell us there was a bit of a lesser and more rigidity, but not to call it a spectrum as we used to understand: because of the brain difference. The brain functions differently physically which has its effect on the “mind” – cognitive ghostly thing that would include the emotional world – which then tends to express itself in outward list of symptoms, which can vary greatly from one autist to another. The different intelligence capacities gives autists a chance to develop coping tricks and skills, but it wouldn’t alter the basic issues: no concept creation, situation blindness and poor imagination skills (note: she said she didn’t mean fantasy by that). Some stuff may require much less energy, even when stressed, than others. So some would never have an outward issue with teaspoons at all. But instead of describing autism from the outward symptoms, she went to the neurological and mind issues which would then translate in examples. What you say about the engineer would fit the one-to-one preference, everythign the same, perfectly.
A teacher asked about lying and manipulation. She thought that the child in her class seemed to be trying at it at least. She didn’t outright say they are thruthful (and they can want to avoid revealing something and sidetrack issues), but they’re not succesful liars, let alone manipulators. The intent would be to hide something, but not to enjoy harm. An example would be an autistic teen in class who starts to act out terribly, because they are under such a stress that it makes it too difficult for them to even try and function as they would otherwise. They may be actively break the rules in order to be sent out of the class, so they can be all by themselves and alone – and have some peace of mind again. This is of course a form of manipulation, but lightyears away from a spath who derives pleasure from the act of manipulation by itself as well as the harm it causes within the victim. It’s rather a byproduct of the momentarily aim to be by themselves, rather than enjoying the effects of the manipulation witin the target.
Several of us in the seminar had a family member with autism: sibling, son or daughter, cousin, etc… and many of the examples, if we transposed them, were very familiar to us. But I really liked to have the neurological causes explained to us so thoroughly. It then also becomes clear you can’t say: someone can make half-concepts. The way conceptual thinking works, you can think conceptually, or you can’t (note: conceptual thinking may overlap but is not the same as abstrahation). Just like with spaths: either you have the capacity to feel guilt or you can’t. There are of course people who can ignore or shut off feelings of guilt, sidestep them, but they still have a brain with the capacity to feel it. These we’d call spathic, and toxic and to avoid, but aren’t strictly speaking spaths.
I do remember something about Milo telling us about Grand’s effort to cover up something that happened with practice and how he blamed and made it look totally different.
I know you see ego-centrism as a form of narcissism. It’s something I still not agree with. But that’s another discussion, for another time 🙂
Tea light,
Glad I could pass on what I learned in that session.
Dars mom, Interesting stuff. Thanks.
I don’t know about the rest of ya’ll, but I feel like my minds been put through a food processor, lately. It doesn’t help that I have an obsessed tooth. Ha, haaaa, Get it? Obsessed tooth? Not abcessed, but obsessed? I crack myself up. Too much Ibuprofin, I think.
So, where is everybody?
Anybody in the mood for a little, “Simon’s Cat”?
http://www.simonscat.com/Films/Fetch/
kim:
I love Simon’s Cat. Thanks for this.