A sociopath is someone who has a pervasive and persistent disregard for the rights and feelings of others. This disregard is manifested in the antisocial behavior sociopaths show. While we usually think of antisocial behavior as criminal, not all antisocial acts are illegal. A person who slips up once is not a sociopath. Sociopathy is a lifestyle.
Since humans are designed to live in society, a healthy personality has prosocial inclinations. Therefore, people who are pervasively antisocial are disordered in the sense that they are not the norm (thank God). Although antisocial behaviors are observable actions like lying, stealing and assault, there are personality traits that cause antisocial behavior. It should come as no surprise that people who have a sense of entitlement, over-rate their own greatness and have poor self-control are more likely to hurt others and show pervasive antisocial behavior.
The American Psychiatric Association has defined a group of personality disorders it calls “cluster B”. According to a recent paper* by German psychiatrist, Christian Huchzermeier, M.D., “ The cluster includes disturbances of personality that go hand in hand with emotional dysregulation phenomena, a tendency towards aggressive—impulsive loss of control, egoistic exploitation of interpersonal relationships, and a tendency to overestimate one’s own importance.”
The disorders of “cluster B” go together because what underlies them is a disturbance in three developmentally acquired abilities I have called The Inner Triangle. These abilities are:
Ability to Love
Impulse Control
Moral Reasoning
These abilities that a child gains during development are a triangle because the development of each depends on the other two. A child begins to acquire ability to love in the first year of life, impulse control begins in the second year of life. At two years of age there is already a link between ability to love and impulse control. Children with the best impulse control also are the most loving/empathetic. Moral reasoning begins in the third year of life and its development depends on a loving nature and impulse control. Similarly the most moral kids are also the most loving and self-controlled.
I think of the cluster B disorders as different manifestations of damage to the inner triangle. I think of sociopaths as individuals who completely lack ability to love and have impaired impulse control and moral reasoning.
Given the Inner Triangle, it should come as no surprise that it can be difficult to find people who have only one cluster B personality disorder. For that reason individuals with antisocial personality, narcissistic personality, borderline personality and histrionic personality often have symptoms of the other disorders. If someone gets a diagnosis of only one of these, it doesn’t mean that the person doesn’t also have one or all of the others. The person making the diagnosis simply thought that the one chosen best described the person. You should know there is a gender bias in diagnosis such that women are often labeled “borderline.” These women can also be sociopaths who leave a trail of victimized friends, lovers and children in their wakes.
A recent study reported in Behavioral Science and the Law, “The Relationship Between DSM-IV Cluster B Personality Disorders and Psychopathy According to Hare’s Criteria: Clarification and Resolution of Previous Contradictions” examines the relationship between psychopathic personality traits as defined by the screening version of the PCL and Cluster B personality disorders. The authors of this study were careful to examine people who had only one cluster B disorder. They found psychopathy to be associated with all cluster B disorders.
The authors conclude:
“One clinical implication of our results, nevertheless, is that in cases where a cluster B personality disorder is diagnosed a high psychopathy value is to be expected, especially where antisocial, borderline or narcissistic personality disorder is involved. The PCL score is a better predictor of subsequent events, such as problems during (criminal) custody or a relapse into delinquency, than a diagnosis of a DSM-IV personality disorder, especially in forensic populations; therefore, an additional investigation with the PCL should be carried out, if a cluster B personality disorder has been diagnosed.”
It is important for Lovefraud readers to be aware of this study especially if there is a divorce/custody proceeding or a cluster B personality disorder has been diagnosed. Many people might think that if the partner has been “diagnosed borderline” or “diagnosed narcissistic” that means the partner is not a psychopath/sociopath. This study suggests otherwise. IF YOU ARE INVOLVED WITH SOMEONE WHO HAS THESE YOU HAVE TO CONSIDER THEIR HARMFUL BEHAVIOR AS AN INDICATION OF PSYCHOPATHY/SOCIOPATHY. There are some people with cluster B, histrionic, borderline and narcissistic disorders who are not highly antisocial. But if the person is lying, cheating and manipulating, that is antisocial behavior. This behavior in the context of any cluster B means the person is potentially very dangerous. As the authors state:
“Screening for PCL-based psychopathy can also be important for general psychiatric patients with a DSM-IV personality disorder, so that potential difficulties in the course of their treatment can be anticipated and this comorbidity can be targeted in the planning of therapy. Patients with both a DSM-IV personality disorder and PCL-based psychopathy can exhibit behavior that is particularly dangerous to therapy (Stafford & Cornell, 2003).”
If you have been diagnosed with borderline personality and reading this frightens you, I am sorry. You can improve by working on your inner triangle. Talk to your therapist about DBT a treatment that is very effective in improving the state of the Inner Triangle in people who are motivated to do it.
*The reference for the paper discussed is Behav. Sci. Law 25: 901—911 (2007).
EB – another thing – get LOTS of mirrors. It’s how i deal with small spaces – i bounce light and I refelct good views – it never actually feels larger, but it does make it less oppressive. I have five mirrors in the tiny dark walled bedroom i am now sleeping in, and three in the kitchen (both are north facing with darkish paint and under trees/ balconies) – i need one or two more in the kitchen. Some of these mirrors are quite small – 1’x1′, but they do the trick. put one on the wall beside your desk and if you can stand your own sweet face, in front of your desk as well.
One joy- hope you are feeling bettter today. As far as the noise you might want to try some peaceful music.. Nature sounds. That might help. My upstairs neighbor is very loud and that helped me. For the longest time io thought he was just having wild sex than I realized bot even superman himself could keep that up. Apparently he works days and exercises at night… Jumping rope. Weird?
Hi coping,
jumping rope – that’s what gyms are for! jayzus, it never fails to amaze me what people will do in apts. why would someone think that a toddler playing fetch with a dog wouldn’t be noisy, especially since she already knows there is sound transference??? I mean, there IS a yard here. City folk.
there are such beautiful naturally occurring nature sounds here on the north side of the apt. – lots of birds and crickets in the woods across the street and in the neighbours yard (big trees). i love the natural sounds, but run fans at night to drown out the other noises. i also have buses running on the southside of my place, and i have learned to tolerate their sound (but not their pollution).
the only thing that would have helped last night would have been loud music – and well that would have been counterproductive, as i was trying to sleep. 🙂
candy: thanks for your suggestions and your concern. This is the second time since I have known spath that I destroyed something. I am not self harming: I went through all that already – a long time ago – not wanting to live, not being able to deal with everything. I am way over all of the ‘self harming’ phase. I am into the LIVING and FIGHTING stage, Dear One….Something just overtook me yesterday and I just went a little off. 🙂 I can’t even explain it. I am usually a very peaceful, loving, kind person, even though I have always had an underlying ‘temper issue’. I haven’t gone out of my way to harm anyone, including myself. That’s why I was just so stunned! At myself and the degree of hatred that was under all that. Hmm: I thought, “Wow, if this is a symptom or a reaction to frustration and I AM CONTROLLING it, WHAT would happen if I truly touched that hatred and acted upon it the way sociopaths do?” I understand the degree of that frustration but what sets us apart from ANIMALS is that we can rationalize and hopefully know the difference between wrong and right and I am telling you, I am absolutely afraid to touch the hatred I feel for “IT” at this moment. I have been suppressing my disdain for quite a while and well, my temper doesn’t come out often but when it does…I usually lock myself up until I calm down.
THEN: I think of the spath and his uncontrollable urges and propensity for violent responses and it only made me believe MORE SO that we ALL have choices. Even sick people.
There is NO excuse that will ever suffice for someone doing the things they do. We can’t understand them because there is no understanding the un=understandable. And, that’s what they are. That is where all this confusion inside us comes from…trying to understand the unexplainable.
Yes, coagulants and clots and bleeding does not mix with beating up desks. And, to tell the the truth: my right hand today is completely swollen and scarred up and cut up and I think I may have decimated a knuckle – but better to do THAT than to get in my car and drive where “IT” is and just whomp the living crappola right out of it! 🙂 Right?
I don’t, unlike “IT” choose random targets – only the pukes like he is that tick me off. I said this before: I had a temper BEFORE IT CAME A LONG in the form of PTSD (severe) and well, since it has come and I made it go, (because it’s stupidity ALWAYS inspires this kind of temperment), I thought I had this part of my temper dealt with. “IT” brings it out in me. I just can’t imagine ANYONE choosing to live the way “IT” does. “IT” used to say: “How do I change now? I have been this way all my life?” Well, you know what?
I was a sexually abused child from the age of 3 to about 13 and I had a heroin addict for a ‘mother’ who was never there; I have been kidnapped and GOD KNOWS WHAT ELSE because of the dysfunction in my family pod – all the horrid things that ACTUALLY COULD justify living a lifestyle like they do but I chose different. I GROOMED MYSELF OUT OF THAT DYSFUNCTION and altered, DRASTICALLY, the direction of my family because I found it so truly unacceptable, even as a small child. Anger issues??? Yah, maybe – but I never purposely harm no one not even myself, anymore.
I walked around the rest of the afternoon yesterday, after I beat the crap out of my desk, looking at my hand and saying: “Better my fist than your face, MF!” 🙂 I said to myself the remainder of the afternoon: “You should be so fortunate as to thank GOD YOU were not here because THIS could have been YOUR FACE!” 🙂 That’s me…right there.
I have torn stuff up more than punching lights out. Terrible, terrible, terrible,dynamic, explosive temper but yet I am the most patient and understanding person that exists. Open minded, non judgmental…so, from early on, I learned to keep that temper under wraps. I don’t let it out often – it’s powerful and even “IT” is afraid of my temper. hehehehe It should be.
AND IT IS A THREE TIME COMBAT VETERAN! And it should be.
Thanks, Hon’, for your post and your love and concern. I will be alright; this is a long time issue for me, that temper; hehehehehe I don’t go off often but when I do, wow. It takes a lot to get me that pissed because I have trained myself how to control it over the years.
That temper of mine is always there, underlying in me. It has been my whole life BUT “IT” has truly pushed it off the edge and I could be like it: hunting for victims and being dark and ugly, OR – I can let the moments pass and not react on them instantaneously but let the moment subside, most times and choosing the higher road. I am and always have been “the high road” kind of girl…I don’t spawn drama nor chaos nor any of those other negative feelings – it’s when they are FORCED upon me, I get just a little resentful because I just spent my whole life learning how to NOT PHYSICALLY DEAL with all the frustrations that are locked up inside me. THAT IS CALLED CONTROL. If I can control MYSELF = they could learn to control THEMSELVES and that knowledge only increases my hatred and disdain for “IT”.
LACK OF CONTROL is why spaths are the way they are. They are weak beings and have no control whatsoever and I am here to tell you that EVEN I FIND IT UNACCEPTABLE: their behaviors.
Happy Day everyone, I am on my way to counseling this morning and I do truly hope it helps. I just don’t need my heart jumping out of my chest the way my anger over rode it yesterday…I REFUSE TO ALLOW “IT” to inspire that temper in me. I flat out refuse to give it so much. “IT” isn’t worth what we flush down the toilet, much less harming ourselves or anyone else over….
xxoo
The reason “IT” is afraid of me is because I am not intimidated by “IT”. It was taunting me one time and trying to piss me off on purpose and it did = it all ended up where I had MY HANDS around HIS NECK and pushing hard, telling “IT” to shut the f**k up! “IT” was absolutely speechless that a ‘little, old woman’ would dare have the balls to defend herself against “HIM”.
He ended up grabbing his things and leaving immediately and that was a very wise choice.
Well, guess what?! ahahahaha ~ he will be smart to continue walking wide circles around me. He knows. I have just a few more years experience at controlling myself than “IT” does but my temper NEVER GOES OFF AND ON THE BLINK unless it is ‘inspired’. 🙂
Why, I just bet that he has NEVER had a woman come off to him like that before; usually they cower. ahahahaha Surprise, surprise, surprise!!!! 🙂
Squirm, spath ~ squirm….
You have spent your life trying to make others squirm and trying to effect harm on innocent, caring people…now it’s YOUR TURN to squirm a while….
Dupey
Sky: So instead of “lighten up” I should say”please take my words in the spirit of conversation, not as an attack?.’ think your alternative is is very good.
i think that reno thing is amazing – you know, most of the unpleasant verbal exchanges between my folks revolved around the renos.- and he tired to make her look foolish often and he did a pretty good job of it. he would make mess after mess after mess and expect her to clean up after him (he’d never start and finish a job in a logical way, so always re-made many messes) after working a full day and commuting for 2 hours, and she had significant physical disabilities and chronic pain. She was always angry with him about this stuff – i wonder if she recognized it as a control play? I certainly didn’t, but it’s the same kind of shit he’s pulled on me over the years.
One, After the EMDR I can still visualize the aircraft crash like a mini video or photograph, but the emotions are not attached to it. Sort of like I think you feel about a movie you saw….while you are watching the exciting movie you are INVOLVED in it emotionally but telling someone about it later, you can visualize the scenes but the emotions are not there any more.
The concept of our culture’s “individual space” and how it expands or contracts….like most people stand about 3 ft apart to talk, but in an elevator people get closer together without having their space “violated”—I read a book called “The Naked Ape” years ago that was really interesting about those things…and other books that I can’t remember the title of right now (CRS). When I lived in town, in an apartment, etc. my space shrunk somewhat, and now that I’ve lived in the woods for years my space is bigger and anything that intrudes on my bigger space irritates me, and noise is one of those things that can intrude and DOES irritate me. I am not one to keep the TV going all the time for “noise” as I enjoy the quiet, my X best friend used to be freaked out when she would come here because it was so quiet. She lives in a small town but also has to keep the TV or two TVs going all the time so it isn’t so quiet.
I am however, constantly “chattering” to myself or thinking about something, and noise is distracting because I am not tuned in to or used to it any more, like I was when I lived in town. Plus, I think I am “crankyier” about noise now than I was.
It also might be possible, One/Joy, that the noise bothers you MORE than it would if you were not under such constant STRESS as well. So the stress makes you sensitive to noise, and the noise increases your stress…and round and round it goes….like a hamster on a wheel, the faster it goes, the quicker it gets no where. LOL
You know, I just can’t get over how much it HURTS to disconnect from my spath. I’m once again like 5 days into this process – my own damned failure – and I find it actually HURTS in my belly.
In the old days, I would take it as a trauma bonding sign of sorts, and I’d run to him and try to make things better. I’d do all the making up, I’d seek him out, would try to FIX things, which of course, couldn’t be fixed.
But still, here I am, with this PAIN in my gut, and I know running to him won’t solve anything, it will just continue the pain. But the PAIN is just so real. I just don’t understand it.
SK
Dearest Dupey,
Yes, I think you are right about mornings not being your best time! Like I told you, I’m a bit like that myself. Nevertheless, I was going to say that all this stuff about “monitoring” your IT on the computer (I’m not sure what you mean by the “messenger” thing, but whatever it is, it sure as hell isn’t NC!) is definitely not good. It might not “technically” be breaking NC, but I think it’s damn close. So tighten up on that, Dupey! No Contact means something much more radical than just not talking to him in person!
I’m still hoping that your biopsy comes back negative. Unfortunately my mom’s was positive. But on the bright side, it appears to be in a very early stage, and the doctor is expecting that she will make a complete recovery after minor surgery. (Speaking of which, the Doc is a nice lady: very skilled and with a good “bedside manner.” Which means that if she pulls this off, I just might have to make an exception to my “medical anathematizing”!–haha)
Still, the thing that helps me the most is how stoical my mother is in the face of this sort of adversity. If she were in a depressed or negative state, this would be twice as hard for me as it is now. So that means you too need to continue to be your courageous self and refuse to let your guard down–if only for the sake of your kids, and all the other people who care about you. (One of whom is myself.)
Okay, so how’s that for a bit of “reverse psychology”?!
In the meantime, have a nice evening. I’m still keeping my fingers crossed about your biopsy, but whatever happens, I know you’ll be able to meet this head on.
(And please stop monitoring IT–good grief, Dupey!)
With loving best wishes,
C.
I am completely messed up and it’s gotten so frustrating that I don’t know what to do with it. Recently Oxy, Onestep, EB, and Sky have all posted to me about how messed up I am, and they are COMPLETELY 100% right. I was seeing a counselor before I left for my job and it’s obvious that it isn’t working. The lady I was talking to seemed to blow me off when I spoke about having issues with narcissistic people in my life.
Sky can relate to me having the affects of growing up in a dysfunctional abusive home with both narcissistic parents. As a result of it I am severely addicted to drama-to the point that I don’t know how to be around normal people who are not N. I am using black and white thinking as a defense mechanism against it and it seems that I also learned that behavior from them. Everything that I read says that narcissists use black and white thinking.
I am trying to do good things for myself like Oxy keeps telling me to do. I feel anxious because the drama is decreasing in my life. I am starting to feel like I need to become even more of a recluse than I am just to avoid picking friends who are like my parents and encircling me with drama. Prime example-I picked the neighbor as a friend and then ended up feeling romantic toward her and all the drama ensued. She finally devalued me this week. At first I was all upset and hurt over it, but frankly I feel quite relieved now. It made me able to see her as only a neighbor, not a friend, not someone significant.
She offered to get my mail while I was gone-in an effort to have some sort of control. Once she devalued me I cut it off and stopped the mail. My black and white thinking actually served me well this time because now I was able to stop trying to contact her. I missed a really big red flag in all this. A couple weeks before leaving my friend Heather stopped by my house to talk to me. She is the police captain. We were having a conversation and then I hear someone calling my name. It was my neighbor calling me from the front door trying to get my attention. I told her to wait and I continued my conversation with Heather. While we were talking she continued calling my name and I told her to wait again. Heather finally asked is that your neighbor? She asked what her problem was and I said I guess that she thinks that what she has to say to me is more important than you and I having a conversation. Heather just rolled her eyes. I guess little missy didn’t like the idea that I was giving the white shirted police officer attention that she thought she deserved more.
Anyway, I am discouraged because I feel like I am incapable of picking anyone to be around me that INSN’T a narcissist. I have GOT to have normal people around me. I am so grateful to have this new job-that the recruiter took a chance on me. I now have the chance to stay with this company until I am ready to do something else. I do still feel some stress with having my N father so close to me geographically. He appears to now not like me being so close to his wife because it takes her attention away from him. I do enjoy her but it seems like they are a packaged deal. She was married to a spath before my dad, but he has her completely snowed. She is clueless that he is N because he has a new mask on.
It seems to me that the best thing for me is to try to take another assignment after this job in a place that is far away from home and all others in my family-maybe on the west coast for awhile. Does anyone know anything about EFT? I came across it on-line while reading about recovering from narcissists. I am so afraid that I won’t ever feel normal and that’s all I want for myself.