Sociopaths rarely go forward with their lives with reliable, sustainable momentum; at best, they may zig-zag for a while with the good (and bad) luck of a gambler; or go sidways for a while, “seeming” to hold it together.
But eventually, the sociopath tends to go backwards. He is much like the person on a high-speed treadmill who, no mattter how hard he or she walks or runs, finds himself, sooner or later, drifting off the end of the machine.
His disordered lack of empathy, detachment from others, detachment from an emotional connection to the world that keeps the rest of us on fairly solid ground, giving us at least a chance to hit solid ground, and hit it running—the sociopath is missing this connection, and thus makes no consistent, sturdy contact with solid ground; his traction, ultimately, is tenuous and illusory.
The sociopath may “look” like he’s making progress (especially if progress is defined as his profiting, in some fashion, from his disrespect or abuse of others’ trust and vulnerability); in the end, however, his progress will be as superficial and unreliable as he is—finally, certainly in the vast majority of cases, he just makes messes of his own and others’ lives.
For this reason I don’t regard sociopaths—even so-called really sharp, predatory sociopaths—as generally very “smart” individuals. Most of them, as I’ve written elsewhere, and stress here again, are just “mess makers.”
Many end up in jail, and those who don’t, when they aren’t sowing havoc, are usually courting disaster and, at some point or other, almost always finding it.
Even the smoothest, most effectively calculating sociopaths, even allowing for those who are never apprehended–even these sociopaths lack the capacities that make for a life worth counting: the capacity, for instance, to love; give from the heart; sacrifice for others; and be counted-on in “crunch time” (which is to say, during times of real personal inconvenience).
The sociopathic individual doesn’t genuinely relish these experiences, although he may, as we know, mimic them superficially (and sometimes convincingly); but he doesn’t derive the pleasure to be experienced from a genuine investment in them.
His view of the world is not unlike the immature child’s who, on halloween night, approaching a bowl of candy left on a stoop, where the code of integrity is implicit (take one or two candy bars), instead grabs a fistful of candy, stuffing his pillow case with it.
The child then feels a bit giddy over his caper, heedless that, in the process of enriching himself, he has selfishly deprived other children of candy and, at the same time, violated the homeowner who risked trusting in his basic sense of fairness and respect.
It’s possible that this child on halloween may make his “grab” in a more impulsive, less calculating, fashion; or, he may have plotted his “grab,” and then executed it from house to house, even before putting his “costume” on at home, prior to hitting the streets.
In either case, take his mentality and now watch it never evolve, even as the boy grows into a man, and there you have it—an adult who thinks, and acts, like a sociopath”¦that is, a sociopath.
The forms of corruption and violation his personality can later express are many, but the underlying mentality is the sociopath’s. And it dooms him, in the end, to a troubled, troubling and unfulfilled life.
(This article is copyrighted (c) 2011 by Steve Becker, LCSW. My use of male gender pronouns is strictly for convenience’s sake and not to suggest that females aren’t capable of the behaviors discussed.)
Hopeforjoy
Steve,
I hope these disordered social preditors not only slide backwards but they get what’s coming to them. All the pain they cause to their children, spouses, friends, etc.
When I see the pain my daughter feels (her face contorts with all sorts of emotions), when her father tries to contact her, I hope he slides waayyyy backward, off a cliff!!!!
bluejay
Ox Drover,
I just got back from eating dinner out with two of my kids, my oldest son and my daughter – it was nice. Okay, so sociopathy is a mental disorder, not a mental illness? I realize that spaths know what they’re doing, doing the unthinkable time and time again (always bending the rules) – no big deal to them. I still tend to think that the spaths are controlled by the disorder, not the other way around, being open to correction about this viewpoint, but from what I’ve experienced, the spath acts according to they way he is programmed, his brain being messed up.
Steve Becker, LCSW
Superkid10….thanks so much for the feedback. really appreciate it.
Steve
Annie
Hmmm. Interesting reading this article after the comments on the “LF Crash” article.
Steve, I think your argument holds water when it comes to the ‘personal con’ type of sociopath. But, as much as I’d like to believe what you say is true, I’m not convinced when it comes to the corporate psychopath.
For every Bernie Madoff, Kenneth Lay, Jeffrey Skilling, etc… that gets caught and pays for their crimes there are thousands, if not millions, of others who go on to lead lives of luxury and indulgence until the day they die – usually laughing at the suckers they conned. Who can forget the commodities traders (California electrical company – forget the name) who joked about stealing from grandmothers and orphans and leaving them in the dark? Sure, markets crashed, but who got hit hardest? Not the financial services executives, that’s for sure.
Harry Markopolous tried to report Bernie Madoff repeatedly, for 10 years or so. He had absolute mathematical proof of wrong-doing and presented it to the SEC, etc… No-one ‘listened’ to Markopolous (they probably wrote him off as a conspiracy nut), but not a single major financial instituation got hit because they knew it was a con but didn’t say anything to anyone else.
Bernie Madoff’s wife is still blindingly loyal to him – despite the suicide of her own son. How many of the decent people here on LF had that much support through our own hard-times?
bluejay
skylar,
I am glad that you talked a bit about spaths and money – they don’t mind being poor. What floors me is how the spath doesn’t understand the workings of money, period. He has no savings, not planning for the future – he doesn’t comprehend how to manage a bank account. He lives on the edge, obviously. There are business people (the spath is self-employed) who won’t do business with him (due to bounced checks). It’s my impression that he doesn’t fully grasp why (which I find mystifying) these business people have cut ties with him. I would love it if someone would write an article about spaths and money. The spath’s father (who I believe was a spath too) was just like him when it came to money, not knowing how to manage finances. The way some spaths operate is very irritating, maddening.
Annie
Oxy,
I’m not sure how your father felt about his life towards the end. But this thread has me thinking: I’ve worked with a fair number of psychopaths (who I didn’t recognize when I was working with them), and some of them even hit the news in a really scandalous way. But the biggest, slimiest ones always managed to skate off with a fair degree of public support and sympathy and some poor ‘lesser’ predator or two paid the price (as in they were all over the national news for months and months as the public scapegoat).
I hate to be a downer here, but that is my honest impression after working with quite a few corporate predators.
And when I look back on what I knew of them personally, and then see the same behavioural hallmarks displayed in the press years later, the overwhelming impression I get is that they’ve had *fun*. That, in their terms, they consider their lives successful. That, in their own way, they feel exquisitely *happy* that they succeeded in ‘winning’ over against those of us they considered (as you said earlier) “weak and worthless”. The impression I get is that they feel satisfied, the same kind of way the Grinch felt satisfied after he’d stolen all the Whoville Christmas stuff, complete with that sickly self-satisfied smile. They could care less about whether or not they were loved or well-regarded. That’s our values, not theirs. I think there are more than a few that die, in their own way of thinking, happy. Or at least content.
Again, sorry to be a downer here.
Ox Drover
Annie, I can’t argue with you there….their idea of “success” is not ours….my own P son, Patrick, even though he has been in prison since he was 17 except for a few months out between crimes, total less than a year…still SEES HIMSELF AS A SUCCESS. Here he is a criminal, a convict, has never had a legitimate adult job, never had his own apartment or house, been in prison 99.9% of his adult life, and THINKS HE IS A SUCCESS?????? WTF?????
Doesn’t make sense to me, but it is the way he thinks.
I am sure that my P sperm donor considered himself a success….because he thought that people envied him, wanted to be him, thought he was superior to them, appreciated what a great intellect he was–when in fact, anyone with any class at all looked down their nose at how crude and rude and crass he was.
He actually didn’t realize how people despised him—and if for some reason he knew someone didn’t like him, he devalued them to where “they didn’t matter”—the only thing I do know is that HE HATED ME WITH A PASSION BEYOND BELIEF because I stood up to him, and one other man that I know of he hated and maligned in print, a great man who is recognized the world over not only for his professional accomplishments but for his intellect and his great spirit and heart….the polar opposite of my P- sperm donor. So, to be hated by him was an honor as far as I am concerned.
But it is still sad that any human being, or what passes for one, could live and die so deluded.
The Bible Talks about casting our pearls before swine, and when we “throw pearls of love” at these people, when we offer them kindness and compassion, they have no appreciation for these “pearls” of infinite value, and as the Bible says, they “turn and rend us.”
Denise Guiney
Their investment plan, get paid by the government and spend this all on gambling. It might work!Then play poor with a collection of girlfriends for the next two weeks, and make sure you get plenty of new phone numbers if you go out. You might manage to marry a rich woman or get one pregnant so she feels obliged to feed you. Repeat this recipe every two weeks. Throw any failed dishes away and try a again.
behind_blue_eyes
“Annie says:
Hmmm. Interesting reading this article after the comments on the “LF Crash” article.
Steve, I think your argument holds water when it comes to the ’personal con’ type of sociopath. But, as much as I’d like to believe what you say is true, I’m not convinced when it comes to the corporate psychopath.
For every Bernie Madoff, Kenneth Lay, Jeffrey Skilling, etc” that gets caught and pays for their crimes there are thousands, if not millions, of others who go on to lead lives of luxury and indulgence until the day they die ”“ usually laughing at the suckers they conned. Who can forget the commodities traders (California electrical company ”“ forget the name) who joked about stealing from grandmothers and orphans and leaving them in the dark? Sure, markets crashed, but who got hit hardest? Not the financial services executives, that’s for sure.”
Having been first-hand victimized by Wall Street Psychopaths, I could not agree more.
Regarding my x-spath, Steve’s article seems accurate. My counselor would not let me talk much about the x-spath except in a couple of sessions after the drama. One of the few things I remember my counselor saying was in regards to my x-spath leaving a good white-collar career in something he had gone to University for to become a Flight Attendant.
Talk about taking a step backwards and what career offers the prospect of emotional detachment better than Flight Attendant?
themelinda
It was Enron. Lay’s wife started a second hand store for the fabulous items they had acquired and received enormous sympathy.
Experience teaches spaths they can rewrite history. They do it because it works. I married a spath and I’ve worked with one. The only successful strategy for me was to tell them I knew what they were, naming the characteristics, and then block emails. The problem is not solved though because the predator moves on, looking for other prey. I want them identified and their names publicized. Tattooing across the forehead would also be useful.