A researcher conducts a study that reveals just how much narcissists focus on themselves.
Read: The definitive fMRI test for narcissism, on PsychologyToday.com.
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How to recognize and recover from everyday sociopaths - narcissists
Sarah999, I concur loudly with what you have written.
Normal parents, persecuted for the behavior of their genetically spath children, as though they created these behaviors in their kids.
And the poor parents if they are clueless, may beat themselves up for ‘failing” at parenting — OR feel very misunderstood by the experts and by judgmental onlookers… and may also be in an abusive relationship with the parent who is the spath.
Or as you say, may have skipped a generation and both parents have no clue what they are dealing with.
Or in many cases, the parents divorce and the kids end up with the non-spath parent who is now a single parent of a difficult child (or more than one!). The kids are acting out… is it because of the divorce? Or because of the genes? No matter what, experts are full of non-applicable advice.
Totally agree with the need for REAL bullying education at an early age — unfortunately, with bullying in the news now there are already a lot of bullying intervention programs which are well-intentioned, may help a little, but misapprehend what is really going on (still refusing to acknowledge that some bullies are sociopaths and irredeemable).
A lot of work to be done.
BBE, That is very interesting about the high level of sociopathy in HIV+. While I think you may be right in the high percentage of at least “dysfunctional” gays, the problem is that it might not be taking all gays in to the number since so many gays remain in the closet so those “functional” but closeted gays might not be being counted in the numbers of total gays, which would skew the numbers.
I worked with and associated with a lot of gay people, mostly guys in both Dallas and Los Angeles when I lived there and most of them were younger guys who did live a pretty farked up life style at least on a relationship aspect…lots of drama, but I also knew some who were settled in stable relationships and lives. My granddaughter is gay and is in a committed relationship and what appears to be a “normal” life. I also know other “stable” relationships and committed relationships among other adults.
When you figure that 50% of the marriages of straight folks go bad (divorce) and 75% of second marriages do, being straight doesn’t convey much benefit I don’t think. LOL
I have been following this thread and this is a very interesting conversation. Ox: you sure hit the nail on the head when you said there should be some sort of ‘legal standard’ to define psychopathy within the legal system and process. While it does smack of the 70 and 80’isms, it is appearing that these types of people are starting to proliferate amongst our society and they are permeating our acceptable lifestyles and feel quite justified in doing the horrid things they do. While I know not ALL people with mental illness choose to be so ugly in their victimizations, there ARE some, in fact, I would guess MOST of them, who DO preach and support their behaviors very passionately, as we all know and have witnessed. A lot of these crimes (and that is truly what they are; whether done physically and/or emotionally or psychologically) are done intentionally there with making it an intentional act of inflicting harm/and/or injury upon others. In my State they call that ‘mayhem’ and ‘mayhem’ IS and can be made justified through the law here but it is not given the importance it truly deserves. Further, ‘mayhem’, in a personal context, is not recognized when it comes to psychopathy and it should be because ‘mind injuries’ can sometimes be worse than actual physical harm, if not equivalent thereto. It certainly is my wish that psychological crimes be dealt with in the same manner as any other violation that includes any other type of violence and/or violent behavior.
Their victimization DOES deserve a recognition within the legal world. Absolutely. I think too that it will be only a matter of time when their actions against those people who ARE good and ARE kind are recognized for what they truly are: abuse.
Thank you all for this very interesting discussion on this thread. I wish you all a wonderful week ahead filled with new resolutions and peace. ~ Dupey
I have a few thoughts on this test, but first:
Ox you are mentioning the left-handed bit again. I just wanted to mention that I dated ALL lefties until I actually started screening for right-handed men!!! I am right-handed, though I taught myself to write and throw a Frisbee with my left hand when I was a child (I thought I should be prepared in case my hand ever gets chopped off….yeah, weird kid, I know). Anyways, lefties are so noticeably different to me that I can sometimes I guess when someone is a lefty. After too many bad experiences with them, I started hoping that a cute guy/gal wasn’t left-handed, cause then I’d be automatically a bit reserved until I knew he/she was semi-normal.
I am sure there are lots of great people out there who use their left hands, but I have met a LOT of lefties that are just weird in a way that I’m a bit scared of.
Hi all,
I haven’t written for a while but considering I am left handed and, reasonably normal (if a bit weird), I was curious about what people had written on left handedness.
It is true that we do think differently, tying laces in the opposite way is just one of the more obvious differences. When I was younger I remember doing a small computer progam designed to put a dot on the top right of the screen, the whole class got their dot where it should have been but mine, being the only left handed person, was in the bottom left, the exact opposite of where it was meant to be.
Besides these differences though, I have never found left handed people to be worse, more anti-social, more self obsessed than right handed people. In fairness though, I have not made a study of it.
Perhaps tying in with power and those that seek high positions, a good many years ago now, a company were setting up a laser for micro brain surgery and, during the fact finding stages, realised that they would have to put a left hand trigger on their device because so many brain surgeons were left handed. Alexander the Great and Napoleon were also meant to be left handed, tying in with the whole “lust for power” trip.
Interestingly, the latin for “left” is/was sinistra, where we get sinister from. The left hand path was always associated with darkness and seeking power no matter what the cost.
Today, in many cultures, accepting something with your left hand or eating with your left hand is, at best considered rude, if not a mortal insult.
Hmm, I haven’t exactly put forward a positive case here but, honestly, any time I have been duped, wronged or in any way injured, physically or mentally by someone, it was by a right handed person, but then, only 10% of the population are left handed so that is to be expected. The point is, it would be nice to see some verifiable, if non-scientific facts on the subject : How many serial killers, narcissists, psychopaths, etc., are left handed?
Lastly, if I am not being rude to Panther or not asking too personal a question – choosing only 10% of the population to consider for a relationship and defining that population by what hand they use, seems non-accidental and if so, why would one deliberately choose to initiate a relationship with someone based on whether they were left handed or not?
Nemo, there is only a small percentage of people who are left handed, I can’t rembember what it is something like 4-7% (I just made that up cause I can’t remember) but it isn’t much. Anyway, the left handedness in psychopaths is higher than that…again, I can’t remember the numbers just that it is HIGHER.
ADHD is also higher in psychopaths than in the general population, as is bi-polar disorder. So there are SEVERAL things that are connected with psychopathy, but having one doesn’t prove you have the others.
Genes for various things are connected to odd places, for example the gene for horns is connected in goats to the gene for sexual maturity…so if a goat lacks both genes for horns they will not sexually mature. If they have one gene for horns and one for no horns, they will not have horns but will sexually mature. So that is why you can’t “breed the horns off” goats like they did in cattle.
But all the things I mentioned are related to genes except possibly the handedness and I’m not sure about it.
Nemo;
I will second Ox Drover’s comments and add that while there are statistically higher aforementioned incidences, none are overwhelming. Thus, the majority of of psychopaths are not left-handed nor are a majority of left-handed people psychopaths, rather, a statistically significant higher percentage.
Such statistics make sense given that the predominant underlying cause to all of this, and some other traits as well, is womb testosterone level.
Ox;
I am not as optimistic as you regarding the gay community in general. Yes, there are many normal people, but as a whole, I still believe that there is a far higher percentage of sociopathic and otherwise toxic individuals in the gay community. While some of this may be driven by society, since homosexuality is in part attributable to womb testosterone levels, it makes sense more sociopaths would exist in the gay community, just as a higher percentage of gays are left-handed, suffer Autism and ADHD…
There do seem to be more stable lesbians than gay males, however.
When I saw the comment about s/p being left handed – I almost fell out of my seat. My ex was left handed and he used to brag about it – being so different and special. Now I know just how special he was. A user, liar, con artist, there are other words to describe him. I hope one day these people will be held accountable for their actions.
I saw him recently out with his new “conquest” – she has no idea what he will put her through. I am done. AMEN.
Hi Nemo,
I think I must have expressed what I said wrong. I don’t mean that I selected people based on them being left-handed. What happened is that after a few boyfriends, one day it dawned on me that they ALL had been left-handed. It made me wonder why I was somehow picking out lefties without even knowing they were left-handed. There are sooo many different theories and speculations one could put forth to try and figure that out. All I knew is that my exes hadn’t been good boyfriends (either cheating, stealing, lying, etc), and I had noticed that there was some identifiable, tangible thing that I could abstractly associate with my selection process. I thought that I should try dating a right-handed person just to see if it makes any difference. It may seem totally random and unscientific, because it is. The thing is, even AFTER noticing this, it kept happening. I’d get to know someone, start to like them, then look down one day and notice OMG another lefty!??!? I was asking myself HOW do I keep DOING this?!?!??!
It really was me grasping at straws Nemo, because at that point, I hadn’t figured out what the REAL red flags were, only that there was a correlation between my most difficult exes and which hand they wrote with.
My father is a P and a lefty and my ex is a spath and a lefty. It would be interesting to see a study of this.
I’m sorry if I offended you. Perhaps I got a bit ahead of myself thinking there was something to it.