What is the single most powerful signifier of sociopathy?
How about, lack of empathy?
I don’t think so.
As an isolated factor, I don’t think lack of empathy best nails the sociopath.
Many millions of people, after all, lack empathy and aren’t sociopaths. Also, exactly what constitutes empathy is a subject of some disagreement. Some LoveFraud members, in fact, question whether sociopaths even lack empathy (some asserting, to the contrary, that the sociopaths they’ve known have used their capacity for empathy to exploit them).
But the biggest problem with lack of empathy is its weakeness in explaining the single, truly best signifier of sociopathy—the characterological exploitiveness of the sociopath.
It is a high level of exploitiveness that most singularly exposes the sociopath.
Now exploitiveness is also associated with the narcissistic personality. For this reason extremely destructive (“malignant”) narcissists can be hard to distinguish from sociopaths. Still, a high level of exploitiveness is rarely the single best signifier of narcissistic personality disorder, whereas it is, I suggest, the best single indicator of sociopathy.
Why does lack of empathy fail to explain the sociopath’s exploitiveness? It fails because most people who lack empathy are not exploitive. Just consider the autistic spectrum disorders: Lack of empathy is commonly associated with these disorders, but exploitive behavior is not.
Now it is true that empathic individuals will generally be nonexploitive. Why? Because their empathy will prove a deterrent against exploitative impulses or ideas. Empathy, in other words, surely is a powerful deterrent against exploitation.
But in someone nonexploitative (someone, say, with Asperger’s Syndrome), empathy will not be needed for its deterrent effect. However, in someone inclined to exploitation, lack of empathy will be a missing deterrent in a situation where deterrence is urgent.
Effectively, the sociopath’s exploitive nature is undeterred by empathy, which is missing, thus liberating him to exploit. And it is the sociopath’s tendency, or compulsion, to exploit, I propose, that best characterizes his sociopathy.
I’d be remiss not to clarify my working definition of empathy. Empathy, as I use it, is an experience, or appreciation, of another’s experience that, depending on the situation, elicits a thoughtful, respectful, perhaps nurturing, but never exploitive, response.
While some sociopaths may possess an evolved capacity to read others’ vulnerabilities, this doesn’t make them empathic.
It is the particular response to someone’s vulnerability that indicates the presence of empathy, or exploitation. It is the particular response, or pattern of responses, to someone’s vulnerability that separates the empathic individual from the predator.
In this respect, I regard the sociopath as seriously, and given his exploitive personality, dangerously deficient in empathy.
What about his remorselessness? Certainly the sociopath’s remorselessness is quite notable and diagnostically significant. However, I would argue that the sociopath’s remorselessness is a byproduct not of his lack of empathy, but of his exploitive personality.
Many people who lack empathy are remorseful, for instance when informed that an action they took, or something they said, left someone else feeling damaged. They may struggle to relate emotionally (or even intellectually) to the effect their behavior had on the wounded party (their deficient empathy); but they are upset to learn that their action caused damage.
In other words, they feel remorseful even though their empathy is deficient.
However, exploitation and remorselessness go hand in hand. The essence of exploitation is the intentional violation of another’s vulnerability. The exploiter knows, on some level, that his behavior is exploitive.
By definition, the exploiter is grossly indifferent to the damaging effect of his behavior on his victim. All that matters is his perceived gain, his demanded, greedy satisfaction. There is indifference to the loss and damage to others resulting from his self-centered, aggressive behaviors.
This sounds a lot like callousness; and we recognize callousness as another of the sociopath’s telling qualities. But I would suggest, again, that the sociopath’s callousness derives not from his defective empathy, but rather from his characterological exploitiveness. Most people with deficits in empathy are not callous. On the other hand, the exploitive mentality will engender a callous perspective.
I discussed in a prior post the audacity of the sociopath. I suggested a correspondence between audacity and sociopathy. But here, too, we want to get the causality correct: audacity doesn’t make for sociopathy; but the exploitive mentality will make for staggering audacity.
(My use of “he” in this post is for convenience’s sake, not to suggest that men have a patent on sociopathy. This article is copyrighted (c) 2008 by Steve Becker, LCSW.)
Indigo,
THanks for your response. I just find it all incomprehensible. The ability to imitate otherwise normal feelings and behaviors as they do, when they really don’t have the capacity to truly understand them makes no sense to me. It’s what makes us wonder in the end how they were feeling and thinking all along as they told us they loved us and we planned a future with them. I imagine it to be like a panic state fearing their inability to control or fearing abandonment.
THe way they twist and turn every situation to appear to be victims when really they have created their own demise. THey ARE adept. The xS I dealt with was so good at being whatever you couold want or need. He took my dreams, hopes, desires and abused and violated every part of me. THen it felt like he slammed my head into the ground and walked away laughing at me as my friends and family stood there shaking their heads asking me “what the hell are you doing?”
It’s unfortunate that they have to actually break the law or physically hurt someone in order to be incarcerated or removed from society. Can’t someone just push them off the ice? LOL
cls0755,
I SO sympathise with your situation! My ex-P did the same thing to me. He held me down and raped me when he began to realize that I wasn’t a compliant little fool anymore. He held his hands around my neck and told me the same thing, “I’d better act like I liked it”. The next day, he found the papers I’d hidden under the floor mats of my car indicating I began divorce proceedings. When he confronted me I told him I’d call it all off if he’d just treat me decently. I asked him how he could have done that to me. It was at this moment I knew he was inhuman: he just looked me dead in the eye, got up very close to my face and said in a menacing manner “I expect you to give me exactly what I want. If you don’t , I have to take it”. He had that tell-tale look in his eye of PURE EVIL that everyone else here has described. He is a cop in the small town I live in, so when I filed for a protection order against him, I did receive it, but the word was spread to the rest of the local police department that I was “crazy”.
I really agree with the other thread going on here about alcohol! The next man I was involved with after my husband was either a malignant narcissist or an S, not sure yet which. He completely fit the profile of what people are discussing in this thread! I first realized he was a liar. When I confronted him with his lies he used the “pity play”: explaining that he knew in therapy that he had a “disorder” due to the way he grew up. That his mom wasn’t affectionate with him, and he “so wished” he could be, because he “really felt it inside”, but he was unable to express it. He made this out to be a source of great pain to him. “If only he could be lucky enough to meet someone who understood him, then he’d finally be lucky in relationships”. I was such a sucker! After I bought that one, he moved on to: cheating on me, stealing from me, moving in and living off me, etc. Each move was testing the waters to see how much more he could get away with. We went camping frequently, and he liked to drink wine around the campfire. Looking back, I can see how his carefully controlled exterior would fall away the more he drank. Liike someone else mentioned, he’d say things that were true indicators of what he really was. He never remembered them in the morning, and would explain them away as just drunken ramblings. I remember going for a walk the following morning to figure out what had just happened the night before. He panicked! Following me, frantically talking a mile a minute. I didn’t understand what was going on. Hindsight!! He also always had someone lined up before breaking up with the current girl. I have a really hard time understanding this. I didn’t know it at the time, but when we got together he was still with the girl before me for about 3-4 months. I found out later he even vacationed in Hawaii with her for 2 weeks while he and I were supposed to have been exclusive! When I confronted him he said she was crazy and was stalking him. He felt too bad about her frail state of mind to be harsh with her. While we were together he was always pontificating and ranting about how mistreated he was by the world. One major source of heartache for him was that his previous wives and girlfriends “never followed through on anything”. He was “always trying to help them, and they never accepted his help”. I’d do everything I could to help him. I worked my full-time job, and helped him with his business on all my days off. He was always complaining that I “didn’t do enough”. If I had a hobby I enjoyed, he’d try to come up with ways to turn it into a money-making business. I’d try to go along with these things to the extent that I could. Things would always come to a head when he expected me to exploit my friends – I would refuse at that point. Then the desire to engage in the hobby or however I was helping would die. The day we broke up he was raging at me. I was “useless”. I “wouldn’t accept his help”. I “just sat around and wasn’t any fun anymore”. So bizarre. ALL the characteristics he’d used to describe what was wrong with his previous relationships. EVERYTHING I’d been so careful NOT to be. Now I realize it’s all just a script. Each woman he’s with is just a cardboard cut-out. Who and what they really are is lost on him. When he’s ready to move on he signs up another one, keeps her on the side a few months until she’s hooked, then starts THE SAME ARGUEMENT. The BREAK-UP ARGUEMENT. It’s like a script. The faces change, but the lines stay the same. Even though I intelectually get this, I still can’t comprehend it. I KNOW in my head that I was the only one in that 6 year relationship. That EVERYTHING we did together was a lie, a con. It’s still so hard, though, to wrap my heart around.
Grog here come , what dat? Dat look like Poop! Touch! yep feel like poop! Taste! Yep Taste like poop! Mum good thing we no step in ! LOVE JJ
Dr. Steve, I respectfully disagree.
I believe the word “exploitation” leads people to think of exploiting for food or money or shelter or sex. This is where people get sidetracked in trying to understand the psycho.
I believe it is more for the thrill of manipulating the situation. Remember the term “duping delight”!? They get off on the chaos, pain, wreckage. It’s not about just leeching — it’s using, and enjoying the power of “using.”
See Quest’s story about hunting the psychopath in the bar. The female P didn’t want to interact with him because she couldn’t “get over on him.”
Rune, I think I get it in the same way you do. I think exploitation has some personal gain that may also include sex, food, shelter, money etc….. but it also includes an emotional gain including control, and “pulling one over on people”.
I saw the xS/P exploit his own adult daughters…. meaning he would overindulged then discarded them for short periods of time. I believe he knew the affect of that kind of abuse which kept them on tow. Then when he was “friends” with them again he would exploit that relationship by sharing all his secrets and generating pity about how their mother abused him, trying to turn them against their mother. He did it simply to assure that their mother didn’t win out as she constantly threatened that his daughters would reject him if he divorced her.
He also discussed sexually inappropriate things with them, which I believe gave them access to every intimate aspect of his life and they liked it. They felt like they posessed him in a way that he owned and controlled them. He would dismiss them then give them total access to his personal life, like he was an open book. Isn’t that exploitation and abuse? What kind of father would smoke pot with his daughter who had been in drug rehab, who he knows is easily addicted? What kind of father at 50 years old would rather hang out with a bunch of 18 to 21 year old girls than a group of people his own age?
He also exploited me and his previous affair and his current girlfriend. We were all in a very vulnerable state when he met us and he took advantage of that for his own personal gain. He told me he had an affair to punish his wife because she was abusive to him. He took advantage by appearing to be the hero that would save the day, treat me better than i ever had been, protect me from the big bad x husband and the big bad boss and everyone else because all men were bad according to him…..little did i know he was really talking about himself. he’s the one he did not trust.
When we were building our home together, he would argue with me and the first thing he would say is “that house belongs to me. You have no place in it. It will never be yours”. That is abuse and exploitation. His gain would have been to control my behavior, my response, my opinions. But he could not control me because I owned my own mind, home and he had nothing materially that I could not provide for myself. That was not the case with his x wife and current girlfriend. Although he treated them the same. He was always indifferent and behaved like he had the right to punish and abuse because someone always did him wrong. ANd someone always owed him something. (Yet he would talk like he needed no one and wouldn’t accept assistance from anyone. But everything he owns was given to him by family members who passed away and he is embarrassed by that).
I think after he was investigated for his lies, he realized he could not “pull one over on me” anymore and that’s when he finally stopped stalking me.
Has anyone else experienced this kind of behavior? I haven’t even gotten into the lies he told about himself….some of which he could potentially be prosecuted for.
Keeping_faith:
If we try to explain this behavior according to the rules of “normal,” we miss the point entirely. I think this is where the researchers and other “professionals” who haven’t lived this get themselves off track.
The P I was involved with “wanted to build a wellness center” — a big fiction, but it kept people thinking he had something going for him. So he’d use that excuse to talk about “high colonics” and suppositories in front of his 8- and 11-year-old daughters. I remember being furious at his highly inappropriate comments and explanations, watching the girls embarrassment. I just thought his behavior was a pointless lapse in judgment. But, NO! He was totally getting off on everyone’s discomfort.
Yes, that’s exploitation, but not the way Dr. Steve described it.
Many of them spin webs of fantasy about their accomplishments, even when they have HONEST ACCOMPLISHMENTS, they embellish them, lie, make up outrageous ones.
There are so many “former navy seals” who are impostors, that they could fill the Astrodome. My P-bio father had a tremendous amount of actual accomplishments, but he always lied in interviews to the press, and was NEVER CONSISTENT, so when he got older and wanted a “book” about himself written by someone else, he didn’t want the man to investigate any of these lies. But, when you are paying someone to write and “publish” a vanity book about yourself, they will write whatever you want them to. LOL That doesn’t make the book legitimate or true. The man called me for a telephone interview and I offered him documents to prove that 3/4 of everything my P-bio father had said were lies, but he declined to see them as he had “agreed” not to investigate that aspect of my father’s life. LOL Talk about a paint job! Cover it all up! Pretend it doesn’t exist. LOL
Interestingly enough in the obit article of my P-bio father in the NYTimes when he died, 3/2 of the article was about one of his X-wives who had used him to build herself up into a celebrity in her own right much like Priscilla Presley had used Elvis. There actually is a great deal of similarity between Priscilla and my X-“step mother” as they were both 15 yr old girls with “big hair” and lots of trashy make up, but they eventually remolded themselves into a “higher class” woman who was admired for her own accomplishments, though, quite frankly, I think my X-step mother did better financially and intellectually and is quite a bright, beautiful and accomplished person who has apparently married well, has children, and a good solid life post-daddie-dearest. Quite frankly I applaud her very much.
There are a lot of posts about their exes setting up the next victim before they leave. Ditto here. For the entire 2 years we were together, my ex was calling all different women and along the way hooked the one he is with now. He bled me dry financially and when I finally ran out of money, looked at me coldly and said, “it’s time.” In other words, time to move on to the next victim. Thinking back, I recall a remark he made one time during a fight. He kept saying, “i need my own place but you know how much rent is out there??” What a lazy ass loser. He didn’t want to put in the work/effort to get his own place. He mooched off me and now is mooching off his other victim. He thought he’d escape with the car I paid for. NAH! Didn’t happen. So now he’s worse off than before because he’s stuck in his low-paying job and the OW can’t afford to float a car loan for him like I did. All I can say is he made is bed and now has to “lie” in it LOL!! She’s paying her mortgage on her own like I did, the grocery bill, utilities and all the baggage. This guy can pack his stuff up in a large trash bag at any given time to move onto the next.
I laugh to myself because he was married when he met me and pretended for 2 years that we were going to be married when his divorce went through. He is saying the same crap to the OW. Only now, his divorce really did go through because I told the wife where he lives so she could get the papers out. So now, I’m sitting back watching the show. He’s probably crawling out of his skin because the OW wants a ring and he either has to pay-up or move on. I give it another 3 months and he’s out the door to another.
How does a guy like this find a woman to take him in all the time?
Iwonder: That’s easy … they just lie to everyone and anyone.
Peace.
I don’t think my S really had any kind of enjoyment of the games. I think this is just how he lives his life. He doesn’t have much concept that he is missing a piece. He just doesn’t understand why pathological lying and breaking promises would be such a big deal to someone. I think he just expects that the women he plays will eventually get pissed off because that’s what he’s used to, and he will just go find another one. What an odd way to live. There is a little drum roll in my head, waiting to find out how the army will prosecute him. The army investigator called one of my friends today who met him. She told him point blank that he did not walk with any kind of disability, walking devices, or have any speech impediments. She said the army guy was acting as if he was angry at the S for duping them.
It really amazes me that this guy was clever enough to dupe someone like me, but too stupid to cover his tracks. He left tons of evidence of his con artistry. There is no way he can get out of this one.