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.)
“Nobody else knows about this, nobody.”
…and maybe it’s better that way. There will always be people who will ask “How could you have been so dumb.”
Everyone here as been in your shoes, so we understand.
If he manages to talk you out of more money, please, please go no contact. Many, if not most of us, simply can’t say no. If you’ve got this problem, he’ll roll you again and again.
Bright Blessings to You in the Coming Year.
You’re Smart. You’re going to do just fine!!!
The subtledness….made me sick when I saw him just standing in the grocery line…but I did it…why? They almost seem childlike — here, I’ll pay for this.. you pay for the majority and you cook it, and you have the house, the pets, the fireplace, the serenity — but look, I paid for the (cheapest things he could) aren’t you grateful I am handsome, and at least act like I am with you..and yes, I will not know you tomorrow, even though I ate the food you cooked, watched your TV, used your computer, slept in your bed, had sex with you (‘scuse me, where you there), got up, said I have to pee, gee, look at my neck, let me go weigh myself..aren’t I cute…
I want to burn that self satisfied smirk off his face with a propane torch. Does that make me as evil as him?
Sarah999
“One of the signs of the sociopath (for me) was “UNCONDITIONAL HATE”.
Lord did you say a mouth full! Yes, it’s this “unconditional hate” that is still so hard for me to wrap my mind around. How can anyone be filled with so much “hate” and still be normal and stable as a person. Hate destroy both the heart and soul. I read somewhere that they feel and think in black and white terms. One person (new target) is prized and loved and the another (last victim) is hated and devalued at every opportunity. Yes at times it feels just like “unconditional hate”!!
I don’t have that hate , I find it difficult to Love someone and despise them at the same time! I know what he did is wrong and I know he is not going to change! It’s Instinc now , He’s 28! He will be dead or in Jail or Prision for the rest of His Life. Oh ! He will put on a Show but the truth of what He is inside means He will never have relationship with anyone!
And Even though He is an adult. I don’t know If He objectivly look at how He treats People and see that it is Him that is Chucked UP! So If the Damage was there in the Breeding , It’s not His fault! And If the Damage was learned as Survival , from Birth! It’s not His Fault!
So It occures to me that what we have here is a class of humanity that is less desriable to deal with , not selfaware enough to manage it’s self!
So by the time Science gets the Name spelled right! Everyone here will have given back to the Planet and be free of Physical limits anyways. LOVE JJ
BloggerT7165
“The lives of most psychopaths are devoid of a stable social network or warm, close bonds.”
Thanks for the links. Most have been very enlightening but also discouraging as well but still thanks again!
“I read somewhere that they feel and think in black and white terms”
This was one of my S/N/P’s favorite terms of expression; “It’s Black and White!”…EVERYTHING was Black and White to him.
Things were often exaggerated, usually to justify his anger.
Things were expressed in extremes – instead of “usually” or “rarely”, it was, “always” and “never”
He heard what he wanted, or would twist things – I’d say, after a 12 hour day with his daughter, “I need some time to myself” to study, and he heard “I hate your daughter” and then proceeded to yell to her in front of me, “She hates you!”
I’ll never forget the time last year (May?) when he yelled at both of us from Friday to Tues, off/on ALL weekend, about her math that he didn’t understand. When she brought the answer home on Tues, he didn’t even apologize to us when we had it right. It was awful, just awful.
He ate 4 crackers yesterday.
He ate some more today.
How many more did he eat?
2, 3, or 5?
She and I both figured it was 2
It didn’t say he ate almost as many (3), or more than that (5), so we figured that it was some more (2).
Well, he was completely hung up on “yesterday” and “today”; yelling “It’s black and white! Yesterday has nothing to do with today! The stupid question makes no sense at all!”
He yelled and waved his arms about it most of the weekend and kept leaving out the “more” in “How many more did he eat?” It was worse in the evening when he had been drinking. He’d get even more argumentative. His daughter was in tears more than a couple of times over it and we both tried to explain it to him repeatedly.
On the Monday, he came home from work and was still yelling about it saying, “I went to work today and told 12 people about that question and they agree with me – it doesn’t make sense!” I’m quite certain he had the question wrong anyways. The “more” was critical and he kept leaving it out.
I couldn’t believe that he was that obsessed over a math question that he would go to work and talk about it all day.
We tried repeatedly to explain it – that it was a teaser question intended to make her think. Then he was angry because he figured it should be in her English lessons, not Math.
He was impossible.
PB,
“He was impossible.”
Y’know PB, I read somewhere that the conflict is usually not about the apparent matter at hand, but some underlying issue.
I think we all get annoyed with the latest fads in Elementary Education. The thing is, we don’t obsess about it. We say things like “Sweetie, you’ve got to learn this for now, but don’t worry. In college you’ll study real Math, which tends to be more concrete.” Then we drive on.
Only a cluster B will use something like “Fad Math” in a child’s homework to flame on and on about for an entire weekend. He wants to dominate and win, demonizing you, making both you and the child miserable. If it wasn’t the kid’s homework, it would be the rain, an inconvenient product packaging, or the way the child parts her hair. Neither you nor the child is supposed to feel good, and you and the child are not supposed to have a good relationship.
When I worked three nights a week in an after hours children’s ministry with an S, I used to wonder where on earth all the drama came from. Sure, sometimes the socio-economically disadvantaged children’s parents brought in a bit of drama, but not usually. Most of it seemed to come from the S’s perennial rage and dissatisfaction. Usually he was mad at me for some shortcoming of mine. Since I’m far from perfect, for a while I bought in to the validity of his complaints. Then his complaints got sillier. Eventually they became outright nonsense. Still I humored him for the most part. Standing up to him only made him act out worse. Eventually I realized that he had to be a winner in everything, all the time. That, and for him to feel he was a winner, there had to be an clear loser for him to have victory over. Usually, I was the person he selected for that role, but not always. Often he chose one of my two children, sometimes he found someone else to flame. Occasionally he’d seem sated for as long as 2 weeks, and we’d start to imagine things were getting better.
His final tantrum was a doozie. It immediately followed a night when he and his emotionally disturbed grandson had acted out atrociously.
Their behavior was over the top. The grandson kept doing dangerous things when his Grandfather was not in the room, then accusing other children of hurting him when his grandfather returned. When his Grandfather returned, he ranted, raved and acted as if he believed every ridiculous claim the manipulative child made. In the process of buying into the child’s lies, he verbally attacked me and several children in the ministry. Then he stewed over the night’s incidents for about 5 days. During that time, he managed to work himself into a towering rage, convincing himself that he and his grandson had been terribly abused. He also managed to work his entire family full of drama queens into a total frenzy of shrieking, clawing fury.
His final tantrum was full of outrageous, delusional claims and insults, all masked as a “professional staff meeting” after hours. The other woman who was called in to witness his diatribe sat in queasy silence, genuinely traumatized. I gotta admit, I lost the last vestiges of my patience with him that night. My years of gentleness and patience had clearly been mistaken for weakness and stupidity. Obviously, I had been wasting my time by trying to be kind to this lunatic.
As I listened to his insane rant, I finally got it. It wasn’t the matter at hand that had him twisted into knots, it was the disordered thinking and pathological desire to “win” at all costs that was scripting all our interactions. The week or two of quiet I had occasionally enjoyed wasn’t improvement, it was the calm before the next storm. His behavior was not going to get better. It was actually getting worse.
Cluster Bs are nutbars. It’s rarely the matter at hand when a conflict arises. If you treat them as if they were severely mentally challenged, you might be able to get the drama with less personal cost. I certainly wouldn’t try “reason” with a cluster B. Clear structure would probably work best for real negotiations, and mollification would probably be best for addressing trivialities.
Before I knew about Cluster Bs, I used to think that childish adults could grow up if treated in the same benevolent manner we treat teenagers. This was ignorance, and it’s a shame that so many people remain ignorant of the truth about Cluster B disorders. If someone hasn’t grown up by the age of 25, they’re not going to.
I love Math
Where is answer d none of the above?
I took two seperate psyc evals. They had Questions that had no answer? They said pic the best choice! For some questions , no answers where acceptable! Needless to say they were’nt crazy about my choice not to answer those questions!
E.C.
How are they going to survive? LOVE JJ
I’m a Mathematician. I studied Mathematics instead of liberal arts because I didn’t enjoy trying to figure out my professor’s prejudices in order to leverage a decent grade. Mathematics is challenging and fun for me.
Refusing to select one of several wrong answers to a Multiple choice math question makes sense to me. If they’re all wrong, then you don’t get a better grade for choosing the wrong answer as opposed to choosing no answer. In the case you describe, not selecting one of the wrong answers is the closest you can come to being correct.
Some things are cut and dried. Not everything mind you, but most of Mathematics falls into that category. There are two types of pathological though patterns that lend themselves to serious dysfunctionalism: Everything’s relative, and everything’s black or white. Both are invalid. When either invade institutions, you can safely conclude the inmates are running the asylum.
I sympathize. Bonzo stuff like that came up all the time when I would dabble in liberal arts.