The “sociopath,” boiled down, is someone who routinely does, and takes, what he wants, unconcerned with the impact of his behavior on others. Nothing in my mind defines his essence more than this concise, factual description. He is rather unique, and thus diagnosable as a sociopath, to this precise extent.
Sure, we’ve discussed this before, but it always merits, in my view, fresh reconsideration. And so let me add, I think, an important caveat: The sociopath doesn’t necessarily feel he has the “right” to what he’s pursuing, or planning to take.
Rather, he doesn’t feel he needs the right. He just needs the want.
Simply wanting what he wants, with or without the right to it, meets his standard for laying claim to his quarry.
Because after all, you may ask the sociopath, “Did you have a ”˜right’ to take that? To steal it?” And he may answer, with intellectual honesty, “No. I realize, intellectually, that I had no right to what I took.”
Which gets to the nub, the essence, of his condition: His” right” to what he wanted wasn’t relevant, didn’t even enter his thinking; rather, his wanting it was the sole factor necessary to support his comfortable, non-conflictual pursuit of it.
To sum up, the sociopath’s disordered essence is captured best in his pattern of taking, without remorse, what intellectually he may very well know doesn’t belong to him—he has no right to it—yet he takes it anyway.
To be clear: when I say that the sociopath intellectually can understand he may lack the “right” to what he’s taking, I’m not suggesting that he lacks a sense of entitlement. Quite the contrary: his sense of entitlement is all the more astounding for his intellectual awareness that he may lack the “right” to what he wants, yet still takes it. In doing so, he is exhibiting self-entitlement, and attitudes of contempt, in their gaudiest, most audacious forms.
One always must beware of oversimplifying complicated concepts. The sociopath’s disorder is complex on many levels. Yet on some levels the sociopath’s mentality isn’t so complicated at all. In some respects it’s pretty simple.
In this article I suggest the sociopath is, essentially, that strange, disconcerting, disruptive individual with a history, and pattern, of taking from others what doesn’t belong to him with an impoverished sense of shame and remorse. When you confront an individual with this history and pattern, you are dealing with a sociopath.
What he takes, and even how he takes it, are less relevant considerations that that he takes, with no right.
(This article is copyrighted © 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 and attitudes discussed.)
Hens-I hope your making a mountain out of a yellow string.
Lizzy I think I am, but was a trigger all the same, guess I am a drama queen. Has been a bad day but I will be ok….:)
Coping, I heard it explained really well once, so “to the point” and it was something like this:
When you start to think there is something wrong with you, look around you to find the source of this feeling. Usually it’s not something wrong with US but that someone is causing us to feel this way.
Spaths ALWAYS tick me off in this way. They unnerve me so quickly that I start suspecting I have a paranoia disorder the moment one pops up on the radar. Even this little visitor in LF threw my heart rate into a bit of a tail spin. The “skills” that we need to learn and EMPLOY are basically to learn how to immediately disconnect and let go, rather than go with our “bad old instincts” to latch on and try to “solve” or “understand” the impossible, thus starting the vicious cycle into utter madness. My instincts are always to argue back. I’m acquiring the self-discipline (for self-preservation) to just NOT do that, no matter how annoying that “holding back” feeling is. It’s a weakness that needs to be overcome. Spaths irritate me like a photo hanging on the wall tilted slightly off balance. My bones are just aching to go adjust it…then it tilts again….so I walk back and re-adjust….next thing I know I’ve wasted a whole day just trying to align a damn painting! Instead, just say, “Yup, that’s a crooked picture hanging on the wall. Big whoopie dee. I have better things to do.”
😀
Panther – You just described Gaslighting.
hi folks – than god for wifi in the hospital. god an email this aft from my dad (sent this am) saying that mom was doing very poorly (for days. fucker.) she has an infection that has triggered delusions, among other things.
he had sent the email at 930 am, and i say it around 430 pm. i called and asked if she was in the hospital – no greeting, nothing on my part. she had just been sent in the ambulance. i got here before he did. they are really backed up and people are stacked up in the hall – so only one person can be in at a time. when he showed up the nurse asked if i wanted to trade off with him, i said no.
it’s funny, i had a bad feeling about mom last night, and some more moments of clarity about dad. so here i am today richer for the work i did yesterday.
she’s mostly out of it – thinnks the dogs are here and a baby has been dropped in a box in the hallway. i am sure some of the stuff she is saying is from her years nursing. should have seen us trying to get her to use the bedpan. LOL . but i was also disgusted by the male nurse’s attitude, and asked him to go. old people are treated like meat and Alzheimer’s patients are treated like ground meat. i knlow they are busy but they don’t get to man handle her or talk to her two at a time or any of the other shit.
exhale.
they just took her for a chest cat scan. leaving the n sire alone…so i left and came out into the waiting room.
i really really really don’t want anything to do with him. hard as nails one joy is. i will cry for his life and the father i wanted when he goes. but i really don’t want any of his life to touch me.
Hens…..if it’s any consolation….we were given the same earplugs at the ‘range’. And I can guarantee you……your spath does NOT have the monopoly on the ear plugs!
Blue cushy with yellow wire string….YEP….here they are….right next to my ‘buddy’ in her case.
If ya don’t watch it…….well….you know the routine! 🙂
It’s impossible to make a mountain out of a yellow string…..it could never support the mountain! Let it crumble Hens…….
Try to regain control of your emotional response to triggers…..none of it matters…except your comfort and health!
Now….come on over for some Chicken and Dumplings with me and the kids…….that’s a good tonic darlen!
XXOO
EB
One…..I’m sorry about your mother….but pleased you are there! Kick some male nurse ass if you have to!
I send you mojo to get through this time…..and I think there will be some healing in here somewhere for ya darlen.
Remember……my recent most valuable and poignant lesson…..Take the high road….even just for now!
It’s NOT about him…..it’s about your mom.
Do what you need to and know your not alone!!!
XXOO
EB
Hi Everyone
First, I take our “visitor” as a prime example of how the general population views us. Unless you have “really and authentically” been targeted by a spath, you will just never comprehend what we are all doing here on LF.
Some of the arguments made by our “visitor” are not that far off from those made by well meaning bystanders. I hear comments like that all the time when I try to explain Narcissism/Sociopathy to others. Even when I try to educate them, it has very little effect. There is just a cock of the head and a glazed look in their eyes (kind of funny and frustrating at the same time). This just strenghtens my resolve to be educated and to educate those who have earned my trust and only for those who have my best interest and healing at heart. If a person is looking at Sociopathy in a clinical sense, then yes, our comments on here might seem sensational and perhaps, too broad. But for those of us who have had first hand experience with these disordered folk, there is no discounting our stories. The truth has been revealed to us and there is no turning back. We see behind the mask now and we see just how many masks are out there. I won’t apologize for that gift. And I won’t allow anyone to minimize my intuition and knowledge.
Second, I have found on LF enormous strength and valid answers to my confusion. Thank you to ZimZoomit, KatyDid, Skylar, Oxy, and so many others who have contributed to my healing. Because, really, it doesn’t matter if anyone from the outside “gets it”. We “get it”…And I am grateful.
Yes, indeed the sociopath takes what he wants. A person with a normal human conscience could never pull it off like a spath does.
I have to take breaks from LF because when I think back on the past it overwhelms me how my spath used me and pulled the matrimonial marriage fraud to deceive me.
My spath had a secret marriage before me years ago when he was a kid of 21. He wasn’t with his wife long but long enough to make a kid. He never paid child support and his ex wouldn’t let him have anything to do with his kid because she didn’t consider him human.
They were married for 5 years but maybe lived together one. In that 5 years after there was no contact. He owed his ex thousands of dollars in back child support. The courts came to arrest him and throw him in jail. His ex-wife filed for divorce and told him he could relinquish all rights to his kid. (Her new husband adopted the kid). However he would have to give her a settlement and pay back child support. He didn’t have the money so his mother co-signed a loan for him.
Time went by and he couldn’t pay the loan which went into the thousands. If he didn’t pay the loan his mother would get stuck paying it. He didn’t want his mother to have to pay it so he hatched a plan to join a dating agency, find a sap, romance her, marry her, and have her help him get out of debt.
That sap was me. However I didn’t know about the situation till after we were married. He asked his long-term girlfriend to help him but she couldn’t or wouldn’t as she had debts of her own.
So he, his mother, the long-term girlfriend and my brother-in-law were in on the bridal scam. And this is why they kept my husband’s secret condition quiet from me. They were like the “ma Barker gang” and the only thing missing were the black & white stripped prison suits. If they wore them they would have made a matching set.
When my ex husband married me he told me we had to work hard to pay off his debts so we could get a good start and get on with our married life.
As I told you before the week he paid off his debts he deserted me for a rich girl in another state and after he used her he went back to his long-term girlfriend and they had a baby together.
The night the mask fell we split up. He told me exactly why he married me and how much he despised me and how he hated play acting and sleeping with me just so he could get his debt paid off. I was so overwhelmed by it I ran out of the house.
We lived near a train station and I jumped onto the train tracks to end my life. Just as the train was coming close a good samaritan jumped down, gathered me up and took me to a hospital where I got counseling. They never told me my husband was a “sociopath.” I didn’t even know he was a “psychic vampire” or what one was till years later when I figured it out and it all came together. I’m healed now but I still live with the scars. For years I was okay and now I think about it a lot.
I believe it’s unresolved issues with my mind I have to work out.
Hopefully I’ll find complete and total peace with it soon and be able to put it to rest.
I’m taking a break from LF but looking forward to writing my Halloween story on the nephilim.
Just checking in.
Joanie123
Thanks EB ”“ my mojo feels pretty good. I see the stone I am to him.
I haven’t been well, was going to go to the doctors tomorrow if my chext didn’t clear”.and here I am in the land of bugs. Go the mask and lots of hand sanitizer! Going to go back in and see if she is back from the cat scan.
Not going to stay a whole lot longer ”“ I want to see her into a bed and as settled as she can be (she will be staying in). this is going to be hard on her.
I’ll come back in the morning to visit before work ”“ no doubt she won’t get much sleep tonight.
There were a really beautiful few moments when she knew that I loved her, and then she faded out again.