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.)
Oxy and all, (yes! dancingnancies, sooo in same mindset as you)
I think it a great learning opportunity. Oxy had her spidey sense activated. Others who are new did as well but I think they talked themselves out of their alert and worked to “be fair”. I remember the first time I GOT it, that someone who was constantly shifting their story actually had a hidden agenda different from the one they stated. That was a HUGE moment for me, that I was not so deficient after all to discern BBBBBSSSSS. (b/c up to then, I actually believed my spath that I was just a paranoid mental case.).
To me, the lesson is:
1) TRUST your spidey sense! It’s there for a reason.
2) The ONLY solution is to go grey rock. Observing will affirm whether your spidey sense applies to the current situation or if spidey sense is triggering the memory of a previous assault by an spath.
3) Once an spath has been identified, don’t feed the predator. Get away. On LF, send a “report abusive comment” and do as Oxy does, post around them as if they aren’t there, in other words, GREY ROCK.
I am so pleased with myself b/c it is taking me less and less time to ID spaths or merely toxic people (as Oxy pointed out before, people don’t have to be completely spaths to exclude them from my inner circle, Toxic people aren’t allowed intimacy with me either.)
Katy, who is SO happy to mark that she is growing stronger boundries.
dancingnancies: Amazing book! I read half of it before it mysteriously went missing while I was living with my spath.
I plan to get a new copy soon!
Good night again…..for real this time. I’m sweepyhead!
OMG Panther!!!! I am so happy you said that!!! I thought it as well. Actually I thought Myers actually turned into Ex-Humbris (remember-but the flip side, the persona of the wife) and the comment you “referrnecd” hit as well…the site. Make sence..without spelling it out.?? Maybe its the 3rd time around…LOL. I don’t know and guess it ultimately doesn’t matter. My gut was right on regardless!!! Yeah!!
Am soo happy you saw that too!! It’s NOT paranoia…it is very real. Fighting against those “thoughts” that seem to unreal to be true. LOL
I am feeling good today.
Someone posted on my face book today “some people come into our lives as a blessing, and some people as a LESSON.” That is so true, and the thing is that the trolls here when we spot them and realize what they are, can be a GOOD LESSON.
When I first came to LF about 4 years a go, there was a regular poster here named Aloha and she and I got FLAMED by a blogger here and we were both DEVASTATED, thinking that something we had said had “hurt” a “poor innocent victim of a psychopath” (who really was a P herself) and I remember how I cried and was going to leave LF, because I thought I had hurt someone else, but Donna to the rescue and blocked that person and “saved the day.”
You know, many times by the time someone gets here to LF they are so raw and wounded that any kind of chaos will wound them further because like One/Joy said about her mom, even a touch is perceived as painful….and sometimes when we reach out to “touch” someone even in a loving way, it is perceived as painful, so we do try to be tactful and still speak the truth in a comforting way, but we don’t always succeed and sometimes we do indeed hurt someone, but the ATMOSPHERE that the psychopath throws around can usually be spotted pretty quickly ONCE YOU’RE LISTENING to your gut instincts.
So, good lesson for us all. The hardest ones to spot are the ones that are the ones who have been involved in a 2-abuser relationship with another psychopath and are the “loser” of that fight…for a while they will sound “real” but eventually you will start to understand that they are NOT really growing or reaching out to comfort others much, but are pretty attention seeking and blame placing, not willing to accept that THEY might have had some “issues” as well…it is all CONDEMNATION OF OTHERS…
Dancing, I agree De Becker’s book THE GIFT OF FEAR is awesome! a MUST READ for all of us!@.......
Once you see em around a few times…..they do raise your suspicians.
Usually they start with NO STORY…..or NO appreciation for LF……think of how ‘we’ started.
Very few people just find LF and jump in and post…..it’s the natural intimidation factor we all experience…..will i be accepted, do I know enough to keep up with these posters, is my experience ‘valid’ enough, can I add to this group, who are these people, are they safe ….yadayda…..
When someone comes on a support group and doesn’t post any sort of story and jumps right in as the ‘educator’……UH HELLLLLO!
Bottom line…..we are here to be educated…….Yes….BUT so much of our education comes from others vulnerabilities that they are willing to share wiht us….not so much ‘book smart’. We are everyday people and part of the surprise at LF is how others have experienced similar toxicitiy in their own lives….we take away…..we are NOT alone….OMG!
There is some sort of comfort in knowing we are NOT alone…..it’s a validation we are not crazy, nuts or whatever we were portrayed as. NO……none of us is pleased that ‘you’ experienced such horridness……but there IS comfort.
We have experts, we all have access to books, internet research and the likes. It would be ridiculous to rely on some newby freak and deem them the authority!
It’s prudent for ANY of us to cross reference information and naturally filter it to what our experiences are. None of us are looking to diagnose another…..but there IS comfort when doing a google search on ‘WHY DOES MY HUSBAND/Brother/Mother etc.. DO THIS OR THAT?’……and come up with an answer to our question that we can identify with.
When I was informed by a Psychologist about Sociopathy……and delved into my own research……it made it ALL clear on how I WAS TO PROCEED……that HE wasn’t going to change and I was spinning my wheels.
Now…..whether or not some quack or valid professional diagnosis him with the PAPERWORK….as a bonafide Spath….or not will NEVER affect me! I lived the behaviors and wanted better for us. I took this knowledge and found my own realizations of WHAT I HAD TO DO! It took 28 years to figure this out! I gave it plenty of time and effort.
I do believe he’s a spath on what level or how bad or class or whatever……I don’t care-I know enough about him to knows hes’ dangerous and toxic….It doesn’t matter when he’s sending an Arian Nation’s skinhead to kick in my front door and cause harm………DOES IT?
Panther,
you are so right on. It is validating to encounter a spath, label it, and predict its behavior. That’s why I don’t run from spaths, I just watch them. It’s like a game: Spot the Spath. SCORE!
Spaths use the tool of deception to confuse us and hurt us. Once we label the spath and REFUSE TO DEVIATE FROM THAT LABEL, (as the clown demanded we do) we are free to walk around and point at the spath and say, “Look at the funny spath!” It has no emotional affect on us except to make us laugh. That’s what’s called psychological hygiene.
It’s actually very difficult to master, it can be dangerous to our minds and to our bodies. But the only other choice we have is to live in fear with our heads in the sand. We are adults, we have to face that big scary world because IT AIN’T GOING AWAY.
LOL! the clown said, “I won’t be coming back!” and you saw right through it. Classic. My spath said, “I can go to where no one will ever find me.” I WISH.
🙂
That poor clown did everything wrong and couldn’t figure out how we knew. It will probably go back to report at the spath website where it will get taunted and ridiculed for having been outed by the “stupid empaths.” 🙂
.
Oxy – I love the “LESSON” lesson. I should post that up on my cubicle wall.
Sky
That was a fun game of SPOT THE SPATH.
Pretty easy.
Even funnier when they demand to know how they were spotted.
Now I know.
I wish I would have known this three years ago.
Superkid
Constantine, your post is so right….and sometimes I wish I could put my “finger” on how I “know” as quickly as I seemed to with this “circus” character…and any attention FEEDS them….and so WATCHING from the sidelines, SILENTLY watching, not poking them with a stick to see them respond, is the BEST way to handle them, as well as, of course, NOTIFYING DONNA.
I too encountered a very demanding and narcissistic person a few days ago and they were VERY IRRITATING to me, but not hurtful, just disgusting at the UNMITIGATED GALL displayed by this person who felt so entitled to DEMAND that I dance to their tune over so many minor things. Unfortunately I was somewhat trapped by their presence and did try my best to appease them (unsuccessfully BTW) LOL but NC works very well with this type of person and I am now able to go NC with that person and they are out of my life entirely, completely and forever. I am also not the first person to go NC with this person, I understand, and most of their family has done so as well, and I sure do UNDERSTAND WHY the family would NC them…which they complain about loudly.
My cousins that live not too far away from me have some relatives (her siblings) that are really very trashy and high in P traits as well as feeling entitled….and they abuse her husband all the time. He tries to say NO to their demands but ends up giving in to them eventually so they of course continue to abuse him. I’ve tried to get him to say NO AND MEAN IT to them, but after increasing numbers of requests/demands, he will then give in, so he has trained them to just increase the number of demands on him until he will eventually give in.
We must set our boundaries and STICK TO THEM solidly. NOT give in eventually. So when we see a person here who is behaving in a counter productive way, we must IGNORE THEM ON THE BLOG, but notify Donna ASAP!