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.)
Joanie123, your true story floors and saddens me, for it is so-o-o-o close to my own. Someone tagged me today, in a comment section, under the profile I posted for my ex on womansavers.com, about your story, so I had to take a look for myself. Hope you do not mind that someone mentioned your blog on that other site. Whoever tagged me was one positive, feed-forwarding individual. The difference between your story and my own..while I truly believe that my ex (IMO, a SPATH!) also has SERIALLY committed marriage fraud to THREE WOMEN, not just one, I was fortunate to not have married him, after almost a decade of living with him. I wanted to, at one time. I would have had he not turned out to be the fraud I found him to be, finally. I think, had I married him, he also, would have used my good credit to pay of his $17K debt to his sister, who, I think, was WISE enough to have him sign a doc stating that, if he ever went bankrupt, he would NOT be absolved of his debt to her. I suspect that his 3RD WIFE, the one I assume he married after he ditched me, had to assume that debt. So, I very well understand MARRIAGE FRAUD. I am so sorry that that happened to you. Thank God, Buddha, The Goddesses Kali and Saraswati, and/or my Higher Power, that I DID NOT MARRY HIM! You have support up here, with all the LF members. Stay positive. We all will help you through it!
Zim
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As to my comment’s to the 3 ring circus ” I have a third grade education “, actually I made it all the way to the twelf grayd…not that it matter’s, but there ya go…
Constantine!!
that’s my favorite word! It works beautifully on spaths.
My exspath had an absolute cow when I said, “whatever” to his lies. I was not allowed to accuse him of lying, so “whatever” very effectively took the wind out of his imaginary sails.
Hens…..your high level education is a given!!!!!
BUT….what I really wanted to know… is……. 🙂 Don’t you attend services at the Babtist Church on Sundays?
LOL!!!!!
(Sorry…..still got some smartass in me today!)
Hens….
am i to take it that you told the truth when you said you had a third grade education???!!! In addition, you have a forth grade, 5th grade, 6th grade….12th grade education?
well well. educated. a job. and a pulse. and gay. you possess the qualities to be the best friend of this girls dream…
funny, compassionate, animal lover, and holder of common sense make you even sweeter. now… if you dance neeked under the neon moon, then… you’d be perfect. :))
Constantine, you said:
‘Empathetic people have a certain delicacy about them, for example, in the way they comport themselves, and in their dealings with others, that Ss are generally unable to duplicate for very long. At first, yes, but eventually you do just get that “feel” that you’re dealing with someone who is merely a mask on top of a giant yawning emptiness.’
on lf it often starts with ‘authoritative’ posts,
posts with a lot of personal data (ie where the person lives, what their affiliations are, etc. the very things most of us do not reveal when we first come),
often they show up in pairs (snort!), with one chatting and then supporting the other when the shit hits the cake,
then they challenge a comment, a concept or another poster directly,
the lack of respect and empathy show,
their is no humility,
their are pity plays,
there is a move to pit posters against one another, etc.
(and must add…then sometimes re invent themselves and show up again within days…remark on the posts made in their original posts or those made about them.)
the true marker for me of spaths (not just the garden variety whack job trolls)is a certain flat affect, a steeliness in the pursuit of mind fucking, which is revealed by their lack of modulation of behaviour in response to others, in fact, an escalation of behaviour when questioned (even when the questions are asked genuinely and innocently).
I had a real concern that this one would go after a lf poster or two who were having a hard time while this one was here. ergo, i poked it with a stick. out of spite. yup, one joy is a little spiteful.
OneStep
Oh that’s it. Thanks for this. You put my impression into words, FLAT AFFECT. That’s how that person struck me. FLAT. No nuances. No realness. Just annoyingly dismissive b/c nothing affected “it”. I’m thanking you b/c while I got that ‘off’ feeling, I didn’t have the right adjective. And maybe it’s my ocd coming out, but I like the right word b/c when spoken, it says way more than just that word or phrase and all who see it, know the fuller meaning. (ooops. does sound like ocd. oh well, my daughter would just say there goes mom being a weirdo again…)
ps i thought myself mean b/c i was happy that others thought the posts spathy too. thought i should not feel happy about it, but that’s my indulgence in spite and yes, there is a sweetness to it.
One Step,
the clown certainly had that flat effect. It’s like you’re talking to mr. spock. Lots of spaths sound that way – especially the young ones. There are other types, though, which I know you’re familiar with. These spaths are the type that can fool anyone with their empathetic sounding “tones”.
I’ve run into a few of those and it boggles the mind that they can wear such a perfect mask and yet be so diabolical. The key to recognizing those is usually the love bombing. It’s hard though because it’s human nature to want to accept love, not question it. Unfortunately, we HAVE to question when someone expresses intense feelings, if we haven’t known them for long.
When “we” (love fraud posters in general) first show up here, some of us appear quite “crazeeeee”—-that includes ME and probably “thee” as well. Our stories are off the charts unbelievable most of the time (even my therapist didn’t believe mine until I took in court documents and a witness that “yes, indeedy most of my family WAS actually trying to kill me!”) So just because someone sounds “crazee” doesn’t mean they are a psychopath….In fact, I think the real P-trolls that show up here SOUND TOO “SANE” AT FIRST…..I have teased several people here by telling them they were “starting to sound SANE” but it almost isn’t a joke, because when they FIRST came here they did sound “insane.” That is IF YOU HADN’T EVER BEEN AROUND A PSYCHOPATH YOU MIGHT THINK THEY WERE INSANE, but if you have been a victim of a psychopathic attack, you know how it FEELS to FEEL INSANE and to have others look at you with a “WTF????” look like you are really CRAZY.
I try to keep my eyes open for potentially disruptive posters here and NOTIFY DONNA, and TRY NOT TO ANTAGONIZE THEM and make them spew off more than they would anyway, as anytime you BOMB THE OUTHOUSE, there is sheet gets flung everywhere and I sure don’t want some person who is a newbie to be wounded in the explosion. I’ve been blasted here in the past few months and it didn’t bother me the least because I am past being “upset” by someone on the blog flaming me, but when it first happened to me 4+ years ago I was devastated and hurt because I ACCEPTED the blame for hurting someone else who was just throwing a tantrum—now I know that I may on ACCIDENT hurt someone’s feelings, but I am quick to apologize if there is any real issue going on, and most people here have been around long enough to realize I am not out to deliberately hurt anyone or run rough shod over anyone. We do build up relationship and trust between posters here over time, but at the same time, people can pretend to be anything they want to pretend too be over the internet. Ask One/Joy if you don’t believe that, she fell for a horrible scam of PRETEND PEOPLE from a fraudster, and there are others here who have also had people pretend to be something they weren’t over the internet. I’ve actually met some.
Again though, it is back to the “some people come into your life as a blessing and some as a LESSON” and I think I have found that some people can try to do you harm but the LESSON is worth the damage in the end. I’ve had to take the “remedial psychopath 101” class several times before I got the LESSON, but Each encounter is a new learning experience and another chance to GET THE LESSON. So let’s just take that EVIL CLOWN and put him/her/it in the “things I have learned from” box and keep the lesson!