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.)
ElizabethBennett..you wrote, “When my N who brought me here called me to “get closure” he told me that he was in therapy. I know that if he was, he only went as condition that his crazy wife would take him back, and he also probably went to see if he could fool the shrink for his own entertainment. I just cannot believe that anyone who was truly ever spathed or narcd could possibly believe that they could be cured”
Yeah, my ex tried that one of me, too..said he intended to go see a therapist (the same one I had seen, years before, after I fought/won an EEO grievance, so was having some adjustment disorder from what my ex boss..ANOTHER SPATH..had put me through!) Me ex also said he would return going to AA meetings (which he had stopped going to after moving in with me..as if I should be HIS therapist, instead? Ya think?)
hahahahahahahaaaa..snort..gafaw..teeheeheeheeeeee..hohoho.. (EB up here has helped me learn how to laugh better)
If he did go back to AA or to see any therapist, it was probably so he could glean more co-dependency jargon that he could continue to misuse, flip the script..to call others “enmeshed”, “obsessed”, “over-reactive”..like he did with his wife before me..I think he even used a few of his terms to describe his own mother [Aunt Bea like lady who morphed, after years of seemingly loving me, into a mother like the Manchurian Candidate had] .. what a stupid dolt..and dyslexic, too..had to help him with all those foreign words, French and Spanish, while he sat on the commode each morning, completing his crossword puzzles.
A friend of mine once said about her nasty ex, “I will never let any man RENT MY MIND again!” .. I finally GET what she meant!
Zim
I’m still gafawing, EB.., I went into hysterics over that one.. A narc/spath cured??? hahahaha..snort….snicker..chortle..squeeeeeeeeee..heeheeeeeeheeeee
Zim
Zim-I let that one rent my mind for a really long time. It took me so long, over 2 years to get over it. All the while, Oxy and ErinB were telling me on here over and over, along with my stepmom, that I was letting him rent my head for free. It took me a long time time to realize it.
I let the one next door do it a long time too. She is still physically there next door and I do still post about it, but it is now me just realizing all the new aspects of her Nness that are popping out all the time. She sent me an email when I was out of town-back in August that basically let me see her for what she really is. I stood up to her without a confrontation with a return email and all the infatuation that I had over her in my head, and all the drama, left out of me. I am so relieved to know now that a relationship with her could NEVER have ever worked in a million years, and that I would have been beyond hurt if she had been willing to go there, and I would be a basketcase all over again.
Ana-“IT” really freaked me out too, and that’s why I don’t like clowns either!
Good morning Katydid – Sisterhood said ” I dont feel safe here anymore and it isn’t really even because of the spath that was on here yesterday.”
Elizabeth Bennett,
LOLOL! I hear ya 🙂
Elizabeth, you wrote, “Ana- ”IT” really freaked me out too, and that’s why I don’t like clowns either!”
That balloon I found tied to a forsythia bush in my back yard..it looked like something a CLOWN would tie on the bush, and it wasn’t even my birthday! I get the jeebies around clowns, now, too. Think I read somewhere about pedos using clown outfits to perp on kiddies, at fairs and birthday parties, and my ex seems a LOT like one of those clown types, now that I think about it. EEEK! Funny thing, though, how he seemed paranoid when he rode on a Ferris Wheel with me at a fair..he said he didn’t like them. I think I remember reading somewhere how one trait of BPD (not that I know he has it) is commitment phobia doubled with fear of enclosures or heights (feeling trapped)
Zim
Zim
Darwin’s mom, your post above is AWESOME!!!!! You are so right about the HOSPITAL ANALOGY. There ARE bad germs in a hospital that put us at some risk, but when we NEED A HOSPITAL we have to go there to be healed. We just WASH OUR HANDS to get the bad bugs off! GREAT ANALOGY!!!!!
And thank you for trusting my insight, but I get “spathed” too once in a while now when I don’t pick up on one for a while….got flamed a few months ago, but that person doesn’t come here any more….I didn’t respond to the flame at all….just ignored it totally, posted around them like they were not there–eventually I got an “apology” on my g-mail account which is listed here, which I did respond to with two words, “thank you” and that was the end of it. I never saw them on the blog again, and didn’t hear from them on the g-mail account.
When I first came to LF when I was flamed once it DEVASTATED me and made me want to leave LF, but fortunately Donna immediately saw it and took care of it. Now that I am further along the healing road and not nearly so RAW, I let the flames just wash off my back like rain on a duck’s back.
Sure, we have developed “cyber friendships” here with people that we grow to have sincere affection and trust for, but no one on the other side of this screen can HURT ME if I don’t allow it, and I will NOT allow it. What are they going to do, point a gun at their computer screen and pull the trigger? LOL
Sky, I didn’t see the part where the clown accused your murderous ex of having Asperger’s, but as an Aspie myself, I am offended! The last thing we need is to get confused for spaths!!!! Socially retarded but harmless ain’t the same thing as socially retarded and evil!!! When the Aspie version of a mask slips, what people usually see is something like a three-legged dog trying to eat a bowl of honey with chopsticks while singing a zany song that’s been stuck in his/her head all day. What I mean is that Aspies are social “fakers” because we feel funny/awkward/freaky and don’t know what to do. Spaths do it cause they feel NOTHING and hate everyone!!!! My mom is a MAJOR Aspie, and the only time this woman could hurt someone would be if she got lost in a monologue about the color purple and then forgot to take the cake out of the oven (the suffering you endure is eating that cake!)
One/Joy, you mentioned how quickly people jumped on that visitor. I agree! That was swift action, and I think most of us were just not in the effing mood for this shit again. Spaths are soooo painfully BORING that their presence confuses me. I cannot decide if I want to kill them for being evil or kill myself to avoid the mundane drag of their lifeless personalities. Did it really think that ANY of us were just at the edge of our seats DYING to read its psych profile so that it could prove it was normal? My eyes were glazing over loooong before it posted a huge list of numbers and then started strutting around like it had discovered the Holy Grail!!! Ahahaha.
You know what the greatest irony is about Circus saying that spaths could be cured? The paradox of hearing this from a creature that would NEVER admit it was a spath, hence PROVING itself wrong…..so ironic. If it would have said it were a spath and was desperately seeking humility and personal growth (and meant it, haha), then it might have proven its own point. But the key is that a spath will never admit its a spath (almost never, unless there is an advantage to admitting its a spath). So, she negated her own point.
Sky: the reason her mask sucked so badly is cause she was so young. I bet she took notes and will be more careful next time. Not to mention, I bet her mask is enough to fool the average person. But she came into Spathinatorville. To burst her poor wittle ego, we’ve seen worse!!! We’ve battled worse and won (eg going NC, seeing the truth, escaping), so this 20-year-old amateur spath didn’t have a chance 😉 …..if it was even 20.
Sky, you mentioned pointing and laughing at the spath earlier. In this case, it was, “Awww, how cute! Look at the little baby spath! Its mask isn’t fully formed yet!” Ahahaha 😛