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.)
mine do too. It hasn’t rained here in a couple weeks and it always rains here.
Lot’s of rain here – finally ~! wont have to water my potted plants for a week ~!
Hens-I want some of your rain. When I was in your state it was so freakin hot and it only rained one stinkin time.
SK, it wouldn’t matter if Bob Hare himself diagnosed this guy it does NOT mean “game over” he gives up, he quits, THEY THINK IT IS IMPOSSIBLE TO LOSE.,…anything that sets “back” like going to prison is only a TEMPORARY set back it is NEVER A LOSS.
My P son has been in prison for over half his entire life, but he thinks he is a WINNER and his brothers who have never been arrested much less had multiple felonies are “losers” cause he is soooo much smarter than they are. DUH???? He is so smug cause he’s the smartest inmate in the Texas prison system? BIG DEAL! He is a LOSER, but he cannot see that. So the answer is DON’T EVER TALK TO HIM !!!!
OMG sky your post above made me laugh aloud. ‘social spaz’ indeed. snort.
Donna Dixon, the gambling is complicated. If the money is coming from the government then it is money they don’t want to think they need. They don’t want to think of themselves as the kind of person who would need that. They want to think they are a more special kind of person, the kind of person who could afford to lose that kind of money. They see people who are publically able to throw money away as powerful. In that way gambling is not about winning, so they do not care if they do not win. It is about having the prestige to throw money away without caring. Because of this if they win they do not keep the money and pay bills or pay back someone they owe. They keep gambling or just buy drinks for the whole pub until the money is gone again, because for that brief period of time they can be that kind of person they wannabe. They take your money if they can and gamble not so they can win and pay back but so they can put across the attitude of not to caring about losing. Since it’s not usually money they have worked for indeed they don’t care about losing it and always have a back up plan to know where to scam more.
Skylar if your spath wasn’t so evil I would laugh out loud. Social spaz? Spathology indeed.
Oxy. You are right. The bigger win is for me to avoid him. No contact.
yesterday at work I gave the receptionist his name and pic with explicit instructions that he is to be turned away if he shows up like he did last year.
Hens you are on point!
I remember at the very end, when I broke up with my spath, I asked him why? Why did you take me on this two year trip to no where? Why did you cheat on your ex wife, why did you lie to that woman in florida only to dump her on a wim after after after… why jeff, why?
His reply after I blew his lies away… Because I can. That was his answer. I still have to work with this @ss hole.
sw – his reply after I blew his lies away…I really don’t give a fuck what you think or how you feel…
sorry you have to work with that assho
What a great description! Hits the nail on the head. Another slam dunk in my reflection of who I had been dealing with for years. This definitely hits the bill for my ex. I could have actually described him in exactly this way using similar words.
I was continuously baffled by the short process he goes through before taking what he wants. I did realize after some time that he goes straight from, “I want it,” to, “I will therefore take it,” in such an oversimplified way that there was absolutely NO consideration whatsoever of the consequences to himself or others. This article mentions the consequences to others very clearly, but he didn’t even care about the consequences to himself. If anyone tried to actually hold him accountable for any of his destructive actions, he’d just get pissed off at whomever it was “punishing” when what he then WANTED was unconditional forgiveness and for everyone to just ignore what he’d done. Yet another self-righteous want: No consequences.