(This article is copyrighted (c) 2012 by Steve Becker, LCSW. The 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.)
“Loyalty” and “the sociopath” are incompatible terms. We’ve discussed many traits of the exploitive personality, but let’s not minimize a very vital one: deficient loyalty. Clearly, deficient loyalty is a sociopathic characteristic.
A deficiency of loyalty can be disguised very well by clever, self-serving rationalizations. But you will not find the case of a true sociopath about whom you will ever be able to say: he (or she) was really, through and through, truly loyal.
Loyal? What does “loyal” mean? It’s actually pretty simple to define: when you are loyal, you “have the backs” of those who’ve “had your back.”
You “have their backs” because you want to “have their backs.” You are glad, if not grateful, for the chance to “have the backs” of those who’ve had yours. This is loyalty. It’s application feels good, and it feels consonant with the loyal individual’s “value system.”
Now, in some cases “loyalty” can lead to corruption. For instance, look at law enforcement: cops, corrections officers, will often “have each others’ backs—”they will often “go down” protecting their own even in scandals where, intellectually, they are well aware that laws were broken (by colleagues and friends), and the public’s trust violated. But they “have each others’ backs,” sometimes stubbornly and illegally. Their loyalty to each other may, in a rather complex way, sometimes contravenes other “values” they may have, such as ethical ones.
In a person of conscience, this may produce real conflict and stress. In someone with a weaker conscience, this may not be the case.
In some cases, the “whistle-blower,” who might “look” more honest and courageous than his seemingly more ethically-challenged colleagues, might be more sociopathic than his “corrupt” counterparts who, in snubbing authority and the law, maintain “the backs” of those who had his (or hers).
I am not judging this phenomenon in any way at all, just pointing out its sometimes complexity.
So “loyalty—”its demonstrations (and abdications)—can encompass serious moral complexity.
This is a case where, of course, not all evidence of disloyalty is a hot red flag of sociopathy, but “disloyalty” is absolutely a feature of the sociopathic personality.
And this is especially true: when “loyalty” becomes inconvenient, now we have something to evaluate. When it’s “inconvenient” to be loyal, watch the disloyal individual (and sociopaths) shed their capacity to “seem” loyal with a variety of disturbing rationalizations, and sometimes without even the need to explain. Watch them, in any case, emerge in their truer colors.
If there is a single quality, in fact—a single, true trait—whose presence alone virtually “rules out” sociopathy, it is arguably “loyalty.”
You simply cannot be “loyal” to those in your life who have been loyal to you—that is, be truly loyal to them even when it’s no longer expedient to be so—and be truly sociopathic.
As I said, true loyalty and true sociopathy are simply incompatible concepts, and will never describe the same individual.
kim frederick
Eralyn, you were probably your friend’s saving-grace.
Eralyn
OxD,
Have you heard the story about the psychopath who murdered his victim and couldn’t get the body to prop up the way he wanted behind the steering wheel of a car and the psycho says, “why does this always happen to me?” in exasperation. Or something to that affect.
It’s reminds me of your story about your son.
kim frederick
You know what though, even though I talk a good game, My raising is a hard thing to shake. I still, normally become a good prop. It comes natural to me. Being a bad prop feels bad, and I suffer when I disappoint the narcissist. My conscience plagues me. I let my narc down. I’m bad. I wanted a say. I wanted a self, an opinion, a personhood. O shit. My bad. 🙁
Eralyn
Kim,
Sometiimes I see just why we find certain people at certain times. Thankfully it’s not just the negative that makes us go hhhmm……:)
Ox Drover
Eralyn,
Yea, that’s Patrick for sure! LOL It would be funny if it wasn’t so freaking SAD.
I wish I could have gotten through the cog/dis sooner…it never made sense to me why he would think I was being disloyal to him for turning him in, but HE was somehow NOT being disloyal to me by stealing my car, or being dis-loyal to our friends by robbing their business and shutting them down for weeks til they got their computers back???
You know it is not supposed to “make sense” and when we try to make 2+2=5 and we can’t understand why it doesn’t work all we do is drive ourselves nutso!
Seeing clearly now that 2+2=4 and that no matter how many times I try to make it =5 it ain’t gonna happen.
Yea, they always seem to think that life is unfair to them and other people stab them in the back…unjustly of course. LOL ROTFLMAO
kim frederick
In the aftermath of x’s affair, I said I wanted to go to the hair-dresser’s, and get a whole new hair-style. Money was tight, I knew it, but, the most hurtful answer from him, and totally unintended to hurt me…just, total insensitivity, was his response….”No one’s looking at you anyway”….
Eralyn
Kim,
He sounds like my father. TOTALLY. He, to this day, will tell my mother to jump out of the F’ing car while he’s driving 80mph on the highway. He’s got some very brutal one liners.
Another thing about these spaths, if you’re coughing (choking), laughing, sneezing, wheezing, and on and on, it’s always makin’ them mad! You’re doin’ it to them. I’m fairly sure my dad thought I had his game growing up and he was abusive as he was sure I was outgamin’ him at age 5! lol As sad as it is, I really was just being 5………..
kim frederick
He was just being honest. I was totally insignificant to him. There was something wrong with me, because I couldn’t accept my role as invisable, voiceless and insignificant….
Eralyn
Kim,
I didn’t get the game so I tried to understand but was determined to be myself. That cost me A LOT of wasted explanations and defending myself and apologizing and thinking until my brain hurt. UGH!
Now that I think of it. 🙂 psychos aunt and I weren’t too far off making a game board out of the psychos life! So close to the answer and I didn’t even know it as they’re nothin’ but game!
skylar
Eralyn,
So that explains why they could speak with your spath and not understand why it would anger you. To them it’s just a game.
I totally understand how you feel about your mom. It feels wrong to speak ill of my mom too. And it feels confusing when I try to figure out why she does what she does. But it’s getting easier. Truth is, we don’t want to see anything bad about our parents. It’s like seeing them naked.