LoveFraud reader buzzibee raises some important issues in a recent comment.
How does a tested and proven psychopath usually respond to being told “You have a mental disorder. You are characteristically a psychopath”?
Are [they] so arrogant to dispute a medical diagnosis that they have a mental disorder? Do they display any desire to learn more about the disorder and at any point admit to it?
In order to be diagnosed as a psychopath, a person needs a score of 30 out of a possible 40 on the Psychotherapy Checklist-Revised test (PCL-R). This is a very time-consuming test which only trained personnel can administer, so by and large only prisoners and research subjects are likely to have it.
Psychopaths don’t see themselves as having a problem and so wouldn’t present themselves for testing anyway. Unless they thought they might benefit from the diagnosis in some way. So that’s point number one: psychopaths are unlikely to receive the diagnosis unless they are incarcerated, and probably not even then.
Point number two is that those who do get the diagnosis respond like psychopaths; in other words they use it as yet another tool to manipulate others. Here’s a quote from a December, 13 ‘Nature’ article on research scanning the brains of psychopaths in order to better understand empathy:
All the subjects seem to find the experiment to be nonsense. “It was stupid, boring,” says inmate Willem Boerema (not his real name), who claims to have taken part only because he likes Meffert [the young female researcher]. Then, contradicting himself, he adds that “if they say the study can help people then it’s good”.
Boerema, smart, articulate and multilingual, has a PCL-R rating of 35 and a big problem with the term ‘psychopath’. He views it as a fashionable label abused by the judicial system to keep people like himself from being released. “The courts look at your PCL-R rating and add two years to your sentence, then another two years, and then another.”
When he entered the prison five years ago, Boerema says, ‘borderline personality’ was the fashionable term, and his designated pigeon-hole. “The psychopathy label is more damaging though it prompts everyone to see you as a potential serial killer, which I could never be.” (Note, in reporting this article it was agreed that inmates’ crimes would be neither asked about nor reported on.) But Boerema also wears the score as a badge of honour: “I think my high psychopath score is a talent, not a sickness I can make good strong decisions, and it’s good to have some distance with people.”
I’m reminded of Freud’s comments on the following “piece of sophistry”:
A. borrowed a copper kettle from B. and after he had returned it was sued by B. because the kettle now had a big hole in it which made it unusable. His defence was: “First, I never borrowed a kettle from B. at all; secondly, the kettle had a hole in it already when I got it from him; and thirdly, I gave him back the kettle undamaged”….We might…say: “A. has put an ‘and’ where only “either-or” is possible.”
‘Boerema’s litany is classic. It’s ‘nonsense’, ‘stupid’, ‘boring’. I’m going along because I like the doctor, I want to help people. It’s ‘fashionable’, ‘damaging’, labeling, used as an excuse to keep him in prison. It’s a badge of honour, a talent. It’s not a sickness… In short, there is no such thing as psychopathy, but to the extent that it’s true, it’s a good thing.
Just two other uses to which the diagnosis might be put are: as a threat, and to elicit pity.
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There’s never anything wrong with the psychopath. This is perhaps the main reason why therapy doesn’t work with them – they have no motivation to change. But that’s a topic for another day!
Oh. Please.
If a woman is dating a sociopath, then she DOES have a bad feeling about everything. Goes with the territory.
Secretmonster. That is not the kind of intuition I am talking about. Alot of men define women’s intuition in those kinds of scenarios, (dont go on that trip), but intuition is so much more sophisticated, subtle and multi dimensional than that. Its aligned to the kind of synchronisation of events that causes a perpetrator to be detected by the tiniest thing or be found out by a weird series of events or even another incident that isnt connected but exposes. Hope that makes sense.
Bev: I understand what you’re talking about, I’m just still not buying it. I think women are more perceptive than men, as a general rule, don’t get me wrong, I just don’t think it’s preternatural and able to be side stepped like anything.
I find it absolutely absurd to consider that every woman I’ve been with had a bad “spidey sense” about me. But hey, who knows.
SecretMonster
I wouldnt say “every” woman – of course there are all types – non-intuitive etc.. but if a woman is in tune with herself and her relationships – she knows things arent all peachy. She stays anyway because of various reasons we read here but Mr. Green – she doesnt usually stay to use you in the way you use others. Staying with you could be out of disbelief that you are what you really are, or the comfort level of being with you – its a known entity. Or your deceptive ways make us doubt and question our own feelings so we stay quiet to see if it will get better. The problem with you Sociopaths is once you key in on a woman’s spidey-feelings about you – you get real good at sweeping up your dirty ways and suddenly you dont look so bad for the moment. Its really a twisted way to live. And what a relief to be free of the tangled rats nest of emotions you create.
Not sure why any of you are putting the time and effort into discussing this with SM and Mr.Green…or putting any credence into what they tell you about who they are etc.
Sociopaths are cockroaches essentially – they don’t provide any benefit to the world and treating them like they are somehow of great interest is really just playing to what they want. SM is right when he/she says that real people and emotions are more interesting than a room full of sociopaths.
SM, I would be less concerned about whether your wife has any intuition about who/what you are than who she may become when she becomes aware (and she will) – some of us believe you should be treated the way a vicious dog would if it came at you a second time and would have no compunction about having you destroyed. You certainly do suck the emotion out of people which can have more dangerous consequences than may have occurred to you.
I think we provide a valuable service to the world, why else would we be here? We are the balance that is needed. If everyone was happy all the time how exciting would that be? We make the good times even better.
If you think about it we have the short end of the stick here. You guys get to feel good about doing good things, you get to enjoy life and smile a real smile. After you leave your sociopath it is over for you but we are the ones stuck having to deal with what we have done and who we are. We will never know what it feels like to love. We did not choose to be this way, it is just the way we are.
The thought of destroying a sociopath just because we are different is a very dangerous thought. Many of the most evil people in history have considered destroying others because they were different. Hitler wanted to eliminate the Jews for the good of the German people. As far as I know most of the people posting here are from developed nations but a comment like that feels like something you would hear in Darfur. It is not an accepted practice to destroy other human beings just because they are disabled. Would you see people with schizophrenia destroyed, they can be equally as dangerous without medication. Unfortunately a treatment has not been developed to cure us yet but there may be one in the future.
With all that said the reason I am here is to learn just the same as many others who are following this blog. To offer a sign of good faith that I have something to teach I will clearly state the previous three paragraphs before this are trash. I do not believe a single word of what I just said but you can clearly see some tactics we can use when dealing with people. We can say a lot of stuff we don’t mean and it can be fairly convincing and seem like we mean it. I have no reason to lie here, it is the internet and my posts are fairly anonymous. I am not here to take advantage of anybody and I am not trying to offend anybody I just like to stir up a good conversation. Maybe some of what I say will help you heal. Ignore me if you want, I don’t mind my feelings won’t be hurt. Use me as a punching bag, call me names, call me the devil if it helps you. It won’t hurt my feelings, I won’t fight back. I just want to learn.
cheers.
SM/Mr Green: Would you swap, if you had the chance to have a conscience? (I know it’s theoretical and you can’t know properly what that entails, but I think probably all of us wouldn’t swap with you, however much it hurts us from time to time).
I would not swap. I like me.
I don’t know. Maybe? What a trip that would be. But what if I was hit by the guilt of my life in one whack? That would suck, and likely leave me flattened. I’d rather leave those as amusing anecdotes in my internal monologue, personally. but if I could switch and just say, feel remorse and guilt and all the good stuff too, like love and devotion from this moment forward, would I?
I just am not sure. It’s a double edges sword. I see people incapacitated by their emotions. Left prostrate on the ground, whimpering because of the weight of their emotional experience. I know plenty of people on medication to “even out” their emotions. They want to be more like me, in a way.
I’ve also seen unfaked joy and delight at some pretty stupid shit – and I always thought to myself “Damn, it would be kind of nice to be that easily amused”.
I wouldn’t have gotten where I am today in terms of lifestyle and ability to navigate the corporate world if I wasn’t a conniving social engineer. People know I’m as hard as nails when it comes to business, and it has taken me farther than I could have hoped.
I’ve thought about your question a lot, and I never have come up with a satisfactory answer. Some days I lean towards “Yes”, and some days I emphatically think “NO WAY”. Depends on how bored I am on that given moment I guess.
SecretMonster
Who knows more about the process that is used to make diagnosis of the ones who are incarcerated?