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!
I enjoy the company of others already, that wasn’t my question.
Also, I don’t blame my “victims” as you put it, nor do I seek pity or forgiveness or any of that. As you said, this would certainly be the wrong place to get either. I get along with the rest of humanity quite easily – but I’m acting. It’s all mimicry.
And to entertain myself and to glean some enjoyment or satisfaction out of life at all, I involve myself in little intrigues. These intrigues involve all sorts of things everyone here would condemn as terrible or whatever, and that’s fine. I’m not apologizing, but what if this is as good as it gets? What if this is best case scenario for a true sociopath? To identify them young and subsequently train them (i.e. therapy) how to blend in? Train them that they HAVE to blend in, that the alternative is essentially death.
I can’t help what I do because a life without these simple pleasures seem too dull or lifeless to bother with. It’s what keeps me going, gives me the ability to focus almost constantly on maintaining the show. It gives me a big picture to work towards, an end goal of life undetected. I’m alone in enemy territory, forever. I’m not free to do what I want, when I want, how I want. All my urges and desires have to be held in check. Every response has to be conditioned and calculated. I have to mimic giving a shit in situations where I absolutely don’t.
This is what therapy taught me. It taught me that there is something wrong with me that can never be fixed. It taught me that I would likely end up a petty crook or worse, a serial killer. It taught me that my utter lack of regard for the value of life in general meant that I had a huge chance of ending up dead or locked away at a very early age.
I was arrested at a point early in my life, and spent a brief period of time incarcerated. It was the exclamation point to the lessons of my therapy.
My wife knows about that, she knows I was a troubled kid. We’ve had enough thanksgivings with my mom around for her to hear all the stories. But even my mom knows to avoid talking about the diagnosis and the years of therapy. It was simply a phase I grew out of.
So please, don’t confuse the conversation with me trying to figure out how to live a “decent and moral life” by your standards, I know. Trust me, I know. And for the most part, I do play by your rules.
I have to satisfy this damn need that crawls under my skin. You have no idea how stir crazy it can make me when nothing is going on. It’s like I can’t sit still, I can’t focus, I get irritable and short. Cracks start appearing in my mask. The desire to act out becomes uncontrollable. That’s when the real damage could potentially take place. That’s when people can really get hurt. So I do my best and satiate this hunger before it gets to this point. So I use your heart as a pinata briefly, I’m trying to avoid running it through the blender. Not for your sake, but for my own.
I need the tension, and the chaos, and the anxiety – but the goal is to keep it to small doses. Manageable doses.
I recognize how petty and stupid it is. I’m not a complete moron. Ohh, so I got some girl to fall for me, and believe in my little story.. ohh, soo smart, soo crafty I am! Please. But I tell you what, when you get that hit, when you’ve been working on a intrigue for awhile, and it’s gotten really tricky, and when the odds are against you, and it pays off… it’s like lava in the veins. The exhilaration and euphoria I get from that is… intoxicating. It’s the perfect drug.
And that’s what I aim for. Usually after the success, I will start cooling things off and engineer its end. I don’t “get off” on acting like a parasite and stealing material goods/money from these people. I’ve always paid the rent. It doesn’t delight me to see them in ruin after I’m done. That’s counter to my end game goal of being undetected.
Give me a pill that changes the catalyst of this rush to something else, like… I don’t know, writing a haiku – would I take it? I wonder.
Maybe you all can use my perspective to your advantage, and it can help you understand a little bit of a different side of things. I’m not going to pretend I’m an expert in these matters, but I can tell you I can spot a true sociopath a mile away. I run into them often enough in business, and more often then not, they are extremely successful. But with that said, I think people are a little too liberal with the armchair sociopath diagnosis. We are all on the spectrum, after all.
SecretMonster
P.S. Reposting this response to my blog as my description of the urges and payoff has been something I’ve been wanting to write about.
SecretMonster: What motivated you to post all of that here?
I don’t want to disagree with anyone for the sake of it, but I really do want Secret Monster to keep posting. I think to have a go at him is to take out the anger we’ve felt towards our own sociopaths – and to be honest, puts us at risk of falling for the same crap again.
His posts have given me another level of insight on the matter and raised again the question that I’ve asked myself so many times. What is society meant to do with these people? And how do we expect them to behave if they don’t have the same motivations as we do? What this thread’s demonstrated is that if Secret Monster and people like him *are* honest (and as a result less harmless to us) they are immediately ostracised. However appalled we are by this behaviour, it is incredibly bad strategically for us to deny it or try to shut it up!
SM, how do you relate to the concept of emotional pain? I see a lot of conflicting stuff about depression – some places say that sociopaths don’t suffer from it but other places say that their life expectancy is a lot shorter and they do suffer pain. (Having said that, ‘devoid of feeling’ is the closest thing I can come to describing my own experiences of depression).
EnnLondon, my question was sincere.
My question wasn’t a hint to shoo him, if that’s what you thought.
I don’t do hints, as I find it a manipulative, tiresome, dishonest, and ineffective means of real communication.
I wasn’t implying anything. I was expecting an answer.
(Not that I would take his answer at face value, of course, considering the way the conversation has meandered strategically away from any direct linear path of open communication thus far. But that, in itself, is interesting of course.)
And also were sincere my statements on life relationships in society, as they can apply to anyone, sociopathic, anti-social, or any garden variety human in civilization.
If any of us behaves incorrectly, the results are the same.
Secretmoster says: “I’m not free to do what I want, when I want, how I want.”
Are any of us? Can any of us do whatever we want, whenever we want, however we want without effects to, and consequences from, society?
The fact remains, if you, as a human without wings, jump out of an airplane in flight, you will fall.
EnnLondon said: “What this thread’s demonstrated is that if Secret Monster and people like him *are* honest (and as a result less harmless to us) they are immediately ostracised.”
As far as I know, the only person who could ostracize someone from posting here is the web site owner, and that hasn’t happened, and thus far I see no reason for it to happen.
But I’m curious to know – what do you think the alternative should be? What alternative is there than to disagreeing with him and stating our opinions on the matter?
Should we be obliged to agree with SecretMonster, to give him accalades simply for his honesty, and ignore the ethical disagreement to his assertions and descriptions of behaviour, just to keep him around, while studying him silently?
That wouldn’t be very honest of us, would it? Or if it was honest, would it be true to ourselves?
(Anyway, I hardly think someone like Secretmonster will be driven off in tears because of some strong opinions against some things he’s said.)
And also, what makes you so sure that SecretMonster IS being completely honest with us, and even if he is, that it makes it less harmful?
I’m not saying that SecretMonster is lying, or that what he’s saying is harmful. I’m not even saying he’s a sociopath. As I’m not sure about any of that, of course.
I’m just asking you why you’re so confident in that he’s being honest? And why you’re sure that it’s less harmful?
I mention this because of DrSteve’s BRILLIANT exposure of one of the things I see as KEY in understanding the intrinsic problems & pitfalls involved with communicating and relating with sociopaths, or anyone of a similar perspective…
http://thetoptwoinches.wordpress.com/2007/12/16/myth-psychopaths-are-great-liars-part-3-the-nature-of-lying/
DrSteve says:
“I’ve argued that for the psychopath telling the truth and telling lies are equivalencies and that it not so much the psychopath’s intention to deceive as to dominate another.
The psychopath is a pathological liar and so is by definition a pathological truth-teller. It’s one and the same thing to him – a set of devices to enable him to dominate another.
If the psychopath does not tell lies or truths in the same way as a regular person, does it make good sense to say that he’s up to the same thing at all?”
Meaning that a sociopath will tell the truth out of the same motivations for which s/he lies. So is even the truth honest in that case?
DrSteve brings together the information offered by Martha Stout in “The Sociopath Next Door” and combines them with the explanation found in Patricia Evans’ book “The Verbally Abusive Relationship”, forming a picture that I came to understand only after reading both those books, and considering the implications for some time.
This marriage of ideas culminated in my now firm belief…
That there are people who fall into, let’s call it group X
X = anyone bent on manipulation/dominance/power-over, (be they sociopaths, narcissists, borderlines, co-dependent, or with whatever issues that have put them into viewing others from that perspective)
And people who fall into group Y
Y = people who function from a stance of empathy, equality with fellows, cooperation, and fair negotiation & compromise
(Patricia Evans calls these groups Reality I, and Reality II in her book.)
My firm belief now is that there is no true direct communication, and therefore no relating in the way most of us think of as normal, between a person operating from group X and a person operating from group Y.
And that in some cases, this is a permanent unchangeable condition. Some people, like sociopaths (or narcissists), are permanently in group X.
It was certainly a disillusionment when I realized the hopelessness in situations with certain people.
But it was also a source of freedom… (In a way I’d find very hard to explain without going on for 3 more paragraphs! LOL.)
I’m not saying I don’t see any use in talking to someone in group X, ever, for any reason, in any context. But I recognize I’m not going to get anything like the same results nor similar type of communication I would get with other people of group Y. And to expect anything like it is to set oneself up for disappointment or worse.
One could, of course, decide to use group X tactics when dealing with group X.
But I have come to believe that group Y methods are actually more effective and save much in the long-run.
Though not in the way you might think.
And certainly not in the way it would occur to someone coming from group X perspective, that’s for sure.
As for sociopaths & depression. From my understanding from everything I’ve read suggests sociopaths are completely capable of feeling things like anger & frustration or resentment – which I believe are more closely related to depression than even sadness.
I think generally we often use the word “depressed” or “depressing” in our vernacular to mean “extremely sad”, which confuses understanding of the actual clinical state of Depression. Kind of like “sad” is to “pain” as “depressed” is to “excruciating”. (I use the word myself that way, shame on me. 😉 )
In fact, I think “loss of feeling” or “emotional numbness” is actually a described possible symptom Clinical Depression. (As well as a possible symptom of some other emotional/mental maladies such as PTSD, Borderline, or Bipolar.)
The shorter life expectancy thing really isn’t a mystery to me. I mean when sociopaths are described as reckless, as risk-takers, and as social antagonists, it’s not really surprising.
At the risk of of a crude comparison, the same way it’s not surprising indoor-only pet cats have a much longer life expectancy than outdoor cats. 🙁
Er.. happy new year all. I’ll reply when I’m not drunk and can actually see straight. Cheers!
Hello WP (and Happy New Year all!),
I didn’t meant to suggest that your question was sincere (and I hope he answers it) – my post wasn’t aimed at you (or anyone in particular – I just noticed people getting angry with him, and whatever his reasons for being here, or whether he’s honest or not, he’s valuable to this forum). I just wanted to be another voice. My posts to this forum (and I apologise cos they’re waffly and disordered) represent me trying to make sense of the whole issue. When I said that thing about ‘being ostracised’, I was really asking the question myself; I’m trying to understand their motivations and really whether there’d be any benefit in them outing themselves.
Anyway – for all these reasons and more I thank you for writing that post.
Re: human responsibility – I agree that none of us are free to do what we want when we want, but our consciences keep us in check. The fact that some people don’t have them is absolutely blowing my mind, and I am just trying to understand what it must possibly be like to have that sort of a brain. To do that, I have to try and get a grip around what pleasure and pain feels like to the sociopath. That’s the sort of insight I’d like from someone like SM. Such as: How did he feel at the point when he proposed to his wife? How would he feel if his wife beat him to it and left him? (I’m imagining no emotional response, but I’d love to know what sort of an impact the losing control element has pain-wise). How would he feel if he got someone pregnant? I know that sociopaths are prone to substance abuse but is that really always for kicks? Do they ever ‘drink to forget’, for example? Do they enjoy looking at the chaos they leave behind, or curse it for limiting their options to create more upon being ‘discovered’?
In answer to your question, I have absolutely no idea what I think the right response is! (Helpful or what?!) I’m interested in all responses even the ones I appear to be arguing against – I don’t want *anyone* to leave this discussion, or stop contributing. I don’t even disagree with anyone who posts – I am just reasoning aloud really, and I can’t believe how many paradoxes the whole question keeps bringing up for me.
And no, absolutely not – we shouldn’t be obliged to agree with Secret Monster. As I said, I just want us all to stay around. And of course – I am not at all convinced that he is being completely honest with us :-).
In short (now she tells us!): Every single post I read on here heals me a bit more, and the more diverse it gets the better (I think!)
LOL sorry, I meant of course to say I didn’t mean to suggest your question was *insincere*!!
But of course, by all means, think out loud!
I just think if SecretMonster is a sociopath, I don’t know that you’ll ever get real insight into what it’s like to be him, or be a sociopath. A sociopath will always be inclined to serve his own purposes. And you will always be inclined to project your own capacity of feelings onto whatever a sociopath says.
I think it’s like trying to explain color to someone blind their entire lives. And you can’t imagine what it’s like to be blind your entire life by just imagining that you’ve got your eyes closed.
It’s a catch 22.
This is the conclusion I came to after reading the Hare book.
For me the shock came when I realised that the person I thought ‘at times’ had good personal qualities – integrity, trust, loyalty, stability – turned out to be a total fraud and that he had groomed himself to prey on me, like the others before me. I feel very angry that I have been ‘had’. But at the end of the day, he may have got one over me and got his fix from that – but by his actions he has condemned himself to a life of ongoing torment – as much as an addict looks for his next fix and high through exploiting other peoples trust and love – There is no real lasting satisfaction, superiority or triumph in that. It is pseudo, short lived and as phoney as the behaviour that goes with it.
I agree with EnnLondon. Every post made by SecretMonster helps me understand things more and I feel he is a value to this forum.
Cheers