More aspie feedback

More aspie feedback re this blog:

The really severe sociopaths have a creepy emptiness inside. The eerie emptiness of sociopaths is what people were referring when they say things like "looking into the eyes of a soulless killer". There's nothing there. Their lack of insight comes from this empty place inside, not disorientation with the outside world, like an Asperger's lack of insight.

He has a point, tho, about how badly sociopaths are viewed. In a sense, it is a natural disorder that is beyond their control, just as AS is beyond control. People just hate them more because AS people seem innocuous and naive. But on the other hand, some NTs tend to treat sociopaths better than autistics, respecting and fearing bullies whereas some NTs feel more comfortable dumping on AS people. So I don't think that sociopaths are as brutalized and marginalized as AS people are. So his whining rings pretty hollow.

and another:

On the Sociopath blog. Very interesting. Glad he's done it. However, given that one of the major symptoms (and a clear give away once you've known one long enough to see the full cycle of their operations) is the way they continually try and evoke pity in you. And that is the aim of that blog. See the way he says "he would join the Aspie party if he could because the Aspies get ALL the sympathy". What utter rubbish!!! We're the ones who are good people at heart, yet get treated like monsters. They're the ones who are destructive heartless manipulators, yet they manage to charm the pants of everyone the meet...for a while. And then they blame their victims for being 'weak'.

The thing we have in common is that we are both see weaknesses in NT behaviour. However, in general we suffer as a result of those weaknesses, the sociopaths benefit from them through their ability to exploit them.

And lastly:

Je le doute.

There is little to none of the glibness/superficial charm alternating with hostility and contempt that define the psychopath's relation to the world. Obviously I haven't read it all, but I don't even think psychopaths have the patience to write blogs. They're more likely to break a computer for not doing what they want it to do.

Ah really? Not charming enough. Sigh.

More feedback

Some more feedback regarding this site left on other sites:

I found the perfect site for him, its a pro-sociopathy blog (found by googling chay's 'sociopath for dummies' on a whim! luvs) where the author goes on about sociopathy being a normal human variant and stuff about how superior he is and shit. Should appeal to this person's narcissism. He's be wearing the disorder like a badge of pride after this and after all, don't we all want our madmen out of the closet? Win!

Aspies are particularly interested:

Psychopathy and other personality disorders is one of my special interests. I've been reading about the psychopath mind online from time to time and this website http://www.sociopathworld.com/ the guy is asking the same thing we're asking and that is for his mindset to be acceptable in society. I totally agree with Neurodiversity to the core but I had a feeling this would present itself as an issue and a problem. More and more of them are going to ask to be in the ND movement and will even try to pretend to be an aspie. This man is using our logic against us and logically and technically he is correct and again I was afraid of this would happen.

I think what will have to happen is we're going to have to develop some kind of code of ethics for the ND movement and for any different mind configuration. If we have one already as I am just beginning to get into this than it will need to be developed in more detail.

We also have to be able to develop a way to root these types out and out them when they do inflitrate our movement.

I don't know. Aspies are always talking about how they can tell who are the sociopaths and who aren't, but they have always seemed to me as clueless regarding sociopaths as they are regarding neurotypicals. In fact, I'm pretty sure sociopaths have already infiltrated the aspie/autie movements and do their business with those groups undetected. The good news, though, is that maybe this means that socios and aspies can live symbiotically, especially if the aforementioned infiltration hasn't caused any problems already.

Feedback on the site

Here is some feedback I've received on this blog, both from comments left on posts and commentary regarding the blog on other sites:

Sociopathworld * Warrning!* This site is dangerous ! But it is also a view into a mind of evil !

Don’t post ! Just read and Leave

If you back this serpent into a corner it can only invenomate you ( poision )

Love Jere

(Ah man, people are on to our invenomation [sic].)

I do not know what to make of the guy who owns that blog. I think he must be really off his nut. I mean, who would be proud of having no empathy for other people?

Coming from an aspie who regularly posts on aspie discussion boards, I feel like this is a little bit of the pot calling the kettle black.

Sociopath friends = end to a chain of forwards

There are some admittedly bad things about having sociopaths as friends, but the good thing about them is that they will never send you an email forward like this:

'Gold Wrapping Paper'

I received this from a friend who had a choice to make. I had a choice to make too.

I've chosen. Now it's your turn to choose.

The story goes that some time ago a mother punished her five year old daughter for wasting a roll of expensive gold wrapping paper. Money was tight and she became even more upset when the child used the gold paper to decorate a box to put under the Christmas
tree.

Nevertheless, the little girl brought the gift box to her mother the next morning and then said,
'This is for you, Mummy.'

The mother was embarrassed by her earlier over reaction, but her anger flared again when she opened the box and found it was empty. She spoke to her daughter in a harsh manner

'Don't you know, young lady, when you give someone a present there's supposed to be something inside the package?'

She had tears in her eyes and said, 'Oh, Mummy, it's not empty! I blew kisses into it until it was full.'

The mother was crushed. She fell on her knees and put her arms around her little girl, and she begged her forgiveness for her thoughtless anger.

An accident took the life of the child only a short time later, and it is told that the mother kept that gold box by her bed for all the years of her life.

Whenever she was discouraged or faced difficult problems she would open the box and take out an imaginary kiss and remember the love of the child who had put it there.

In a very real sense, each of us, as human beings, have been given a Golden box filled with unconditional love and kisses from our children, family, friends and GOD. There is no more precious possession anyone could hold.

You now have two choices:
1. Pass this on to your friends, or
2. Delete it and act like it didn't touch your heart.

As you can see, I took choice No.1.
Friends are like angels who lift us to our feet, when our wings have trouble remembering how to fly.

Luckily sociopaths can't be guilted into forwarding emails like these. We don't care if it makes us seem inhuman. We'd rather be inhuman than morons.

Autism and serial killers

More media suggesting that sociopaths aren't the problem. I'll give you three guesses about who is.

You must be a gemini

Some people are just asking for trouble. And by trouble I mean sociopaths. As further proof that those who seek after and date sociopaths are asking for it, here's a response to this email after my original personal ad:

Okay, actually, I should have added a few more things to my list: sinister, promiscuous, flexible definition of the truth, emotionally unavailable, able to rationalize almost anything to myself, manipulative, prone to boredom, weak sense of empathy. Still very Jimmy Stewart-esque, right?

"Marty" responds:

you sound like a Gemini!! I am a Taurus....Marty

Marty, you sound like you're asking for it. I hope you get what's coming to you.

You can kind of see why Marty would guess Gemini because they are two-faced monsters. But sociopaths are not two-faced so much as one-faced with a mask. Maybe that seems like a distinction without a difference, but I have the sense that not many sociopaths are geminis. I've often wondered if certain astrological signs had more sociopaths than others. I think cancers may be prone to sociopathy, but I am biased being a cancerian myself. I also think that even though Geminis might not be great sociopaths, they can easily be narcissists. But I don't really have anything besides anecdotal evidence to base these assertions on. Thoughts on the astrological connection?

Life = futility punctuated with tragedy

While driving to work today I saw a school-aged child walking a bike with a flat tire down a busy street in inclement weather. It made me remember how horrible and awkward childhood was. Then I started trying to remember when things got better. I kept thinking, moving more and more recently in time, and I couldn't really pinpoint a specific time when I stopped feeling like that kid with the flat tire. Then i started wondering, did things ever get better? Am I still that same kid?

How is one to live a moral and compassionate existence when one is fully aware of the blood, the horror inherent in life, when one finds darkness not only in one's culture but within oneself? If there is a stage at which an individual life becomes truly adult, it must be when one grasps the irony in its unfolding and accepts responsibility for a life lived in the midst of such paradox.

-- Barry Lopez

Sociopaths = next Holocaust target

I posted earlier this month about a new television show exploiting criminals by giving them the best day ever right before arresting them. The TV executive responsible for the show rationalized the exploitation: “If it were a regular person you’d feel bad for them, but they are all wanted by the law.” This sort of rationale is used frequently to justify persecuting sociopaths or other unpopular sub-populations. Take for instance the justifications for the horrible medical experiments practiced by the Nazis on their Jewish captives:

What underpinned this behaviour was a widespread belief that some people were less than human, relegated to a lower plane of existence by their inherited degeneracy - or their race. For German doctors, a camp inmate was either a racially inferior subhuman, a vicious criminal, a traitor to the German cause, or more than one of the above. Such beings had no right to life or wellbeing - indeed, it was logical that they should be sacrificed in the interests of the survival and triumph of the German race, just as that race had to be strengthened by the elimination of the inferior, degenerate elements within it. After all, German medical science had uncovered the causes of several major diseases and contributed massively to improving the health of the population over the previous decades. Surely, therefore, it was justified in eliminating negative influences as well?

These days, it is obvious that racial hygiene is pseudoscience, but in the 1920s and 1930s it was considered a perfectly reputable science, and indeed many universities had academic departments devoted to it, not just in Germany. Against this backdrop, with their nation engaged in total war and steeped in propaganda and ideology that proclaimed the Jews to be a "cancer" or an "infection" threatening the health of the volk, physicians and scientists really did come to believe that the enemies of the Nazi state were subhuman.

Does the term subhuman sound familiar?

Sociopath TV execs exploit their sociopath criminal brothers

Fox Television is planning a new television program tentatively titled, Smile, You’re Under Arrest. The show features law officers setting up elaborate sting operations to lure criminals with warrants:

“It is a reverse Punk’d,” says Fox President of Alternative Entertainment Mike Darnell. “Instead of the worst day of your life and then a joke at the end, this is the reverse. This is the best day of your life, and then we arrest you.”

One of three set-ups just shot in Arizona features the cops luring a criminal to a movie set with the promise of making him an extra and paying him a couple hundred dollars. An elaborate film set is staged and filming begins on a faux movie. The set-up continues as the director then gets mad at the lead actor, fires him and replaces him with the law-breaking extra.

The scene escalates with the fake director introducing the mark to a supposed studio mogul and continuing to create this dream-comes-true sequence. Finally, all the participants are revealed as officers of the law, and the criminal is apprehended (before signing waivers to let the footage be used in the show).

Other scenarios include a fake fashion shoot where the subject thinks he is about to become a supermodel and another in which the mark becomes an auto racer, a set-up which ends when a police car comes up behind him on a race track to pull him over.

“If it were a regular person you’d feel bad for them, but they are all wanted by the law,” Darnell says.

This is why people feel fine persecuting sociopaths. You can just hear someone justifying sociopath abuse: "If it were a regular person, you'd feel bad for them."

Sociopath quote of the day: evil

All that is necessary for evil to succeed is that good men do nothing.

Edmund Burke.

Sociopath = into S&M?

Most of the responses from my empaths-who-date-sociopaths-are-asking-for-it experiment were from the women seeking men ad. Maybe that means that straight men are more into sociopaths than straight women, gay men, or gay women. But I think the more likely explanation is that straight men looking on craigslist for women are looking for a dominatrix. Guys looking for nice girls go to church social functions, guys looking for easy girls go to bars, and guys looking for dangerous girls go online. True? How about this as a case in point:

Just a Great ad .... and straight to the point .. so well done you .... pity half the people who worked for me arnt like that ... save me so much time ... but thats life i guess... and i like jimmy Stewart also ....
You will also no doubt be deluged with replies .... and some very strange i bet ... however if no suitable white knights on horseback ( in full shinning armour of course ) happen to appear just let me know...... and i will feed my steed and drinks ( the Sanderson is good fun ) and dinner would be my pleasure ....
Me .... 6'2 200lbs (slim ) 54 considered attractive ( well a frog needs a kiss now and then )..... my home is in Liverpool and i keep a flat in London as my business is down here ....as I am every week for 2/3 days (for all my sins I am in the fashion industry ... we supply clothing to most high street strores River Wallis Oasis etc etc etc ... ... ) we have an office in Hong Kong were i go for around 8/9 days every 8 weeks or so .... I also keep a home in Majorca and try to get out there most weekends during the summer...

If i hear from you when it would be nice .... and if not i wish you luck on your quest....

Peter

Peter, like many others, was not dissuaded by my addendum to my personal ad:

Almost .... no stutter ..... and of course he was very nice to all in " a wonderful life " ... and most of the other listed things are .... well " cool "
.. sinister ( hmmmmm ) promiscuous ( more HMMMMM .. capital letters ) .. flexible and able to rationalise ... ( dont we all ) manipulative ( most women are ... its actauly a gift )
.... so you sound quite the lady .....
Now if i was a couch doctor i would probably find many things wrong with you .... however as i am not and of course my services are free ... and include the bottle of good wine and dinner ..... it may be well seen as " sinister " ..... " promiscuous " and " manipulative " .... but you decide.
I will of course promise not to bore you.....

Oh, I know you won't bore me, Peter. I won't let you.

Personality disorders

A reader asked me to address other personality disorders associated with sociopathy besides narcissism. Narcissism and sociopathy are on the same cluster with the other "emotional" disorders -- Borderline Personality Disorder and Histrionic Personality Disorder. According to wikipedia, the cluster breaks down as follows:

Antisocial personality disorder: "pervasive disregard for the law and the rights of others."

Borderline personality disorder: extreme "black and white" thinking, instability in relationships, self-image, identity and behavior

Histrionic personality disorder: "pervasive attention-seeking behavior including inappropriate sexual seductiveness and shallow or exaggerated emotions

Narcissistic personality disorder: "a pervasive pattern of grandiosity, need for admiration, and a lack of empathy"

I don't necessarily agree with these one-sentence descriptions. In fact, I don't believe that sociopathy is necessarily the same thing as APD. Like Dr. Robert Hare, I think APD isn't specific enough to give a good picture of sociopathy, and that the two do not necessarily share all of the same characteristics. Consequently, although I consider myself a high functioning sociopath because of my weak sense of empathy, failure to conform to social norms, manipulativeness, etc., I do not necessarily believe that i have APD. Nor do I think I have any of the other personality disorders with the possible exception of very mild Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder, which helps me fight my impulsiveness.

What about everyone else? Are there connections between sociopathy and other personality disorders that I am not aware of?

S is for serious as a heart attack

One response to my men seeking men personal ad:

You sound so conceited I want to cry

I had to laugh at this, of course, but I also really respect this guy's astuteness. I sent him the same follow up email I sent most of the responses to my ad:

Okay, actually, I should have added a few more things to my list: sinister, promiscuous, flexible definition of the truth, emotionally unavailable, able to rationalize almost anything to myself, manipulative, prone to boredom, weak sense of empathy. Still very Jimmy Stewart -esque, right?

He mistook my complete sincerity for being a joke and actually apologized:

You gave me a good laugh. Thanks. I need to lighten up. It's rare that I send snide remarks to strangers. I can reduce that to zero. Don't know if it's jimmy stewartesque. You sound honest here.

Ron

Thanks Ron. I was being honest. And by honest I mean that the words I said were to be interpreted as having their ordinary dictionary meaning.

I don't understand how empaths can say one thing and mean an entirely different thing and the true meaning is understood by other empaths. Ttsk tsk to the whole phenomenon of sarcasm. But prevalent sarcasm and insincerity make it easier for sociopaths to "pass" in normal society. If you've ever seen an episode of Dexter, some of the funniest moments are when he is telling the horrible truth about something he did but no one will believe him because no one wants to believe that horrible things and people exist. But we do. Seriously.