Guest post: Aliens

I stumbled upon this article titled: Alien Origins of Sociopathy. By the title alone I'm sure many of you can just guess the incendiary nature of the content of the article.

Just as religion has traditionally portrayed sociopaths to be SATANIC, POSSESSED BY THE DEVIL, DEMONS, SINNERS, WITCHES, WARLOCKS, and any other pejorative, now we have the newest demonization of sociopaths, the meme that sociopaths are "reptillians", or "alien predators".

My questions for anyone who might be a sociopath is, how do sociopaths want to be portrayed? If you were the cult leader, the fiction writer, or the director, how would you portray the sociopath characters? It's only fair to ask for input on this.

Sociopath quote: wise as serpents

Behold, I send you forth as sheep in the midst of wolves: be ye therefore wise as serpents, and harmless as doves.

Matthew 10:16

Guest post: socio song Hey Mister

Narcissists in the news: Charlie Sheen

In an open letter to TMZ:

What does this say about Haim Levine [Chuck Lorre] after he tried to use his words to judge and attempt to degrade me. I gracefully ignored this folly for 177 shows ... I fire back once and this contaminated little maggot can't handle my power and can't handle the truth. I wish him nothing but pain in his silly travels especially if they wind up in my octagon. Clearly I have defeated this earthworm with my words -- imagine what I would have done with my fire breathing fists. I urge all my beautiful and loyal fans who embraced this show for almost a decade to walk with me side-by-side as we march up the steps of justice to right this unconscionable wrong.

Remember these are my people ... not yours...we will continue on together...

Charlie Sheen

Guest post: Pick-up artists and sociopathy

It occurred to me while reading your posts that the pick-up artist (PUA) community essentially teaches "normal" people sociopathic behavior, or at least something really similar. They borrow heavily from theoretical frameworks like neuro-linguistic programming and other areas of psychology/psychotherapy in order to systematize the art of manipulating and seducing women. As an adjunct, there's also a body of concepts dedicated exclusively to disarming any male competition/protectors/significant others. Here's a slice of the mental flowchart involved in something like Bait-Hook-Reel-Release theory:

"A Hook is when she genuinely answers a question, complies, or responds to the artist’s DHV [demonstration of higher value] with an IOI [indicator of interest]. If she is not hooked, neg [throw a light backhanded compliment] and roll off [start to break away to bait them into chasing you]." (http://www.pualingo.com/pua-definitions/bait-hook-reel-release-bhrr/)

As you can probably tell, the community is blighted by a juvenile obsession with its own jargon, BUT many of the core concepts are field tested and sound. One big side effect of becoming proficient at pick-up is that you come to see people as predictable, exploitable, and inferior systems--mere concatenations of switches to be flipped before some utility can be produced. Unsurprisingly, charges of teaching sociopathy are not unheard of from within the PUA community:

"The whole thing is set up to make you view women as unreal, and merely as objects for your own sexual gratification and validation. People you aren't sexually interested in are supposed to only register as possible obstacles to using a girl for sex, if they register at all. . . . So you're always leading on chicks you aren't interested in, just to "practice" or "socially proof" yourself, or maybe use her as a gateway to her friends?" (http://www.puahate.com/showthread.php?t=6051)

If you haven't already, I can recommend reading "The Game" by Neil Strauss for an entertaining look into the minds of both fledgling and veteran pick-up artists. Because of the notable similarities between the methods/goals of pick-up and sociopathic behavior, it might be useful (and easy) for sociopaths to add some PUA tools to their arsenal. My apologies if this is already quite obvious to you--I didn't see much writing on the subject on your blog, so I figured it couldn't hurt to e-mail you about it.

Best,

Aspiring Sociopath

Guest Post: Stepping Up

Part One Here

When I left home it was raining. I remember thinking I picked the worse day to leave. I didn’t really know where to go. Eventually I found an old abandoned car dealership with some homeless kids in it. I conversed with them for a while and they ended up letting me stay.

A Christian construction guy ended up giving me a job as a laborer, because he felt bad for me. I started making a little money which I spent on booze. When I first got the job I was excited. After a while I got bored and every time the boss left I would smoke weed in the back. I’m not really the hard labor type. I’m too lazy. Eventually I just never showed back up to work.

Opportunity always knocks. One of the kids started using hard drugs that I was living with. He would spend all day trying to make enough to supply his habit. I asked how much a zone (ounce) would cost me. He didn’t know because he bought it in small units to do himself. I asked him if I could go with him next time he was buying. He was excited thinking he would be mooching of my package.

I showed up and asked the guy what the pack would cost. He gave me a price that was a little over what I had left from working. I either had to go back to work, beg for money, or rob someone. I didn’t want to go back to that job, because it would be embarrassing to go back hat in hand. I have a lot of pride. Equally humiliating was doing what these low lives would do, beg for money.

I never did a robbery before this. I asked my new friends if they wanted in on it. They refused. They thought I was crazy. I obviously needed new friends. No wonder they were homeless. They had no initiative. I knew I was by myself. I wondered what to rob. People? Stores? A bank? I stupidly decided to rob the convenient store across from the abandoned dealership where we slept.

The next night I got my knife and put on my normal clothes I wear underneath some sweat pants and a hoodie. I made a mask out of a shirt by tying the two shirt sleeves together behind my head and my eyes were looking out the collar. I did this on the side of the store. My heart was racing. I knew I need confidence though. I was a little buzzed and I thought it would help, but it didn't. I walked around the corner of the wall and shut my eyes as I walked through the front. I knew all eyes were already on me because I had my shirt mask on. Once I crossed the door I opened my eyes and saw the clerk already running for the phone. I knew I had to be quick. I jumped over the counter and grabbed him by the hair yanking his head up and putting the knife to his throat. I told him to empty the drawer into a plastic bag. He told me to let go of his hair and he would comply. I knew he was lying. He was the hero type. I sidestepped him and yanked his hair so his head went into the counter. I started seeing red like before when I would get in fights. I kept slamming it. Fortunately I came out of it and he was only a little messy. He complied none the less.

The money from the robbery was shit. It was enough to get the zone, but it was way smaller than I thought you would get. The television is a lie. Regardless I returned to the dealer and got the zone.

Loss Of Cat Child's First Real Experience With Death, Killing

The title of thisThe Onion photo caption.

Sociopath song: Bewitched

Guest Post: Origins

The other day I was thinking how I got here. I'm not the rearview mirror type, unless its the latter part of my life where I have been successful and happy. I can always look back on past successes as well.
When I was in five I started my path of destruction. I would say it was a reaction to the situations I went through. That may be an excuse.
In elementary school the kids four or five grades above us picked on the new kids. I have always had a lot of pride, and did not accept this treatment. After a few months I recruited another kid to help out against these idiots. They got mad that I would fight back so they started rat packing me. One day I set a trap. I remember it because it was significiant. I went on the swings and went over their imposed time limit on purpose. They, of course, tried to grab me off the swing and I lept off over them. My friend ran over and punched one in the head, then we ran to the slides. I went up the slides and one followed. When I slid down it I grabbed a rock I had at the bottom. As the kid came down the slide after me I took the rock and smashed it in his face. He was bloody. I remember feeling bad. I know I did because I can remember feeling sorry for him. It's the only time when I have done violence to someone and felt bad about it.
The principal called a meeting with my parents and told them about what happened. My parents defended my action. They told the principal that I would come home with bruises and skinned knees. The principal asked why I hadnt gone to them to begin with. My father told them that he raised us to handle our own problems.
The next year went by and I had this new teacher. I didnt like her. She handed out tons of homework. She also heard about my previous years trouble and singled me out, in my opinion. Towards middle of the school year I got the kids together and told them that we needed to get this lady out of there. I told them to go home to their parents and tell them that she was verbally abusive and sometimes she got physical. The parents ended up coming in as planned with stories of abuse by the kids. With this many kids how could it not be true? She was fired.
My home was oppression. I remember how much I hated it. My father did not drink. He didnt do drugs. He was a hard man reguardless, and a religious zealot. He would turn us against each other using collective punishment to try to get us to snitch on each other. He would beat us sometimes so badly we couldnt go to school the next day because he didnt want them to see the lacerations and bruises. One time he broke down crying, because he lost it and beat my older brother really bad. He was a good man despite these things. Very loyal and very family oriented. Sometimes he would just lose control like he was someone else. Like he was possessed by a demon.
When I reached my teens I went crazy. I will say that now, because looking back it was madness. I created my own world around myself where I was in charge. I started living it. I fought anyone in school that would fight. I started vandalising anything outside my neighborhood. I lit dumpsters on fire next to businesses. Soon I lit businesses on fire next to dumpsters.
I learned how to make an explosive out of acid. I wont go into how to make it, but its very simple. I had a plan to throw it into a grocery store. I dont know why I did and I can't remember what justification I had, but everything in my mind was for the greater good. I was testing it in my backyard when the neighbor called the police. My parents were gone and I didnt answer the door when the police came. I told my brother not to let them in, but he did anyway. He was later beaten for that by my father. The police arrested me for my first felony.
This is where my parents feel I lost my way. In fact to this day they blame my brother for ratting to the police about me having harmless fun. They think if it wasnt for the day I was put in the system I would have never turned out like this. They had no clue of what I was planning to do after I tested it out in the backyard.
Juvienielle hall and probation thwarted plans to do my grocery store thing. I now entered high school with a record and the administration watching me closely. I continued fighting my way through school reguardless where they couldnt see it.
One fight this kid got the best of me. I got angry. I pulled a knife out of my pocket and the kid told me to use it thinking I wouldnt. I went to stab him and he moved enough to where it stabbed into his arm instead of his chest. I didn't feel bad about it at all. He panicked and stumbled back tripping himself on the ground. I told him to tell his friends next time it wouldnt be in the arm.
One thing led to another. Some guy got brave and came up to me during shop. He told me if I ever tried to stab him he would take the knife and stick it up my arse. I didnt stab him. I grabbed the piece of wood I was working on and beat him. I saw red. I felt taken over. I knew then how my father felt. They pulled me off him and he was a mess. I was arrested again.
The next year I had my own little crew. They looked up to me. We caused all kinds of trouble I wont get into. One day I told them that this business, a pornography store, was a closet child molesting front. I said this because one of the kids confided in me that he had been abused. He was fuming. I just wanted to burn something down.
One morning him and another kid came to my window and knocked on it. I looked out my curtain and opened my window. They told me to come outside they had a surprise for me. I came out. They told me they thew molotov cocktails on the roof of the business. I was surprised they did it without me. They wanted me to come check out their work.
I ended up going down there with them against my good judgement. The business had a drainage ditch next to it that we used to get away from the police, and as a shortcut to school. We approached from there. When we arrived the business was still standing. Unharmed. One of the stupid kids climbed the fence into the razor wire and cut himself up trying to look on the rood for damage. Meanwhile, someone with a cell phone was there calling someone and looking straight at us. I knew he had to be calling the police. I tore my shirt and wrapped it around my friends hands that got cut by the wire. I told them to run. The police were quick. They cut us off on all sides. They drew their guns and I surrendered. I was once again in custody.
They tried to pin me as the ring leader. They had no evidence and despite one of them informing on me the other stayed loyal. He said I had nothing to do with it, and I was let go.
My home life was already a nightmare. My father got crazier. I felt overwhelmed. I didnt care about life. I wasnt suicidal, but I didnt care about living. I sat in my room and I remember everyday feeling life their was a brick in my chest. One day I took that brick out and chucked it at the world. I'm not about self preservation until the moment I need to preserve my life. I set myself on fire and use other people to put out the flames.
My father went ballistic about the fire. I decided it would be best to get out of there. At fifteen I grabbed some money I saved over the summer working construction and set out on my own.......

To be continued..

I meant to write this...

I meant to write this in a grandiose fashion when I first thought about writing something here as a guest. I found the mental state to do that too hard to reach and it would have meant manipulating myself in such a way that my views would alter. So I just gave it a go.

I think I might be a narcissistic sociopath. Not because I manipulate, not because I don't seem to have what it is called affection, but because I am an outsider in society. I read a lot about sociopathy, psychopathy and ASPD which from what I understand they are three different things. The actions of psychopaths that are being portrayed by writers (Martha Stout, Robert Hare, Hervey Cleckley and others around the web) don't seem relevant to me because all that is written and depicted in their stories is purely circumstantial. Each one of us has to do what he has to do. I will never think of my past and say that I wanted to do harm here and there. Instead I firmly believe that I am a good man, have done nothing wrong, only what was necessary. If someone comes to me and tells me that I have hurt them, I immediately try to apologize and make them understand my behavior.

This blog has helped me because I felt lost in the vortex of my urges. I wanted to be normal and everything I did seemed to be out of the ordinary. I didn't understand why I did what I did and why I didn't feel anything. If I wouldn't have found this blog I would've surely ended up in prison by the time I reached 30. Finding this blog allowed me to sit on it a while and think and compartmentalize.

As I said, I don't feel that I am doing anything wrong and when I read about reoffending sociopaths I see them somewhat below me, stupid and unable to control themselves.

The facts that strongly point me to thinking that I am a sociopath are the simple things, not the schemes I involve myself into. I am asexual, I don't have any opinions, I can say whatever it is need for me to say without it affecting me, I don't fit in any group in the whole world.

Before I started reading this blog I felt that the whole world was against me because I thought that everybody was thinking like me. When someone tried to give me some advice, I took it as manipulation, when someone helped me I took it as their way to indebt me, I didn't even trust my mother. Now I understand that the people do things that I don't understand for reasons I don't understand and I can pretend I understand and go with the flow.

Sociopaths in media: Underdogma

The first part of this interview is an interesting exploration of how and why people resent those who have more relative power, possibly explaining the knee jerk reaction to hate sociopaths.

The last part about "America's enemies," is either inane, or he didn't get enough of a chance to explain why it's not inane.

Guest post: Troublemakers removing Blind Spots

I saw this video today, and thought it somewhat interesting. So often I feel that I'm trying to remove people's blind spots, and to liberate them from the bonds within their heads, clouded by emotion without a healthy dose of logic. Like the speaker, I really appreciate it when people remove my blind spots. It is so rare that it happens. I find that the few sociopaths I know in real life on a personal level (one of my uncles and a close friend) are usually the ones that do this.

Guest post: A fellow sociopath

Hello, I'm a fellow sociopath. I've read your entire blog, all the way from the beginning, I thank you. My father called me a psychopath when I was very young, between the ages of 5 to 8. I didn't get certain things, certain emotional things, certain norms.

How I got this way, I do not know. I had a traumatic event at the age of 14, I got jumped because I was messing around with somebody's girl. Her boyfriend found out, beaten me up with the help of his friends in front of the entire school. I didn't even go home that day, I slept in an abandon house, in the cold and the rain, plotting to kill this person. I had drawn up a plot to break his knees in and cripple him with a baseball bat.

Sadly I got arrested before that could happen.

I believe this started my extreme sociopathy besides the lack of empathy. I became a misogynist, a manipulator, extremely cold by that point. My mother had me put into therapy until we moved.

I was juvenile delinquent at 14, breaking and entering, shoplifiting, skipping school, a smart ass, constantly in the principals office. After my beating, I calmed down, cause I realized I was never gonna get out of high school at that rate. I had to be low profile, and just get out of high school. I was a gifted student so not like the work was hard.

By 16, I've began manipulating girls, collecting what I call trophies. Maybe nude pictures or videos of them. Females became my victim. I rarely had sex with them. Cause I'm asexual and find females weak and gross. Sometimes I do it, just to act out my urges of dominance and power, make them easier to control. But certain qualities I can find and like, for the most part, I'm not attracted. I do have them, every sociopath/narcissist, has his partner, his play thing. House/Wilson Sean/Christian....

Sociopaths in the news: Julian Assange

In celebration of Valentine's Day, this is a hilarious story of friend-seduction starring Wikileaks founder Julian Assange. From the Daily News:

This is a love story - an unrequited love story, but a love story nonetheless. 'My first thought upon seeing him was: cool guy.' This is how Daniel Domscheit-Berg describes his first meeting with Julian Assange at a conference of computer activists. . . . Daniel is smitten, and will remain smitten until, a year or two later, it all ends in tears.

'We used to be best friends, Julian and I - or at least, something like friends. Today, I'm not sure whether he even knows the concept. I'm not sure of anything any more.'
***
From the start, their relationship is that of servant to master, or disciple to guru. Daniel, dull and solid, is mustardkeen to do Julian's bidding, even to the extent of carrying his bags. Meanwhile, the vain and monomaniacal Julian barely notices him.
Before long, Daniel is tying himself up in knots about Julian.

'On the one hand, I found Julian unbearable, and, on the other, unbelievably special and lovable.' But between the lines, it is clear Julian finds Daniel a bit of a bore, worth tolerating only for as long as he kow-tows.

Julian gives little sign of noticing anything about Daniel but, for his part, Daniel takes an obsessive interest in Julian and his little quirks: the way he says 'hoi' instead of hello, and asks 'how goes?', the way he slides down banisters, the way he dances by galloping across the floor 'almost like a tribesman performing some ritual', the way he alters his name on his business cards to the more mysterious and glamorous 'Julian D'Assange'.
***
[W]henever Assange enters, we are all ears. Like most heroes and villains in literature, he is entirely self-centred and extremely peculiar. . . . He is a fantasist, and has what Daniel describes as 'a very free and easy relationship with the truth'. At one point, he tells Daniel that his hair went white from gamma radiation when, at the age of 14, he had built a reactor in the basement and reversed the poles.

The first cracks in the master-servant relationship appear early on. When they visit Switzerland to install a computer server, Daniel spends the rest of his money on supplies of Ovaltine to take home with him.

'I love the Swiss chocolate drink and for the rest of our tour I couldn't wait to get back home and make myself a huge cup of cocoa. But when we arrived back in Wiesbaden, the cocoa powder would be all gone. Julian had at some point torn open the packages and poured the contents straight into his mouth.'

Julian is forever taking more than his fair share of everything. 'If there were four slices of Spam, he would eat three and leave one for me.' Daniel often thinks: 'You could at least ask,' but doesn't like to say anything.
***
Julian is also something of a skinflint, always letting other people pay for things. He claims it's so his whereabouts can't be traced via a transaction with a cash machine, but when he uses this excuse straight after appearing at a televised Press conference, Daniel begins to smell a rat.

Before long, infatuation turns to irritation. Julian picks up women and brings them back to their shared hotel room. 'One night I really needed to sleep. I was dead tired, and I asked him to let me crash in peace for once. A short time later, I heard Julian talking to a woman on the phone...Julian insisted she come to the hotel. My problem was that we shared not only a room but a large double bed. I buried my head in my pillow and tried to sleep, or at least give that impression.'
***
[The] social isolation [of the Wikileaks team] fosters their self-regard, their notion that the world should be made to dance to their tune.

This turned, as Daniel says, 'two pale-faced computer freaks, whose intelligence would have otherwise gone unnoticed, into public figures who put fear into the hearts of the politicians, business leaders and military commanders of this world. They probably had nightmares about us. A lot of them probably wished that we had never been born. That felt good.'

In passages such as this, it becomes clear that the megalomania-they affect to despise in world leaders is as nothing compared to their own.

Moral high ground

Me to a friend: "I'll never ever be able to yell out 'I have never done you wrong, never,' to anyone. Because I do *everyone* a little wrong."

Sociopath song: The games you play

From R. Goose:

Sociopaths in media: Lady Gaga

From a reader (and for the search engines), as reported by Vogue via dlisted.

On how one of her greatest talents is not barfing on stage: "I don't know if you knew this. But the other night, in London, I had food poisoning. I was vomiting backstage during the changes. Nobody knew...I just Jedi mind-tricked my body. [I told myself] 'You will not vomit onstage.'"

On how she molests little monsters every night: "Sometimes, being onstage is like having sex with my fans. They're the only people on the planet who in an instant can make me just lose it."

On how her fans are bad kids, or something: "I see myself in them. I was this really bad, rebellious misfit of a person--I still am--sneaking out, going to clubs, drugs, alcohol, older men, younger men. You imagine it, I did it. I was just a bad kid. And I look at them, and every show there's a little more eyeliner, a little more freedom, and a little more 'I don't give a fuck about the bullies at my school.'"

On how she's full of so much modesty: "Speaking purely from a musical standpoint, I think I am a great performer. I am a talented entertainer. I consider myself to have one of the greatest voices in the industry. I consider myself to be one of the greatest songwriters. I wouldn't say that I am one of the greatest dancers, but I am really quite good at what I do. I think it’s OK to be confident in yourself."

The sociopathic art of persuasion

The subject has just recently been covered in "Split-Second Persuasion The Ancient Art and New Science of Changing Minds," by Kevin Dutton, part explanatory, part how-to. This review compares the book to other self-help books, such as Dale Carnegie's "How to Win Friends and Influence People":

The worldviews of Carnegie and Dutton overlap at times. Both proffer self-confidence as a means of getting your way. But while Carnegie was a classic partisan of brownnosing (smile, never argue or find fault), Dutton sees things through a darker lens. The book builds slowly toward a simple climax: Nobody does it better than the psychopath.

The term psychopath gets defined here quite liberally. Jim Jones makes an appearance. But not all psychopaths inhabit jail cells. Some serve as platoon sergeants. Others prowl corporate suites. Some pretenders may even sleep in cribs. Yes, babies, no surprise to many of us, "lack empathy, are superficially charming, possess not the slightest sense of the consequences of their actions and are out purely for themselves" - all qualities reminiscent of Hannibal Lecter or Gordon Gekko.

So ultimately the book is more Con-Artistry for Eggheads (certainly not Dummies) than How to Win Friends and Influence People, all of which makes it a lot more fun to read than the hackneyed prescriptions of run-of-the-mill self-help gurus and Oprah guests.

Persuasion keeps us alive, Dutton proclaims in the first few pages. Any society worthy of our esteem relies on conviction, not coercion. The author's interest lies not in the mundane garden-variety skill - "let me have the extra pillow, dear, I need to wake up early" - but in milling through the mental circuitry of a select cadre of those who seem to be able to get whatever they want: "reservations, contracts, bargains, babies. Anything." Yes, fame and infamy grace this club. Winston Churchill and Ted Bundy, but also elite salesmen, lawyers, a type of fungus that tricks both plants and bees into doing its bidding.

***

There is a lot to like. You'll learn how other species as well as our own take advantage of key stimuli for their persuading. A key stimulus triggers a fixed response from its recipient, "neat 200 proof mind control - undiluted by language and the thought fields of consciousness," as Dutton observes.

Lesser species do this much better than we do. Bell frogs have their "quonkquack" love calls. Honeybees dance to convey to their brethren the whereabouts of food. Humans can achieve similar responses, but language, our main persuasion tool, must first penetrate an "ozone layer" of conscious thought. "Only the really special make it through," Dutton asserts.

Coddle

I was sifting through my emails and found this from a seduction target who turned into a friend, and then a seduction target, and then a friend again, and then (in a late night impulse) a confidante. It's a reply from an email I sent while traveling, waiting for my shoes to be repaired in time to catch a flight -- an email in which I questioned whether I had the requisite skills to "coddle" this person upon arriving home, and what does does coddle even mean? From my friend:

coddle: to treat with extreme care or kindness

Couldn't even the superficial charm, manipulation and self serving behaviors of a self diagnosed sociopath permissibly appear to be coddling even if it is covertly hostile and dominating? More likely, what is interpeted by your victim as joy, love and compassion - even if feigned, feels close enough to the real deal to be worth it. Or at least, as one of your named victims, I don't care and would prefer the shallow coddling to no coddling at all.

This is not to say that I see you so without capacity for empathy or love; but that seems to be the theme of the DSM IV's diagnosis of the sociopath. So I'm running with it. I must enjoy being the abused.

90% chance you made the flight. 98% percent chance you were still sending an email or texting when flight attendant had to tell you to stop.

Sex drive

A friend asked me:

I've been watching a little dexter, the first 3 episodes so far. I want to know how you explain his aversion to sex because arent most sociopaths super promiscuous? They dont understand the morality of sex but it still feels good so whats dexter's deal. I can understand him not getting the emotional side of it but theres more to it than that. Do you have any insights?

I'm super interested in this kind of stuff, probably because you are too and i found it a little weird how they portray him. He does a lot of stereotypical socio things like killing animals but they decided not to have him be promiscuous which prolly could have generated more buzz. Yeah i do like the inner monologues haha. You're probably right about there being a socio writer cause a lot of the things he says sound just like you. :)

I said: Well, the new version of Sherlock Holmes is supposed to be a sociopath and also asexual. From what I know of sociopaths, there sometimes seems to be more of an interest in the power and seduction aspects of sex, and less the actual act itself, perhaps because basically all it is to them is physical gratification, no soul melds or expressions of anything but dominance, power, and vulnerability. But I also think that sociopaths have physical needs just as much as anyone, and their lack of ability to conform to social norms may make their sexual activities seem comparatively more prominent and important in the sociopath's life, just because they're attitude about sex is more direct and less apologetic or euphemistic. Despite appearances, though, I don't think that there is necessarily anything unique about the sociopath's approach to sex vis a vis other drives, but rather that the nature of the sociopath's impulsiveness as it relates to sexual urges is the same as the sociopath's impulsiveness as it relates to everything else. In other words, to the extent that third parties perceive sex to stand out in a sociopath's personality, it may just be due to the squeamishness and buzz that most people associate with sex and sexuality, rather than there being a categorical difference between the sociopath's approach to sex and any other of his bodily needs.

Sociopaths in literature: "The Trojan Prince"

"He wants to tell her all about himself, his future. He feels how fascinating he is to her -- it's as if she were attached to him by some glistening thread, which he can tug this way and that, and she'll turn her head, with its coil of heavy hair, to attend to whatever he shows her. He's aware of his own body, slim and hard beneath the dense cloth of his dark suit. It begins to fascinate him, too, this power that belongs to his looks, to his nature."

--Tessa Hadley

Sociopath song: Ghost

Undercover

This is an account of a woman involved in eco-terroris groups taht falls in love with and marries a man who is an undercover policement sent to spy on her organizations, with hilarious parallels to empath/sociopath relationships in which the sociopath is "undercover":

[I]n June 1999, after a night in another pub, that Laura says she began to have a meaningful relationship with Boyling. "For the most part while he was undercover we had a blissfully in-love relationship," she says. "In the beginning I nearly broke it off because it almost felt too strong; he was a perfect blueprint for something I didn't even know I was looking for."
***
Jim the Van was also known as "Grumpy Jim", and Laura says her boyfriend also raised eyebrows by a seeming reluctance to get involved in a sustainable activist culture, once refusing to help pick up rubbish at a campsite. "He was interested in disrupting, not building, it surprised me but I put down to immaturity." Despite a slight sense that he did not fit in, Laura never suspected her boyfriend was a police informant – except for on one occasion.

"It's such a cliche – but it was the way he was cleaning his walking boots," she said. "I suddenly thought, 'Who is this intruder?' – and then I came to and suddenly he was Jim again. It was such a brief moment and it made such little sense that I blanked it."
***
She also says he encouraged her to cut ties with the activist community and wanted to "train" her in the art of deception. "He said the trick was to have a whole and detailed story but not tell too much of it," she says.

Boyling, however, may have struggled to balance his two lives.

"He said he missed that [activist] life – he said it was great because it was like being God. He knew everyone's secrets on both sides and got to decide what to tell who and decide upon people's fate."
***
"Jim complained one day that his superiors said there was to be no more sexual relations with activists anymore – the implicit suggestion was that they were fully aware of this before and that it hadn't been restricted in the past," Laura says.

"He was scoffing at it saying that it was impossible not to expect people to have sexual relations. He said people going in had 'needs' and I felt really insulted. He also claimed it was a necessary tool in maintaining cover."

Faux-ciopath

"Some day neurosurgeons could offer to turn you into a psychopath if you so desired." This is great news for all of those alleged sociopath wannabes, particularly since penis enlargements seem to be little more than a pipe dream still. Selections from FuturePundit (original article here):

“Our findings show that people who have psychopathic symptoms behave as though they are suffering frontal brain damage,” said Dr. Simone Shamay-Tsoory.

At the risk of stating the obvious: If an injury to a specific part of the brain reduces empathy then empathy is a product of that part of the brain.

Not all psychopaths lack the ability to comprehend emotions felt by others. It isn't that they lack the ability to model the emotions of others. Rather, their emotional reaction to their own modeling of others is different than it is in most people. This is, by the way, why I fear future artificial intelligences. I do not expect they will have behavior-restraining empathy.

An existing explanation for such behavior suggests inability to comprehend the existence of emotions in others. However, the fact that many psychopaths act with sophistication and deceit with intention to harm others, indicates that they actually have a good grasp of the mental capacity of others - and are even capable of using that knowledge in order to cause them harm.

I almost didn't share this particular article because it lacks a certain coherency that one expects from a legitimate source. The most ridiculous part of the article is this statement: "This is, by the way, why I fear future artificial intelligences. I do not expect they will have behavior-restraining empathy." Behavior-restraining empathy? Empathy is not necessary for helpful behavior, nor does it necessarily prevent hurtful behavior, as shown humorously here. Plus, it's weird that he would say that. Hasn't he seen Bladerunner? Terminator 2? Doesn't he know that there is a little moral ambiguity involved with AI?

America the sociopath?

Better late than never?

Now, I've heard the impact of these releases on our foreign policy described as a meltdown, as a game-changer, and so on. I think -- I think those descriptions are fairly significantly overwrought. The fact is, governments deal with the United States because it's in their interest, not because they like us, not because they trust us, and not because they believe we can keep secrets. Many governments -- some governments deal with us because they fear us, some because they respect us, most because they need us. We are still essentially, as has been said before, the indispensable nation.

— Secretary of Defense Robert M. Gates on the Wikileaks scandal, November 30, 2010