The pleasure of power

From Zhawq:

In your article The Art of Massage you posed the question:

"What pleasure does the seducer get then? Why go to all of the trouble? It's a good question without a good answer."

I think there is an understandable explanation to why psychopaths (and other manipulative people to some extent) tend to get pleasure from being active and the giver in a seduction event rather than being the receiver.

We like to give because of what we receive that way. This is true for all people - even Mother Theresa gained something from her martyrdom - but it is most of all true for psychopaths.

The neurotypical majority of people do tend find it slightly annoying, something to get over with so as to get to the pleasurable part. This is a common experience, and psychopaths can certainly feel just as bored with it as everybody else. Of course there're exceptions to this...

First of all, it isn't quite as unusual for neurotypical men to enjoy the giving role as it is for the women. There're also neurotypical people who simply enjoy the active giving role, it is part of their personality. The most common exception is when someone is in love with another and spontaneously like to cause that person pleasure.

It is very different for psychopaths. I find that psychopathic people's overall greater joy from being the active party, being the one who gives, has to do with the way we (psychopaths) experience the world.
One obvious reason is that we gain pleasure from being in control, and that to get in control you have to be the active part at least in the beginning.

But there's more to it than that...

The neurotypical majority of people always have a clear inner sense of what they feel, at any time and about anything, though very often not why. But they seem to have a two-part, or a 'split up' radar which monitors both their own feelings and the feelings of others. Their empathy may be what keeps them focusing on both others and themselves, but it may also be what keeps them from focusing on a certain outcome.

A psychopath's attention is not split in two and our focus is mainly outward (unless we're in pain or otherwise in an unpleasant state). We are very extrovert people and extrovert people are more likely to enjoy the active role when interacting with others. We generally enjoy having the dominant role.

Psychopaths do also not get our attention bend inward via empathy triggered emotions from those we interact with, because we largely lack the ability to feel empathy. We don't have the neurotypical person's common range of emotions, and the ones we have are often not clearly defined. And because we don't have the 'mystical link' (empathy) with other people and their feelings that neurotypicals have, we are pretty much left to gain an understanding of others by observing their behavior.

Our emotions aren't the only central element in how we (psychopathic people) experience the world. On the other hand, our senses - what we see, what we understand cognitively and intellectually, and what we can do with what we see, experience, understand - is the great and main part of life for us.

Neuro-science have been making discoveries that support the above. One could hope that the so called growing understanding of the human mind will lead to a better understanding of people like our host, M.E., like myself, Zhawq, and like many of our readers. But sadly I don't think that's the way it's going.

Habitual thinking and adherence to outdated dogma is a strong incentive to keep things at their status quo, and for as long as even the leading researchers use the easy way out and blame psychopaths for all wrongdoings in the world like a broken record about 14.th century witch hunt, there'll be build new concentration camps and Dr. Mengele types will induce their 'gene therapy' and 'brain chip implants' in the name of the greater good.