I have often said that sociopaths are not difficult to understand, they're basically four year olds in an adult's body. They manipulate like four year olds. The world revolves around them like four year olds, but they can also be genuinely interested/curious about the people and things around them like four year olds. They can be surprisingly naive about certain things and tactlessly blunt. They don't have a great understanding of their own emotional worlds or the emotional worlds of others, nor do they have great emotional regulation. They will throw tantrums, sometimes violent, and they can sometimes be hard to reason with, but they still rationally respond to incentives. Four year olds can be incredibly cruel and devious. They can also be very creepy, as illustrated by this BuzzFeed article, "The 13 Creepiest Things A Child Has Ever Said To A Parent," from a longer reddit thread.
Worth reading in their entirety, some of my favorites include:
Worth reading in their entirety, some of my favorites include:
- "I'm imagining the waves of blood rushing over me."
- "I was tucking in my two year old. He said "Good bye dad." I said, "No, we say good night." He said "I know. But this time its good bye.""
- "My 3 year old daughter stood next to her new born brother and looked at him for awhile then turned and looked at me and said, "Daddy its a monster..we should bury it.""
- "Death is the poor man's doctor."
children are great (with ketchup)
ReplyDeleteI remember i was 8 my mother just died
ReplyDeletemy father was seducing a gf and was laughing because his games were working on her
my brother(6 years old at that time) and me were laughing cause we noticed
and she (the gf) did not know what wa going on
i think grownups can learn a lot from kids
ReplyDeletespecialy to be openminded ,curiosity and the will to learn
As a mother of four, I can agree with this. I used to call them "psychopaths in cute overalls".
ReplyDeleteNo matter where they fall on the empathy spectrum, they are capable of very deliberate cruelty. I will never forget having day camp counselors report to me that my three year old "Sunshine" reduced her 5 year old sister to panicked tears after giving her the silent treatment. It was very clear that she got off on the power trip. From that day forward, we all had a new respect for her because up until that point she was completely dominated by her sister.
I also had to ban the use of some cat leashes and harnesses after my kids took great pleasure in "walking" cats against their will. True confession- it was pretty hilarious but I knew it was a bad path to go down and that making family pets miserable to induce laughing fits is a bad road to repeatedly travel.
I don't think children are evil. I just don't think they feel the need to repress or sublimate their aggressive impulses the way most adults do.
Wow Great insights. Thank you for this ME.
ReplyDeleteWhat you're saying is that children are little narcacists. They believe
ReplyDeletethat the whole world revolves around them. Sociopaths are "overgrown"
children?
Some people believe that Psychopaths and sociopaths are NOT the same.
They say that Psychopaths are born and sociopaths are made. They are
probably speaking about especially brutal serial killers and mass
murderers-almost always male-like John Wayne Gacy who seem to have
nurological disfunction. A sociopath could be an abused woman who took
up these traits as a means of survival.
A number of years ago,there was an especially brutal serial killer named
Paul Barto up in Canada. He teamed up with a naracistic woman named Carole K. (I don't remember her last name.) when a psychopathic man gets
together with a sociopathic woman it spells Trouble.
The killing began with Carole's own sister. Paul wanted to have sex with
her, so he had Carole drug her. While the sister was knocked out, Paul
had Carole do unspeakable things to her sister's body (This was all
caught on tape at Barto's insistence.) Then Carole turned her sister
over to Barto, for even more obscene activities. The sister sufficated
on her own vomit.
Bardo used Carole to entice other girls. All the horrific torture killings were captured on film and it could be seen that Carole was every
bit the eger partisipant that Paul was.
Paul began to give Carole sever beatings so she decided to turn states
evidence against him. He was sentenced to life. She did about 10 years
and was released. She got remarried and has children. This was somewhat
before social media was invented so she was able to dissapear.
The point is, if Psychopaths are born and sociopaths are made it might
be possible for sociopaths to reform.
Psychopaths come from nature. Sociopaths come from nurture.
Casey and Jodi were vicimized by thier families. They TURNED sociopath to
survive. People like Ted Bundy were born psychopathic and can't be helped.
My suggestion is that we preserve the attractive sociopaths (Who are
almost entirely female) and offer mercy killing incentives to all
unattractive sociopathics, psychopaths and depressive "losers."
We wouldn't REQUIRE that the person kill themselves, just strongly
encourage it and ease their "transitions" in the most painless way
possible.
I scanned over your post but I disagree with your perception of Casey Anthony.
DeleteI think she was a bad seed from birth and SHE abused her family. She didn't pull much on her father but her mother thought Casey would grow up to be a "winner," so she let her get away with a lot. And we all know how that turned out.
My suggestion is that we preserve the attractive sociopaths (Who are
Deletealmost entirely female) and offer mercy killing incentives to all
unattractive sociopathics, psychopaths and depressive "losers."
We wouldn't REQUIRE that the person kill themselves, just strongly
encourage it and ease their "transitions" in the most painless way
possible.
LOL!
I think you mean the men, yes?
DeleteWe could have the mercy killings done by the female sociopaths.
If your 10 yr old daughter would not get off the only toilet in the house in order to make the 12 year old daughter shit in a basin, would that be considered cruel??
Deleteand mercy killing for everyone older than 60 unable/unwilling to wrok
Deletewould solve the crysis
Mercy killing for those that cannot spell, use grammar correctly and unable to comprehend.
DeleteMercy killing for all those who are for the idea of mercy killing, except me.
DeleteNo, wait, let it be a merci-less killing for those who are for the idea of mercy killing.
Deletelol
DeleteME- I listened to the last program in its entirety and it left me with some questions that would best be answered by someone who meets the criteria for being a psychopath. Your personal response to the questions of dimensionality would be very helpful for me as I continue to sort through my own changing thinking on this particular shade of psych pathology.
ReplyDeleteAnyone else who has been clinically diagnosed as a psychopath- I would also welcome your opinion on the comment (about 8 down) I left on yesterdays post as to whether being a psycohpath is an either/or proposition or if it is a disorder that exists on a continuum and can be moderated by environmental interventions.
I haven't actually been diagnosed but I strongly feel it to be dimensional. We all have a little sociopath in us and draw upon those traits when we have to. Or at least thats my opinion.
Deletethanks, Khan. I think I agree with you here. I wonder, however, if there is a certain tipping point that particularly severe sociopaths reached where reigning it in is impossible and what the indicators for that might be.
DeleteI keep telling everyone I am a 5 year old trapped in the body of a middle age man...
ReplyDeleteThat little girl looks like a gremlin.
ReplyDeleteThe only thing consistent about a sociopath is their inconsistences.
ReplyDeleteOne minute they are so intelligent they shatter the IQ scale. Then the next minute you learn that they are like a 4 year old trapped in an adult body.
Unless their dumb. Hence all the ones in prison.
Deletei dont think it's fair that if you are child-like that someone gets to mooch off your energy when you are fun fun fun and then chide you when you are temper/pouting/pointing fingers. They signed up for woman-child when they fell in love with the first part. why can't they put up with momentary negative traits. shit i have to put up with monotonous adult-like boring boring boring from them.
DeleteYou have to broaden your knowledge of intelligence. Today it is merely measured as a technical information processing ability(learning, remembering short an long term, understanding information). You can still be emotionally "held back" or have any other combination of mental deviance.
ReplyDeleteIntelligence does not make you "better" in any way as a human in regards to human values.
My soon to be four year old told his mother late one night: "If my father does not come home soon, we go get a new one, OK?"
ReplyDeleteRepeatedly other things too, many I can't remember. Even threats of violence and what not.
I have always perceived this with humor.
His three year old friend is propably not going to be beating me up any time soon, for the reason of me denying my son chocolate... despite the honest and sincere threats of this happening.
In my view the sociopath is like a mentally challenged or retarded person. The challenges/instability displayed sort of run along the same line or has similar patterns. In other words they are emotionally retarded. Bearing in mind though that there are varying degrees of retardation for each person.
ReplyDeleteThe intelligent socio tries to improve on his condition so I think it gives the loved/favoured ones some amount of ease in dealing with them emotionally. Outside of that the empath must be willing to exert his/her emotions and spirit in trying to deal with the sociopath in an effort to makes some sense of the person at the emotional level. The relationship of sort ends up as short term because the emotional retardation of the socio is heavily taxing on the one who has real emotions.
So I would agree that the emotional instability of the sociopath is the thing that is most consistent about them in a relationship of sort that should be platonic or otherwise.
One of my favorite stories from my mother was her trying to work and me coming up behind her with needle nose pliers and snagging her while saying "Poke". Children just do not realize the consequences of their actions and it sounds like for Sociopaths they never get out of that.
ReplyDeleteThough I do not pinch people with pliers anymore, I never really get emotional unless someone is either questioning me or even worse inconveniencing me.
I'm a Borderline (undiagnosed, but 9/9 slaughters coincidence.) , and I suspect also a sociopath (I don't seem to match all of the symptoms, but I think psychology has sociopathy completely wrong anyway:) and to me the similarity between children and sociopaths makes perfect sense to bolster a suspicion of mine.
ReplyDeleteThere is nothing wrong with Sociopaths, or children, the factor we share in common being that we haven't signed our souls to the social contract. We don't agree to sacrifice logic and self-preservation for 'the good of the team', unless in the process of doing so we are benefiting ourselves.
If a sociopath truly cannot feel sympathy or empathy, or any other emotion, then I must be whatever dark and horrid thing is beyond a sociopath, because I feel everything, when I choose to do so. Often it is not beneficial to do so, and when that happens, I turn it off. It took me a long time to realize that not everyone can/chooses to do this (I am not entirely convinced that anyone is incapable of learning to do it), and at the risk of looking evil, I am glad that I have the ability, and wouldn't give it up for anything. Least of all for something as meaningless as 'being normal'.
*shrug*