Sociopath treatment

There is no "cure" for sociopathy, but it can be managed well or it can be managed poorly. Sociopaths don't respond very well to punishment, but they do respond to incentives. As discussed in this little blurb, referencing the successful treatment of teenage sociopaths:

Psychopaths aren’t murderers and criminals by their nature, they’re simply people without compunction. Naturally this can make them callous and cold, but it doesn’t automatically make them dangerous. In fact, in cases where it has been demonstrated and proven to psychopaths that they will personally benefit from abiding by rules, then it is possible they can become relatively well assimilated into society. Let me explain, where traditional treatment is used, (like psychotherapy or counseling), the sessions merely act as a kind of unintentional specialized training to help psychopaths more effectively mimic healthy emotional behavior. They are not treated or helped by traditional therapy as any insane (or sane) person might be. But Dr. Robert Hare developed a system whereby by accepting that the psychopath may never be anything but rational and uncaring, and used logical process to demonstrate that it is in their own interest to behave appropriately. Apparently there are criminal rehabilitation systems which are testing out this process, offering instant rewards for psychopathic subjects who follow the rules, appealing to their need for instant gratification and it is shown to be relatively effective. This is the first treatment in the history of psychopathy that has been been effective at all.

What is the difference between a successful sociopath and a less successful one? Sometimes I wonder if it's a matter of chancing upon a good thing first and sticking with it rather than a bad one -- like we're monkeys in an experiment, and if you press one button you get heroin, if you press another you get food, and if you press another you somehow get sexual pleasure. Once you find a good thing, you'll probably just stick with it, right? I always got good results being legit, ever since I was little, but if I didn't, or if my first good results came from being less legit, I'm sure I would have gone that way.

But if you want to "manage" yourself or someone else, I do think the key is incentives and immediate gratification. The caveats are that the incentive cannot be discretionary (because sociopaths will see it as arbitrary and not actually associate it with their own behavior) and the reward can't seem too good or the task too hard, otherwise he will spend all of his time trying to figure out how to trick you into giving him the reward without actually completing the task.