So why is there no psychopath awareness?

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People have seen "creepy emptiness" in autistic peoples' eyes, too, though. Are you sure it isn't just an effect of the failure to mirror emotions?

Could be! I think you're exactly right. And that is why people used to misdiagnose some manifestations of AS as sociopathy and some sociopaths think they have AS. So from the outside, it's hard to tell. The difference is that the AS person in impaired in the social mirroring, whereas the sociopath has nothing inside (no potential source of emotional connection) with which to mirror. I.e. the AS person's mirror is broken whereas the sociopath has no place to hang a mirror.

I have a hard time using the DSM-IV diagnostic manual. Sociopaths, bullying, harassment and social function have been a special interest area of mine for a while now. I have constructed my own sort of system to explain a whole constellation of social functions and the forms of development people have. My special interest in this area evolved from my need to be able to spot and avoid sociopaths before they target me. I've had 2 encounters with closet sociopaths. So I needed a working system.

IMO the only really accurate way to distinguish between antisocials or a-socials (I consider AS people to be more a-social than anti-social), is to develop ways to tell if the person has more of a problem being disoriented socially and lacking the ability to project a social personality, or if the person has more of a problem identifying with others as humans, tending to view them as objects or tools or creatures. The sociopath, in my system of analysis, will be the one with the identification, or identity issues. His hollowness and lack of insight will be real, and not just due to an limited interface.

I think I've spotted two active sociopaths on this forum already, posturing as AS people.

I never viewed Autism Awareness as an attempt to erradicate people living with autism. They mostly promote early intervention and screening for autism.

Psychopaths are very rare. Even within that subset, only a small percentage of psychopaths are violent criminals.

No, they're actually not "very rare", unless you have some extreme definition of them that I don't have. If you can only count somebody as a psychopath if he's a mass murderer or something like that, then I can see "very rare". But if it's just "person who repeatedly and deliberately violates the rights of others without feeling significant remorse", then they're common.

It's possible to be both lacking a mirror AND a place to hang one, right? so even by your theory it should be possible to be both a sociopath and an Aspie.

Doing that can make you a target though, too. When I was still a child, I stopped a really disturbing and elaborate scheme cooked up by a few sociopaths and a few non-sociopaths who got caught up in it (their mistake was confusing me for someone who could get caught up in it, and revealing their plans to me). Got involved more tangentially in something similar as an adult, that time dealing with theft of money. I'm still dealing with the effects of the resulting equally elaborate character assassination and gaslighting. (Both of these were offline situations.) I imagine if some of them thought they could get away with it they'd be assassinating more than my character.

Seriously though, being ethical makes a person more a likely target, from what I've read, especially if your ethics are an obstacle to their plans. Still, as one book I read pointed out... better to be targeted by them than be them.

My fiance's ex-bf was one too I think. There is one facial expression I can perceive and that is pure hate. I never perceived facial expressions before until I saw his look. I thought he was going to literally kill me.

The guy was a user.

My fiance told me he was into twisted violence and sex. He would get her angry on purpose, it would turn him on to sex, and he would try to take off her clothes in a forceful manner.

He tied her up in blankets, while she was crying, and he just looked at her like he didn't care at all. Her crying did not faze him.

I personally believe this guy is going to kill someone or a bunch of people one day.

His younger brother is an aspie also and by what I've been told did not want to be around him and did not want to go anywhere alone with him.

The younger brother said that everytime the guy was around it caused him and his mom loads of stress and grief and wished he would leave.

You know, you are right, but you are also wrong. I have to think about that some more.

The brain is organized from a set of computational function units ("cognitive primitives"). The cognitive functions that form in your mind are formed using the set of cognitive primitives that your brain will support. So if you have certain neurological traits, that affect what set of cognitive primitives you possess, you cannot have some brain functions, and maybe you have to develop workarounds and compensations to engage in some behavior (like socializing). A lot of traits of AS are developmental in nature -- i.e. they exist because certain things never developed. If an AS person was also sociopathic, they would have more deficits and the set of functions they would develop would be smaller. So an AS with sociopathy would be less functional. But in what ways?

IMO AS people have strong identity functions. That is how they become attached to their special interests, identifying so strongly with systems and ideas. So AS people become MORE strongly attached and infatuated than NTs (they even become infatuated with things and systems) even if they lack a full range of interpersonal attachments. Sociopaths, however (in my system of cognitive function analysis) have impaired identity functions, so this is why they are so uncreative, among other things, and dispassionate. An AS person who was a sociopath would simply be kind of catatonic, lacking both a meaningful, secure connection to the outer world and lacking a meaningful inner world. They would be a kind of non-delusional, catatonic schizophrenic, with aimless sensory disruptions, IMO.

IMO you find some sociopathy and AS in the same families sometimes. You have a fundamental inability to divide your brain's resources between subjectification and objectification, in both types. I.e. in the AS, your sensori-motor system cannot be separated from your emotional and cognitive processes, where in sociopaths, the unfeelingness means that the sensori-motor system is disconnected from the rational cognitive functioning. They are unaffected by their sensorimotor state and their feelings.

I'm not a neuroscientists, but from some light reading, I understand that sociopaths have less white matter and more grey matter, particularly in the frontal lobes, while AS people have less grey matter and more white matter. Since grey matter corresponds to computational capacity (so to speak) and white matter corresponds to relational and associative functioning, these can account for some of the traits that sociopaths and AS people have, that seem to be opposites of each other.

There is no reason why AS and sociopaths cannot exist in the same family, if the genes responsible for regulating the proportional growth of white to grey matter in the brain, are somehow not expressing properly. So if the genes responsible for regulating the proportion of white to grey matter (and where they distribute) are not expressing properly, you can have either of the two variations arise. (Hypothetically).

I am able to step into a computer's shoes better than most people. I can almost become the computer. Wierd huh? In fact, most people I do not understand at all. Since, personality disorders is one of my interests will you be willing to share your knowledge about psycopaths with me. Where are good and reputable sources to look?

I have thought of this that we could exist in the same family. We could be polar north and they could be polar south.

Oh, I think personality disorders are really fascinating, too.

I never found any good sources, that's why I developed my own theories from first principles. The DSM-IV is inconsistent and muddy when it comes to personality disorders, especially multiple PD. Don't know yet what direction the new DSM-V goes in.

I'd be happy to talk but maybe a thread outside of "General Autism Discussion" would be better, tho...

Ah... Yes. Being targeted because you are the one to say the emperor's got no clothes on... I've experienced that. I was the only one to see through my stepfather's lies for a very long time, and as a result he targeted me for abuse. That and my insistence on fairness tended to get him really angry. Oddly enough I prefer it that way, because I would rather have been hurt by someone I knew was doing evil things, than betrayed by someone I thought loved me.

oops I forgot to link the thread because I got tied up. Me and my forgetful ways. http://www.wrongplanet.net/postt85208.html

Wow! You've got it. I see through their bs all the time and unfortunately I dont refrain from showing how upset I am and am the one who gets shafted.

Sociopaths, along with narcissists borderlines and histrionics CAN be VERY dangerous and I agree there should be more awareness of them. However, those people often do not want to get cured and blame everyone else for the bad things they do as they truly have little or no empathy. Some Aspies may have trouble associationg empathy in particular social contexts, but that doesn't necessarily mean they lack a conscience. I reality, sociopaths, narcissists, borderlines and histrionics genuinely lack a conscience even though they may pretend to have one. Unfortunately, any psychopath awareness group would probably be a "beware of these people" group instead of a "let's heal these people" group because it is very hard to treat any of them let alone curing them. I know a lot of peopole here will tell me "why are you picking on borderlines and histrionics? They aren't dangerous." But really, people who are genuinely borderline or histrionic do tend to cause trouble and mayhem wherever they go. Should we HATE those people? No. They can't help it. But we should be aware of them, learn how to identify them, and stay away from them as much as possible.

That would certainly be the case in socialized sociopathic societies. I.e. societies in which the population is socialized to sociopathy. Like countries where tribal genocides, corruption and interpersonal warfare overrules civil law. In these societies, especially, you have the successful sociopaths and psychopaths rising to power. So you can have people like Saddam Hussein ruling Iraq, without being really conscious of how out of bounds his behavior was getting, because he was not reined in by any punishment system that informed his value system. So he went way off the rails, using chemical warfare against Iraqi Kurds, etc. (Not to say invading Iraq was justified).

Good links, BTW, on the "successful sociopath" paper.

Wait wait wait! You really cannot lump borderline or histrionic people into "have no conscience". Those two disorders do result in things that can hurt others, but they do not have anything to do with lack of empathy. In fact people with borderline PD probably have stronger empathy than most--the lack of strong identity practically requires identifying very strongly with others! Histrionic PD involves a love of attention and dramatic personality, but does not actually result in a lack of conscience. Both groups of people mature as they age, as well.