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GnothiSeauton
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12 Mar 2014, 5:24 pm

An academic question for all of those who wish to follow with an adequate answer.
Is psychopathy/sociopathy merely a form of high functioning Asperger's syndrome stemming from the genetic predisposition, or a genetic disposition/epigenetic development, in order to avoid responsibility/emotional baggage developed through the course of exploring the emotional side a person develops from the interaction with other members of the society?
As a side inducement I would encourage the exploration of the feminine/masculine archetypes.
As another side inducement I would encourage the exploration of what it means to face the unencountered and overcoming it through relegating what one fears.
I have been diagnosed as a high-functioning 'aspie'/sociopath/sub-clinical psychopath (I will explore these diagnoses further, if you wish).
Please explain your personal point of view along with the theoretical explanation of how you view your own response and approach to fear.



Callista
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12 Mar 2014, 5:46 pm

I've made peace with fear. Sometimes I feel afraid; sometimes I don't. That's life. You can't let it stop you.

Quote:
Is psychopathy/sociopathy merely a form of high functioning Asperger's syndrome stemming from the genetic predisposition, or a genetic disposition/epigenetic development, in order to avoid responsibility/emotional baggage developed through the course of exploring the emotional side a person develops from the interaction with other members of the society?
No; they are completely unrelated conditions. A sociopath has normal social perception ability and normal social skills, and they can read other people just fine--in fact, they often use their social skills to deliberately manipulate or hurt other people, to toy with their emotions or to get what they want from them. In contrast, someone with autism has a hard time learning how to communicate and finds it difficult to read others' emotions.

Autistic people:
--Have an intact sense of morality and justice.
--Are somewhat more prone to following rules than typical people.
--Have difficulty figuring out other people's state of mind.
--Are as likely as neurotypicals to engage in altruistic "helping" behavior.
--Are less likely to seek revenge against those who have been unfair to them in the past.
--Have communication difficulties, and may have language difficulties.
--Are as likely to embarrass themselves as they are to embarrass someone else.
--Have a hard time learning how to manipulate, bully, or dominate others.
--Are seen as "weird", "creepy", "eccentric", or "strange".

Sociopaths:
--Do not see morality and justice as particularly important, though they are aware of the existence of rules.
--Will use the rules to their own benefit, but break them when it is convenient or beneficial.
--Will engage in altruistic "helping" behavior only if it also benefits them.
--Are usually charming and socially skilled; adept manipulators.
--Are often impulsive, disorganized, and unable to keep a steady job. May have a string of "get-rich-quick" schemes or participate in high-risk or questionably legal work.
--Are good at communication, both at reading others' state of mind and at projecting a particular state of mind to others.
--May enjoy hurting others for pleasure.
--Most are seen as very normal, personable people; some are career criminals, but most are not.
--As they age, tend to become more pragmatic and learn to "play the game", living in relative harmony without causing too much harm.
--Often popular; many make good politicians, businessmen, and lawyers.

It is possible for autistic people to also be sociopaths. In that case it's usually a good deal more obvious, because they do not have the social skills that the sociopath uses to hide their tendency to not think other people are worth very much. But this does not happen particularly often; autistic people are no more likely to commit crimes (somewhat less likely, in fact) and their moral reasoning, both as children and as adults, is as advanced as the average neurotypical's.

Many autistic people are accused of being sociopaths because we are socially clumsy and may not understand what other people want from us. But this is lack of social skill, and it hurts us as much as it hurts anyone else; once we find out we have hurt someone, we are likely to feel absolutely crushed at the discovery. Many autistics are unusually altruistic, becoming advocates of social justice, habitually volunteering their time, and even risking their own safety for others' benefit. We tend to want to protect the weak, because we know what it is like to be weak--animals, children, vulnerable adults, old folks, or just the underdog in general. And unlike neurotypicals, it's hard for us to see anyone as an "acceptable target"--the social norms that stigmatize people just aren't as clear to us.

Rule of thumb: If you care what happens to your fellow man even if it doesn't affect you, then you're not a sociopath.


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Waterfalls
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12 Mar 2014, 5:55 pm

What Callista said. Autism and Aspergers are related to each other and are not related to psychopathy or sociopathy. People sometimes mistake someone with ASD as psychopathic when the person does not show remorse for unknowingly hurting/upsetting someone and not understanding intuitively what they've done. There is no connection, however, other than that superficially they can look similar. Once you look deeper, there is no relationship.



GnothiSeauton
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12 Mar 2014, 6:09 pm

Still, I find that the distinctions are superficial in the cultural/societal context.
I've been exploring the sociopathworld and the wrongplanet forums for some time and find myself amiss.
Neither seem to provide the answers in the strictly empirical point of view, as they obviously relate a personal and therefore biased experience.
My point of interest stems from trying to adjust my observational and the perceptual points of view.
Both forums agree on many levels, yet they both disagree on the understanding of what any one condition encompasses in the terms of the human condition.
I understand the stemming point from which these forums and the topics encountered in and then explored come from, yet still I find myself torn between understanding what these conditions truly encompass and what do they mean, when forced against the wall of reality.



conundrum
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12 Mar 2014, 9:27 pm

OP: this book may provide a starting point:

THE SCIENCE OF EVIL: ON EMPATHY AND THE ORIGINS OF CRUELTY

If nothing else, it does discuss how and why sociopathy and autism used to be (and sometimes still are) mistaken for one another.


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Callista
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12 Mar 2014, 9:35 pm

You're looking for black and white; you're looking for exact definitions, either-or, objective, is or isn't. Doesn't work that way, though. You can't put people in boxes. You can't make a universal statement about all autistics or all sociopaths or all of any other category of people, because people are too complex to ever be truly categorizable.

Each person is unique. And I don't mean that in a fake sugary inspirational kind of way; I mean that a human being is made of too much information for any two human beings ever to be alike, even if there were a human being for every atom in the universe. The thing we call "autism" is a collection of traits, perhaps a phenomenon connected to some underlying developmental difference; but because every human being is different, every autistic person expresses autism in a different way. And every case of autism is different, too, because the genetic and neurological differences themselves are different.

What autism is, in the scope of reality, is a name for a phenomenon of similar traits occurring among human beings, just similar enough that we can see a pattern, but it is only one tiny facet of the wild diversity of humankind. We can observe the behavior of people, and ask them for their self-reported experiences, and when they are close enough to the standardized description of "autism" for that description to be useful in finding them assistance, therapy, and better self-awareness, then we diagnose them with autism.

Autistic people are those with a group of traits that are found together more often than you'd expect by chance.

The concept of Autism is an abstract idea that describes a group of traits at the rough center of the things that tend to describe this group of people, but do not tend to describe non-autistic people.

When a doctor diagnoses a patient with autism, they take this group of traits and decide whether someone is close enough to the abstract concept of "Autism" that the group of treatments and accommodations that have been shown to help others in that group, has a good chance of being useful to that patient.


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