So why is there no psychopath awareness?

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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.

Logic and rationality don't really help with fending off sociopaths because they will just skew their speech to appeal to your logic and rationality. I find sheer gut instinct and 'feelings' are what you have to go with (it feels wrong) and they will try to talk you out of your 'feelings' with rational arguments.

They really are amazingly glib. It astonishes me how quickly they sum up your weaknesses and they are usually in the areas of honesty or pity. I would love to know how they do that, see people's weaknesses so clearly and so quickly.

I think another indicator or sociopathy is that their way of relating is shallow. They only need or want to know people to the extent that they can exploit them and any progress beyond that is pointless to them.

They ARE seeking acceptance of their mindset as a way of being like we are. creepy!

You have obviously never met a borderline or histrionic. They honestly do not care about anyone. The sometimes APPEAR to care about others when the situation calls for it, but really it is their way or the highway. A borderline might not go on a killing spree, but if you are friends with one, they will often cause conflict, manipulate others, use past bad incidents as an excuse to be mean to others, control who you are around, perhaps even steal from you because they need to self-serve and only think on the moment. Yes, borderlines and histrionics will be drama queens and claim they are the victims and that they care about everyone else, but they do not. I love how we are quick to call narcissists and sociopaths (their mostly male) evil and uncaring, but when someone tackles the evils that borderlines and histrionics (they're mostly female) people lecture them about those "poor and tragic" borderlines and histrionics are just victims and have just been dealt a bad hand in life. They never say that about narcies or socies. Usually it is a radical feminist who is so out to excuse and support the borderlines and histrionics but not the narcies or socies. I'm not trying to start an argument about feminism and gender, but if we look at narcies and socies as dangerous (and many are), we need to look at borderlines and histrionics the same was (as many are also dangerous).

...No, one of my current friends is a 38 year old woman with borderline personality disorder, actually. Also, I interacted with quite a few of them when I was misdiagnosed with BPD and stuck in group therapy with them. They always struck me as basically emotionally unstable, and not quite sure what to do with themselves; some of them were in their forties and I felt more mature despite being barely able to live independently. They do hurt people; but when they hurt people they tend to be desperate or impulsively angry, and it isn't the sort of thing that comes from not caring. They hurt themselves a great deal more than they hurt anyone else--they will sabotage their own accomplishments, impulsively do dangerous things, reject the people who love them most and then run back because they are scared to be alone... If anything, it is emotional immaturity--something I can relate to, because I have the emotional control of a very young child, and I know what it's like not to really be able to control showing anger or sadness. The only reason they were worse off in that area than me is that I have since learned to understand and compensate for uncontrollable emotions; and these folks were still blindsided and confused by them.

I've never understood the reason for female and male distinctions of diagnosis. Someone once told me that only males have autism.

Have been around borderlines and yes, they are manipulative can turn on the emotions when it will suits their goals, claim they feel something, claim they care but really do not and get others to think they actually care about them but their actions show the truth but are females that are actually sociopaths being misdiagnosed with BPD instead?

There are actually plenty of research papers and books on personality disorders out there. I have a now waning interest in personality disorders and personality more generally and have learned a lot about the various dimensions people's behavior and attitudes tend to vary over over the past few years. One of the classic books on personality disorders is Disorders of Personality: DSM-IV and Beyond by Theodore Millon and Roger D. Davis. It's a little old, so it contains some outmoded psychoanalytical-style ideas, but its exploration of the cognitive, affective, mood/temperament, behavior/expressive style, etc. is nevertheless insightful.

For psychopathy itself, quite a few theories exist, and I won't go into them here.

Borderlines may seem to be the most caring, sensitive and empathic 'victims' of a tough life out there, but I assure you they do not feel anything for anyone but themselves, they use their emotions to get what they want and if they feel bad about hurting someone, it is not because they feel bad about how they made you feel, but about how that makes them feel.

I was married to a borderline man for over a decade and a half and in that time I watched him use pity to manipulate people into doing things for him, giving him things etc and after he got what he wanted he would get this evil grin on his face (when he thought no one was looking (except for his overly observant wife)), he even brags about what he gets other people to do for him, he doesn't have to do anything illegal he can manipulate people out of anything he wants. If you were to meet him, you would think that he is just the greatest guy and then you would be right where he wants you. He can still sometimes fool me into thinking that he actually cares about others (because he makes a lot of effort to create that image) but if you get in the way of his good image, he will destroy you.

I was in some of his therapy sessions and he both said that he felt empty inside (not depressed) and that he didn't know who he was... And if you have never witnessed a borderline in a rage, you have no place saying they don't do any harm.

ManErg

That is a really scary thought, that psychopaths in power are intentionally trying to destroy us, I agree that that would be a bit paranoid, but I also think that there is something to that statement, although I don't believe that there is some organized intentional effort out there that wants to do us in (with exception to autism speaks), I do believe that our ability to see through most of them and to pick up on the patterns of those that we don't immediately see through, makes them (psychopaths and NTs alike) very uncomfortable and would cause them to want to at least discredit us, so that they maintain their power and/ or self image. I personally have a hard time knowing what is okay to notice and what I am supposed to pretend that I don't notice or when the truth is inappropriate, but even if I stay silent, they still know that we know... I am still having a hard time understanding what is wrong with telling the truth, maybe someone here could explain it to me.




Postperson wrote:


You are absolutely correct in your observation here, this is how I was fooled, I see through most people and have since childhood, but when someone came along that knew to use my logical and rational mind to gain my trust as well as my compassion, my defenses where used against me. Now I use gut instinct to check my logic and it is never wrong, the book the gift of fear is excellent at teaching you how to get in touch with this, if you don't already know how.

Aufgehen... that doesn't sound like borderline PD to me. Or, if it was, then it was mixed with something else. It really sounds like pure antisocial to me, not borderline.

Generally after having got something they want from someone, a borderline type will idealize them, tell them they're wonderful, get extremely grateful like they just had their life saved... not grin evilly and brag about how good they are at manipulating. With BPD, people are either horrible or wonderful; but they're not objects to be manipulated--they depend on people too much, and when they manipulate they do it because they're desperate for something--usually a relationship. The self-defeating part comes in because being manipulative (often by threatening to commit suicide if the relationship doesn't continue, for example) will obviously drive the other person away, especially when it happens too early on in a relationship--which it will, because BPD tends to make you think you have found your true love and they are perfect and everything will be perfect... and then something threatens it and you get desperate... but when you get too clingy and push them away, their "perfect" image is suddenly shattered so you swing to the other extreme and see them as devil instead of angel, and get angry and yell and say hurtful things or even get physically violent... until you realize you no longer have a relationship, at which point you get desperate to get it back or else find a new one... See what I'm getting at? (That's stereotypical, BTW. Individuals vary.) Much more desperation and impulsivity and poor control than intentional hurt. Not that I'd particularly want someone like this to raise a kid without first getting some help; but this isn't sociopathy, and in any case, by middle age has usually burned itself out as the person gets "older and wiser"...

"Psychopath" in this context equates to Antisocial Personality Disorder, right?

My father fits that perfectly.

Which has happened in most countries if you look at say, the last 500 years of history.



And they'll probably achieve it long before we do as they have the correct tools! There are those who say that thay already have achieved it in the western world where we accept that our leaders will have no integrity, will be feathering their own nests at our expense, cultivating an anti-intellectual bias amongst their minions.

Some other points: I assume that sociopathy is a spectrum too, although I've never found this declared in anything I've ever read.

On conscience: maybe Aspies have on over active conscience? That would explain the stress of even telling white lies, and the inability to act a role. I'm wondering if we are at one end of a spectrum, with sociopaths at the other and NT's in the middle.

On the Sociopath blog. Very interesting. Glad he's done it. However, given that one of the major symptoms (and a clear give away once you've known one long enough to see the full cycle of their operations) is the way they continually try and evoke pity in you. And that is the aim of that blog. See the way he says "he would join the Aspie party if he could because the Aspies get ALL the sympathy". What utter rubbish!! ! We're the ones who are good people at heart, yet get treated like monsters. They're the ones who are destructive heartless manipulators, yet they manage to charm the pants of everyone the meet...for a while. And then they blame their victims for being 'weak'.

The thing we have in common is that we are both see weaknesses in NT behaviour. However, in general we suffer as a result of those weaknesses, the sociopaths benefit from them through their ability to exploit them.

SP's on WP: Yes, I've noticed what appears to be the occasional SP wandering by too. With 22,000 + members, there's bound to be a few. Ages ago there was a thread where somebody was basically asking "why would anybody who hadn't got AS ever bother to come in here and upset people?". I realized at the time that this was naive as WP would make a really fun playground for an SP! What I'm now realizing is that some SP's have a fascination with AS that makes it even more likely they'll wander by and play some games.

Looking at crime figures, they are dramatically skewed towards SP's . Estimates seem to be around 30 - 40% of the prison population. Aspies are much less likely to be in prison. It would be in a SP's interest if he could pass his lack of empathy off as being due to AS rather than SP. Expect more than a few to come here to try and learn how we work, as well as just to exploit our weaknesses.

The only way to engage with sociopaths if one targets you and fixates on you is to treat it like you are being possessed by a demon. You cannot reason with them and you cannot reason with the people they manipulate so successfully. If you try to engage with them honestly, they will quickly gain control of you psychologically and start either undermining your health or whatever else they want to do to bully/harass/manipulate you. If you get truly targeted by a sociopath, the only way to fend them off is to figure out what their game is and position yourself to be either (1) an unmistakenly benign presence in the landscape who will be a lot of trouble and wasted effort to try to deal with or (2) someone who can derail their game and who will. If you engage with them, you have to use a system of reward and deterrence. Once a sociopath recognizes that you can be a potential source for what they need (like positive attention in the group, if they are a narcissist), you become a potential asset instead of a potential target. If you control the flow of what they get from you, and do not let them gain control over you, you can mediate a standoff.

Sociopaths who are driven to be socially aggressive by some urge like narcissism or perversion, are creatures of compulsion, moreover. They are the ones who can be most dangerous, but most easily manipulated and controlled if you understand their compulsion. But it's very dangerous to engage with them, and it would be best to only do so if there is no other way to get out of being one of their targets. And you ONLY engage with them just enough to mediate boundaries or a stable power relationship and otherwise don't let them in your life or world. You have to be alert at all times for signs that they are infiltrating relationships with others who are important to your job/life/etc. (like finding an excuse to call up your wife at home saying the office is going to have a lunch for your new promotion, and befriending her and inviting her to come along, and then they get friendly and she gives them information). Boundaries, vigilance and boundaries.

I didn't diagnose him, a Dr. did, and more than once.

Your description of a Borderline here is a perfect description of him, on the surface and if I had not had the chance to observe him intimately for so many years, I would think that that was the extent of it.. maybe it is possible that he is an antisocial that is pretending to be a Borderline, maybe he is a borderline mixed with something else (Dr's also speculated DID) who knows? but his ability to appear as though he has a conscience and cares about people is what makes him so dangerous, It took me years to see through him and I am not someone that is easily fooled (although a couple of Dr's saw through him immediately), he is also now way past middle age and if anything his behaviors are worse, but more hidden, he has just learned more effective ways of disguising what he is doing and who he really is, whenever I would get him to read a book I thought might help him, he instead used the information to better his image and manipulation skills, seriously if you met him, you would feel nothing but pity for him and want to help him (he often gets people to do his dirty work by getting them to think they are helping a poor helpless victim).

I am sure that there is a spectrum to all disorders and I feel that the label is really irrelevant because nothing is that transparent, but BPD or not, we all need to hold people accountable for their actions instead of getting caught up in rationalizations or feeling sorry for them, otherwise we are part of the problem, we are then the enablers that help them to continue getting a pay off for acting in destructive ways and often times helping them to carry out a vendetta against someone else that they have painted as the villain. My ex always gets someone else to either suggest what he is already intending to do to someone or do it for him, absolving him of all guilt and responsibility, every time he does something that goes wrong, he just says, I didn't know any better, I was just doing what people told me to cause I am just innocent and helpless (an innocent that makes 150,000 dollars a year manipulating people and still gets people to give him charity). If you really want to help someone, don't give them pity, that is like giving an alcoholic a beer and don't believe anything they say, how can you, their perceptions are twisted to serve themselves.. If everyone stopped the enabling they would be forced to find more acceptable ways to get their bottomless needs met, but in my experience when someone figures them out and stops giving them what they want, they just move on to the next fool that just want to feel good like a good person.. We are not helping them by pitying them, we are giving them a reason to stay sick.

Wow, the people on this board have such sophisticated opinions. This is how I've felt, too. I feel that this narcissistic, sociopathic woman who targeted me a while back was so clearly sociopathic and yet, if you put her games and compulsions and her plastic, emotionally labile affective traits on the board with BPD, it's like a hundred percent fit there, too. What is that all about? I mean, I feel sometimes that the BPD diagnosis is a variation of a kind of affective dysfunction that can perhaps be realized in any of a number of personality or identity disordered people, i.e. a particular manifestation. Just like sensory integration dysfunction gives rise to certain profiles of behavioral and psychological traits. Only people seem to like to slap BPD on the affectively labile, codependent personality disordered women without regard for how sociopathic or dangerous some of their traits can imply. Like infantilizing or trivializing the female sociopath. Maybe psychopathy is the way of masculinizing the male sociopathic predator (soulless homicidal maniac) and BPD is the way of feminizing the female sociopathic predator (toxic emotional vampire).