Aspies For Freedom

Ever met a sociopath?  What was your experience?

one of my current special interests is studying about cults, terrorists.  I wonder if many cult or terror cell leaders are sociopaths.

I also want to know how to tell if someone is a sociopath when first meeting them.

Why do you have guilt - if you don't care what others think of you, where does the guilt come from?


Separate issue - I can't imagine a sociopath ever experiencing guilt.
Having said that - I don't understand much about sociopath.

Doesn't dogbrain like Chosen one??? He seems angry.

I recently read a few books about sociopathy / psychopathy  - I can post the info if anyone is interested.

There is one person I know who feel has sociopathic traits and has used these against me. I avoid them totally now. They are part of the reason I'm thinking of emigrating.

I recently examined the whole issue of "lack of empathy" and the difference between autism and psychopathy/sociopathy in an article in my blog.

I can say that Dr Robert Hare appears to be the big expert on psychopaths, and he has written some books on the subject for a general readership.

I've been reading a book about the psychology of personality recently: "Personality" by Daniel Nettle, and it has an intelligent discussion of the difference between autism and psychopathy, which is quite a rare thing to find in pop science books.

Psychopaths are not common (1% of the population is one estimate), but I think people who are of that psychological type, but not extreme enough to fit the description completely, are common. I know a whole family who are of this type. They have all the hallmarks of the type within their family; impulsivity, irresponibility, lying, deception, child neglect, domestic violence, mental illness, drug and alcohol abuse (including during pregnancy), low IQ, ADHD diagnosis, chronic truancy, chronic discipline issues at school, criminality, imprisonment, stealing, intervention by a government child welfare agency, children with subnormal speech development (not due to autism). But importantly they don't appear to suffer from poverty. They have money to spend on expensive non-essential items. So the socialists can't say it's all due to deprivation. It's genetic. When is someone going to start up a charity called "Cure Psychopathy Now"? We need a genetic screening test for this disorder.

I think that some sociopaths or psychopaths could try to use an aspie to do their bad work for them by fooling them.  Once the aspie sees who they are they are not going to trust them anymore.  

"When is someone going to start up a charity called 'Cure Psychopathy Now'?"   that is funny.  just as long as the money only goes to genetic research and developing a prenatal test and not to adults with the disorder or their parents.

From UK to Canada initially. btw this is not because I think there are no sociopaths or psychopaths in Canada, it is just to escape one particular person who has caused me a lot of distress.

I might also look into going to the Indian ocean area as I have family there.

Reading books about psychopath and sociopathy was helpful though as they gave advice as to what you can do if you are being mistreated by someone who has traits of this.

Thanks for sharing your interesting description, Callista.

I think it is interesting that your ex-stepfather was one of 14 (!) siblings, had an abusive childhood (we assume), and he had fathered an illegitimate child which he did pay support for. This is an intergenerational tradition of irresponsible procreation. It is possible that genes alone account for this pattern. One scientific explanation of psychopathy is that it isn't the result of brain damage, but is a genetic variation that perpetuates itself by making people who have this gene prolific breeders who don't incur the personal cost of raising their offspring through a lack of personal responsibility. These people pass on their genes but do their best to evade the responsibility of raising their kids, leaving them free to find new partners and create even more illegitimate offspring. I can think of some real-life examples of people who fit this pattern. One example is the appalling family that I wrote about previously, in which the parents are unmarried (to each other) and both have kids from previous relationships, and between them have many neglected offspring (and they also have a collection of neglected pets). There is at least a two-generation tradition of illegitimacy combined with large families in this family. Another example of a psychopath raised in a very large and abusive family is the infamous Australian serial killer Ivan Milat.

I also think it is interesting that the step-father was a compulsive gambler and a smoker. People who have the extrovert personality trait are especially sensitive to rewards from their environment, which is why they tend to have more sex, travel more and socialize more. A similar hyper-sensitivity to rewards is often given as an explanation for addictions such as drug abuse and problem gambling. One cluster of traits found in psychopaths has been found to be correlated with extroversion, and the psychopath type personality is more likely to be involved with drugs and promiscuity.

How about the sociopaths and psychopaths that led terrorist groups and get vulnerable people involved?  They make the bombs and the plans.  

What is the difference between a sociopath and a psychopath?

New autistic activist idea:  go to marches or rallies for "Cure Autism Now"  wearing "Cure Psychopathy Now" t-shirts and hand out literature about how much suffering and money psychopaths cost our society.   Demand that genetic testing and a prenatal test be researched and made available because it is so important.  Psychopathy is stealing our children, literally.  How eliminating psychopathy could reduce child abuse and exploitation and other crimes.

Apparently some terrorist are not sociopaths or psychopaths but just normal people who do terrible things.  I just can't understand it all.

A lot of people confuse sociopathy with narcissism and vice versa. micgrace is still confused on the issue, and thinks the two are the same thing. Although it's easy to see why. Both sociopaths and narcissists see others as things rather than people.

But there is one crucial difference in their behavior.
Narcissists are on a never ending quest for greater and greater attention seeking behavior.
Sociopaths want to avoid attracting attention to themselves if they can help it.

This is why very few tyrants are sociopaths, but almost all tyrants are narcissists.

A narcissist sees other people as objects of self gratification. They are the center of the universe, and everything else exists to serve them. If you do anything for most people, its seen as a favor, warranting at the very least a thank you. If you do anything for a narcissism, its seen as part of an unfulfillable obligation you had to him/her since before you were born. And since your obligation is unfulfillable, nothing you do for the narcissist will ever be good enough. But s/he will certainly keep letting you do him/her favors, all while bashing you for not doing them right.

A sociopath on the other hand sees other people as threats and obstacles in their path. They are single minded in achieving a goal, -almost always purely selfish- and will use other people as s/he sees fit, and then discard them or kill them if they become too much of a threat to their plans. Because of this ever present fear of others getting in their way, sociopaths do what they can to avoid attracting attention to themselves.

How do each of them react to certain situations? Usually they’re the opposites of each other.

A narcissist will always accept a position of power because s/he’s convinced that doing so places others in the position to revere him/her.
A sociopath will usually refuse a position of power because it puts him/her in the spotlight, and that’s something sociopaths don’t want.

If a narcissist is discovered as such and publicly accused of wrongdoing, s/he will resort to further attention seeking behavior, to do anything possible to refute these claims. This includes blaming, accusations, lying, and even violence if it gets other people to agree with him/her. After all, to a narcissist there’s no difference between the substance of agreement and the act of agreement, so either will do just fine.
If a sociopath is discovered as such and publicly accused of wrongdoing, his/her only priority at that point is escape. S/he will do anything possible, no matter how deplorable, to make sure s/he gets away and then disappears. The sociopath knows that any public attention s/he gains could end in him/her being discovered as a sociopath. So a sociopath resigns him/herself to coercing and harming individuals to get his/her way, while trying to steer clear of the attention of groups.

If he really is a narcissist, than the only thing he'll do in response to that is blame you for the failure of the marriage. Then he'll try to get you to do more things for him.
Infants believe that because their perspective comes from behind their own eyes, and not from behind anyone else's, that somehow their perspective is central, and that all others are tertiary. This makes them, in their mind, more important than anyone or anything else.

Narcissists are never able to grow out of that.

maybe narcissists with addictions are even a worse torment to people who are involved in relationships with them.  

I do thank Watsonsword for that description of narcissist and psychopath.  This is a really useful discussion for me.

I would hate to be mistaken for a sociopath or a psychopath as much as the next aspie.  Maybe a good reason to have an official diagnosis around.