Good
For psychopaths
Psychopathy is a variant brain structure. A quick reminder of what that means:
Psychopaths have marked brain differences from a neurotypical brain. Our amygdala alone is around eighteen percent smaller, as well the same showing/damage to the orbital cortex, the frontal lobe, and also the insula, which is located deep in the cerebral cortex.
The orbital cortex regulates impulsivity, and the frontal lobe is the damage-to-ethics and morality section of the brain. All of these areas will show a pattern that is present and distinctive for a psychopathic brain.
It is also why we do not process our chemical or electrical impulses as a neurotypical does.
Okay, now that we are all caught up, this difference in the structure of the brain causes the intensity of most emotions to drop to exceptionally low and removes the experience of others.
Things we cannot feel:
- Bonding—Any bonding. To a friend, a husband or wife, to children, to pets, etc. We have our own version of love, and it involves no emotional connection of any kind.
- Depression—Not even a little; we don’t feel it.
- Anxiety—The same as depression.
- Suicidal ideations—Psychopaths don’t kill themselves.
- Fear—We can feel adrenaline, but not fear. A lot of people like to think that we can; I invite them to live in our heads so they can see how wrong they are.
- Chemical love—Right back to bonding. That high most people chase—the “Woo hoo, I’m in love intoxication”—we don’t get that. Our love is very intentional. It is a conscious act. This means when we want to be around a person, we actually want to be around them. It also means that we don’t get frustrated that our feelings changed, meaning we aren’t on the chemical high any more and resent our partner for it.
- Sadness—Nope.
- Self-doubt—Failure is never a problem. It doesn’t bother us, we don’t fear it, and we never dwell on it; it simply isn’t there. We either accomplish something or we don’t. If we don’t, we go about it a different way. If it’s unobtainable, we move on.
- Low self-esteem—I still can’t figure out the evolutionary reason for this one. We don’t think we’re amazing by default. Sure, some psychopaths do and have high narcissism traits, but as this is simply a trait of personality that everyone has on some level, some psychopaths, just like some neurotypicals, have it quite high. Narcissism as a trait is very different than diagnosable narcissistic personality disorder. This is something else we cannot have. Goes against the wiring. For the last time, there is no such thing as a psychopath with NPD. Every time I read that, it tells me that the person writing knows nothing about either condition.
- Empathy—We have cognitive empathy, not emotional empathy. We have never had it. We didn’t feel it when we were young and lost it; it’s not hidden under the bed. We don’t have it.
- Jealousy- No idea what the purpose is.
- Resentment- We simply don’t care what other people are doing, or what they have.
- Remorse—Yup, we don’t feel bad when we do things that hurt people. The reverse of this is that we don’t care about the many small trespasses that happen all the time that most people lose their minds over. We just aren’t bothered by pretty much anything on a normal realm. There are certainly things that will, but they are pretty specific and normally have to do with a violation of trust or loyalty. Remorse is not something we understand. We can cognitively see why something upset a person and can make apologies based on that, but it is because we can logically work it out, not because we feel any way about it.
- Stress—Nope. Not even a little. We are incredibly adaptable. We just flow from one thing to the next. Circumstances changing doesn’t trip us up; we will adjust.
- Trust— this is a part of the oxytocin cocktail just like bonding and chemical love. Due to that, we will never feel it.
- Hatred— This requires deep emotional capability that we lack entirely. The most we can do is not like someone or something, or simply not prefer it.
I may be missing a couple, but those are things we don’t experience.
The rest of the emotional experience we have. HOWEVER, we have it in a very diminished way. If you think about it like volume, neurotypicals are at a seven out of ten for volume on their emotions, and psychopaths are at zero to two or three. Most emotional cues pass by us like background noise. They are never loud enough to influence actions; they are just there as a side effect. This includes things like anger. Anger never fuels behavior for me. Emotions are in no way—nor are they ever—the main show. -Athena Walker
Sociopaths
A person who has a significantly reduced ability to experience empathy, as the result of psychological trauma.
To get into more detail, sociopathy arises when a deep bond shared with someone is broken by the person with whom it is shared. It’s a betrayal that can never be rectified. The trauma said person caused is one that can’t be rationalised or justified. We can’t make sense of it, but we know we are not the ones to blame. A personal conflict arises. We are the victim of someone who we had such trust in. We can’t recover from that, so we change. We adapt to expect this behaviour from anyone - after all, if the person we bonded with can cause such a thing, what the fuck will stop anyone else in the world? It becomes a game to us - the world, life, people. We’ve seen how ugly it can be, so we’re prepared to be just as ugly if and when we need to. We don’t feel sorry because there was no one to feel sorry for us. Fuck your feelings.
Now, there are two types - high functioning and low functioning. Each type generally operates in the opposite way. Here’s a basic HFS vs LFS breakdown.
- Controlled vs uncontrolled behaviour.
- Skilful deception vs obvious lying.
- Automatic (don’t need to think before acting) vs manual (has to think about every step) actions.
- I would include great planners vs poor planners, but I’m an INTJ so it’s hard to tell where the planning skill ends for one and starts for the other.
HF and LF can also be applied to psychopaths and machiavellians. The natures of the function system, from what I’ve seen, are the same across the board and don’t actually differ between personality types. It took arguing with people like Athena Walker to actually realise that. Most studies claim the differences between HF and LF as the differences between psychos and socios but that’s bullshit, and I don’t know how or why Machiavellianism isn’t characterised as ASPD but I suppose the ability to empathise makes them “acceptable”.
Things both HFS and LFS share:
- Extreme rage when triggered.
- Compulsions to complete an objective when set.
- Lack of interest in others’ problems.
- Prioritising of self-interests.
- Ego - more than a normal person, less than a narcissist.
- Desire for power - not usually over people but over situations, which often involves the manipulation of people. We control situations.
- We let you in to gain your trust. We’ll tell you a lot of things about us - LFSs will usually include lies, HFSs will usually masterfully tell you the truth - because it gets you to open up.
- Make no mistake, we have trust issues and we generally won’t trust you - for a good while, at least, if ever. We may give you a chance to prove yourself and we may just take a risk, whether we care about your trustworthiness or not, but don’t have any high expectations.
- Disregard for rules and social norms. We march to the beat of our own drum and create our own “code” that we live our lives by. I can’t begin to tell you how annoying this code can be at times but it saves us from so much additional bullshit. (I can personally testify that every time I have broken my own rules, it has taken me down a road that could have easily been avoided.)
- We are not rebels. We don’t go against the system because a system is there to go against, we just do what we want, regardless of the side of the fence upon which it sits.
- We can (and will) rationalise absolutely anything we want to do.
- We are obsessive.
- We are efficient. We don’t like to do things that will take longer than necessary. This is why we are seen as “lazy”. We just don’t like wasting time on shit we have no interest in.
- We plan - it helps with our efficiency.
- We don’t “practice” fitting in. It’s not like we are forever feeling compelled to do crazy and horrific shit. We just do what we know as best we can. Psychopaths are the actors, not us.
- To elaborate on being an “actor”: Most people mistake acting for appropriate behaviour or social convention. Smiling and all of that is fine, it doesn’t change who you are. That’s simply you getting by in the world. This is completely different to the genuine acting of psychopaths, just like actors in real life, who develop entire personas to base an identity around. That type of acting is way too much effort to keep up.
- We have the ability to not care about a great many things - this does not mean that we don’t care about anything. That is a myth. What we care about depends on the nature of an individual, as well as their personality. What you do need to realise is that we tend to have a low to no level of care for the things society expects people to care about, such as death (in general), maliciousness, greed and so on.
- We feel empathy over the weirdest shit. I can empathise with a character in a TV show for a reason I wouldn’t give a shit about in real life. I’ve never actually understood why, but I have a theory that I explain later on in this answer.
- We feel emotions. What we can also do is significantly suppress emotion in a given moment.
- We can emulate emotional responses to a degree if we feel the need to, but we don’t usually see the need to. What does happen, however, is that regardless of outward appearance, we absolutely never believe that shit ourselves. The feeling inside is so hollow it’s hilarious; you know just how much bullshit you are slinging in that very moment.
- Sociopaths are not sadistic. Sadistic sociopaths, however, are.
- We give objective advice to help you fix problems so you can stop telling us about it. It usually isn’t sugar-coated and may not be what you want to hear, but such is life. Unless we need to keep you in a specific state, that is.
- Serious issues maintaining relationships. People have to accept us as we are. Most relationships are on borrowed time the moment they begin because, unlike psychopaths, we can’t act like we give a shit.
- It is possible for us to not be sociopathic with the few people we are able to bond with. The happening of a bond is never within our control, which is a bloody pain. You just feel different about the person and it can happen the moment you meet someone. Again, something I can’t fully explain.
- We CAN love in a romantic way. We can love very hard, in fact, due to obsession, but our love is not expressed in the same way as most people. It’s more accurate to measure whether or not we love you by assessing how we treat you compared to other people. We can also do romantic things because we know what is considered romantic. Some sociopaths just don’t make the effort, just like some “normal” people.
- No conscience. We know and understand right from wrong… We just don’t care.
- Following on from the above point, when rationalisation/justification has been established but we wonder if it what we did was the best course of action to take, we experience something that can appear similar to guilt but it’s not guilt; more “indeterminable retrospective conflict”. It can be a bitch on the mind, too.
- We do anything to get what we want.
- We are scarily consistent.
- We are loners and exist in our own world. Whether we are isolated or in a crowd, we just look at you through the window of our own invisible room.
- We don’t necessarily hate the world; thinking we do is a common misconception. In fact, we don’t hate the world at all. That would bear too much emotion in us, which isn’t possible. I, for one, can like people individually but don’t like people in general - that’s because I’m misanthropic. We accept the world for what it is - however one may view it - and we just move through it however we feel is necessary for satisfaction.
- No, we aren’t empty inside. If you meet one who is, that’s them as a person, not them as a sociopath.
- We are neither good or bad, but we are both. Just like normal people. It all depends on the nature of an individual in question.
- Lastly, a sociopath will deny, ignore or accept the fact that they are one. No sociopath will ever sit around bitching and moaning and crying about the fact that we are one. We won’t wish to change. We won’t seek ways to raise empathy levels. We won’t hope a psychologist/psychiatrist/therapist can find a way to change our personality. And, for Christ’s sake, we definitely won’t start (multiple) Quora threads about it, begging random people of the world to help us find a “cure”.
We share many characteristics and traits with psychopaths but the perspectives are different. The desire for power, as an example. Sociopaths want to control a situation while psychopaths, from what I’ve seen, want to control the people. They can both lead to the same place but the approach is different. Machiavellians, well they just aim to control everything because manipulation is their ball game above the other dark triad personalities.
Sociopathy isn’t one of the dark triad personalities as it’s classed as a subset of psychopathy but, in my opinion, it places somewhere between psychopathy and machiavelliansm, but within the psychopath half. Thinking about it, the distance between psychopathy and machiavellianism may actually be the scale of sociopathy, based on the amount of empathy one can express, since sociopathy is not absolute. I guess the nature of our creation allows experience prior to our change to have some bearing on the degree to which sociopathy changes us - I do know that the later in life you become one, the easier it is to fit in. One can assume that’s based on you spending X amount of years following social norms.
Sociopathy is not a coping mechanism, nor one of defense.
- A coping mechanism implies that the cause is still being experienced, and would mean we use sociopathy to reduce the feeling, like when you are experiencing physical pain and tense up. When the pain is gone, you relax. This is not what is happening. The event that changed us is gone. We don’t relive the experience constantly, so there’s nothing to “cope” with.
- A defence mechanism is one that we use as a shield. Sociopathy isn’t a shield. We aren’t guarded against the world. We don’t feel that the world is a threat. If we did, we wouldn’t so freely walk through it without apprehension. We don’t feel like we are being attacked by the world, at all.
Both of the above imply that sociopathy can come and go - either when the causal event has subsided or when we no longer feel threatened. Sociopathy is a result; a fixed state. It can’t be turned on and off, not even when with someone with whom we have a bond.
Many people are misdiagnosed as sociopaths because they do shit like go on killing sprees. Society really needs to understand that some people just do crazy shit without a mental disorder. Some people are desensitised to certain things and therefore do not see anything wrong with doing it. Some people just don’t like the world. All these people have sociopathic traits, but that doesn’t actually make them sociopaths. Technically, everyone has and expresses sociopathic traits to varying degrees, but that doesn’t make them a sociopath at all.
Regarding my theory on the empathy situation. I saw something and it must have been during one of my slower moments because it was the only way I was able to realize what was actually happening in my head. I was watching either a TV show or movie - I can’t remember exactly because I watch so much shit in a day - that was showing scenes of war. I wasn’t initially looking at the screen during this particular scene, so when I looked up, it caught me by surprise. There were children laying dead on the floor. It was enough to make non-ASPD individuals cry or, at least, feel a deep sense of sorrow. For me, however, I saw it differently. Body, body, dust, broken buildings. After a couple seconds, I thought to myself “this is sad”. It was only then that it dawned upon me what exactly happens - I see the objects, I see the event and then I see the actual situation at hand. It was all processed in 3 distinct parts. Most people see the situation first and then see the objects and the event. I can only speculate that the order in which one processes these things is what determines the ability to have an empathetic response, but it all usually happens too fast to notice. It was an interesting moment, I must admit.
Now, as for why we can feel empathy for TV characters more than real people (and I know it isn’t just me because I laughed about this with another sociopath who thought it was just him). The way I see it, we know TV characters are part of a fantasy land. It’s not real, so we don’t need to apply the same rules as we do to the real world. There’s no harm that can come from empathising with a TV character because it has no bearing on actual life, so there’s no chance of it hindering us. It’s one of the few experiences in life where we are able to get lost in another world without worry. This can probably hold true for books, too, but I can’t testify to that because you wouldn’t catch me reading a novel for love nor money.
Sociopaths in love. This, for some reason, is such a hot topic, so I’ll explain it. As I previously stated, yes, we can love. It can be deep, obsessive and with a singular-focus on the one person. We are possessive. We are territorial. However, this only happens with people we bond with. We don’t (intentionally) hurt people if a bond exists, so when the bond is there, the relationship can be just as awesome as a relationship with a normal person. So, why are sociopaths known for destructive relationships? Simple - because many (especially LFSs) get into a relationship just for sex or to have someone there, for whatever reason. There’s no bond created, so it’s essentially just two people fucking and whatever else. Again, we see this in everyday life with most types of people. Obviously, with no bond, a sociopath doesn’t give a shit about you, and you are just another object to them, so it’s to be expected. The preconceived notion that a sociopath can never and will never love a person is idiotic, at best, and go-cremate-yourself stupid, at worst. If you are in a relationship with a sociopath and they are actively being sociopathic towards you, leave. They don’t love you; probably never will; don’t waste any more of your time. If they threaten to kill themselves, just laugh (to yourself, at least). No sociopath is going to commit suicide over that trivial shit. If they threaten to kill you, laugh harder (again, to yourself). They’ll want to, but it’s a lot of hassle, so unless you are in a perfect situation that will allow the murder to go unnoticed, the chances are slim. Unless you have done something that they see as betrayal, there’s an almost certain chance they are bluffing. If you are dealing with a low-functioning sociopath, just inform the police or people like family members and employers immediately, in case they try any of that “destroy your life” shit. If you are dealing with a high functioning one, we won’t go out of our way for you. If you stay and hope any sociopath will change, then you likely deserve whatever it is they do to you. Stupidity receives no sympathy. I also wrote a specific answer on sociopaths in relationships, which you can find here:
We aren’t very different from normal people, but we’re more capable of acting on the thoughts and wants of normal people than they are because we don’t have the general morals and ethics of society restraining us.
So, what exactly is the definition of Sociopathy? One big trust issue and a giant fuck you.
Have a nice day.
-Corey Reaux
you read all that? sociopaths are made from trauma and psychopaths are born like that, so people with ASPD are just adults with an underdeveloped brain, like having a child’s brain in an adult body, since sociopaths are made from childhood trauma, their brains can’t manage it and shuts down some parts of it and their neurons die, also their empathy are wacked, and yes psychopaths and sociopaths do have some emotions but they are very shallow
Psychopaths and socios don’t care about anyone enough to destroy someone’s life, unless they do something that irritate them to that extent,