Oh, Daath,

I have to disagree with this statement you made: "...neither does he understand the reason for their feelings..."

They understand perfectly, that is why they are so good at manipulations. They just don't have the capacity or desire to walk in your shoes - no empathy and no remorse. They like to play these games where they pretend they just don't understand. It is all abusive twisting. They understand perfectly. They like who they are and they like their lives.

And as far as drive? The only drive that I have seen in my ex for the last 11 years in association with me that has remained consistent through all that time is the desire to control and consume me.

There is a hunger here, but it has nothing to do with the normal needs to be loved and nurtured. It is all about power and control. And the only real deep emotion that I have ever seen in him is rage when I slip that control. That emotion you can take to the bank.

Diane1969

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I say it's wrong to say a psychopath doesn't care about anything.

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So do I. I had certain specifics in mind when I made the statement "Psychopaths just dont care" but as the readers of this board are not mindreaders, thats not very helpful!

Total lack of care about anything equates to catatonia, but many psychopaths are like the Energizer Bunny on crack! Theres a lot of stuff they really do care about, but unfortunately for us its all (ultimately) totally selfish.

One of the things I had in mind is 'caring' as in concern for the physical and emotional wellbeing of others. Another is the lack of care many psychopaths show for the possible implications of their own actions. Many indulge in stupid, anti-social stuff that repeatedly gets them into trouble with the law - and just dont seem to care. They get caught easily. Hence the high proportion of recidivist anti-social psychopaths in the prison system.

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Gee, now THAT'S some rant, huh? I hope you enjoyed the read,

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Yes I certainly did. There are a number of other points I'd addresss but unfortunately I dont have time! Christmas is a cummin in !

One for the road...

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He may even feel a genuine intellectual need to understand himself and what he is.

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I dont think so. From what I know about one particular psychopath and what Ive read about others. I'd say exactly the opposite. Psychopaths dont seem to introspect much at all. They have a strong if delusional 'self image' but they dont question it. The blame is always on the other side.

Their mental focus is always turned out onto the world, looking for the angles, the next con, the advantageous position in any situation - always short term advantage, rarely turned in on the self. I think thats why they seem to make the same mistakes over and over. The past really is the past - its over and done with. Not something to be held on to, mulled over, analysed and learnt from. The psychopaths time horizon seems peculiarly limited.

Diane1969, JAM, Di and Daath,

I've seen your comments and will respond in the next few days (bit rushed right now). I think I need to clarify the intent behind my post but I don't want to respond in an off-the-cuff way. The "Do you believe your P actually loved you at some point" thread may not have been the best place for it since I don't really give a flip whether or not he did. He's history. It just seemed to be the thread that relates to emotions/feelings.

Sylvie

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This is only my opinion but I think you are either a Psychopath as defined by Hare et.al or you aren't. Kind of a black and white issue, not any room for gray."

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..and there we part company, slightly. Im not so definite about it.

I see 'psychopath' as a small arbitrary band at one end of a spectrum which has the non-existent pure empath ( I dont believe in saints - nobody is perfect!) at one end and the equally non-existent pure psychopath at the other.(Total emotional deficit would I think result in catatonia. A pure empath might similarly be frozen into inactivity by the thought that anything they do might upset somebody) 'Psychopath' is an artificial psychological construct, which overlaps but is not synonymous with ASPD.

If you give a large enough random selection of people the Hare PCL-R test you would end up with a continuous set of scores from very low, (maybe even zero if you happen to include somebody like Mother Teresa of Calcutta!) to very high. There are, I think, a small number of people in the world (either currently in prison or now dead) who have scored 40. My guess is that if you graphed the results you'd end up with a bell curve skewed towards the low end of the 0 to 40 range.

There would be no obvious discontinuity in the graph line which would indicate where a 'psychopath' 'non-psychopath' break lies. It seems to be a culturally based arbitrary cuttoff point.

In North America that cuttoff is a score of 30. In the UK prison system it is 25. I've no idea what this means, but obviously from experience in HM Prisons, prisoners with a score between 25 and 30 are thought to be problematic enough to earn the label 'psychopath' whereas in the US such personalities are not.

Does this suggest maybe that the US society as a whole is more 'psychopathic' than UK society? I've seen that suggested but have no idea if its true or not. Certainly there does seem to be a societal element to the incidence of psychopathy. Japan ( and other South East Asian societies) historically had a much lower incidence, though as with obesity, the incidence is now increasing as Japanese society is becomes more Westernised.

If psychopathy was a 'black and white' thing there would be no need to define it using a points scoring system . The symptoms really would be black and white, either / or.

Psychopathy is, in certain respects the mirror of Downs syndrome. Psychopathy being emotional deficit with normal(ish!) intellect and Downs syndrome being the opposite - intellectual deficit with (potentially at least) normal emotional responses - Downs syndrome people can empathise and have the capacity for love. Downs sufferers, unlike psychopaths, also have a number of physical deficits to cope with which makes them easy to identify. (Pity psychopathy isnt the same - it would make life a lot easier for everybody if the Pinnochio effect was real. Imagine a Ps nose growing longer every time he told a lie!)

The two differ in that Downs syndrome really is a 'black and white issue'. There are no such things as 'partial Downs syndrome' or 'Downs tendencies' - you either have it or you don't as the syndrome results from the accidental production of an extra copy of chromosome 21 during meiosis (sexual cell division). You either have this extra copy or you don't -no half measure is physically possible.

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They understand perfectly, that is why they are so good at manipulations. They just don't have the capacity or desire to walk in your shoes - no empathy and no remorse. They like to play these games where they pretend they just don't understand. It is all abusive twisting. They understand perfectly. They like who they are and they like their lives.

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You see, this is where I'm not exactly sure, even though I agree with your opinion that his motivations are always ultimately selfish.

Someone here said he doubted a psychopath could truly "read" emotions, and I personally agree. If you ask me, a psychopath has no real idea of what's going on inside the people he watches and "plays around with," or why they react like they do. I'd say the approach is more like to physics, or math. "If I do this and this, this will happen. If I do that instead, people will do something different".
I have recently read in an article that psychopaths seem to lack a fundamental understanding of human interaction that is inborn to most people - that they do not comprehend by heart, but rather learn by rote. That made me reevaluate some of my opinions. So, what I wonder about is: Does a psychopath know WHY you act the way you do? This may be, but only in the way that someone explained it to him, or because he read a book that vocalized this emotional reaction, but in no case because of true understanding. So he might think "She is angry because I said that and because it is hurtful to her," but he likely does not have any idea why it is hurtful at any rate. That's what I meant with saying that he doesn't understand the reason. It's like learning by doing, in that he noticed a certain kind of action creates a reaction on your side, like using a chemical formula, but without truly getting WHY it does this thing, except in the most loose terms.

I hope this time I managed to express myself correctly. That's is pretty hard.

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One of the things I had in mind is 'caring' as in concern for the physical and emotional wellbeing of others. Another is the lack of care many psychopaths show for the possible implications of their own actions. Many indulge in stupid, anti-social stuff that repeatedly gets them into trouble with the law - and just dont seem to care.

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Yes, I understand what you mean. I totally agree as well. As far as I can tell a psychopath does not care whether you love him or hate him, as long as you accept him as your superior. I think the only matter we disagree about is what a psychopath himself would consider this desire to be.

And as far as the lack of concern for consequences goes... This depends. It's like the Hare dilemma: By studying only criminals you, of course, get a lot of people who do not care about being imprisoned, AND you only get those that managed to get themselves caught. But, if you ask me, I'd say that most psychopaths DO value their freedom, just only in the way that it gives them more ability to do whatever strikes their fancy at the moment. You ARE rather restricted in a 8 m² prison cell after all, and most fight viciously to get out of it again as soon as possible. That's where I'd say the human differences kick in.

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I dont think so. From what I know about one particular psychopath and what Ive read about others. I'd say exactly the opposite. Psychopaths dont seem to introspect much at all. They have a strong if delusional 'self image' but they dont question it. The blame is always on the other side.

Their mental focus is always turned out onto the world, looking for the angles, the next con, the advantageous position in any situation - always short term advantage, rarely turned in on the self. I think thats why they seem to make the same mistakes over and over. The past really is the past - its over and done with. Not something to be held on to, mulled over, analysed and learnt from. The psychopaths time horizon seems peculiarly limited.

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You know, this is rather interesting... Have you ever noticed how psychopaths seem to be unable to diffentiate time spans? The two I knew seemed to have a marked difficulty to say whether something happened two years or two months ago, as if living in a perpetual "now". They could not have given a general outline of their life to this point even if they had wanted to, but they had no difficulty in remembering facts. I think this might be because emotionally intense memories are remembered best, and psychopaths do not have many of these.

As to the other thing... We cannot say much about those psychopaths which do NOT repeat silly mistakes, can we? As they say, "knowledge is power", and most psychopaths seem to enjoy hoarding large troves of trivia, all the better to play their chosen roles. A psychopath might certainly not care about self-knowledge because he wants to change (since he doesn't), but he COULD care for sake of curiosity and out of ennui, and of course the better to justify his "wolf amongst sheep" superiority before himself.

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If psychopathy was a 'black and white' thing there would be no need to define it using a points scoring system . The symptoms really would be black and white, either / or.

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You know, this is something I'm really bothered about. PCL-R mostly defines psychopathy by a fixed set of symptoms, not the way a psychopath relates to himself and his environment. That's of course a very practical approach, since psychologists cannot read thoughts as it is, but it IS really quite spongy... and the reason for the diffuse intermingling of ASPD and psychopathy. Both illnesses often result in the same thing, but using social unfitness as a criterium reeks like more of a moral judgement and less of an accurate medical definition.

Personally I believe psychopathy to be an "either / or" thing, but to be so diverse in its expressions and intensities that it cannot be defined simply by how a psychopath interacts with other people and society at large. That's certainly a clue, but theres definitely more to it.

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As to the other thing... We cannot say much about those psychopaths which do NOT repeat silly mistakes, can we? As they say, "knowledge is power", and most psychopaths seem to enjoy hoarding large troves of trivia, all the better to play their chosen roles.

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Theres always a danger of oversimplifying and ignoring other factors when discussing psychopathy, which I know I'm sometimes guilty of...

Psychopathy does play itself out to quite different ends in different circumstances.

An intelligent psychopath bought up in privileged circumstances, well supported and educated may well end up.....as the CEO of Enron.

A stupid psychopath bought up in a violent criminal familly environment is most likely to end up as a stupid violent criminal - and a recidivist in the correctional system.

(I believe intelligence is a function of both genetics and environment. Genetics defines the potential and environment how much of that potential is realised.)

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Personally I believe psychopathy to be an "either / or" thing, but to be so diverse in its expressions and intensities

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Like you've either got a cold or you havent got a cold, but it could be a really stinking bad cold or a mild 'just a sniffle' cold?

Yup...know what you mean. I feel mildly psychopathic occasionally, especially when queueing at the supermarket.
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Well, this is a really good discussion!

About time and the way they remember things... first of all, no one can get completely inside another person's mind to see how it works. But you can get some clues by looking at what is consistent over time and in diverse situations... and that can tell you a lot about core beliefs and attitudes.

And one thing that always struck me is how facile they are and how changeable. On an item by item basis it "seems" like they are either living in a very slippery internal world, or are clueless, or have difficulty with memories or with placing things in time. But when you look at the overall pattern that is consistent what you find with a psychopath is that no matter what they say it is designed to get them what they want. They want you to be confused, therefore they act in a way that is confusing to you. They want you to feel responsible, therefore their memories, actions, behavioral patterns support that. They selectively forget, selectively remember, and never ever will you see them take responsibility for hurting you or manipulating you or stealing your trust.

And thinking that they ever take your feeling into consideration in such a way as to even acknowledge you have rights is dangerous to you around a P because they will use that to manipulate you. The only time you will think a P cares about you or how you feel or think, it is part of the con. And really well socialized P's are very good at this.

With a P there is a lot of personal pain for you, but never ever any long lasting resolution to that pain. You can't make any kind of alliance that will also get your needs met. And your own inner pain that doesn't ever seem to have a way to resolve no matter how hard you try is the best indicator you possess that you are dealing with a P.

Trying to grasp this stuff and continuing to think about these things is good, but only if you are not currently involved with a P. If you do this while you still have the P in your life, your own caring humanity, your own empathy, remorse, and heart are the weapons the P will use to manipulate you and keep you in a place where he can and does do this. And the longer you are involved with a P and the more you try to understand, the deeper will be your pain, the less energy you will have, the less you will have inner resources to get away from his manipulative control.

And if your understanding comes to the place where everything the P does makes sense you will find that their dynamic is hate based, that they don't care, that they will do whatever they can get away with without facing consequences, that they are selfish, self-centered, totally self-referencing, remorseless, callous, and glutinous. The best you can do is to embrace your own humanity and pity them for their inability or unwillingness to ever feel real connection and love, and let go of any hope that they can ever change. They won't. They really do like who they are and the benefits they derive from their parasitic lifestyle.

P's have always been with us, and they will most likely always be with us. The P is where we get our definition of evil from. It is best to just recognize when you aren't getting and can't get your needs met and walk away from it. Always take care of yourself and spend your love and energy and humanity on people who can and do respond in kind. The P won't. And whether that is because they can't or because they choose not to, it really amounts to the same thing. P's are destructive to the spirits, emotions, and psyches of everyone they engage with. That is the reality that is important - not what makes them tick.

How's that for an opinion?

Diane1966

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Like you've either got a cold or you havent got a cold, but it could be a really stinking bad cold or a mild 'just a sniffle' cold?

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That's not quite it, but pretty much like it, yes. I think the way I meant it would better be explained by saying it's like autism, you know, a "spectrum disorder". One distinctive affliction, but with many degrees of severity and a range of possible symptoms.

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About time and the way they remember things... first of all, no one can get completely inside another person's mind to see how it works.

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Yes, that's true. It's only a weird thing I observed and considered noteworthy.

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Always take care of yourself and spend your love and energy and humanity on people who can and do respond in kind. The P won't. And whether that is because they can't or because they choose not to, it really amounts to the same thing. P's are destructive to the spirits, emotions, and psyches of everyone they engage with. That is the reality that is important - not what makes them tick.

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Sorry, but I strongly have to disagree with that. While I cannot say you are wrong with the first part of your post - hell knows I've had enough of that myself, I sure understand what you're talking about - I still think there is a strong need to comprehend what makes them "tick" if we are ever to change the fact that psychopaths DO exist, or at least to stop any damage before it can be done.
Whether they cannot or just do not want to is a CRUCIAL question, in fact. It defines how they think, how they plan, how they can be uncovered, stopped, and - if at all possible - treated. Although it may sound melodramatic (and I'm sure it does *g*) extensive knowledge on the workings of the psychopathic mind is the only thing that makes us able to recognise something that looks like us and acts like us but is completely unlike us, in a multitude of important ways. We should never make the mistake of believing that it is "simple as that", because it plainly isn't.

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How's that for an opinion?

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It certainly IS an opinion to respect, even though I cannot agree with all you said.

Daath,

It depends on if you are a researcher or a victim whether my point is valid.

Of course, for a researcher this might be a crucial question.

But as a victim of a P it doesn't matter if the P can't or won't be a human being capable of interacting with me in a way that is non-destructive. The point that he IS destructive is what is important and the realization that if I want to have an abuse free life, in an environment I can trust, in an environment of mutual caring, in an environment of integrity, I have to walk away from that question.

Do you see the destinction?

Diane

Yes, I understand.