I believe that there is something wrong with my younger sister. First I would just like to say that we grew up in healthy family, we have two loving parents who would go to end of the world for us and have really tried their best raising us. There was no abuse or neglect in our family. So I don’t really understand what caused her to be this way. My sister is now eighteen years old, and on the surface she seems really sweet and nice, she is an award winning student and she will be going to a top university next fall. No one would even guess what she is really like.

When my sister was a child she got into constant physical altercations. This began at a very early age. The first time that I remember that she hurt someone else was when she was about three. She was in a play pen with the child of a family friend who was the same age as her, she wanted a toy that the other child was holding and when the little boy refused to give it to her she threw a remote in the kids face and took the toy. She proceeded to play with the toy like nothing had happened while the other child was screaming next to her. She literally had no reaction to the kid other that the brief bout of anger(?) when she hit him. No one paid much attention to that event because she was so young, but this behavior persisted, she used to get into very violet fights, I once had to pull her off a bloody kid while she was strangling him. Then when she was about ten a little girl came up to my mother and asked my mom to tell my sister to stop strangling her.

My sister was very clever about her fights and would rarely get caught, even though pretty much every neighborhood kid a very healthy dose of fear of her. When she did get caught she would refuse to apologize and would not feel bad about hurting someone else in the slightest. When she hit other children she would say it was because they disobeyed or annoyed her.Whenever someone “disobeyed” her she would turn them into social outcasts.

She was also sexually promiscuous, but secretly. She had started masturbating at a very young age; my parents were told by the doctor that this is normal so they didn't pay it any mind. But it went past that with her; it was past the normal doctor and “show me yours & I’ll show you mine” games that children play. When she was six years old I caught her receiving oral sex from her friend on the living room couch, when I cornered them to ask what was going on the little girl (my sisters friend) started crying, while my sister just smiled and took her time covering herself up, not bothered in the least . There were numerous incidents like this later on.

She also began sneaking out of the house at an early age, the first time I caught her she was about seven years old, and apparently she had been sneaking out for a few weeks and spending her nights walking around the neighborhood (doing what?). I told her to stop and threatened to tell our parents if she continued doing it and as far as I could tell she had stopped. Then when she was thirteen on a weekend night at about three am I received a phone call from a friend telling me that they just saw my sister at a nightclub in downtown. She somehow got her hands on a fake id and had been visiting adult nightclubs for a while. Then she smugly confessed to me that she never stopped sneaking out after that time I caught her.

Now while this behavior is pretty bad, but what really got me was when I discovered this little game she played with the stray kittens we had around the neighborhood. When she would be playing with them she would find one that she liked and play with it for a while, then she would start torturing it. At first it would be something like holding it underwater for a little bit and after the kitten after the kitten was as properly frightened she would let it go for a minute then go back to it and “gain it’s trust“ again and proceed torturing it again. She told me she tried to make it more painful each time and she would do that until the cat was dead.

My parent’s tried everything to disciple her but nothing would work. They read every parenting book and tried all the popular methods of punishments that they could think of. Everything from timeouts to writing lines to spanking, nothing would work. You could literally lock her in a room with nothing for a whole day and she would not be bothered in the least.

When she was about eleven my parents were at the end of their wits and they tried to put her into therapy, but she was able to play everyone! The therapists would say things like the only thing wrong with this kid is that she’s a little spoiled.

Then when she entered high school she had a complete turn around (or so it seemed), there were no more fights and dead animals, everyone thought she grew out of it. She has not though; she’s still the same only now she’s more calculated about it, she has just become more devious.

Hard to tell with this information alone.

Do you know anything about her current behavior? Her whereabouts? Does she have friends? How do they see her? Is she conning? Manipulative? Lying? Sarcastic? Ironic? Smirks? Stealing? Trouble with the law? Forgetful? Sometimes meaningless? Does she abuse drugs? (alcohol or anything else)? Has she ever been in a relationship? (if so, how did it comes out? Does she ever say sorry? Does she ever contribute in the household with the chores? Or she just seems to have no contribution?

You see psychopaths come in different shapes and forms, it's hard to tell without actually doing a proper test on her, or having her see a psychiatrist for a while.

Has she been bullying in school? Expelled? Attacked class mates or teacher? (both verbally or physically?). Has she been stealing from your mom or dad? Did she try to burn things down? Does she keep promises? Does her behavior reflect what she's saying? Because a psychopath usually "double thinks" his phrases before actually saying something, and what they do never correlate to what they say.

They can be talking long hours about being honest, being nice in society, acting nice with friends, they can be talking about morality and so on and on the other hand their main activity is to con, make fast profits, steal and manipulate (usually this behavior comes out to light, but most of the times the psychopath tries to hide everything from the family, and wants to picture as an honest person.

The animal torturing is concerning, other than that I cannot say much.

Hope this helps.

Xe

Well, promiscuity, pathological lying, lack of guilt and torturing animals are strong signs...

hey crocodile ? How are you?

What is promiscuity? I've heard this word in movies before, is it related to sexual relationships? As in promiscuous sex?

"Promiscuity, in human sexual behaviour, is the practice of casual sex with multiple sexual partners."
By itself it has nothing to do with psychopathy but together with all the other symptoms... It seems like almost every psychopath displays it unless I guess they are super unattractive. But then it's only for the lack of opportunity.

I'm OK just had a few worse days - I'm a bit lonely nowadays and have little opportunity to go out since I'm stuck at work day and night:/. That makes me start to miss the Psychopath even though I should know better right now:(.

Great to hear you're getting on with work and keeping your mind off. You should be good, I hope you get better and better, loneliness is a big issue for me too, hard to make friends with my anxiety and PTSD but I have a plan to step forward.

Oh, now I get it. Promiscuous sex, is also a high indicative of either bipolar disorder or Borderline Personality that in many cases I believe goes hand in hand with Psychopathy, not a rule of thumb but usually psychopathy is hardly diagnosed since the patients are such good manipulators and liars.

Xe

It seems pretty clear to me that your sister has psychopathic traits. From my experience and what i've read the 'behaviours' are as unique in the psychopath as they are in any other individual. The main characteristics that i see as problematic and the core of the psychopath is the lack of empathy and conscience. how these characteristics play out in a person's behaviours all depend on their external environment (family and social structure) and their other characteristics. you can have a psychopath that is very sexual and one that's not. just as you can have a kind person that is sexual, or not. what i keep seeing is this focus on the behaviours. your sister seems to have figured out how to hide her inner being, which the socialized ones do. my dad is very socialized. the only people who will see it will be people who get close - actually intimate (not physically). when you realize they have no connection and concern to how they affect others.. others that they should care about.

i feel for you. i cannot even imagine having a sibling like that. none of my siblings, nor my mother 'see' my dad. they are just various types of 'victims' in his life arena. i often wonder about his siblings - if they 'saw' him, but i doubt it because he was significantly younger than his siblings. so they wouldn't be as connected, daily, intimately. they would also see him as spoiled. mommies boy.

i just read on another blog/forum one woman's account of dealing with her psychopathic son. i always believe i have it worse than others because i was very alone without any nurturing due to my dad. but then i read about the parents of them and for one of the few times i feel like i have it good.

anyway, i would say yes. the things i see in my dad are: he lies constantly. the simplest things he lies about. it's like he won't even let me be right about anything. so, i question all of my memories - this gives him the edge, to make me look unbalanced, you know, crazy. next - everything really needs to be his way. he does not cooperate or compromise. if you don't accommodate him he will let you go. bye bye, you have no value to him. he also has no conscience, he's never done anything wrong, or any regrets... he really does not understand why he has any troubles in his life, why he has such bad children - god dumped on him - boo hoo.

your sister will probably reach great heights socially and professionally. check this out: http://www.thestar.com/opinion/editorialopinion/2011/11/23/weeding_out_corporate_psychopaths.html

it's all very scary what is happening in today's world. in my personal research i remember reading that in one society, i believe maybe a native american society, they recognized the psychopaths early on and would... i believe kill them, or evict them from society. because if you think about society, it's a cooperative structure. but in the US now, i don't know about other cultures as much, we are giving great power to the aggressors...

i believe it needs to change.. these people, these monsters, need to be seen and removed of their powers.

That's true - if a Psychopath is not a complete idiot he/she learns with time how to hide his/her true self. Often only the closest people know they for what they are - family, ex-partners and friends unless they have a position that makes their character show to the larger audience. Only when they finally overdo their act it sometimes bites them back - it happened to mine, he's burnt the bridges and still he has not apologised for anything and he's got guts to make requests to people who owe him nothing and hate him and is all angry and surprised that no one wants to do his work for him anymore.

I believe Dick Cheney is a Psychopath, he's basically a war criminal and probably many other politicians. Probably there were a lot of them in high ranks of Nazi Germany, when you read the books about these people they appeared strikingly "normal" just like socialised Psychopaths. They had families, were described as charming, funny, dog lovers etc. Read the interviews with some of them done after the war - no doubt many were Psychopaths. These people are a danger to our species as a whole.

Yeah, they have no attachment to anyone - people are as replaceable as cars or computers.

Can you have conscience without empathy?
I don't quite believe Psychopaths and narcissist are the same, they surely share some stuff, but a Psychopath is so much worse. The narcissist you can live with and he can reform and learn - I've seen it in real life.
Medicating the "personality disorders" is such a nonsense anyway...

When it comes to the Psychopath and society - I think it'd function just fine providing that the total count of Psychopaths in the whole human race would be 0. I think the evolutionary explanation would rather go as follows:
Imagine two groups of people: one has no Psychopaths and one has say 2%. These groups start to compete for land, resources and so on. They fight. Which one is more likely to win? The one with Psychopaths - they're more ruthless and as you said are able to brainwash people into murdering others and competing in a ruthless manner. Like in wars. Like in corporations. They bring the evolutionary advantage but it's not one of the real value to society in a sense that it makes it any better. And as soon as there is no outside threat and/or when the number of Psychopaths in a society rises to a too high a level they turn against their own group and destroy it from the inside. If there were no Psychopaths the societies would function just fine, maybe even better, but since they're there the groups without Psychopaths are more likely to be killed off and destroyed. Just as the Indians who were clever enough to get rid of their Psychopaths. That why it'd be so difficult to get rid of them at least until you have the right knowledge.

Funny. I wanted to ask the same question.

How can you have conscience if you lack empathy? I though it would sound stupid though, but in fact it doesn't. This is the main thing that differentiates a psychopath from a narcissist. The psychopath has lacks conscience, but doesn't the narcissist lack it too?

For the average person that has not dealt with a psychopath, nor read or educated themselves on the subject, it would be literally impossible to spot a psychopath even if they live under the same roof. A lot of the abused women live with psychopaths and they don't even know it (after living for decades with the Psychopath. under the same roof).

A friend of ours lives with a dangerous Psychopath. (she's in her 50's) A psychopath that is a high corporate leader, a con artist, a mason, a corrupt man, he conned and lied all his life and has beaten up his wife for decades, yet she still doesn't know who she's dealing with. Recently he had attacked her with a ninja sword and told her that he'll decapitate her.

This time she's ready to put him in jail, it's just a matter of time. This man is such a lusty [censored] you can't believe it. He made his fortunes conning other's, he has even hit his own mom and beaten her up several times.

Xe