Common, everyday psychopaths

[Salomé]

ii've read studies that claim around 20 - 25% of the prison population are psychopaths. this is one of the reasons why sending low-level offenders to prison is a really stupid idea - they get to make friends with manipulative psychopaths.

True.

lol

I always wondered who did that.

Some sociopaths are less subtle than others.

 

[SilkRoad]

If I answered yes to a couple of these, I'd get rid of the person. I'm picky, yes.

I've thought about these people, and I think I have even met a couple of them, but I still haven't met anyone clearly evil. Sure, they are not the people I would hang out with, and they are a drag, but I still tend to consider them more "confused" than evil. This makes me feel pretty optimistic about humanity. It might be, of course, that I've never met a psychopath.

I've known one person in recent years who fits a lot of the description far too closely. I also leaned more towards considering him "confused" than "sociopath", but I'm not sure if that's just me being a sucker or over-optimistic. Conversely, I wonder if describing him as a sociopath might be over the top.

But...looking at those questions, I would answer "yes" to 10 out of 13, at least a lot of the time. And the other three, maybe some of the time. So...yeah.

I do have to take into account the fact that I had an unrequited crush on this person for a long time, and that could obviously distort my perception of him in various directions/ways, or make me more sensitive to certain of his comments and actions. However, it does seem to fit a little too well. He's mostly out of my life now and I should really keep it that way. Whenever I think about getting in touch, I step back and ask myself...why? What good did I ever get out of my friendship with him or could I ever hope to get? That makes me reconsider pretty quickly.

 

[sleepy]

Lone sociopaths aren't much to worry about. Easily recognized and avoided imo. The real horror is when they are in a pack, as in leaders, an occupation they typically will be attracted towards. And Fe each others. The people are generally helpless against such brute force. Like lamb that goes to the slaughterhouse. If you don't feel sorry for those you are probably an sociopath, and your so called empathy is a constructed one. I'm pretty sure most sociopaths are not aware they are one. If they have power over you? I'm not sure what you can do, or even if it's anyone's fault. The system should always incorporate fail safe against this imo.

And I think it's human nature, that is the most scary part. *looks in the mirror*

That estimates says the male, 97%. And that sociopaths mostly go by undetected...hmm...what does that mean? I suspect there are huge dark numbers in the 3-4% estimate.

 

[Salomé]

I've known one person in recent years who fits a lot of the description far too closely. I also leaned more towards considering him "confused" than "sociopath", but I'm not sure if that's just me being a sucker or over-optimistic. Conversely, I wonder if describing him as a sociopath might be over the top.

I think that's why the criteria listed are useful. Most of us automatically shrink from labelling someone we know in this way, but if the majority of those points ring true, it's impossible to argue that this person is anything other than a negative influence in your life.

I also think the whole excusing the person as "confused" is pretty common. It's also projective - they confuse us but they are seldom confused about what they are doing.

And I think it's human nature, that is the most scary part. *looks in the mirror*

Actually, it's quite the opposite. That's why we find it so impenetrable and chilling.

 

[SilkRoad]

I think that's why the criteria listed are useful. Most of us automatically shrink from labelling someone we know in this way, but if the majority of those points ring true, it's impossible to argue that this person is anything other than a negative influence in your life.

I also think the whole excusing the person as "confused" is pretty common. It's also projective - they confuse us but they are seldom confused about what they are doing.

Yes...I think the article pointed out that at the very least, if you answer yes to most of those points, the person is a highly negative influence. You might not even have to lose sleep over whether or not they qualify as "sociopath". Although it isn't very nice to think that someone you've tried to be friends with, or been involved with, or wanted to be involved with, or whatever, might be a sociopath.

 

[sleepy]

Actually, it's quite the opposite. That's why we find it so impenetrable and chilling.

Non humans?

I'm a bit scared by your pov. I think sociopaths are part of human nature, how could this exist otherwise?

It's more a question of how not have them hurt you. I'd rather not look at them as non humans. It's a scary direction. You know. When I read the OP I couldn't help notice that most of the criteria was about perceptions. So that made me wonder, how easily can the roles be reversed. That the sociopath thinks the non sociopath is a sociopath. Ala the inquisition, or any such episode of human history. It's not a pretty picture.

 

[InvisibleJim]

The true sign of the sociopath: the person who doesn't understand that people aren't inherently bad/evil in their own opinions or motivations unless they have a very serious problem.

 

[Salomé]

Yes...I think the article pointed out that at the very least, if you answer yes to most of those points, the person is a highly negative influence. You might not even have to lose sleep over whether or not they qualify as "sociopath". Although it isn't very nice to think that someone you've tried to be friends with, or been involved with, or wanted to be involved with, or whatever, might be a sociopath.

I know. It's kind of horrifying.

I'm a bit scared by your pov. I think sociopaths are part of human nature, how could this exist otherwise?

The article I cited called them "a different kind of human". I think, if 97% of people don't behave in this way, because 97% of people have a conscience, then calling it "human nature" is a bit misleading. It's an aberration. Perhaps, according to game theory / evolutionary psychology an adaptive aberration, but an aberration nonetheless.

 

[Vasilisa]

Just contributing some articles on this subject. *edit: links fixed now!

Suffering Souls
The search for the roots of psychopathy.
by John Seabrook
November 10, 2008
The New Yorker

Excerpt:

The Western New Mexico Correctional Facility sits in high-desert country about seventy miles west of Albuquerque. Grants, a former uranium boomtown that depends heavily on prison work, is a few miles down the road. There’s a glassed-in room at the top of the prison tower, with louvred windows and, on the ceiling, a big crank that operates a searchlight. In a box on the floor are some tear-gas shells that can be fired down into the yard should there be a riot. Below is the prison complex—a series of low six-sided buildings, divided by high hurricane fences topped with razor wire that glitters fiercely in the desert sun. To the east is the snow-covered peak of Mt. Taylor, the highest in the region; to the west, the Zuni Mountains are visible in the blue distance.

One bright morning last April, Dr. Kent Kiehl strode across the parking lot to the entrance, saying, “I guarantee that by the time we reach the gate the entire inmate population will know I’m here.” Kiehl—the Doc, as the inmates call him—was dressed in a blue blazer and a yellow tie. He is tall, broad-shouldered, and barrel-chested, with neat brown hair and small ears; he looks more like a college football player, which was his first ambition, than like a cognitive neuroscientist. But when he speaks, in an unexpectedly high-pitched voice, he becomes that know-it-all kid in school who intimidated you with his combination of superior knowledge and bluster.

At thirty-eight, Kiehl is one of the world’s leading younger investigators in psychopathy, the condition of moral emptiness that affects between fifteen to twenty-five per cent of the North American prison population, and is believed by some psychologists to exist in one per cent of the general adult male population. (Female psychopaths are thought to be much rarer.) Psychopaths don’t exhibit the manias, hysterias, and neuroses that are present in other types of mental illness. Their main defect, what psychologists call “severe emotional detachment”—a total lack of empathy and remorse—is concealed, and harder to describe than the symptoms of schizophrenia or bipolar disorder. This absence of easily readable signs has led to debate among mental-health practitioners about what qualifies as psychopathy and how to diagnose it. Psychopathy isn’t identified as a disorder in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, the American Psychiatric Association’s canon; instead, a more general term, “antisocial personality disorder,” known as A.P.D., covers the condition.

There is also little consensus among researchers about what causes psychopathy. Considerable evidence, including several large-scale studies of twins, points toward a genetic component. Yet psychopaths are more likely to come from neglectful families than from loving, nurturing ones. Psychopathy could be dimensional, like high blood pressure, or it might be categorical, like leukemia. Researchers argue over whether tests used to measure it should focus on behavior or attempt to incorporate personality traits—like deceitfulness, glibness, and lack of remorse—as well. The only point on which everyone agrees is that psychopathy is extremely difficult to treat. And for some researchers the word “psychopath” has been tainted by its long and seamy relationship with criminality and popular culture, which began with true-crime pulps and continues today in TV shows like CBS’s “Criminal Minds” and in the work of authors like Thomas Harris and Patricia Cornwell. The word is so loaded with baleful connotations that it tends to empurple any surrounding prose.

Kiehl is frustrated by the lack of respect shown to psychopathy by the mental-health establishment. “Think about it,” he told me. “Crime is a trillion-dollar-a-year problem. The average psychopath will be convicted of four violent crimes by the age of forty. And yet hardly anyone is funding research into the science. Schizophrenia, which causes much less crime, has a hundred times more research money devoted to it.” I asked why, and Kiehl said, “Because schizophrenics are seen as victims, and psychopaths are seen as predators. The former we feel empathy for, the latter we lock up.”

In January of 2007, Kiehl arranged to have a portable functional magnetic-resonance-imaging scanner brought into Western—the first fMRI ever installed in a prison. So far, he has recruited hundreds of volunteers from among the inmates. The data from these scans, Kiehl hopes, will confirm his theory, published in Psychiatry Research, in 2006, that psychopathy is caused by a defect in what he calls “the paralimbic system,” a network of brain regions, stretching from the orbital frontal cortex to the posterior cingulate cortex, that are involved in processing emotion, inhibition, and attentional control. His dream is to confound the received wisdom by helping to discover a treatment for psychopathy. “If you could target the brain region involved, then maybe you could find a drug that treats that region,” he told me. “If you could treat just five per cent of them, that would be a Nobel Prize right there.”

< read the full article >

Harenski recently interviewed a Western inmate who scored a 38.9. “He had killed his girlfriend because he thought she was cheating on him,” she told me. “He was so charming about telling it that I found it hard not to fall into laughing along in surprise, even when he was describing awful things.” Harenski, who is thirty, did not experience the involuntary skin-crawling sensation that, according to a survey conducted by the psychologists Reid and M. J. Meloy, one in three mental-health and criminal-justice professionals report feeling on interviewing a psychopath; in their paper on the subject, Meloy and Meloy speculate that this reaction may be an ancient intraspecies predator-response system. “I was just excited,” Harenski continued. “I was saying to myself, ‘Wow. I found a real one.’ ”​

 

[Vasilisa]

different brains

These stories are a bit old now...

Psychopaths' brains 'different'
4 December 2006
news.bbc.co.uk

There are biological brain differences that mark out psychopaths from other people, according to scientists.

Psychopaths showed less activity in brain areas involved in assessing the emotion of facial expressions, the British Journal of Psychiatry reports.

In particular, they were far less responsive to fearful faces than healthy volunteers.

The Institute of Psychiatry, Kings College London team say this might partly explain psychopathic behaviour.

Remorseless

Criminal psychopaths are people with aggressive and anti-social personalities who lack emotional empathy.

They can commit hideous crimes, such as rape or murder, yet show no signs of remorse or guilt.

It has been suggested that people with psychopathic disorders lack empathy because they have defects in processing facial and vocal expressions of distress, such as fear and sadness, in others.

“ We are a long way from knowing how to treat psychopathy ”
Dr Nicola Gray, from Cardiff University's School of Psychology

Professor Declan Murphy and colleagues set out to test this using a scan that shows up brain activity.

They showed six psychopaths and nine healthy volunteers pictures of faces showing different emotions.

Both groups had increased activity in brain areas involved in processing facial expressions in response to happy faces compared with neutral faces, but this increase was smaller among the psychopaths.

By contrast, when processing fearful faces compared with neutral faces, the healthy volunteers showed increased activation and the psychopaths decreased activation in these brain regions.

Fearful faces

The researchers said: "These results suggest that the neural pathways for processing facial expressions of happiness are functionally intact in people with psychopathic disorder, although less responsive.

"In contrast, fear is processed in a very different way."

This failure to recognise and emotionally respond to facial and other signals of distress may underlie psychopaths' failure to block behaviour that causes distress in others and their lack of emotional empathy, the scientists suggest.

Dr Nicola Gray, from Cardiff University's School of Psychology, has also been studying what underpins psychopathy.

"What we are trying to understand are the cognitive deficits underpinning the behaviour of psychopaths.

"If people with psychopathy can't process the emotion of fear and that is mirrored in terms of their brain activity, as this study suggests, that will help us understand the cognitive deficits.

"But it is still a long way to finding out what to do about that. We are a long way from knowing how to treat psychopathy."


Gray matter changes in right superior temporal gyrus in criminal psychopaths. Evidence from voxel-based morphometry
PSYCHIATRIC RESEARCH NEUROIMAGING
Volume 163, Issue 3, Pages 213-222 (30 August 2008)
by Jürgen L. Müllera, Susanne Gänßbauerd, Monika Sommerb, Katrin Döhnelb, Tatjana Weberc, Tobias Schmidt-Wilcked, Göran Hajakb

ABSTRACT
“Psychopathy” according to the PCL-R describes a specific subgroup of antisocial personality disorder with a high risk for criminal relapses. Lesion and imaging studies point towards frontal or temporal brain regions connected with disturbed social behavior, antisocial personality disorder (APD) and psychopathy. Morphologically, some studies described a reduced prefrontal brain volume, whereas others reported on temporal lobe atrophy. To further investigate whether participants with psychopathy according to the Psychopathy Checklist — Revised Version (PCL-R) show abnormalities in brain structure, we used voxel-based morphometry (VBM) to investigate region-specific changes in gray matter in 17 forensic male inpatients with high PCL-R scores (PCL-R>28) and 17 male control subjects with low PCL-R scores (PCL<10). We found significant gray matter reductions in frontal and temporal brain regions in psychopaths compared with controls. In particular, we found a highly significant volume loss in the right superior temporal gyrus. This is the first study to show that psychopathy is associated with a decrease in gray matter in both frontal and temporal brain regions, in particular in the right superior temporal gyrus, supporting the hypothesis that a disturbed frontotemporal network is critically involved in the pathogenesis of psychopathy.

a Department of Forensic Psychiatry and Psychotherapy, University of Göttingen, Von Siebold Str. 5, D-37075 Göttingen, Germany
b Department of Psychiatry and Psychotherapy, University of Regensburg, Germany
c Clinic of Forensic Psychiatry, Bezirksklinikum Regensburg, Germany
d Department of Neurology, University of Regensburg, Germany

 

[Mole]

psychopathy, the condition of moral emptiness that affects between fifteen to twenty-five per cent of the North American prison population, and is believed by some psychologists to exist in one per cent of the general adult male population.

Sounds like Andy Warhol who is celebrated as a great post-modern artist.

 

[ThatsWhatHeSaid]

So who're some controversial people that might be psychopaths but are not recognized as such?

Vladamir Putin
Cheney (recognized)
Glenn Beck
Sarah Palin

 

[Vasilisa]

To bring this back to the OP about psychopaths/sociopaths in everyday life, there is also this site www.lovefraud.com which is not authored by mental health professionals, but may be useful and/or interesting to anyone concerned with this issue.

 

[skylights]

so we're just supposed to make every effort to avoid them? kick them to the sidelines, make them caste-untouchable equivalents? and what should society as a whole do with them? lock them up? euthanize them?

information like this frustrates me because it doesn't treat sociopaths like people. and no, maybe they don't have what we commonly refer to as "humaneness", but something about this kind of response fundamentally makes me uneasy. what if your sibling or child is a sociopath? what do you do?

I'd rather not look at them as non humans. It's a scary direction. You know.

agreed. it's not a healthy direction. i have no intentions of being an enabler or of being a victim, but i don't like the idea of abandoning humaneness to treat someone who is inhumane. that doesn't solve anything.

believe that instead of isolating these people and separating them from society, and leaving them to rot in prison, we should simply create a social role for identified sociopaths and psychopaths that forces them to contribute to society in order to avoid being subjected to something they consider undesirable, and to gain something they consider desirable. Since they're not emotionally similar to other people, they must be dealt with differently. We would need to apply rules to them that would seem extremely harsh, oppressive, and cruel if applied to a normal person, but which are justified in controlling/containing a psychopath.

that's interesting. i like this direction better. i wonder what a sociopath would say if they were asked, actually. i mean, when you feel no moral compass or social responsibility, how are your goals shaped? how can those goals be channeled to provide the sociopath with decent human rights while simultaneously protecting other people from them? more questions than answers, sadly.

Sarah Palin

sociopaths tend to be sly and competent; i think that knocks palin off the map.

 

[ThatsWhatHeSaid]

Really? I think she's both sly and competent. She managed to become the governor of Alaska and got close to becoming the VP of the country and she's still pretty popular despite not really knowing anything. She's just vicious and manipulative with truth and with people.

 

[skylights]

hah, i guess that's true. i was just trying to take potshots at her

still, i do find it hard to think of her as a sociopath. would she really put up with all that family? i don't deny that she has a lot of sociopathic traits. it's disturbing how little empathy she shows for those who do not conform to her beliefs. i'd peg her for narcissism first, too.

cheney, on the other hand - wouldn't surprise me as much... though i still do hesitate to condemn.

 

[Domino]

http://www.policeone.com/edp/articles/91372-Psychopath-or-an-INTJ-whos-gone-to-the-dark-side-Part-2/

i can`t find the next part. The interogation. Right now i can`t even find the first part. What a crappy internett page.

Btw: the US army looks for pscyopaths i believe as they dont`t get traumas and so on.

Its also a nice way of getting rid of them.
Also puts them to good use and keeping them away from sosical lifes so they do not develop manipulation skills.

I knew an Army Ranger like that. Totally crackers, no sense of mortality, morality, etc. He was friends with an ISTP friend of mine and an ESTP jackass bounty hunter. Though I had the extreme misfortune of meeting Jackass more than once, I was never allowed to meet Army Ranger Guy - not that I wanted to, but because ISTP was actually a pretty decent person and didn't want 'ARG!' anywhere near me.

I think the end of the line for the Ranger was parachuting into some wartorn area for the millionth time and suddenly realizing that he could be killed and needed a more, shall we say, self-supporting line of work. Hence, bounty hunting with Jackass.

As to Sarah Palin, she's not a psycho. She's just horribly HORRIBLY misguided, to the point of frightening me.

EDIT: I noticed just today that an ailing elderly mobster - 93 years old - is being put on trial for a huge number of murders. Mentioned in his rap sheet is that he was expelled from the Army in 1938 for "homicidal tendencies".

 

[ZPowers]

Really? I think she's both sly and competent. She managed to become the governor of Alaska and got close to becoming the VP of the country and she's still pretty popular despite not really knowing anything. She's just vicious and manipulative with truth and with people.

Part of me think she lacks real understanding. Behind the scenes stories place her as pretty dumb, if personable. With any luck, she's slowly moving to her proper place as a reality TV star, not a legitimate political figure. Of course, a lot of reality stars might be dumber sociopaths (I'm looking at you, cast of Jersey Shore).

Agreed on the others you posted. I think Putin might also be generally accepted as a sociopath, maybe moreso than Cheney. Non-Beck heads who know his history would probably not be surprised he (a dude who made fun of a woman on-air for having a miscarriage right after it happened because he disliked her husband) might not care so much about other humans.

 

[Sunny Ghost]

HOW TO KNOW
Ask yourself these questions:
1. Do you often feel used by the person?
2. Have you often felt that he (or she) doesn't care about you?
3. Does he lie and deceive you?
4. Does he tend to make contradictory statements?
5. Does he tend to take from you and not give back much?
6. Does he often appeal to pity? Does he seem to try to make you feel sorry for him?
7. Does he try to make you feel guilty?
8. Do you sometimes feel he is taking advantage of your good nature?
9. Does he seem easily bored and need constant stimulation?
10. Does he use a lot of flattery? Does he interact with you in a way that makes you feel flattered even if he says nothing overtly complimentary?
11. Does he make you feel worried? Does he do it obviously or more cleverly and sneakily?
12. Does he give you the impression you owe him?
13. Does he chronically fail to take responsibility for harming others? Does he blame everyone and everything but himself?

If you answered "yes" to many of these, you may be dealing with a sociopath. For sure you're dealing with someone who isn't good for you, whatever you want to call him.
]I like Martha Stout's way of detecting sociopaths: "If ... you find yourself often pitying someone who consistently hurts you or other people, and who actively campaigns for your sympathy, the chances are close to one hundred percent that you are dealing with a sociopath."

Because they go undetected, they wreak havoc on their family, on people they work with, and on anyone who tries to be their friend. A sociopath deceives, takes what he (or she) wants, and hurts people without any remorse. Sociopaths don't feel guilty. They don't feel sorry for what they've done. They go through life taking what they want and giving nothing back. They manipulate and deceive and convincingly lie without the slightest second thought. They leave a path of confusion and upset in their wake.

Who are these people? Why are they the way they are? Apparently it has little to do with upbringing. Many studies have been done trying to find out what kind of childhood leads to sociopathy. So far, nothing looks likely. They could be from any kind of family. It is partly genetic, and partly mystery.

But researchers have found that the brains of sociopaths function differently than normal people. And their brains function in a way that makes their emotional life unredeemably shallow. And yet they are capable of mimicking emotions like professional actors.
Sociopaths don't have normal affection with other people. They don't feel attached to others. They don't feel love. And that is why they don't have a conscience. If you harmed someone, even someone you didn't know, you would feel guilt and remorse. Why? Because you have a natural affinity for other human beings. You know how it feels to suffer, to fear, to feel anguish. You care about others.
[f you hurt someone you love, the guilt and remorse would be even worse because of your affection for him or her. Take that attachment and affection away and you take away remorse, guilt, and any kind of normal feelings of fairness. That's a sociopath.

Even when the evidence is staring you in the face, you may have difficulty admitting that someone you know, someone you trusted, even someone you love, is a sociopath. But the sooner you admit it, the faster your life can return to normal. Face the facts and you may save yourself a lot of suffering.

WHAT DO THEY WANT?
A sociopath's goal is to win. And he (or she) is willing to do anything at all to win.
Sociopaths have nothing else to think about, so they can be very clever and conniving. Sociopaths are not busy being concerned with relationships or moral dilemmas or conflicting feelings, so they have much more time to think about clever ways to gain your trust and stab you in the back, and how do it without anyone knowing what's happening.

One of the questions in the list above was about boredom. This is a real problem for sociopaths and they seem fanatically driven to prevent boredom. The reason it looms so large for them (and seems so strange to us) is that our relationships with people occupy a good amount of our time and attention and interest us intensely. Take that away and all you have is "playing to win" which is rather shallow and empty in comparison. So boredom is a constant problem for sociopaths and they have an incessant urge to keep up a level of stimulation, even negative stimulation (drama, worry, upset, etc.).

And here I might mention that the research shows sociopaths don't feel emotions the same way normal people do. For example, they don't experience fear as unpleasant. This goes a long way to explaining the inexplicable behavior you'll see in sociopaths. Some feelings that you and I might find intolerable might not bother them at all.

HOW TO DEAL WITH A SOCIOPATH]There is no known cure or therapy for sociopathy. In fact, some evidence suggests that therapy makes them worse because they use it to learn more about human vulnerabilities they can then exploit. They learn how to manipulate better and they learn better excuses that others will believe. They don't usually seek therapy, unless there is something to gain from it.
Given all that, there is only one solution for dealing with a sociopath: Get him or her completely out of your life for good. This seems radical, and of course, you want to be fairly sure your diagnosis is correct, but you need to protect yourself from the drain on your time, attention, money, and good attitude. Healing or helping a sociopath is a pointless waste of your life.

My best friend has told me she's a sociopath. This should have me running for the hills... and in fact a few times, I have. We came to be associated at first because of having similar friends. Over time, she wanted more and more to suck me into her world. And the more involved I became in her world, the more deceitful she became, and the more rumors she created about me, and etc. She's known to tell a lie, and I've caught her a number of times in the several years I've known her.

However, I only take so much from people. Me and my friend have had many falling outs with one another. A number of times during our friendship, I told her that I can't be with someone who treats me like this, or who straight up lies with no remorse, or creates stories from thin air, or that uses me, not for companionship, but out of either boredom or for rule.

Last fall, basically everything around her fell apart. Her and her boyfriends relationship ended and so did mine and her friendship. Not to mention, everyone else also called her out on her behavior.
We didn't talk for several months.
Earlier this year, we came into contact with one another again and went to dinner to talk things through. I told her we could become friends again, but that I refused to take back anything I had previously said about her, and that she needed to hear those things.

We are now friends again, and I've seen some changes. Whether fully genuine or not, I'm still uncertain. However, she has yet to manipulate me or give me a reason to drop her out of my life again. She's nicer, more reaffirming, and always there if I need her to be. (But like I said, how genuine she is in all of it, I don't know? But she is always there for me regardless. And same vice versa.)

I think she has learned that people aren't always going to be duped by her lies or take being manipulated or rumored about. A lot of that behavior has stopped. I still catch her in minor lies, but they are never big enough to make a big deal. And if they seem to be pushing along to be bigger lies, I go along with it but steer it towards a direction of, "keep this up and you're going to get caught."

She's never had me give her money... and in fact it's usually the other way around. She makes a lot more than I do and so takes me out for drinks a lot. I will often hear from her if she needs help with this or that matter. If I'm able, I will, just as I would for anyone else. If I'm not able, I just tell her, sorry, no can do.

One funny thing though, is that she will often say, "I owe her." But not monetary owe. Say, I skipped out on some party that she wanted me to go to with her. Then she comes over the next day uninvited. I tell her I'm just not in the mood to socialize or hang out. She had told me, "I owe her." I told her that I don't owe her anything and I'm going to my room. Then she'll order, "Sit down. You want to watch this movie with me." I tell her she's crazy and I have no clue where she got that idea. So, there are odd moments like this that come up... but I hold my ground well in these situations.

I do continue to keep my guard up around her though... only allowing her in so far.

Also, if it's of any relevance, she's an ESTJ. ...though she always wants to think she's an ISTJ. She's very executive like.

****just thought of a few funny stories about her:
--She tricked a lie detector polygraph machine, whatever it's called. The first question was just to ensure it was working properly and they asked her if her name was ___. She said, "No." And no detection, whatsoever.

--Shrooming one night, another friend asked a riddle: A woman goes to her mother's funeral and meets the man of her dreams. The next week she killed her sister. Why?

I'll let you guys try to figure this riddle out. But she answered it correctly. The friend that asked the riddle looked stumped for a moment, then said... well typically if you're able to answer the riddle it means you're a sociopath. The next day she played it off as though she couldn't remember the event.

 

[skylights]

i'm curious about the nature of behavior that resembles sociopathy, but isn't quite. or maybe is low-grade sociopathy.

take a friend of mine - we met because we lived nearby in college, and our friendship sort of clicked because we both wanted (needed) someone to hang out with all the time - as EPs, we shared a particular dislike for doing many things alone. as our friendship went on, her minor rulebreaking (not unlike my own) began to reveal itself as a much more serious past (and present) of academic cheating, major drugs, shoplifting, sleeping around extensively, using other people to get what she wanted, etc. i would put money on her being an ESFP, but she had a remarkably lacking sense of humanistic feeling (remorse, for example) for a Fi aux (which i am quite certain she was - the emotionality, fuzzy decision making, use of Te similar to mine, etc). on the other hand, she did have a big soft spot for animals, which i found very interesting. she was raised by a wealthy family in a decent environment (her mom's got some body image issues, but her father is doting and the family seems pretty healthy in general), and i've never really been able to figure out why her life veered in the direction it did. we drew apart, too, as i got more and more moralistic in response to her actions and she got more and more pissed that i was moralistic, and we haven't spoken in years now...

interesting, really. she doesn't really seem to care much for other humans, but she's almost borderline in her need for a close, stabilizing relationship. she never showed anger issues, but she was unquestionably reckless and showed little concern for harming others. she was close and warm with her dad and little brother, but HATED her mother.



i dunno. just interesting.