Psychopathy: is it real?

[Kho]

[MENTION=9160]HelenOfTroy[/MENTION] point taken, I should have familiarized myself with the workings of the forum before being rash enough to post anything at all. Well then I suppose I should just copy+ paste the two corrections/ additions I made in consecutive posts and add those to the OP. Apparently being an OP comes with the great responsibility of spoon-feeding information to people that are too lazy to do the reading, but also too bored to not go do anything else and feel like leaving comments. I'll go edit the OP then, after I finish eating dinner xx

 

[Jeremy8419]

Most people I've met that carry psychopathy traits (or all of them) fall into one of two categories:

1: Actually on the schizophrenia scale
2: Some sort of developmental disorder or odd upbringing that has lead them to never be able to properly communicate with others

1 is medicine. 2 they either eventually find someone capable of translating basic humanity to them in a way they can comprehend or they don't. I've never met anyone who just genuinely has a heart as described by psychopathy. And trust me. I've been looking.

 

[Betty Blue]

[MENTION=9160]HelenOfTroy[/MENTION] point taken, I should have familiarized myself with the workings of the forum before being rash enough to post anything at all. Well then I suppose I should just copy+ paste the two corrections/ additions I made in consecutive posts and add those to the OP. Apparently being an OP comes with the great responsibility of spoon-feeding information to people that are too lazy to do the reading, but also too bored to not go do anything else and feel like leaving comments. I'll go edit the OP then, after I finish eating dinner xx

Look, it's results driven. What kind of results do you want? That should set the tone for your OP.

You also did not respond to my point. Is that something you corrected in later posts? The error you made in confusing psychopaths non understanding of empathy with inability to have emotions/feelings?

 

[/DG/]

[MENTION=9160]HelenOfTroy[/MENTION] point taken, I should have familiarized myself with the workings of the forum before being rash enough to post anything at all. Well then I suppose I should just copy+ paste the two corrections/ additions I made in consecutive posts and add those to the OP. Apparently being an OP comes with the great responsibility of spoon-feeding information to people that are too lazy to do the reading, but also too bored to not go do anything else and feel like leaving comments. I'll go edit the OP then, after I finish eating dinner xx

I don't see why you don't get that people don't want to waste their time reading pages upon ages of shit to get to whatever point you are trying to make. It's not that you don't understand how the forum works. It's that you don't understand how communication in general works.

 

[Kho]

Look, it's results driven. What kind of results do you want? That should set the tone for your OP.

You also did not respond to my point. Is that something you corrected in later posts? The error you made in confusing psychopaths non understanding of empathy with inability to have emotions/feelings?

Look, apparently you did not make your point concise enough for me to 'respond' to -- the 'burden of clarity' is on you, if I'm to follow your logic; and whatever misunderstanding or miscommunication that results is YOUR fault for not presenting your initial 'point' accurately enough.
I made NO error. You are wrong in assuming that I made an error. I 'clarified' what was apparently phrased in a confusing manner, in consecutive posts.

The 'results' I was looking for were to gauge people's ideas about this, to start a conversation -- any kind of conversation, exchange,
I don't expect people to comprehend exactly what I intend to convey anyway, although that doesn't mean I don't try.
I was curious to see how different people would interpret and respond to my initial thoughts (however half-formed they initially may have seemed.)

What I did NOT expect was some half-reasoned, poorly-structured, ill-informed attack-slash-diatribe on some meta-forum-etiquette-communication crap that I have no intention at all of wasting any more of my time or energy on.

If you care enough to reply, you should care enough to pay more attention to what has been said.
I don't really see the point in wasting my energy on stating what has been stated over and over again.
I shall edit my initial post because I think it is fair enough that you say an OP should provide all the necessary information for follow-up debates to be engaged in.
What I shall NOT do any more is explain myself just because you want me to, because this clearly isn't going anywhere.

 

[Kho]

I don't see why you don't get that people don't want to waste their time reading pages upon ages of shit to get to whatever point you are trying to make. It's not that you don't understand how the forum works. It's that you don't understand how communication in general works.

Ages of shit, eh? Fine turn of phrase to refer to whatever you've been contributing to this thread. All you've done is snark and attack. Nothing of substance whatever. Shoo away then.

 

[Kho]

Mercury and Mars in retrograde are not allowing me to fare well at all.
Apparently my computer thinks it's a Pentium PC from the stone age and will not allow me to edit my posts on TypoC.
This means I cannot edit my initial post, although [MENTION=9160]HelenOfTroy[/MENTION] so earnestly insists that this is my moral obligation to those with whom I'm attempting to communicate.

This is the last post I'll make in this thread, and I will not respond to or view any more mentions, attempts to engage, etc.
PM me if you really feel so strongly about interacting with me, and I will respond as I see fit.
Here is all the information you need in order to understand what I was attempting to articulate in an admittedly half-formed fashion in the original OP.

To summarise briefly what happened:
I made a somewhat casual, friendly stab at communicating something, trying to see how people would react to my OP.
Some, if not most, responders to the thread interpreted my OP in such a way that we were able to have a somewhat meaningful conversation.
But then certain others barged in and attempted to correct what was not wrong, make me repeat what I'd already said, then blamed me for not saying it earlier, when I'd already said it; etcetera.

That's enough. I disengage, not because I don't care or because I don't like any of you, but because I can't waste my valuable time and energy on this.
I don't know if [MENTION=6554]/DG/[/MENTION] and [MENTION=9160]HelenOfTroy[/MENTION] think they're trying to help me or help the forum or express their frustration or what -- I trust that their intentions are valuable and good.
I respect them and their rights to express whatever they desire.
Some of you reading through this thread will agree with them, some of you will agree with me, and some of you will not understand and/or care WTF is going on.
I think I shall refuse to care.
You may think of it as a cop-out retreat or a passive-agressive lash-out; You may respect me for walking back from a pointless but volatile and acrid situation; You may not care;
I don't care. I disengage.

I hope the other participants in this thread enjoy reading the "ages of shit", as [MENTION=6554]/DG/[/MENTION] so eloquently put it, and find whatever it is of use to them that they came to this thread to seek.
I hope all of you have a beautiful day and I hope no hard feelings linger.
I also hope any miscommunication gets sorted out eventually and that you come to understand whatever your version of the truth is that feels comfortable to you.
Bye bye, signing off from the thread.

For the more academic-minded AND/OR Sensing-oriented among you, here's an interesting article AND/OR appeal to authority that actually supports my claim of hypersensitivity being linked to clinical diagnoses of psychopathy.

Emotional Sensitivity in Psychopaths

Title:
Emotional Capacities and Sensitivity in Psychopaths

Author:
Willem H. J. Martens, MD, PhD
Director of the “W. Kahn Institute of Theoretical Psychiatry and Neuroscience.”


Abstract:
Although psychopaths demonstrate emotional abnormalities such as shallow affect, lack of empathy, incapacity for love, lack of guilt or remorse, lack of fear, and emotional processing and response deficiencies they may show normal emotional responses or emotional hypersensitive in other areas. The correlates of emotional incapacities, emotional hypersensitivity, and normal emotional activities in psychopaths are studied and discussed in this paper. Emotional hypersensitivity might be linked with: a history of neglect, rejection and abuse; insult; changes which are forced or not under control of the psychopath; obstacles that prevent the psychopath to do what he or she wants to do; narcissistic injury; broken friendships or relationship. Normal emotional functioning might be associate with grief, warm relationship, adequate attention, disease, academic and/or occupational success, impressive events, confrontations, contemplation and maturation, hidden suffering (also as a result of neurobiological determination).

Conclusion:
Psychopathy is diagnostically characterized by serious emotional deficiencies, which may interrelate with other diagnostic features such as incapacitiy for love, lack of empathy, shallow emotions, social-emotional incapacities (lack of interactional skills), pathological egocentricity, grandiose sense of self-worth, irresponsibility, impulsivity, and aggression. Despite their disturbed emotional world some psychopaths may exhibit normal emotional experiences such as normal feelings for pets, relatives, art, sports, and so on. In current and past studies the healthy aspects of emotional life in psychopaths are underexposed. It is, however of major interest to examine the etiological, psychosocial, neurobiological correlates, conditions of normal emotional functioning in different categories of psychopaths, and in what particular circumstances it can happen and flourish. It could be useful for the psychotherapist to direct towards these healthy emotional elements and try to expand or relate them to other emotional and related social and moral areas.
Emotions are hardly objectively measurable, and it is possible that psychopaths “emotional incapacities” in some cases could be better explained as fundamental different emotional functioning rather than emotionally “inferior” or affectively “cold.” Furthermore, there is some evidence that not all “pure” psychopaths demonstrate abnormal emotionality (Martens, 1997). Clear psychopaths (PCL-R scores between 30 and 40) do not necessarily meet all diagnostic features (Hare, 1991), and may show normal emotions. And some psychopaths report that they have normal emotional experiences, while they are unable to show affections (Martens, 1997). This may lead to observations of "shallow" emotions.
More research is needed into effective therapeutic stimulation of emotional development in distinctive categories psychopaths, such as violent non-sexual, violent sexual, frauds, and non-violent and non-criminal psychopaths, which are characterized by their own specific emotional abnormalities which are linked to their crimes and/or personality/behavior patterns (Martens, 1997).

Let me break down my thought process into more manageable bullet-points, to explain:



1. Event. I saw a Daily Mail article (linked) that said:
---1-1) "creative people are more likely to be psychopaths."


2. Reaction. I disagree with the Daily Mail article. BECAUSE:
---2-1) It's dangerous to equate creativity to psychopathy. because:
---2-2) Creativity and psychopathy have only two things in common:
------- a. the ability to be 'abnormal' without fearing the repercussions or taboos.
--------b. being feared, shunned, and misunderstood by society.


3. Reason. This blatant attempt to link 'misunderstood'/ non-mainstream/ 'taboo' characteristics implies two things:
---3-1) Labels of convenience such as 'creative' or 'psychopath' are intentionally designed to control, contain, and homogenise the population.
---3-2) This would mean that: It is possible that there is no such thing as a 'psychopath'.
---------a. The label 'psychopath' is used as a means of persecution, and is not legitimate psychology in any way.
---3-3) A good way to examine the idea that there is no such thing as a psychopath is to conduct a simple thought experiment.
---------a. Imagine a being with no emotions that could act like it had emotions (a Q-zombie of emotions, in a way. I shall call her Q-zombieE.)
---------b. Imagine that there were: a watermelon and a human head in front of it.
---------c. For Q-zombieE, because she is unhampered by emotions, the purely physical impact/ force required to crush a watermelon and crushing a human skull is roughly the same.
---------d. IF Q-zombiE is unhampered by emotions, but has other faculties such as intelligence,
---------e. THEN Q-zombieE can calculate the repercussions that 'murder', labelled taboo by society, can have, as opposed to merely crushing a watermelon.
---------f. THEREFORE: a psychopath (as defined by absence of emotions: Q-zombieE) would rather be more predisposed to crushing watermelons rather than crushing human skulls.
---------f. THEREFORE: a psychopath (as defined by absence of emotions: Q-zombieE) SHOULD in fact be LESS likely, not MORE likely, to commit a crime or murder, etc, compared to the normal population.
---------g. BUT, the percentage of psychopaths in prison is much higher than the percentage of control populations in prison (I've seen statistics; have omitted this in the OP.)
---------h. This leads me to believe that there is no such thing as a psychopath.

And there was a bit more whinging about my being misunderstood and creative and all that emocore blah mixed into the bone structure of this thought process that I have delineated above.
I hope it makes more sense now. Sorry, I'm out of touch with communicating with people; thought for a moment that this forum lived in my head. It's my dysfunctional Ne. Damn you, dysfunctional Ne! *shakes fist at dysfunctional Ne*

 

[Lark]

I just lost the biggest post ever, curse you lousy connection.

 

[magpie]

It is so, so dangerous to pathologize traits like creativity. It's also dangerous to pathologize asking questions and having emotions. If you're on the lookout for a psychopath or assume someone is a psychopath then you'll view all of their actions through the lens of your confirmation bias, thus creating a psychopath in your mind where there isn't one.

There is no test for the diagnosis of a psychopath. It's just someone's subjective interprations of someone else's actions. Be careful.

 

[Jeremy8419]

Oh, I forgot to properly tie my earlier post back to the OP lol. I wrote of psychopaths often simply being schizophrenics. The whole "creativity" thing sounds more like the author is confusing creativity, which is purposeful and fits into the structure of reality, with delusional thoughts and ideas of reference lol. If I suddenly think, "Wow, I must be invincible and immortal!" then I am delusional and there's a high likelihood that such delusion would lead to losing empathy and subsequently doing something retarded and being killed, because, well, you know, the invincibility was a delusion lol.

May want to look at the distinction between "creativity" and "delusions/ideas of reference" lol. Probably will help you see that study much more clearly.

 

[Thursday]

First: psychopathy is a real thing. Its a different part of the psychological spectrum that specializes in cold empathy (theory of mind) and an inability to quickly asses potential threats.
Since these traits and others make a perspective thats different, you're going to get some different results and creative solutions to problems.

Sent from my SM-G930P using Tapatalk

 

[Kanra Jest]

There is Psychopath and Sociopath both under an umbrella term of "Anti-Social Personality Disorder" which doesn't leave much room. Psychopath is true born. A Sociopath is made. A psychopath is a more extreme deficiency than a Sociopath. There's a lot of controversy around them but after tons of research it's the only thing that makes sense. They 'can' however feel empathy, contrary to popular belief. But they have to consciously put effort into it. Some Sociopaths even still retain a personal code, but differently held.

As for if they're real. The Psychopath brain scans show an extreme lacking in certain areas of the brain other human minds do not have, which I think proves well enough it's a real condition.

Regardless I've always found them fascinating and would love to discuss it.

 

[entropie]

Psychopath, sociopaths rational human thinking wouldn't deny those. But telepathy nobody believe in. Do i want to say a telepath is a sociopath? No. But everybody can imagine what a psychophat is. The fine difference is the last Step. Do you dare to cross the final border. That makes a sociopath.

 

[phoenix31]

There is no test for the diagnosis of a psychopath. It's just someone's subjective interprations of someone else's actions. Be careful.

Actually, there is one. I just read about it in "The Psychopath Test" by Jon Ronson. It's not in the DSM, though.


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[Forever]

We better hope psychopathy is real because if it isn't. Humans are a shit ton worse than we might have thought of before.