How Psychopathic Are You?

[Thalassa]

Ah, gotcha. Thankfully, I have no desire to do any of those things. I'm not a huge fan of people in general, but my morality would never allow me to crush another human life in order to get what I want. (My conscience is a bitch that way.) And I love animals; in fact, I agree with April from Parks and Recreation, who said that animals "should be rewarded for not being people."

In short, I may seem scary, but I'm harmless. I suspect that my 33% can mostly be attributed to my inordinate fondness for roller coasters.

Same. I am highly spontaneous, sometimes change plans, and am open to adventure. I mean you have to have multiple traits in combination for psychopathy to even apply, but apparently the lower your score the more likely you are to be good helping people or animals. I like the Parks and Recreation quote, that's right up my alley

Anyway if some people didn't have partial traits they wouldn't be able to do what it is they do. While I strongly disagree it's "neccessary" to be able to run a greedy corporation or corrupt government, people who have higher risk taking and cool heads, like Winston Churchill, are necessary to fight bad guys. I mean some people will set you on fire as soon as look at you, I'm glad there are people who can stand being prison wardens, at least those who aren't full blown sociopaths themselves. Even ethical politicians and police officers need a certain strength, even if they have high empathy, it's great if they are not emotionally reactive.

 

[Robopop]

I got 39%.

I've been reading Hervey Cleckley's book The Mask of Sanity and he describes psychopaths as presenting a deceptively sane, healthy, intelligent person but who fundamentally revels a extremely chaotic internal personality. They seem to have no strong urges or purpose for all the strange things they do other than weak whims, they they are defined by weak drives but even weaker inhibitions. He suspects they are even more fundamentally disturbed than psychotic individuals(like schizophrenics), he says their "mask of sanity" hides a deep semantic neuropsychiatric disorder.

He goes on to describe the clinical manifestations of patients he's observed, they all seem like very normal people initially but their background records are littered with buffonish antics and irrational self-sabotaging behaviors, they lie effortlessly and are unfazed when caught in a lie, they have very trivial motivations and concerns, and have no sense of emotional significance.

What's really interesting is when he goes over fictional representations of psychopaths, he says most miss the mark, such as psychopaths having inconsistent aims, most villains are too consistently evil and purposeful in their aims to be full psychopaths. He actually names Scarlett O'Hara(from Gone With The Wind) as a very close approximation of a psychopath. When it comes to historical figures he actually excludes Hitler because he showed strong emotionality, anxiousness and purposeful behavior. He name checks Alcibiades, a ancient Greek statesman and military general, as a excellent example of a psychopath because of his inconsistent, reckless and traitorous behavior.

The more machiavellian traits are somewhat missing from Cleckley's clinical profile, Robert Hare's Psychopathy Checklist added those features but they are both generally describing the same personality disorder. It seems most serial killers are probably psychopaths but some extra, additional feature seems to be needed to turn someone into a serial killer.

Here's a good documentary on psychopathy, notice how the first psychopath describes murdering his own brother in a casual, matter of fact manner, than stabbing a man, then molesting a child!!!!! It's interesting that OJ Simpson is thought that be a psychopath and they used this info in his arrest.

 

[Pionart]

I got 21%

 

[Andy]

I got 33%. I'm just not impulsive enough to be a psychopath.

 

[Thalassa]

I got 33%. I'm just not impulsive enough to be a psychopath.

So then you have low empathy or narcissism?

 

[Nicodemus]

42%.

 

[Andy]

So then you have low empathy or narcissism?

Maybe... I'm probably not the best person to ask if you want to know if I'm a narcasist. It's the type of thing that can be hard to spot in yourself. I wonder how many narcasists are aware of there own condition? I'm empathy is probably bobbing around at indifferent. It seems to get weaker as the years go by.

 

[chubber]

 

[blahblahbob]

15%

That's why I love you ENFPs

 

[five sounds]

That's why I love you ENFPs

 

[93JC]

24%

You are warm and empathic with a heightened awareness of social responsibility and a strong sense of conscience. You like to carefully weigh up the pros and cons of a situation before you act and are generally averse to taking risks. You are very much a ‘people person’ and dislike conflict. ‘Do unto others…’ are your watchwords. But, although you avoid hurting others, those residing at the higher end of the psychopathic spectrum might not be as considerate, so stay vigilant to avoid being hurt unnecessarily.

 

[Thalassa]

Maybe... I'm probably not the best person to ask if you want to know if I'm a narcasist. It's the type of thing that can be hard to spot in yourself. I wonder how many narcasists are aware of there own condition? I'm empathy is probably bobbing around at indifferent. It seems to get weaker as the years go by.

Apparently narcissists do know they're narcissistic a lot of the time, except they are proud of it and don't consider it a personality disorder, they think everyone else is the problem.

 

[Thalassa]

I got 39%.

I've been reading Hervey Cleckley's book The Mask of Sanity and he describes psychopaths as presenting a deceptively sane, healthy, intelligent person but who fundamentally revels a extremely chaotic internal personality. They seem to have no strong urges or purpose for all the strange things they do other than weak whims, they they are defined by weak drives but even weaker inhibitions. He suspects they are even more fundamentally disturbed than psychotic individuals(like schizophrenics), he says their "mask of sanity" hides a deep semantic neuropsychiatric disorder.

He goes on to describe the clinical manifestations of patients he's observed, they all seem like very normal people initially but their background records are littered with buffonish antics and irrational self-sabotaging behaviors, they lie effortlessly and are unfazed when caught in a lie, they have very trivial motivations and concerns, and have no sense of emotional significance.

What's really interesting is when he goes over fictional representations of psychopaths, he says most miss the mark, such as psychopaths having inconsistent aims, most villains are too consistently evil and purposeful in their aims to be full psychopaths. He actually names Scarlett O'Hara(from Gone With The Wind) as a very close approximation of a psychopath. When it comes to historical figures he actually excludes Hitler because he showed strong emotionality, anxiousness and purposeful behavior. He name checks Alcibiades, a ancient Greek statesman and military general, as a excellent example of a psychopath because of his inconsistent, reckless and traitorous behavior.

The more machiavellian traits are somewhat missing from Cleckley's clinical profile, Robert Hare's Psychopathy Checklist added those features but they are both generally describing the same personality disorder. It seems most serial killers are probably psychopaths but some extra, additional feature seems to be needed to turn someone into a serial killer.

Here's a good documentary on psychopathy, notice how the first psychopath describes murdering his own brother in a casual, matter of fact manner, than stabbing a man, then molesting a child!!!!! It's interesting that OJ Simpson is thought that be a psychopath and they used this info in his arrest.

I do very much appreciate this input, as well as the documentary. I definitely could see that, that psychopaths are actually rather empty and dull, just sort of pointlessly vile. I think that's the mentality behind Mike Myers and Halloween, and I love how Rob Zombie just made him a white trash abuse victim with pre-existing mental issues. Some people were angry or unhappy about Mike Myers being less mysterious, but I thought it was great, like yep hmm here's your bad guy, most murderers are not clever and interesting but are often just stupid and mean, or when intelligent may just be what you describe, someone who thinks it's his inalienable right to murder his ex wife. I always thought Scarlett O Hara was more like antisocial personality disorder. Apparently one in a hundred people are psychopaths, they're pretty common, I'm sure I know one or three.

 

[AphroditeGoneAwry]

I disagee with this film. I have dealt with the BBC before personally and I do not find them to be morally sound. They are not the unbiased source they may have used to have been, or present themselves to be. Also, our world is on this big intention to make everything have an organic cause: gayness, gender dysphoria, and now, mental illness.

I reject the notion that psychopaths do not come from childhoods full of abuse or neglect. And if these things cannot be controlled for (and it is difficult to prove because cruel family members and abusive traits are usually well hidden), then there is no way they can definitively say it is organic, or nature, because there are too many extraneous variables, i.e. the existence of harsh conditions, to prove it was really an organic cause. Brain scans might show correlations, but those features likely were incurred or began during the harsh childhood years.

Yes, we all have the ability to be very cruel. To become murderers. Some more than others. But what switches that on is a harsh and unloving and cruel environment in which we are raised.

What a cop out.

 

[chickpea]

YOUR
SCORE 36%
Though your conscience is in the right place you also have a pragmatic streak and generally aren’t afraid to do your own dirty work! You’re no shrinking violet - but no daredevil either. You generally have little trouble seeing things from another person’s perspective but, at the same time, are no pushover. ‘Everything in moderation – including moderation’ might sum up your approach to life.

 

[Thalassa]

I disagee with this film. I have dealt with the BBC before personally and I do not find them to be morally sound. They are not the unbiased source they may have used to have been, or present themselves to be. Also, our world is on this big intention to make everything have an organic cause: gayness, gender dysphoria, and now, mental illness.

I reject the notion that psychopaths do not come from childhoods full of abuse or neglect. And if these things cannot be controlled for (and it is difficult to prove because cruel family members and abusive traits are usually well hidden), then there is no way they can definitively say it is organic, or nature, because there are too many extraneous variables, i.e. the existence of harsh conditions, to prove it was really an organic cause. Brain scans might show correlations, but those features likely were incurred or began during the harsh childhood years.

Yes, we all have the ability to be very cruel. To become murderers. Some more than others. But what switches that on is a harsh and unloving and cruel environment in which we are raised.

What a cop out.

I agree with a lot of what you are saying, but I do think what separates psychopathy from ASPD is in fact organic, and you can see it in their eyes.

I have a sister who is very very off. I now refer to her as my narcissistic sister to keep it light, but I suspect her, and her father, of being functional psychopaths or sociopaths, or abnormally high borderline psychopaths. She's different from all of us, her own therapist couldn't stand her, her old therapist actually didn't want to treat her anymore, calling her one of the most twistedly selfish people he had ever met. My mother practically jumped through hoops to help her, she has violently attacked several of my family members, is of normal or even high intelligence, and you can't tell me someone made her this way when there's three of us nothing like her, my mother even called her the brute as a child. She was born breech and may have had lack of oxygen to the brain, my mom thinks.

 

[AphroditeGoneAwry]

I agree with a lot of what you are saying, but I do think what separates psychopathy from ASPD is in fact organic, and you can see it in their eyes.

I have a sister who is very very off. I now refer to her as my narcissistic sister to keep it light, but I suspect her, and her father, of being functional psychopaths or sociopaths, or abnormally high borderline psychopaths. She's different from all of us, her own therapist couldn't stand her, her old therapist actually didn't want to treat her anymore, calling her one of the most twistedly selfish people he had ever met. My mother practically jumped through hoops to help her, she has violently attacked several of my family members, is of normal or even high intelligence, and you can't tell me someone made her this way when there's three of us nothing like her, my mother even called her the brute as a child. She was born breech and may have had lack of oxygen to the brain, my mom thinks.

Lol. Just fyi: if she was born breathing normally, and did not have some form of CP, then it was not lack of oxygen to the brain. It would have manifested somehow in an obvious way.

I don't think we need to designate antisocial from borderline from psychopathy. It's all essentially the same. People lack some degree of conscience. And they hurt people to varying degrees. Usually borderlines are the ones therapists cannot work with, because they are so manipulative as to make it almost impossible to interact with them. Gender dysphoria and DDNOS and DID are common overlying diagnoses as well, confounding the diagnosis.

Autism spectrum disorders and schizophrenia are more likely to have an organic basis.

Everything else is nurture, I believe. Or lack of it.


As for the eyes! Yes, remember the shooter with curly blonde hair who looked like a clown a few years ago? His eyes were CRAZY. And it was obvious. Also, the eyes of DID or DDNOS are simply dead or devoid of life. I guess antisocial and borderline fall somewhere on the eye spectrum between dead and CRAZY. OTOH con artists have quite normal eyes and pass as friends and associates. It is very hard to tell sometimes.

 

[Thalassa]

I agree with a lot of what you are saying, but I do think what separates psychopathy from ASPD is in fact organic, and you can see it in their eyes.

I have a sister who is very very off. I now refer to her as my narcissistic sister to keep it light, but I suspect her, and her father, of being functional psychopaths or sociopaths, or abnormally high borderline psychopaths. She's different from all of us, her own therapist couldn't stand her, her old therapist actually didn't want to treat her anymore, calling her one of the most twistedly selfish people he had ever met. My mother practically jumped through hoops to help her, she has violently attacked several of my family members, is of normal or even high intelligence, and you can't tell me someone made her this way when there's three of us nothing like her, my mother even called her the brute as a child. She was born breech and may have had lack of oxygen to the brain, my mom thinks.

Lol. Just fyi: if she was born breathing normally, and did not have some form of CP, then it was not lack of oxygen to the brain. It would have manifested somehow in an obvious way.

I don't think we need to designate antisocial from borderline from psychopathy. It's all essentially the same. People lack some degree of conscience. And they hurt people to varying degrees. Usually borderlines are the ones therapists cannot work with, because they are so manipulative as to make it almost impossible to interact with them. Gender dysphoria and DDNOS and DID are common overlying diagnoses as well, confounding the diagnosis.

Autism spectrum disorders and schizophrenia are more likely to have an organic basis.

Everything else is nurture, I believe. Or lack of it.


As for the eyes! Yes, remember the shooter with curly blonde hair who looked like a clown a few years ago? His eyes were CRAZY. And it was obvious. Also, the eyes of DID or DDNOS are simply dead or devoid of life. I guess antisocial and borderline fall somewhere on the eye spectrum between dead and CRAZY. OTOH con artists have quite normal eyes and pass as friends and associates. It is very hard to tell sometimes.

I'm sorry I am not sure why you find my mother's struggle to understand what is wrong with her daughter amusing, because it's clear she was born that way. She was especially rough and selfish even as a child, she is glib, charming, superficial, manipulative, impulsive, promiscuous, cunning and appears to have very low empathy or remorse for her actions. Her father is really a quite horrible person in similar ways, and one of her father's cousins exhibited bizarrely cruel and selfish behavior when she was younger, including killing my sisters pet rabbit.

I'm pretty sure lack of normal human empathy is organic, and that it's only compounded or becomes particularly dangerous in children who are not loved.

I am quite sure you have the best intentions, and I do agree many conditions are likely the result of abuse, but nothing phenomenal happened to my sister that made her this way.

I could see something about her even when we were children, there is a roughness, a meanness, a cruelty to her that differered from my other sisters, and she has harmed so many people as an adult, and refuses help so plainly, that, like the man in the BBC documentary, giving her a hug and a puppy hasn't helped the way it would with some one simply suffering from a number of other emotional or mental problems.

My mother was informed that my sister will always be manipulative, selfish, etc FOR THE REST OF HER LIFE and there's nothing we can do about it, it is not like bipolar disorder or schizophrenia that can be very well managed with medication.

 

[AphroditeGoneAwry]

I wasn't laughing at you or your mother. I just find it humerous in general because as a midwife I hear things like that quite often. Sometimes there is some merit of truth to them, I agree!

I know people can change. If I had a dollar for every story I heard where a 'doctor' said someone would be incurable or would never change, or would die in such and such amount of time, and it didn't pan out or come true, I'd be a rich woman. Point is: Doctors don't usually know diddly. Doctors are not prophets. In fact, they are usually the antithesis of a prophet.

People can and do change. God can cure people, if they ask Him for help.

What I ardently disagree with is telling someone there is no point in trying to change. That just gives them a pass for their intolerable behavior. And it underestimates the person in question. Also, sometimes overlying illnesses, like DID or DDNOS exist, protecting the core person. And what they show to the world is an alter with antisocial PD....In other words, people's minds and brains are so complex, I resist any pat 'organic' causes or treatments, and feel like they cause way more damage than they alleviate.

 

[Thalassa]

I wasn't laughing at you or your mother. I just find it humerous in general because as a midwife I hear things like that quite often. Someti,menev there is some merit of truth to them, I agree!

I know people can change. If I had a dollar for every story I heard where a 'doctor' said someone would be incurable or would never change, or would die in such and such amount of time, and it didn't pan out or come true, I'd be a rich woman. Point is: Doctors don't usually know diddly. Doctors are not prophets. In fact, they are usually the antithesis of a prophet.

People can and do change. God can cure people, if they ask Him for help.

What I ardently disagree with is telling someone there is no point in trying to change. That just gives them a pass for their intolerable behavior. And it underestimates the person in question. Also, sometimes overlying illnesses, like DID or DDNOS exist, protecting the core person. And what they show to the world is an alter with antisocial PD....In other words, people's minds and brains are so complex, I resist any pat 'organic' causes or treatments, and feel like they cause way more damage than they alleviate.

It's been years and years that people in my family have attempted to help her. She lost custody of all three of her children, and while my mother was raising two of them before my sister legally lost custody, my sister was using their food stamps for herself. This has been ...oh hell...five or seven years ago? Now the father of her children has custody, except for the oldest, who my mother now has custody of. My sister skipped her daughters last birthday party, and when my mom asked where she was, my sister blamed my mom for not giving her a ride (nothing is ever my fault is a common trait among narcissists and sociopaths)...which was absolutely absurd, my mom would have given her a ride, as would have several other family members, my sister just didn't want to be bothered. With her child. On her child's birthday.

It's not like oh we've had a few problems, no my sister is in her thirties and was a juvenile delinquent. My mom thought she'd grow out of it, especially since she had kids. My sister IS THAT WOMAN. It's horrible. It's embarassing. And it's increasingly painful to love her because a lot of its a con. I used to actually go to meetings with her for her drug issues, and participated in what mainly amounted to a group family kidnapping to institutionalize her (again, this was all at least five years ago, when we still believed she could change).

I don't think it's giving them a pass either. No one is giving my sister a pass, if anything, we dropped her ass so she could hit bottom, she was just being enabled back when she still had custody of the kids. This woman has a biology degree, a huge extended family, and her ex comes from one of the wealthiest families in West Virginia. ..you would think though from what I described that she crawled out of the holler with the cast of Texas Chainsaw massacre.

And violent psychopaths, the kind you see actually killing people and going to prison, did you not miss the part where they say psychopaths who get treatment have an even higher recidivism rate than ones who don't?

I don't necessarily think they all should be killed, but in my opinion psychopaths who have crossed the line into things like murder should just be disposed of quietly.

I think the death sentence should only exist for murderous psychopaths, and those who commit violent rape and sexual torture. Fuck that implanting a chip crap, just ...put em down. I mean it. I think what they have runs in their gene pool, and back in the day, I guess violent rapists were pretty successful at impregnation so their genes got passed on.

I agree with the doctor who said there really is no positive side to psychopaths. Seriously, the only person even the successful wealthy ones benefit is THEMSELVES and they damage the community and business world in the process.