[ENFP] ENFPs: do you like psychopaths?

[Wunjo]

So then if empathy isn't the defining characteristic when determining whether someone is a psychopath, then what is? I love semantics and am happy to get into the nitty gritty here. I can't respond to the question in the OP properly if I don't have a clear understanding of what delineates a psychopath. I was always under the impression that it was lack of empathy. I don't think this is a diversion or attempt to ENFP-wash our terms.

In my opinion lack of empathy is not, at least, not entirely because when it comes to define the symptoms of a delicate matter such as antisocial personality disorder, we need to focus our minds to the specifics of the concepts at hand, as I said, lack of empathy does not always define a psychopath, it is said that lack of empathy is a symptom of autism too, based on this, can we say that all psychopaths are on the autism spectrum, or the other way around? I do not think so. A lack of affective empathy is one of the key concepts that define a psychopath from my point of view. Psychopaths do have empathy, but as I said before, this empathy is mostly cognitive which helps them to pick-up emotional and behavioural patterns and mimic them when it is necessary. Psychopaths can empathise with people, but it is more of like a switch that they are in control of, the concept of empathy does not control the psychopath, the psychopath controls the concept of empathy, usually for a desired goal or outcome. One of the major differences between compassionate empathy and cognitive empathy is that in affective empathy, you identify yourself with the feelings of the other person, in an unconscious way that makes itself conscious. In cognitive empathy, identification is usually a mean to a certain end and also, it is much more conscious and/or deliberately induced than affective empathy.

I think this answer will help you for the question at hand. If not, ask your questions here and I will try to answer as far as I can, also, you can hit me up from PM, I and a very close person to me have written a paper on the subject, which can be helpful.

 

[FemMecha]

Define empathy for us ENFPs if you would...

How do you define it?

I would say it involves not kicking down vulnerable people with cruel words, not giving false appearance of goodness, having a certain amount of respect for living things, etc.

 

[Lark]

Bizarre question as its a little like saying do you like a lethal burst of electric voltage or perishing fire or flood or tsunami.

 

[Wunjo]

Bizarre question as its a little like saying do you like a lethal burst of electric voltage or perishing fire or flood or tsunami.

Psychoanalysis proposes that every person intrinsically carries a drive focused on death, which can induce masochistic symptoms and/or self-destructiveness, so, based on this quite rational and self-manifesting argument, I do not really think that I can agree with your statement about the bizarreness of the question.

 

[Amargith]

How do you define it?

I would say it involves not kicking down vulnerable people with cruel words, not giving false appearance of goodness, having a certain amount of respect for living things, etc.

Those are the actions that follow from it, for sure..

This may be a J vs P thing, but for me, raw empathy, is the experience of walking in someone elses shoes, and see, better yet feel, viscerally feel their pov and how they're experiencing the situation they're in (or would be in).

I'm not talking about calculating what they must be going through. I'm talking about people who start crying, trembling or giddily laughing, because the other person is doing so too /would do so too, in this situation - regardless of the level of control to channel that response in any way.

This does not guarantee the proper response to be able to deal with those people in a way they most need. That is an art, in and of itself, and part of 'skilled and honed empathy', imho.

 

[Starry]

Define empathy as it would appear in any standard dictionary for us ENFPs if you would...

[MENTION=32548]Glados[/MENTION] I apologize and have ^edited my post for clarity. While I'm familiar the concept of subjectivity..."subjective definition" is entirely new to me and caused me to be careless with what was a reference to 'audience'.

If you want my own, subjective definition of empathy on the other hand...

Based on theoretical approaches and observations, I can not really say that psychopaths lack empathy, in fact, I can say that psychopaths can be very empathetic, but this empathy is rather cognitive than personal or compassionate, without empathy actually, you can not know for example, if you are going to hurt somebody, where is it going to hurt most, so no.

Now that I understand this notion of "subjective definition" though there's really nothing more I need. Please simply disregard my post. Thanks.

 

[FemMecha]

Those are the actions that follow from it, for sure..

This may be a J vs P thing, but for me, raw empathy, is the experience of walking in someone elses shoes, and see, better yet feel, viscerally feel their pov and how they're experiencing the situation they're in (or would be in).

I'm not talking about calculating what they must be going through. I'm talking about people who start crying, trembling or giddily laughing, because the other person is doing so too /would do so too, in this situation - regardless of the level of control to channel that response in any way.

This does not guarantee the proper response to be able to deal with those people in a way they most need. That is an art, in and of itself, and part of 'skilled and honed empathy', imho.

I agree with this, and my response was a small fragment of what could be said on the discussion. I identify as a P, as I have close to zero Fe. I won't add more to this particular discussion, but you demonstrate a lot of understanding of empathy that people can learn from.

 

[Lark]

Psychoanalysis proposes that every person intrinsically carries a drive focused on death, which can induce masochistic symptoms and/or self-destructiveness, so, based on this quite rational and self-manifesting argument, I do not really think that I can agree with your statement about the bizarreness of the question.

By psychoanalysis you must mean Freud, and the whole death instinct/Thantos, as a corollary to eros, was a late theory for Freud and largely a reaction to the first world war.

Erich Fromm has done a pretty good analysis of that thinking and revision of the theory into the biophilia/necrophilia thesis, masochism, more accurately sado-masochism is explicable as one aspect of the social unconscious and social character, principally an adaptation to internal conflicts arising from the fear of freedom. Even if you go with a later theory, like Bowlby and Winnecott's attachment theories its closer to Fromm than Freud. Which is to say that Freud and his death instinct are not the whole of psychoanalysis.

 

[Wunjo]

By psychoanalysis you must mean Freud, and the whole death instinct/Thantos, as a corollary to eros, was a late theory for Freud and largely a reaction to the first world war.

Erich Fromm has done a pretty good analysis of that thinking and revision of the theory into the biophilia/necrophilia thesis, masochism, more accurately sado-masochism is explicable as one aspect of the social unconscious and social character, principally an adaptation to internal conflicts arising from the fear of freedom. Even if you go with a later theory, like Bowlby and Winnecott's attachment theories its closer to Fromm than Freud. Which is to say that Freud and his death instinct are not the whole of psychoanalysis.

I am not necessarily speaking about Freud when it comes to death instinct.

Melanie Klein, Sabina Spielrein (i.e. Destruction as the Force of Coming Into Being, though her point of view is more Jungian but she paved the way to Freud's Thanatos in Beyond The Pleasure Principle and the paper dates back to 1912, so you can not say that the idea of Thanatos can merely be a reaction to the First World War) can also be taken into consideration as well. I can not agree that it arises from fear of freedom, since the choice of the masochist to be bound to the sadist can happen consciously as well, dialectically speaking, chosing not to be free is also an exertion of free will, though Nietzsche probably would not like this assumption.

 

[Betty Blue]

As far as I understand things there are two things which are not synonymous and are often confused which are psychopathy and sociopathy. Psychopathy presents as a physical difference in the brain from birth and is primarily a learning difficulty. Most psychopaths are most dangerous to themselves (through not understanding things which may be naturally obvious to most people) and more at risk of having crimes done to them rather than doing them to others. This is generally the way with most people with disabilities/learning difficulties. Psychopaths can however be helped in understanding things like empathy in a sense or certainly a social/secular reasoning/morality to right and wrong. A tiny percentage of psychopaths are ever a danger to the larger set.

Sociopathy is more of a learned pattern of behaviours stemming from things like severe neglect (& sometimes abuse) in early childhood. Of course most people do not end up as sociopaths at all and of those who do most end up in jail pretty quickly and do not present a huge threat. However highly skilled/intelligent sociopaths can be extremely dangerous. Psychopaths can to be dangerous if not helped but usually due to not understanding whereas dangerous sociopaths may intentionally and with full understanding hurt others. There will also be some cross over, but thats my rudimentary understanding.

With that in mind I rather watch sociopaths from a safe distance and can interact (carefully) with psychopaths.


Edit: I think there is a huge amount of fear mongering around psychopathy, heres an article which goes a little past that...

Not all psychopaths are criminal – Research Digest

 

[Starry]

How do you define it?

I would say it involves not kicking down vulnerable people with cruel words, not giving false appearance of goodness, having a certain amount of respect for living things, etc.

I missed this earlier - sorry. What you are describing... I would define all of those as behaviors stemming from past empathizing as well as sympathizing. This is how I define empathy...

empathy
noun [ U ] US ​ /ˈem·pə·θi/
​
the ability to share someone else’s feelings by imagining what it would be like to be in that person’s situation.


^^The key in all of this is the word share. You experience/share what the other person is experiencing emotionally to the same extent for a certain duration in spite of not having directly experienced the cause.

 

[Lark]

I am not necessarily speaking about Freud when it comes to death instinct.

Melanie Klein, Sabina Spielrein (i.e. Destruction as the Force of Coming Into Being, though her point of view is more Jungian but she paved the way to Freud's Thanatos in Beyond The Pleasure Principle and the paper dates back to 1912, so you can not say that the idea of Thanatos can merely be a reaction to the First World War) can also be taken into consideration as well. I can not agree that it arises from fear of freedom, since the choice of the masochist to be bound to the sadist can happen consciously as well, dialectically speaking, chosing not to be free is also an exertion of free will, though Nietzsche probably would not like this assumption.

When I read Beyond The Pleasure Principle I didnt see Thanatos as even so much as really implied in it, Freud was getting to realise that there was too much human behaviour which was inexplicable in some of his theorising though but that's not the same thing, Fromm again did a good analysis of that in his book Freud: The greatness and limitations of his thought.

I'm not a fan of Klein to be honest because I think a lot of her theorising is pretty convoluted, I dont see the forfeiting of freedom as an expression of positive freedom, I think there's too many sumersaults of thinking involved in that, not to mention a pretty simple rationalisation of behaviour too, but it makes sense that the fear of freedom would lead to the sado-masochistic character, submit to a higher power and persecute anyone on a lower rung, its unconscious more than conscious, even if someone rationalises after the fact that it was all a clear eyed decision made of their own volition.

 

[Wunjo]

When I read Beyond The Pleasure Principle I didnt see Thanatos as even so much as really implied in it, Freud was getting to realise that there was too much human behaviour which was inexplicable in some of his theorising though but that's not the same thing, Fromm again did a good analysis of that in his book Freud: The greatness and limitations of his thought.

I'm not a fan of Klein to be honest because I think a lot of her theorising is pretty convoluted, I dont see the forfeiting of freedom as an expression of positive freedom, I think there's too many sumersaults of thinking involved in that, not to mention a pretty simple rationalisation of behaviour too, but it makes sense that the fear of freedom would lead to the sado-masochistic character, submit to a higher power and persecute anyone on a lower rung, its unconscious more than conscious, even if someone rationalises after the fact that it was all a clear eyed decision made of their own volition.

I figure that I was not talking about Freud in my previous post, I was rather talking about the origins and the variations of the death drive, I have not scrutinized Fromm yet, since I do not find his school however I still do not think that masochism can be merely a result of fear of freedom, for there are multiple ways to create unhealthy co-dependent processes that'd eventually get you hurt, rather than punishing yourself because that you are afraid of freedom. I think Fromm's point of view here is quite related to his Marxist tendencies, for being afraid of freedom only creates a ''masochistic proletariat'', I remember Marx once said that the proletariat had nothing to lose but its ''chains'', interestingly enough, so based on this detail I have caught, I can not say I neither agree with Fromm nor Marx, for a Marxist approach to Psychoanalysis would be a suicide, in my opinion. The difference between Klein, Freud, Spielrein, Jung etc. is that they were able to remain indifferent against the political agenda of the time, though some funny allegations are made against Jung that he was a Nazi, I find the argument quite hilarious itself, so, I can say that their opinion regarding psychoanalysis is less biased with political tendencies, I hope I was able to make my point.

 

[Red Memories]

while I think psychopaths sound scary...


I really really wanna know what makes them tick. XD

 

[Frosty]

Of COURSE I love psychopaths.

I would love to grab one and squeeze one and squeeze one and call him george.

Truthfully though- people with psychopathic tendencies... both fascinate me and disgust me.

This is going to sound... odd. But sometimes with some people I just get this... FEELING... this slimy skin crawling feeling... that theres just something WRONG. That theres something... not really there. Sometimes something that looks there... but isnt and therefore looks WRONG.

I believe there is good in everybody... but I also believe... in some people... the good is not far reaching. The good ight be there for... bad reasons.

At the end of the day. Psychopaths have every right to live and exist as I do- and I respect that. I try not to JUDGE and CONDEMN people unless they absolutely are toxic or give me a reason to. So I try to base my judgements on actions with those sorts of people that I feel the... weirdness with. If they can be somehow decent people... then live and let live. If they cant... then different story.

Anyways. All in all- and this might not be fair- if I see a person that is toxic- to me or to others- frequently. If O see a person acting truly maliciously... eventually... I have to just be done just for my own self. Because I tend to be overly forgiving. And at some point... you just cant any more. Because some people... WILL take advantage of that.

As disgusting as that is.

 

[awildmiss]

I find them to be fascinating, as I have an interest in abnormal psychology. But they are also scary.