thanks for posting this, mordy, really quite fascinating. the quotes from the kid made the hair stand up on the back of my neck, i really can't fathom what it must be like to parent a child like that. do anne and miguel lie awake at night wondering if he's going to try and kill them? or his brothers? idk this seems like a horrifically stressful and scary situation to be in.
as to the dad - one thing they didn't address in the article, that i wondered about, is the possible guilt miguel has, like does he feel responsible for the way michael has turned out, bc of the genetic link?
― just1n3, Saturday, 12 May 2012 04:15 (1 year ago) Permalink
del, wd love to hear yr millionaire's voice.
― World Congress of Itch (Dr Morbius), Saturday, 12 May 2012 05:45 (1 year ago) Permalink
An hour later, after the boys were finally asleep, Miguel and I sat down at the kitchen table. Growing up, he said, he had also been a difficult child — albeit not so problematic as Michael. “A lot of parents didn’t want me around their kids, because they thought I was crazy,” he said, closing his eyes at the memory. “I didn’t listen to adults. I was always in trouble. My grades were horrible. I would be walking down the street and I would hear them say, in Spanish: ‘Ay! Viene el loco!’ — ‘Here comes the crazy one.’ ”
According to Miguel, this antisocial behavior lasted until his late teens, at which point, he said, he “grew up.” When I asked what caused the change, he looked uncertain. “You learn to pacify the rough waters,” he said at last. “It just happens. You learn to control yourself from the outside in.”
I've never been a psychopath, but this resonated with me because I had behavioral problems as a kid that alienated me from other kids & it seemed to dissipate magically within a few months towards the end of puberty.
― crüt, Saturday, 12 May 2012 06:18 (1 year ago) Permalink
was in school with a dude like this from middle school through the end of high school. he killed his parents in college. :-/
― the late great, Saturday, 12 May 2012 06:50 (1 year ago) Permalink
I don't feel like I have quite enough sense from that article on just how those kids have been raised. they might be getting enough attention, and are disciplined sometimes, but maybe the parents aren't raising them to have a moral sense... which would perhaps develop naturally, or by example, for some kids, but for kids with Michael's condition, maybe there needs to be a moral framework to explain the actual significance of compassion and reciprocity. a lot of parents seem to just think as long as their kid is happy and equipped for success in the world, then they're doing their job, without really teaching them to actually be nice. and in my experience with sociopaths and emotionally irresponsible people, they were never really given that kind of lesson or example. I kind of get the sense that Miguel is bit aloof about it all... 'oh, he'll figure things out'... while the mom maybe just disciplines without explaining why this kid should bother giving a shit about other people
― Chris S, Saturday, 12 May 2012 08:02 (1 year ago) Permalink
afaict, a lot of people raised in fucked environments don't suffer from serious, tragic, organic mental disorders. and a lot of people raised in safe, loving homes with a coherent "moral framwork" do. hesitant to blame the parents psychotic kids, though obviously bad/inept parenting can lead to all sorts of problems, too.
― 10. “Pour Some Sugar On Me” – Tom Cruise (contenderizer), Saturday, 12 May 2012 08:12 (1 year ago) Permalink
...the parents of psychotic kids...
well, there are exceptions, and I'm not suggesting it's the whole story, but actually I'm trying to think of even one sociopathic type I'd known growing up that didn't have a distant/cold/lazy upbringing. you could always trace it back, in part, to having absolutely no example to build on, or if there was it was more 'life's a game'. I'm not suggesting everyone with inept parents end up that way, but if someone's chemistry is off it's probably worse that they're coming up in this meaningless suburban context getting their sense of others through screens
― Chris S, Saturday, 12 May 2012 08:33 (1 year ago) Permalink
I was involved for a few years with a guy who I suspect was borderline psychopathic. He was deeply manipulative and had this calculated, smirking way of doing really horrible things to people - mostly me, at the time. Lying about having ever borrowed money or something and twisting recent events around and accusing you of being forgetful and stupid. Subtle implications and dropped comments to imply all his friends hated me. Werid acting out. Completely forgetting/denying shitty things he'd do, the next day. He was adopted and he was SO HORRIBLE to his parents, who were older, and seemed to really try their best (and you could tell had always struggled), and he hated his sister because she wasnt an adopted child.
Hes dead now, and I dont know what from. Probably alcoholism. Ive never known anyone as intensely, deeply spiteful, malicious and *delightedly* so as that guy could be.
― Pureed Moods (Trayce), Saturday, 12 May 2012 08:45 (1 year ago) Permalink
Yeah, the psychopath in my life also died young, but not before possibly getting away with murder. It was a super complicated act of manipulation, probably nothing any jury could ever convict on, and I cannot and will not get into the details, but a very close relative of his whom he despised got DNRed under very strange circumstances. He did the terribly dutiful family member bit very publicly afterwards, grieved beautifully, but I saw him hissing coldly to his victim "I wish you would hurry up and die already" a month or two before, while other family members were talking loudly and friendlily in the same room and thus not paying attention. He saw that I saw, and didn't care.
― Three Word Username, Saturday, 12 May 2012 09:33 (1 year ago) Permalink
― the late great, Saturday, May 12, 2012 2:50 AM (5 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink
I know someone who killed his parents, too, and although I didn't go to school with him, I was part of the same church youth ministry and later had some college classes with him. I don't know if he was a psychopath, but he was, on reflection, a weird guy.
Mordy, have you read Dave Cullen's "Columbine"? It makes the clearest, most well-argued case I've seen that Eric Harris was a psychopath, and that there were people in his life who should have recognized it.
― i love the large auns pictures! (Phil D.), Saturday, 12 May 2012 12:26 (1 year ago) Permalink
My favorite part in The Psychopath Test was his meeting with Toto Constant. I think about it all the time.1. Toto Constant had a roomful of happy meal toys he'd collected.2. At one point Constant tells Ronson he's glad Ronson likes him. Why? "If people like me, I can get them to do what I want." (paraphrase) I think about this when I'm irritated someone doesn't like me. Do I really want to be like Toto Constant, though?
― Dale, dale, dale (Abbbottt), Saturday, 12 May 2012 16:15 (1 year ago) Permalink
the eric harris journals are fascinating if you're interested in this kinda stuff: pages of total contempt, sometimes icy and sometimes enraged, for the deluded people around him who think there's a point to life besides power and are so easy to lie to. helped me understand nazism better: that eugenic worship of power and disgust at weakness.
― their private gesture for bison (difficult listening hour), Saturday, 12 May 2012 16:30 (1 year ago) Permalink
haha abbbottt
― dell (del), Saturday, 12 May 2012 16:56 (1 year ago) Permalink
i have two enduring memories of this guy (who was an AP student and went to a competitive engineering college)
1) in junior high school, telling everyone he could get the pr0n if they wanted (videos or magazines) because his dad supplied him with pr0n (i believe this was true) ... afaict everyone was creeped out by this, kids starting teasing him by giving him the nickname MISTER P, and this followed him through the end of high school
2) in high school, senior year, he played frisbee in the lawn on the quad at lunch every day, and sometimes when a throw would go wide, he would go charging after it at a full sprint, yelling "HEADS UP" and "LOOK OUT" and literally running through circles of seated freshmen on the grass to get the frisbee, sometimes almost kicking girls in the head in his rush to catch the damn disc
so basically lack of understanding of social conventions mixed w/ total disregard for others' well-being
― the late great, Saturday, 12 May 2012 18:34 (1 year ago) Permalink
he murdered his parents because
-- he flunked out of the prestigious engineering school he was at
-- he forged transcripts to transfer into berkeley, which they figured out, leading to revocation of his successful transfer
-- he forged enough paperwork to convince his parents he was transferring to berkeley, and managed to get like $10k off them for it
-- his dad figured it out, confronted him about it one evening at the family business, and he murdered his dad with a handy pipe wrench that was sitting on the table
-- his mom showed up at the office as he was trying to clean up the murder scene, and so he murdered her too
― the late great, Saturday, 12 May 2012 18:37 (1 year ago) Permalink
they interviewed his next-door neighbor on the TV news, who was also in our high school class, and iirc he said something to the effect of "well, you always hear people say i couldn't believe he'd do such a thing, but honestly if there was anybody in our high school i would think would do this it would be him"
and sadly enough everyone from high school i've ever talked to about this has said something to the same effect
― the late great, Saturday, 12 May 2012 18:38 (1 year ago) Permalink
if you had just mentioned these bits without the murdered-his-parents part, I would have just assumed the kid was autistic/asperger's. :/ which, i think, just shows how hard it is to diagnose someone as a psychopath before they actually do something horrible.
― Roz, Saturday, 12 May 2012 18:43 (1 year ago) Permalink
, in which 'Roz' shares their wisdom
― nakhchivan, Saturday, 12 May 2012 18:46 (1 year ago) Permalink
?
― Roz, Saturday, 12 May 2012 18:49 (1 year ago) Permalink
except all of my autistic / aspergers kids in my classes tend to be very introverted and would be sitting by themselves looking at pr0n or sitting as far away from other kids as possible making lists of types of frisbees
― the late great, Saturday, 12 May 2012 18:50 (1 year ago) Permalink
i agree there is a similarity but the behavior is very very different
the proportion of engineering majors at good schools with autism spectrum disorders is probably higher than say the number of child soap actors or fast food workers with autism, but probably not so high that engineering majors can just be assumed as 'autistic'
there is no reason a psychopath couldn't have other developmental disorders or psychiatric conditions
engineering majors are just generally terrible, it's not a dsm-v thing
― nakhchivan, Saturday, 12 May 2012 18:54 (1 year ago) Permalink
tbf i think roz was referring to offering other kids pr0n (unaware of social norms) and chasing the frisbee (lack of empathy)
― the late great, Saturday, 12 May 2012 18:58 (1 year ago) Permalink
yeah i think so, i misread that
frisbee example doesn't sound autistic at all tho
― nakhchivan, Saturday, 12 May 2012 19:00 (1 year ago) Permalink
like higher forms of communication, intuition etc are impared, but most aspergers cases would realize jumping on some random person's someone's skull is problematic behaviour
― nakhchivan, Saturday, 12 May 2012 19:01 (1 year ago) Permalink
i think of it as not understanding the tradeoff
i.e. assuming that being an athletic frisbee dude (he was big and stocky and muscle-y and i think he did track and lifted weights) who chases down frisbees w/ intensity would be impressive to girls rather than realizing girls are looking at him going "wtf is wrong w/ that psycho"
― the late great, Saturday, 12 May 2012 19:06 (1 year ago) Permalink
I was just reading the thread when tlg posted the first part and I was like, how is this guy a psychopath? and yep I was referring to the high school anecdotes - I wasn't assuming that engineering majors were autistic! I know I quoted that bit, but the part about him being an engineering student didn't quite register. sorry if it came out that way.
― Roz, Saturday, 12 May 2012 19:09 (1 year ago) Permalink
my theory is: our society favors psycopathic behavior. bingo, psycopaths!
― Impetuous hybrid (Matt P), Saturday, 12 May 2012 19:16 (1 year ago) Permalink
no actually i misread yr post and got snarky on a false premise, sorry for that
― nakhchivan, Saturday, 12 May 2012 19:16 (1 year ago) Permalink
im trying to read ronsons psychopath book and drink wine
― nakhchivan, Saturday, 12 May 2012 19:17 (1 year ago) Permalink
in my mind
psychopath = doing socially unacceptable things (offering strangers pr0n, endangering underclassmen to catch a frisbee) in order to get a perceived reward (social acceptance)
asperger's = being intensely obsessed w/ a few interests to the point of not being able to relate to people on any other level, no cognitive impairment
autism (low-functioning) = serious neurological disorder w/ cognitive impairment which is not really the same as asperger's even though it has the same biological root
i'm not a psychologist so i'm not really qualified to draw these lines but i do work w/ a lot of special education students and have done some professional work on autism spectrum disorders and that's where i got my ideas about asperger's and autism (i have no professional experience w/ psychopathy)
― the late great, Saturday, 12 May 2012 19:17 (1 year ago) Permalink
my uncle's son has asperger's, he is super good at school and very very smart (he's in 10th grade and doing calculus) and does everything like a normal person (eating, dressing, hygiene, etc) but basically has no interest in anything but video games, particularly sims like farmville and pokemon-type rpgs, but if you want to he is glad to have a two-hour adult-level conversation with you about those topics that even though he is 15. he understands social norms and whatnot and will like get up from his pokemon to help his younger brother if he falls on his face (which he does a lot since he's a rambunctious kid who loves doing this like jumping off furniture) but he would really just rather play pokemon than make friends - except he has a ton of online friends and a few IRL friends who are also super-into pokemon and gaming and they do friend-type things like have little parties that revolve around those interests
― the late great, Saturday, 12 May 2012 19:24 (1 year ago) Permalink
but i have never seen him engage in antisocial behavior (as wikipedia puts it "behaviour that lacks consideration for others and may cause damage to the society") although he is pretty much what you might call "antisocial", ie introduce him to other kids and he'll say hello and smile and then go back to his ipod touch and ignore the other kids
― the late great, Saturday, 12 May 2012 19:26 (1 year ago) Permalink
i do sorta fear the day when he discovers pokemon pr0n (if he hasn't already) :-(
― the late great, Saturday, 12 May 2012 19:27 (1 year ago) Permalink
i guess that's a pretty stupid thing of me to say, he is 15 for god's sake
i had dim sum w/a bunch of friends and their kids and all of them were zoned out on iphones and made zero eye contact. could be a technology thing to some extent? kinda chilling to think how much i rely on technology and ~feel the lure~ and it didn't become prevalent at this level of 'necessity' until i was in my early twenties.
― omar little, Saturday, 12 May 2012 19:32 (1 year ago) Permalink
yeah when my parents have parties sometimes there will be like a circle of kids in the living room and the ones in the middle-school to high-school range will all be on ipod touches or iphones chatting with their "real friends" or facebooking or whatever and yeah, zero eye contact or interest in each other, asperger's or no
the younger ones at least seem to show some interest in each other and are still into running around and doing things like playing with the cat and dog
i guess kids attitude nowaday is "why bother to make friends with these new kids who i'm only connected to cause our parents know each other and i probably won't see again for weeks or months if at all and i can just be hanging out with my IRL friends in computer land"
― the late great, Saturday, 12 May 2012 19:39 (1 year ago) Permalink
i've pretty much decided if i ever have kids i'm not going to let them have iphones or ipads or computers or nintendos ... EVER
― the late great, Saturday, 12 May 2012 19:40 (1 year ago) Permalink
although he is pretty much what you might call "antisocial", ie introduce him to other kids and he'll say hello and smile and then go back to his ipod touch and ignore the other kids
i think "asocial" is the official word for this kind of thing -- disinterest rather than hostility. but yeah everyone says antisocial.
― their private gesture for bison (difficult listening hour), Saturday, 12 May 2012 19:41 (1 year ago) Permalink
― the late great
word
― omar little, Saturday, 12 May 2012 19:42 (1 year ago) Permalink
right, like non-social basically
― the late great, Saturday, 12 May 2012 19:42 (1 year ago) Permalink
was LBJ a psychopath?
― Exile in lolville (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Saturday, 12 May 2012 19:44 (1 year ago) Permalink
It's easier to see the traits in Stalin and not just because he ordered the death of thirty million people.
― Exile in lolville (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Saturday, 12 May 2012 19:45 (1 year ago) Permalink
OHmigod my dad is like SUCH a psycho like do you WANT me to become a friendless xtian luddtardddd{unintelligble vocal fry}
― nakhchivan, Saturday, 12 May 2012 19:46 (1 year ago) Permalink
i figure even in the year 2040 being able to make eye contact and being outdoorsy and athletic and knowing how to read books will still have more cachet than "being good at the internet"
one thing that strikes me about kids today compared to when i was in high school are that kids who are "good at computers" are not actually very good at computers ... like i had a kid who told me he did "procedural 3d graphics" and i was like "oh wow cool" and then i found out that meant that he'd pirated an expensive CGI program and was good at highlighting regions of the screen and pressing a button that said "TREES" or "MOUNTAIN" and manipulating the sliders
american kids who are "good at technology" nowadays seem to basically be just good consumers and proficient end-users rather than innovators or creators, but maybe it's just always been the case that 0.001% are creators and innovators and everyone else is basically just a "vulgar mechanick" in the words of isaac newton
― the late great, Saturday, 12 May 2012 19:47 (1 year ago) Permalink
xxp
the trait in stalin that gives me pause is his incredible patience. i don't know if a psychopath would have been able to play that long-term a game. but who knows.
lbj definitely comes off as one in the first couple caro volumes, especially in childhood; later on it's easier to attribute his psychopathic features to just Being A Politician. but yknow. don't have to be crazy to work here but it helps.
― their private gesture for bison (difficult listening hour), Saturday, 12 May 2012 19:49 (1 year ago) Permalink
can someone link to studies showing what TV did if anything to the attention spans and social skills of the first generation exposed to it?
― Exile in lolville (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Saturday, 12 May 2012 19:49 (1 year ago) Permalink
yeah Stalin could be impulsive but I can't think of any decisions after 1930whatever motivated by a bad temper (are there instances of Stalin yelling at subordinates like Hitler did to his?). The guy was methodical.
― Exile in lolville (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Saturday, 12 May 2012 19:51 (1 year ago) Permalink
xp to myself (sorry for blogging) then again, i guess that's just the state of the american math and science educational system that values "watch what the teacher does and copy what the teacher does and then do it again accurately on a standardized test" rather than tinker and explore and figure it out yourself
re stalin and lbj i agree with DLH, i'm not sure how good of a working definition this is going to be because under that rubric pretty much every general or admiral or executive is going to turn out to be a psychopath
― the late great, Saturday, 12 May 2012 19:51 (1 year ago) Permalink
reading these stories, and talking with some friends about that psycho kids article, it's made me think: is there an opposite to psychopathy?
if psychopathy is basically a human tuned toward self-empowerment at the total expense of feeling for others, is there a problematic state going the other way? or is that just sainthood.
― goole, Wednesday, 6 June 2012 18:29 (11 months ago) Permalink
lol femininity
― horseshoe, Wednesday, 6 June 2012 18:29 (11 months ago) Permalink
depression
― the late great, Wednesday, 6 June 2012 18:29 (11 months ago) Permalink
no i'm just kidding but yeah, i definitely think the opposite state is a problem. don't know if there's a diagnosis. martyr complex?
xp oh yeah, good call
― horseshoe, Wednesday, 6 June 2012 18:30 (11 months ago) Permalink
if you look at the depression thread that's pretty much what it is - people feeling guilty and awful and beating themselves up about shit that's not their fault, trying constantly to live up to some normative ideas about being a good or productive person or making their families proud or whatever that they can't ever live up to
― the late great, Wednesday, 6 June 2012 18:31 (11 months ago) Permalink
i don't know if depression necessarily includes feeling for others at the expense of oneself, though?
― horseshoe, Wednesday, 6 June 2012 18:32 (11 months ago) Permalink
that's kind of where i was going, but psychopathy seems like a constantly painful state as well (i'm brewing another post on this)
― goole, Wednesday, 6 June 2012 18:34 (11 months ago) Permalink
well i think depressed people tend to blame themselves when other people do hurtful things, not sure if it necessarily leads to empathy but there is a common thread of "oh that person was an asshole to me, no wonder, i am an unlikable loser and they probably have better things to do" rather than "oh f them they're assholes anyway"
my understanding is that there's a part of your brain that helps you give up. otherwise, we'd never learn to not do anything, and we might kill ourselves trying to reach that same frustratingly distant banana on the end of that branch, or alienate the other members of our monkey tribe by being all "me first" all the time. and your brain does similar things when its frustrated / giving up as depressed people's brains do all the time. i imagine an impulsive person or a psychopath might have the opposite brain make-up
but who knows, i am kinda suspicious of evolutionary psychology and i know that in neurobiology its frustratingly hard to separate cause and effect in the way you want to.
― the late great, Wednesday, 6 June 2012 18:40 (11 months ago) Permalink
of course i am not a doctor, but, my experience with people who fit the dsm markers for psychopathy really leads me to believe it is a disorder of fear and anxiety, fwiw.
as a basic set of statements, everyone has some kind of mixture of fear and hope when dealing with any stranger (politeness and basic social norms govern these) and some mixture of will-to-pleasure and sympathetic connection to others in your life. ime the borderline-types have their fight-or-flight responses jammed always to fight, over basically nothing. it seems like a really extreme form of self-protection. they can't bear to give anything or to place themselves in a position of weakness for a second, and have to struggle to maintain dominance in all situations, no matter how trivial or short-sighted. the unknown is always trying to fuck you over, and everyone is always unknown to some degree.
i guess this could be a learned (or, uh, beaten in) variety of the disorder as the examples i had in mind had some really rough and, importantly, arbitrarily horrible experiences while young. what i'm describing is not a soul-deep understanding of the human world as being pathetic and weak, but being sneaky and hostile.
― goole, Wednesday, 6 June 2012 18:41 (11 months ago) Permalink
right, and that squares w/ the accepted idea that depressed people are basically constantly in flight / withdrawal mode
well put!
― the late great, Wednesday, 6 June 2012 18:43 (11 months ago) Permalink
it is important though to recognize the social norms involved - a psychopath might be very disruptive to the lives of the people around them, but a depressed person can be the same (by not getting out of bed for several days, to use an example i'm acquainted with). we tend to think of the former as much worse than the latter but i'm not sure that's true.
― the late great, Wednesday, 6 June 2012 18:45 (11 months ago) Permalink
― omar little, Wednesday, 6 June 2012 18:51 (11 months ago) Permalink
Lock thread
― fancy poodle (latebloomer), Wednesday, 6 June 2012 18:54 (11 months ago) Permalink
goole, what you're describing does not sound to me like psychopathy
― Mordy, Wednesday, 6 June 2012 19:19 (11 months ago) Permalink
my understanding is that there's a part of your brain that helps you give up.
Don't I fuckin' know it.
― Guess what? They crucified him. (Jon Lewis), Wednesday, 6 June 2012 19:25 (11 months ago) Permalink
Thread relevant but pretty terrible article about how we can all learn some good tricks from psychopaths:
http://www.salon.com/2012/10/13/how_psychopaths_take_over/
― Mordy, Sunday, 14 October 2012 01:08 (7 months ago) Permalink
I think maybe more interesting as Exhibit A on the pop cultureization of psychopathy.
― Mordy, Sunday, 14 October 2012 01:10 (7 months ago) Permalink
What would you think if somebody started trying to make deals with somebody you didn't get along with about you behind your back online , then openly announced they'd done that to a whole chatlist you were on?
Just been wondering about this for a while.
― Stevolende, Sunday, 14 October 2012 08:06 (7 months ago) Permalink
also if after a rather psychotic flame had been posted about putting an individual's child in the microwave, somebody reposted the flame message to show how it was punctuated?
― Stevolende, Sunday, 14 October 2012 08:32 (7 months ago) Permalink
http://www.psychologytoday.com/collections/201305/confessions-sociopath/confessions-sociopath
― Kiarostami bag (milo z), Thursday, 9 May 2013 20:32 (2 weeks ago) Permalink
i'm distrustful of that magazine on the whole but goddam
― goole, Thursday, 9 May 2013 20:48 (2 weeks ago) Permalink