Psychopaths (Adult and Otherwise)

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

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.

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.

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, 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.

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?

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.

haha abbbottt

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

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

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

i have two enduring memories of this guy (who was an AP student and went to a competitive engineering college)

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.

, in which 'Roz' shares their wisdom

?

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

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

tbf i think roz was referring to offering other kids pr0n (unaware of social norms) and chasing the frisbee (lack of empathy)

yeah i think so, i misread that

frisbee example doesn't sound autistic at all tho

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

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"

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.

my theory is: our society favors psycopathic behavior. bingo, psycopaths!

no actually i misread yr post and got snarky on a false premise, sorry for that

im trying to read ronsons psychopath book and drink wine

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)

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

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

i do sorta fear the day when he discovers pokemon pr0n (if he hasn't already) :-(

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.

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"

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

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.

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

word

right, like non-social basically

was LBJ a psychopath?

It's easier to see the traits in Stalin and not just because he ordered the death of thirty million people.

OHmigod my dad is like SUCH a psycho like do you WANT me to become a friendless xtian luddtardddd{unintelligble vocal fry}

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

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.

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?

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.

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

alfred i don't think that's going to be forthcoming because afaict ideas about social skills and emotional intelligence or whatever postdate the introduction of TV

he had those weird sadistic dinner parties where he made everyone drink way too much but that's in the twilight of his rule when he's genuinely starting to come unhinged and seems like pretty standard-issue Absolute Power madness.

the most psycho-like guy i ever spent real time with was a dude named l____ with whom i lived for about a year. this was during the early 90s, in a large, cheap and deliriously scuzzy rooming house full of drug & street casualties in seattle's university district. he was a smelly, perennially shirtless young hippie who inhabited a nice, expensive room upstairs with his girlfriend, while i lived in a dismal basement closet for which i paid $50 a month. l____'s girlfriend was sweet, smart and seriously cute.

l____, otoh, was completely insane. he said everything with a weirdly challenging smirk, so you could never tell if he was being sincere or just fucking with you. he was prone to proclamations of his own divinity and fits of furious anger in response to minimal provocation. while he could be decent, in a strangely childlike, moon-eyed way, he often expressed total, withering contempt for everyone around him, including his girlfriend. he seemed to reserve a special contempt for "social fictions" like love and friendship, and was quite up front about the ease with which he was able to manipulate others (including his long-suffering girlfriend, who fled back to massachusetts after a few months).

anyway, i spent a lot of time with l___ because we were both unemployed, creatively dedicated and heavily into weed. we slept until the mid-afternoon and spent days into weeks on end smoking out and painting in his room, going out dumpster-diving or just running around being crazy at night. i've never done better work than during that year. l____ believed that the forces of nature communicated to him through the movements of animals and the patterns of glowing lines he saw everywhere, and he tried to represent this in his work. his extrasensory perceptions mostly made him wrathful, and he often talked about doing harm to the government figures supposedly for responsible for this or that building. he was really pissed about the arrangement of municipal buildings.

i remember hanging out with him on the roof once, watching birds come and go, and he told me about killing animals when he was a kid. squirrels, cats, dogs, etc. he related this with a creepy sort of dispassion, so i asked if he still did it and how he felt about it now. he said no, that he didn't want to kill animals anymore, that he felt bad about it and knew they deserved better. i got the impression, though, that this is what he felt he should say as a good hippie-shaman-type, that none of it really meant much of anything to him. while he was too obviously delusional to be a pass-for-normal psychopath, there was some really dark shit in there that he mostly kept hidden.

I only mention it because I'm reluctant to blame kids these days when I'd rather yell at their parents.

like the idea of social skills dates back to the 30s and 40s but i don't think people were really doing actually empirically studying it until the 50s so there's really no data set to look at

also it's an interesting question to ask what exactly are social skills and interpersonal skills and empathy defined as in societies that did or do things we think are really unthinkable like own slaves or force women to wear burqas or practice human sacrifice

http://www.arthistoryguide.com/images/294.jpg

what kind of social skills did these people have

would they be good at tumblr?

tbh I would prefer if a lot of parents my age would stick to playing with iPhones if it meant I wouldn't have to listen to their drivel.

talking therapy tends to just be deception training for these people

Ohhhhh man, Phil - can I ever sympathise with your plight. My sister is a wrong'un in many of the same ways and the only way to make it stop is for my mother to press charges. Guess what: my mother is too embarrassed to press charges.

Yeah, I can't imagine talking therapy or anything being remotely useful for her. I don't even think it's something she thinks about - it's instinctive for her to lie every time she opens her mouth, and has been for as long as I can remember.

The sad thing is that, except for her oldest son (who just turned 25), the kids know she can be a handful but don't anything about any of this other stuff. (They're 18 and 16.) They're probably going to find out the hard way one day.

xxp Thanks, suzy. My mom just basically wants her out of her life. If that means letting the money go, that's what it means.

I just remembered that four years ago she told everyone she had MS. (This was at a time when my wife and I were doing charity fundraising and bike riding for the National MS Society.) We have never heard another word about this diagnosis, which is almost certainly a lie.

I hope karma gives her fast-onset motor-neuron disease for lying about MS. Bonus: she wouldn't be able to move or speak, which would cut down on the interactive lying.

My mom flip-flops on wanting to take action on my sister but ultimately sees herself as the failure if anything goes public, rather than the wronged party. I just want my mom to have the happy retirement she planned and worked for, and for my sister to take her equally shiftless and over-entitled husband and get the fuck out of my mother's house. She's caused enough interfamily bullshit.

obv all this is horrible but your guitar, jeez, so infuriating

your sister sounds just awful, phil, and the worst part is she has kids - how incredibly hard it must be having someone like that as a parent. i hope their father is a good man.

Fathers, plural. Three different fathers, one of whom we don't even know who it is. As to how good they are . . . it varies. The oldest is trying to have a relationship with his dad, but pretty much knows his mom is poison and wants nothing to do with her.

Damn man

oh maaaan :/

are you close with the kids? i hope they can cut her off permanently. ppl like bring nothing but bad things and harm into the lives of those around them.

otm

Unfortunately I'm not as close as I should be, because I spent a number of years when they were younger living away, but I do try to be in their lives and communicate with them. They all have a good relationship with their various grandparents, the oldest is very close to his two sisters (one of them my sister's daughter, the other his father's daughter by his second wife), and my sister's most recent ex is actually who my niece lives with.

https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2017/06/when-your-child-is-a-psychopath/524502/

I read that last week. Never really thought about child psychopaths before!