Who Else Is Interested In This Controversial Article About Sociopaths?

[Steven Andrew Stalma]

Hey guys...

 

Ok, so the title was kinda click bait--but it got you to read this, didn't it?

 

You'll find that the article isn't too controversial, but I personally found it interesting:

 

http://mindcontrollibrary.com/understanding-sociopaths

 

It challenged what I've heard about sociopaths and even claims they can be treated.

 

I don't take a stance either way, but I thought it would make good conversation and it comes with a few book recommendations.

 

Let me know what you think--

[J. D. Stembal]

The article struck a chord within me in the description of uptime and downtime. When I was prescribed SSRIs as a teenager, I recall the lengthy experience as being very unreal because I was almost completely disconnected from my emotional self. I felt like I was not experiencing my own life, but watching a movie. I did not have the capacity to experience joy or sorrow while on these drugs. Intentionally, I continued this pattern with recreational drug use as a way to consistently avoid what the article calls downtime, a period of self-reflection.

 

Since ditching the alcohol and pursuing more therapeutic activities, I am in downtime much longer than ever before, in which I can safely explore my formerly unexplored emotional self. I wonder how much of sociopathy is perpetuated and made worse by the tendency of quack M.D.s to over-prescribe SSRIs, especially to children.

[labmath2]

The article is not very helpful. I imagine everyone is on a sociopath scale. The reason you introspect is because your identity is not set. Someone who does not introspect is someone who knows what they are or is indifferent to others. Everyone is willing to cheat depending on their circumstances. I think the test of sociopathy is how maleable your identity is. This i imagine requires a lot on introspection to keep track of what your current self would do.

[Matthew Ed Moran]

"Sociopaths, for what ever reason, have a very limited sense of identity. They either don’t have a sense of identity that includes ethical behaviors or they lack an ability to think about their personal identity. The result is they are very seldom in down-time and perpetually in up-time and find it impossible to personally feel a sense of self."

 

I imagine the sociopath does whatever is necessary to maintain his perpetual up-time, because his sense of self is littered with bodies. I don't think sociopaths are born. I think it is the childhood environment that the sociopath is born into that makes down-time unlivable. Maybe it is the rampant sexual abuse they are trying to avoid thinking about, or maybe it is the horror of unpredictable violent beatings. Whatever the case, I think that is why the sociopath will literally kill someone else before he introspects, and why he might claim to feel no anger, or hurt, because he is only living in the moment and doing whatever he must not to feel. I imagine him as a slave to his past, he must do whatever his past commands of him, because he does not want to live for more than 5 minutes in the horror that is his past, so he is perpetually bargaining with it, "making deals with the devil" so to speak.

 

That's my guess at least, just from observation of sociopathic people (in my own opinion) I've been near or heard of. I think in some sense very many people are on the sociopathic scale, and their choices define whether they become more or less empathetic over time. Of course, I also would acknowledge that for some people, it would seem like there is no choice but to remain in perpetual up-time.

 

It's an interesting topic, thanks for the link.