Psychopaths

[Elizabeth Isabelle]

One thing in particular that interested me was the discussion of psychopaths having no conscience.
It was said psychopaths see the world for what it is without emotion and imagination coming in the way of truth. I feel this is a fair description of myself but this leads me to a question. . . What exactly is this conscience I hear about?

Is it just knowing if something is right or wrong? Is it something you can see, hear, feel?

Feel. A conscience is that which causes people to do the right thing and not do the wrong thing for no consciously logical reason other than motivation (in the way of positive, rewarding feelings) to that which is right and aversion to that which is wrong (guilt, shame...). It is what causes a feeling of guilt if a person does the wrong thing.

I feel like I'm stuck in reality; I can day dream and see pictures in my head but I can clearly make a distinction between what is real and what is fabrication.

People are supposed to be able to tell the difference between what is real and what is imagination. Not being able to tell the difference is psychosis - which is quite different from psychopathy.

Everything I know and say comes entirely from intuition.

I challenge that assertion (or perhaps I just challenge the way you phrased that). Where some things do just make logical sense, much of what we know correctly about the world we know from observation or having been taught. We might not remember exactly where we learned things (like "fire is hot" or that "it hurts me when I get burned and it hurts others when they get burned") but these things and many other things were learned. Things that we retrieve from our subconscious are sometimes mis-attributed to intuition.

I don't know how or why I know the things I do, I just know and very rarely am I ever wrong. Is this intuition normal for all of you? Where do your answers or solutions come from?

I actually used to be right more often like that when I was younger, but meanwhile my head got polluted with the inappropriate influences of others. Today I ask myself how or why I know something, and whether I know something to be true or just think it to be true. Intuiting something can be a great launching point, and intuiting correctly from the beginning can lead to more success - but until something is proven or verified, I consider it something that I think rather than something that I know.

Geometry seems so pointless to me because I can already tell everything is in 3d, this makes me think the way I perceive things is different than everybody else. I feel like geometry teaches everybody how things are because they can't see how things are.

It is natural to perceive in 3D. We have stereo vision which helps us judge depth, and a lifetime of experience comparing the depth we perceive to how far away something really is by reaching out to an object or otherwise traveling to it. Basic geometry is just that - basic. It starts off with the easy stuff that everyone can see. The real usefulness doesn't become apparent until more advanced math.

I intuit that your problem here is that you are more intelligent than most people, therefore you fail to see value in things at the lowest level of explanation. I think this is the case for you based on similarities between your attitude toward geometry and some of the attitudes I had to some subjects as well as attitudes I have observed in other high-IQ people. Basically it boils down to a lack of patience for the mundane.

I also intuit that you are young - certainly under 25, more than likely under 20. Some of this lack of patience you may just outgrow, but consciously improving your patience would lead to a better result. Meanwhile, I suggest that you look into more advanced math that will make you realize where you need to go back to the basics, and then basic geometry won't seem quite so pointless to you.

Most things people say are so imaginary to me. It's hard for me to do something or remember why I am doing something if I cannot logically justify why I am doing it in that particular moment aside from the fact I was told to do it. I have quite an imagination, but I have complete control of this imagination, it never gets the best of me. It seems to me that most people are complete slaves to their imaginations and have hard times distinguishing fake from real.

Excellent observation. The sheeple are shallow.

When I was baby I used to hurt other babies

Actually within the range of normal. Babies are born pretty self-centered, and a lot of them, especially the stronger ones, will take pleasure in hurting others because all they perceive is their power. Babies' brains are not as developed, and their mirror neurons are also not as in place as they will be.

but I wouldn't say I am completely emotionless because through the years I have observed how people react to certain situations and copied them.

That reads "psychopath" to me more than anything else you have said. Psychopaths don't really get the feeling behind the interactions themselves, or at least not to the degree that others do, and just copy reactions as a means of fitting in to society as best as they can (or as best as they feel fit) with what they have. Non-psychopaths may copy others' reactions as well, but more out of a confusion "how do I handle/respond to/ react to this?" with an emotional reaction but a lack of means to express it.

A note of clarification - by "emotional" here in this post I mean a feeling response/reaction, as opposed to the "emotion" that is espoused as bad/wrong/unenlightened in this forum. That kind of emotion is the excess display and feeling that can get in the way of reason - which is bad.

If I speak honestly with others it is easy for me to continue, but they're sometimes frightened or weirded out because everything I say is what I really believe to be truth without bias, even if this goes against the general consensus of what we are talking about.

Sounds like you will be a valuable member of GF if you choose to stay, and would enjoy your interactions here.

This is not to say I take advantage of people, because I do not at all. Even though I would not feel very bad for manipulating somebody, I made the choice along time ago that being deceitful was not the type of person I wanted to be. This is not due to any religious or moral standings because I believe nothing is good; nothing is evil. . .

But mainly because I can see what a great thing kindness can be when exported from the human and I do not have any desire what so ever to destroy this from our planet. Even if I am not fully capable of showing it myself, I feel it is something that should be protected and preserved.

It is rare for a person, psychopath or not, to think things through to their long-term and larger impact on the world, which is ultimately the world that the doer also has to live in, so also their impact on themselves. Right is that which makes everything (in general) better, and wrong is that which is harmful or hurtful in the big picture. Those rare people codify right and wrong into laws and religious mores to make right decisions easier for the less-deep thinkers.

I am almost completely convinced that time elapses slower to me than other people.

I believe that is true, and this observation and other statements you made also support my estimation that you are highly intelligent. You think and perceive accurately more quickly than others, so essentially for you, time does go by more slowly because you fit more into each micro-second.

I know I am not a genius by standard definition, the highest I've scored on a IQ test is 124ish.

That's still above average, and a few of the things in the test could skew the results a bit. Do they still do standardized testing in schools where you are compared to others your age across the country? I'm guessing that if they do, you came in the 97th to 99th percentile on most areas.

Does an absence of emotion allow one to make better decisions?

Yes, especially for you because you have better thinking skills than most people.

Does my absence of emotion come from being a psychopath or somewhere else?

Why do you care about some label like that?

[alphaeg]

I feel like I'm stuck in reality; I can day dream and see pictures in my head but I can clearly make a distinction between what is real and what is fabrication.

People are supposed to be able to tell the difference between what is real and what is imagination. Not being able to tell the difference is psychosis - which is quite different from psychopathy.

Well that being said, I am sane living in a world of the insane;truly.

I don't know how or why I know the things I do, I just know and very rarely am I ever wrong. Is this intuition normal for all of you? Where do your answers or solutions come from?

I actually used to be right more often like that when I was younger, but meanwhile my head got polluted with the inappropriate influences of others. Today I ask myself how or why I know something, and whether I know something to be true or just think it to be true. Intuiting something can be a great launching point, and intuiting correctly from the beginning can lead to more success - but until something is proven or verified, I consider it something that I think rather than something that I know.

I am very selective of I who believe is worth paying attention to.
I too notice how the influences of others can fill your head with such lies and distort your view of reality to something pathetic.
I have a tattoo that says Defiant til the End. I got this because I became so fed up with everybody telling me what is, when I can clearly see what really is and the truth of everything is so simple that these complex people can't figure it out. This is what led me to develop a complex of superiority. I have lost faith in many people and have come to rely only on my own perceptions for truth because I know for a fact, I have no bias judgments about anything that will sway me from what is really there.
Since I lack heavy emotion, truth is important to me above all. Which to a ironic sense, is hard for even me to accept at times.

Geometry seems so pointless to me because I can already tell everything is in 3d, this makes me think the way I perceive things is different than everybody else. I feel like geometry teaches everybody how things are because they can't see how things are.

I intuit that your problem here is that you are more intelligent than most people, therefore you fail to see value in things at the lowest level of explanation. I think this is the case for you based on similarities between your attitude toward geometry and some of the attitudes I had to some subjects as well as attitudes I have observed in other high-IQ people. Basically it boils down to a lack of patience for the mundane.

I also intuit that you are young - certainly under 25, more than likely under 20. Some of this lack of patience you may just outgrow, but consciously improving your patience would lead to a better result. Meanwhile, I suggest that you look into more advanced math that will make you realize where you need to go back to the basics, and then basic geometry won't seem quite so pointless to you.

I am 21 and yes, I suppose I have no patience for mundane teachings. I learn better when I teach myself.

I will actively work on my patience if it will improve me. I have noticed that I always feel rushed and it takes effort for me to slow myself down or relax.

[alphaeg]

I know I am not a genius by standard definition, the highest I've scored on a IQ test is 124ish.

That's still above average, and a few of the things in the test could skew the results a bit. Do they still do standardized testing in schools where you are compared to others your age across the country? I'm guessing that if they do, you came in the 97th to 99th percentile on most areas.

I've always scored above the 98th percentile in reading comprehension. I can understand anything I set my focus to and I am a very curious person that can ask an infinite of questions.

Does my absence of emotion come from being a psychopath or somewhere else?

Why do you care about some label like that?

[/quote]

It's not so much I care as I want to understand why I've always had hard times communicating with my friends like they do each other. I grew up playing football where I was defensive captain for a team that won the state championship, I was always accepted into any social circle I desired.

I want to know why sometimes if I'm near a baby I get this urge to throw it against a wall just to see the reaction I get from everybody. This is of course something I'd never do, but I want to know if on some level, anybody else feels strange urges too.

Before any judgments can be made about this, I am somebody with no strange fetishes that I find other people to have. I am quite normal in terms of what I do.

My actions are so refined that I could trick anybody into believing I am of the same. I just react, this is what I meant by why do I just know? I know what traits people look for and I know how to properly counter them into a friendly deception for the greater good you could say.

I find it so easy to gain power over people that I just hand it to whoever I'm with without struggle because I want to see what they are capable of.
I don't want to be controlled, but I do not want to control anybody else either. I want people who I'm with to just react as I do in the moment, without any pre-determined thoughts or experiences taking them in any particular direction, but led by just knowing.
This as I'm starting to notice, is some form of undefined intelligence that very few people can understand, let alone act.

It's as if I have not a thought going through my mind, but I just intuitively know.

[alphaeg]

That reads "psychopath" to me more than anything else you have said. Psychopaths don't really get the feeling behind the interactions themselves, or at least not to the degree that others do, and just copy reactions as a means of fitting in to society as best as they can (or as best as they feel fit) with what they have. Non-psychopaths may copy others' reactions as well, but more out of a confusion "how do I handle/respond to/ react to this?" with an emotional reaction but a lack of means to express it.

I feel I should mention, even though I did reply to that post as freely as I could I still spoke only what I wanted to share. I could of typed that in a manner that displayed no psychopath qualities at all, and I could of typed it to give the impression that I am extremely psychopathic. I have a decent understanding of what it is to be both, neither or would of been a false representation of myself. It's all according to my mood or how I feel like being in that moment. I can blend into anything I need to be rather easy.

I find it interesting that within myself I can observe the way I act to certain things as if somebody is looking in from the outside. I am a bit uneasy that people in this world may feel even less than I do, who have no problem taking advantage of people. I can spot these people almost instantly, their intentions are so completely obvious to me. I do not understand what barriers prevent other people from seeing these things. I have a deep desire to understand these things.

For myself, I believe I feel but not to the degree others do.

When I was younger I had a traumatic experience that forced me to understand sympathy. I was 5 or 6 visiting my grandfather in Idaho and his neighbor had 10 or so puppies. I picked up this one puppy and started throwing it in the air and catching it before it hit the ground.

I didn't catch the puppy one time, he fell on a lawn mower and slit his eye in half. Blood was everywhere, he was yelping uncontrollably and it was one of the more horrible things I had experienced. The thought; more so than the emotion that my actions caused another living thing so much suffering was unbearable. This sympathy wasn't something I just knew, this became very apparent since I had to experience extreme sympathy first hand to even understand.
The burst of sympathy I felt didn't last very long, but it was something I never forgot and it became imprinted in my brain as to how I'd feel through understanding if I ever did something like that again. I suppose you could say my emotions are tied to memory and not so much by feeling, but understanding.

I understand pain more than I can feel pain.

[alphaeg]

Maybe I do have a conscience, but it is one that I have learned because I have a desire within myself to have one. I feel like I created it because I wanted it. I could destroy it at any time I wanted and truly not care about anything. But as I said before, the worst pain is feeling nothing at all; I just want to be human like everybody else. I know I will never be able to fully imitate what it is to be human, but I will settle for whatever I can get.
I do not think happiness is just a combination of chemicals, I see happiness for what it is, and it is a real thing. If you have your doubts, take my word on this. I find it in myself to love people just from the good thoughts of what describe who that person is.

I feel like I created a synthetic conscience in which I have complete control over. I keep this not because I have to, as I imagine other people do, but because I choose to.

[windhawk]

alphaeg,

My best guess is that you're nowhere near being a psychopath with the proviso that my opinion is free, and may be worth a little less than that.

It sounds to me that you're more likely on a disassociative path, and that may well be an overstatement. I'd bet that you rank high on the depression scales, and this precludes you from being a psychopath. They feel unease, but that's a long way from either normal or pathologic depression, and even further from any sort of existential anxiety that reflects a kind of philosophical rumination.

I also have known at least one true psychopath in my life, and also felt the teenage thrill of hanging out with the dangerous. It wears on one after awhile, and the "friendship" eventually ended. He was in jail so many times that he finally left for California out of self-preservation. Two prison stints in CA made him a candidate for the three-strikes-and-out life sentence, and 30 years later he comes back. Nothing in his personality had changed; no growth, no insight gained, and certainly, no self-delusions that would allow him to integrate into society beyond the self-serving manipulations of others, which really did have the quality of a "game."

The only point I have is to never allow despair, depression and an understandable depersonalization prevent you from connecting with others, or with the Universe. What seems so perfectly self-delusional now, may not be as clear cut in the future. While I'm sure any form of western religion strikes you as the height of banality, it does not mean insight cannot be derived from its study. In the words of St Augustine, "esse qua esse bonum est."

"Being, for the sake of being is good."

Chew on that one for a few days, and then search out Paul Tilich (if you haven't already). His book "The Courage to Be," is very good, and might be of use to you. Tillich's remarks on Agustine or salient,

"...people who are not people of good will – that is, the others – if we judge their acts, (and they are certainly very negative acts: they acted toward us very negatively, or they committed crimes, or all kinds of things), then we know that in their acts are elements of goodness, and they can be living acts only because of the elements of goodness within them. Otherwise, they could not have being, because being – or the power of being - has in itself the nature of the good, according to the Christian idea that esse qua esse bonum est, being as being is good. Now if this is the case, then it is much easier not to condemn the others; then it is possible to judge ourselves more adequately. And "we" don't even need to condemn ourselves, perhaps, in such a way as when we distinguish between black and white unambiguously. Our worst deed perhaps was not as bad as we think, when we compare it with other deeds which we count our best deeds. Perhaps the difference is not so terribly great."

This certainly short-circuits the current discussion, and again, it may have no value for you, but in my view, he's worth reading.

Perspective gained always enhances the world's geometry.

[alphaeg]

After writing that last post and thinking about it for the past few days, I realized that I am somebody who has complete control over myself.

The psychopath thing interested me because with this control I have mastery over what thoughts and experiences will cause my emotions to shake. I do feel no emotions at times, but this is because I choose to feel nothing in situations when it would be very insignificant to feel something which would cause unnecessary pain.

I have been a psychopath on occasion and I have been a non-psychopath on occasion. I suppose this is what causes barriers when I talk to people. I speak from emotion and then directly from a feeling of nothing at moments notice. I think I intuitively know that most people cannot keep up (nor should they have to, but I am not always considerate enough to care) with this and in order to avoid social awkwardness I just send my mind blank, because I have no interest in small talk, which I assume is all they are capable of.

I can truthfully say not a inch of me is depressed.

But I thank you for giving me reason to think about this.


I suppose this is why they say emotional intelligence has more influence on success than anything else.

[Diebert van Rhijn]

My thoughts and perceptions of events may indeed only be real to me and false in reality, but through my entire life I have only been wrong about something when I listened to somebody else.

You have been telling yourself that? Just kidding. Thoughts and perceptions can never be "false" (or true) in and of themselves. They need to relate, to compare, to activate in a context in which then truth arises, or ignorance multiplies. This happens all the time though: errors are unavoidable since there's always randomness, unpredictability or just false input which can and will trouble a given relative judgement.

For example, when I was in grammar school I told everybody people evolved from water and the sun should be worshiped more so than god. Of course, I was laughed at and made to think I was a fool, but later in life I come to find these observations I made even as a child were true.

This was very already well known when you were in grammar school and explained in many books, movies and TV shows but was not understood by your "dim" fellow students. You might have been smarter, not in IQ but in common sense, than your environment, more perceptive and intuitive, and this isolation might have made you wonder if there was something wrong or "different" with you. It's possible the feeling still haunts you. But it's important to understand it's not that rare, and you might just not realize where you got the raw data from. You'll meet over time way more people who function the way you do, especially in the "gifted" category. It has to do with how your brain processes information which appears to be less common.

But yes you're right, I do assume I am correct in this instance. What startles me, is the thought that maybe I actually am correct, and what should startle you, is the fact that maybe I do see things differently.

It's not hard for me to understand you have a different cognition. The question for you might be: in which ways did this shape me psychologically? From my own experience I can say it might be rewarding to learn how other people think and why they might experience the way they are doing. It's possible your mind is capable of seeing the world from more than one fundamental perspective. But this has to be developed first. It's a higher form of compassion: the ability to understand the manifold ways in which others understand or perceive themselves by realizing how you are understanding or perceiving yourself.

Does an absence of emotion allow one to make better decisions? Does my absence of emotion come from being a psychopath or somewhere else?

It's useful to see emotions in the context of emotional being, having an identity in a pure social context: someone who feels anger, slights, shame, jealousy, desire, joy - all in relation to your status and social survival in the environment of people around you, or an environment on which the "others" are projected. This means it can include by extension also objects or places. Experiencing feelings might be something separate: hunger, contentment, cold etc.

Absence of emotion means in this given context: absence of emotional being and defines social identity - one does not project oneself very far into the social context. This can be the result of heart felt experience, of insight into the nature of the social bindings and "letting them be", but many times it's also the result of an early lack of social development, caused by a disruption during childhood or some lack in our biochemical make-up which inhibits the ability to develop a social being. This can include also the pathological.

Based on what you told so far there's been a cognitive dissonance in your forming years but it's hard to say what caused it. This dissonance has probably disrupted the development of a social being, causing you to lack many of the usual emotional responses. This doesn't have to be a problem but you might have to examine way closer if you're able to separate truth from false, fact from fiction. This is not an easy road and like every human being you have to at least allow yourself to err, or to admit to error when the time is there. Otherwise there can be no growth, only the growth of illnesses.

[alphaeg]

on what you told so far there's been a cognitive dissonance in your forming years but it's hard to say what caused it. This dissonance has probably disrupted the development of a social being, causing you to lack many of the usual emotional responses. This doesn't have to be a problem but you might have to examine way closer if you're able to separate truth from false, fact from fiction. This is not an easy road and like every human being you have to at least allow yourself to err, or to admit to error when the time is there. Otherwise there can be no growth, only the growth of illnesses.

I do not think every pyschopath was born a pyschopath. Pyschopaths are human, non-pyschopaths are human; anybody could be a pyschopath under the proper conditions.

I know for myself, it was something I develeoped when I realized I didn't have to be a victim to emotion. Threads like this interest me because it's so strange to see people discussing something that I am, as if it were alien to them. I thought these traits were universal; I do not talk about them much.

I know what it is like to be so angry that you cannot control yourself; but I also know what its like for something to happen in which should incite more anger than before, but to feel absolutely nothing from it. It is more often I feel the latter than the first.

In my past it has been beneficial to write off what the people around me say. I grew up in a conservative country town and more often than not, do they speak of crap that does not make sense in which I am unable to ignore. I've been dealing with idiots my whole life and I have built a shell because of it.

I grew up feeling intellectually inferior to everyone because they did not understand me; only to age a few years and realize I was superior to everyone who really just couldn't understand

[Diebert van Rhijn]

I do not think every pyschopath was born a pyschopath. Pyschopaths are human, non-pyschopaths are human; anybody could be a pyschopath under the proper conditions.

Under the proper conditions anything always can happen of course. But the condition we're talking about is not known to be able to occur overnight. Learned or born as, only through endless repetition and affirmation it can become the problem it's known for. And it might only be able to grow when there's a severe negligence by the surrounding.

Some would argue a psychopath is not human, based on the argument a human is defined purely as a social and emotional being, and that without this a basic level of humanity would be missing. But to the law, all humans are equal indeed.

[Elizabeth Isabelle]

I do not think every pyschopath was born a pyschopath.

The difference between a psychopath and a sociopath is that psychopaths were born that way and sociopaths were made that way.

(too many links to reference. Google "psychopath born or made" to start)

[alphaeg]

Thank you for sharing that. :)

[Diebert van Rhijn]

I do not think every pyschopath was born a pyschopath.

The difference between a psychopath and a sociopath is that psychopaths were born that way and sociopaths were made that way.

Both are seen as a possible mixture of certain "genetic predispositions" and environment interaction with only gradual differences between the two categories. Both are also a subset of the antisocial personality disorder, with so many gradations and variants that the distinction seems arbitrary anyway.

Of course all the categories in this field are arbitrary. There is no blueprint of human psychology and what its strategies and workings should be. Not even the attribute of self-preservation.