Psycho/Sociopaths

Calboner

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I remember seeing Jon Ronson on the Colbert Report awhile back promoting his book "The Psychopath Test" which seemed very interesting

The Psychopath Test - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

He also referred to a (standardized?) 20 question test

I hesitate to post this because I don't know how genuine/valid it is but I remembered seeing this when googling said book/test:

Test for Psychopathy
I am reminded of the take-home paper psychiatric examination that Homer gives to Bart to fill out for him:
Bart: Hey, Dad, do you hear voices?

Homer: [angrily] Yes, I'm hearing one right now while I'm trying to watch TV...

Bart: [checks] Yes. Are you quick to anger?

Homer: Bart! Shut up or I'll shut you up!

Bart: [checks] Yes. Do you wet your pants? Well, even the best of us has an occasional accident. [checks the remainder of the form `Yes' all the way down]

—The Simpsons, season 3, "Stark Raving Dad"
The next day, Homer hands in the paper and is immediately seized and hustled off to a mental hospital. Smithers says, as they drag Homer away: "Careful, men; he wets his pants!"
 

Thirdlegproduction

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Thirdlegproduction

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I am reminded of the take-home paper psychiatric examination that Homer gives to Bart to fill out for him:

The next day, Homer hands in the paper and is immediately seized and hustled off to a mental hospital. Smithers says, as they drag Homer away: "Careful, men; he wets his pants!"

Indeed these tests can be abused just like the bible or red riding hood or any literature for that matter.

We should all be carefull with diagnosing people but don't let a degree stop you form forming an opinion based on experiences.
 

B_thickjohnny

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Aggressive narcissism
Glibness/superficial charm
Grandiose sense of self-worth
Pathological lying
Cunning/manipulative
Lack of remorse or guilt
Emotionally shallow
Callous/lack of empathy
Failure to accept responsibility for own actions

Dear God, you just described my ex to a "T".
 

Thirdlegproduction

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The horrible part about it is that I recognise a lot of my female friends in this description.

And I have found it to be pretty common behaviour in women my age.

I hope I just have a very flawed perception of people in general because statistics tell me that I'm dead wrong.
 

Calboner

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Questions of psychiatric diagnosis aside, I can certainly report that when I was in graduate school at a prominent research university, all of the occasions when I encountered shockingly selfish, rude, and abusive behavior were encounters with business students. I don't mean to suggest that most business students are like that, but all the people who were like that whom I encountered were business students.

When the second President Bush made the egregious choice of John Bolton for the position of US Ambassador to the United Nations (or, as I described him, "Ambassador for Saying 'Fuck You!' to the United Nations") and a former coworker characterized him in testimony to Congress as "a quintessential kiss-up, kick-down sort of guy," the phrase seemed to me vividly to capture the types that I had encountered among business students. They are full of seeming friendliness toward those whom they believe to be in a position to benefit them; but all other human beings, in their view, are no more than instruments, or obstacles, or pieces of furniture.
 

TurkeyWithaSunburn

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Thirdlegproduction

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Well I believe the study has first been published in the early 90's but it gets more attention now as the awareness grows.

Society may not have been this fucked up back then or our tools of recognising these behavioural patterns have become much sharper.

Or we are just biased, and the damage the psychopaths in power do is so great we can hardly imagine it could be done by just 4%
 

Fuzzy_

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Fuzzy simplifies his life by surrounding himself with compassionate, sympathetic people. Sociopaths can fake many things, but not sympathy.
 

B_debonair87

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Stay far away from sociopaths.

I unfortunately had the pleasure of living with one and it took a while for me to fully analyze his manipulative and shady behavior. Soon as I put the pieces together I moved the fuck out. Dude was creepy as hell.
 

hrdhatdad

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My sister adopted a new born (he's now 20). As I watched him grow up I suspected he had a personality disorder. Today, he looks very much like a sociopath but he might very well have a narcissistic or histrionic personality disorder. In the end, it doesn't really matter. Personally, I won't be in the same room with him. I have noticed that most males will have nothing to do with him. He's a real predator. He's also very good looking so I feel sorry for any woman that gets involved with him.
 
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My sister adopted a new born (he's now 20). As I watched him grow up I suspected he had a personality disorder. Today, he looks very much like a sociopath but he might very well have a narcissistic or histrionic personality disorder. In the end, it doesn't really matter. Personally, I won't be in the same room with him. I have noticed that most males will have nothing to do with him. He's a real predator. He's also very good looking so I feel sorry for any woman that gets involved with him.

Perhaps it be issues with being adopted? It could be also, he has not been told yet suspects. Or he has been told, but at an age where he has many other issues to deal with in his life as well. I have not come across anyone yet who is a mindreader, the quickest way to discover who a person is, is to ask them.
 

YoungTristan

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And I just spoke to another one via xtube,

I knew he/she was using someone elses pics and called her on it then I'm getting these magnificient stories of her working for the police hunting down frauds and tracking my ip and sending the fbi all because I didnt want to show her/him my cock.

Just wow that was a crazy conversation.
But I enjoy talking to them online as I try to find recurring patterns and learn how to spot them early on in a safe environment that is.

Manipulation trough charm, guilt, threats, jokes and most of all confusion.
They do not like to be told no, they will try any means to get what they want.

This makes him or her a psychopath?

Maybe he/she just made up a lie to see your cock.
:biggrin1:
 

FOXY252

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(Just a bit of humor in this otherwise serious thread...)

My older brother, whom I always have long drawn out debates with, says this on the subject (sociopaths/psychopaths)

"Psychopaths make crazy decisions at the time, and are unaware of what they do as being 'crazy' or wrong, whereas sociopaths know such a behavior is wrong and could care less."

And the long standing joke, that I am psycho & he is socio... *sigh*

In my last 'attempted' relationship (with a seperated man) ... I will spare the sour details, he was very VERY manipulative, and followed all the other listed character descriptions above... Oddly the more I cared, the more he 'resisted' all healthy interaction & pointed the finger, chanting 'psycho' at ME.
A little bit of Freud's guilt displacement going on? :wink;

All in all, personal observation, times/society is changing, there are a LOT more 'damaged' people around... That's my personal label lol I try to group them as functioning damaged or nonfunctioning damaged.
 

wallaboi

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I remember seeing Jon Ronson on the Colbert Report awhile back promoting his book "The Psychopath Test" which seemed very interesting

The Psychopath Test - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

He also referred to a (standardized?) 20 question test

I hesitate to post this because I don't know how genuine/valid it is but I remembered seeing this when googling said book/test:

Test for Psychopathy

Here is an entertaining interview with the author of the book The psychopath test, by Jon Ronson when he was recently in Australia. I haven't read the book, so I have no knowlege of the veracity of any research he presents, but it is definately an interesting subject.
 

helgaleena

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The definition of psycho-sociopath IMO is quite simple: one who is unable to feel empathy or compassion, for humans or other creatures. This results in the list of symptoms you give.

I have to agree with Mr. Fuzzy. An excellent first step toward not attracting such persons to you is to require those around you to exhibit feeling and compassion, and to exhibit more charity, kindness and sympathy yourself. The type of person who thinks you are foolish for doing so and only takes without giving will eventually leave in disgust, or become irritating enough to shun.
 

Nemo_Steampunk

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Licensed mental health practitioner here. I normally don't post, but since there's an enormous amount of mis- and disinformation on here, I thought I'd say a couple of things.

First, both psycho- and sociopathy are very broad terms that cover any number of mental health disorders. It's why the DSM-IV and the upcoming DSM-V don't use either term; they're so imprecise. In fact, DSM-IV uses several other, more specific names for characteristics that are shared in the much broader psycho/sociopath terms: Anti-Social Personality Disorder, Narcissistic Personality Disorder, Borderline PD, etc. Simply saying someone is a sociopath isn't enough to do anything but allow neighborhood children to point and stare. It's such a loaded terminology with imprecise borders that it's useless.

Second, when we're talking about mental health disorders, we're really talking about specific ways of defining behavior that causes significant impairment to functioning. Someone who hears voices but isn't bothered by them isn't 'schizophrenic' in the strictest sense, for example. So saying that 50% of corporate America or whatever scored as sociopaths on some instrument is a ludicrously silly thing to do. What's their social impairment? How are they not functioning?

More to the point, the reason these people score so high is because the nature of their work rewards that kind of behavior. I would be more worried about, say, 50% of clergy or Buddhist monks scoring high on a psychopathy "instrument," but it doesn't surprise me that giving out a psychopathy screening instrument to corporate tycoons and politicians are going to give huge results. After all, they're being rewarded for doing what we ask them to be; the list of 'criteria' for psychopathy are the things most people would look for in a politician/successful CEO. How did they get to where they are able to take time to take a psychopathology screening instrument? Not by telling the truth and having empathy. We can make a moral judgement about these people, but that's a far different issue from being able to make a psychiatric determination.

Finally, there people in this world who are not mentally disturbed who are simply mean, evil people. There's nothing "wrong" with them in the clinical sense. They're just mean people. They're not psycho/sociopaths or anything else.

A couple of specific things to respond to:

WhiteMonst3r said:
Your opinion is not worth less or more then that of a psychologist just because they have a degree, they make just as many mistakes as any other person does.

Except we aren't talking about opinion; we're talking about specific mental disorders with specific criteria that people on this thread are not informed enough to apply with accuracy. It would analogous to me saying someone who is vomiting blood has Ebola, while a real doctor would probably look for an ulcer or something.

Fuzzy said:
Fuzzy simplifies his life by surrounding himself with compassionate, sympathetic people. Sociopaths can fake many things, but not sympathy.

This is wrong; people with personality disorders tend to fake sympathy very well. It's the ability to feel empathy, actually being able to reflect on another human being's emotions and apply those emotions to themselves that is the big problem. A fine point, but it's a significant one. Sympathy simple means feeling sorry/bad for someone else; the other person's emotional state is bad because I feel bad. It's narcissistic on some level. Empathy is a much deeper and more significant skill set. What's the difference in these two sentences: I don't want you to feel bad because I don't want to feel bad. I don't want you to feel bad because it makes you feel bad.

helgaleena said:
I have to agree with Mr. Fuzzy. An excellent first step toward not attracting such persons to you is to require those around you to exhibit feeling and compassion, and to exhibit more charity, kindness and sympathy yourself. The type of person who thinks you are foolish for doing so and only takes without giving will eventually leave in disgust, or become irritating enough to shun.

I actually find this more disturbing than anything else. I understand the impulse, but think hard about what you're saying and the relationship between you and the people you 'collect...' Are they not individuals as well, with separate lives and separate emotions (there's that empathy vs. sympathy thing again) and separate agendas? Aren't they more than simply buffers to protect you from bad people? When you start treating people as objects for your own gain, however good or positive you perceive that gain is... Then you really need to evaluate the way you process your relationships.