Sociopathy (Psychopathy)

Disorganized Episodic Aggression: (psychopath-born)

Organized Sociopathic Hatred: (sociopath-made)

Ritualistic behaviorSuperficial charm and "good" intelligenceAttempts to conceal mental instabilityAbsence of delusions and other signs of irrational behaviorCompulsivityAbsence of "nervousness" or psychoneurotic manifestationsPeriodic search for helpunreliabilitySevere memory disorders and an inability to tell the truthuntruthfulness and insinceritySuicidal tendencieslack of remorse or shameHistory of committing assaultinadequately motivatedantisocial behaviorHypersexuality and abnormal sexual behaviorpoor judgment and failure to learn by experienceHead injuries; injuries suffered at birthpathological egocentricity and incapacity for loveHistory of chronic drug or alcohol abusegeneral poverty in major affective reactionsParents with history of chronic drug or alcohol abusespecific loss of insightVictim of childhood physical or mental abuseunresponsiveness in general interpersonal relationsResult of an unwanted pregnancyfantastic and uninviting behavior with and sometimes without drinkProduct of a difficult gestation for mothersuicide rarely carried outUnhappiness in childhood resulted in inability to find happinesssex life impersonal, trivial, and poorly integratedExtraordinary cruelty to animalsfailure to follow any life planAttraction to arson without homicidal interest

Symptoms of neurological impairment

Evidence of genetic disorder

Biochemical symptoms

Feelings of powerlessness and inadequacy

I myself have had that experience. I now warn people, but some of them insist on liking me anyway. The weird irony is that I know a very kind, empathic woman who gets picked on and hurt deeply everywhere she goes, just about. Seems a bit misguided to me...

But what do I know about fairness?

TRUTH IS...

Yet, according to Robert Hare, an expert on psychopathy, they are "not fragile" -- their character is "set in stone" for life.

But there are no human beings without some vulnerability. I'm not the only one pointing this out. Two other sociopathshere have written of it. (See below, after the end of my essay answer.)

Even after being told one is a psychopath or sociopath, it often seems meaningless to the one being diagnosed.

Sociopaths rarely feel true happiness. If they do, it is usually in the condition that some kind of intervention -- such as one of the small number of medications made for other conditions that may also help somewhat with theirs -- has taken place, and it will be fleeting. For all their frantic racing around, they are really very dead inside, and this is tragic beyond description. Imagine spending your entire life trying to get your brain to wake up! And failing. Thousands of times.

There are stories of people diagnosed as sociopaths who did improve to some degree, with the most ceaseless and diligent help. But since the vast majority of this huge body of people (there are more than three hundred million sociopaths on Earth) cannot get that kind of attention, they turn to abusing those they envy, and often to crime.

It is certainly vengeance: "If I can't have any of this, why should you?" This is the real reason sociopaths lash out at strong and kind people. No matter what they say, they know that inside, they are always empty and damaged beyond repair.

Only in neuroscience is there hope for these incomplete people. The key lies in awakening the cerebral cortex of brain, which is risky because sociopaths are much more prone to seizures than the rest of the population, and that -- an uncontrolled blast of electrical discharge spreading through the brain and causing violent convulsions -- is likely to be the first response from brain pathways that, after years or even decades of silence, are suddenly flooded with impulses.

But if the devices of neurosurgeons can be tweaked to avoid this shock, and all else related to this idea is workable, it's feasible that small electronic devices planted in the brain (these already exist, but are not yet being used for mental illness) could open up a closed connection.

That leaves us with the problem of whether a lifetime of scattered information can ever be set into order. Probably the best that could be hoped for would be a kind of retraining -- like what is now done with stroke survivors and head injury patients -- that would be both intensive and compensatory.

One of the things that would be necessary would be to try to socialize the person whose congenital birth defect made such a thing completely impossible before. Whatever intervention is used, be it drugs or computer chips or what have you, it would probably -- I'd say certainly -- be excruciating for the patient at first. With no knowledge of how to cope with the emotions the rest of the world has been dealing with all their lives, the recovering sociopath would be rendered as vulnerable as a baby. Which makes sense, because some of the most basic aspects of the human mind would be developing from the primordial stasis in which they had remained since birth!

A person thus treated would never be fully normal, but the human brain is amazing in the way it adapts and continues to develop all through life. And given the utterly joyless and meaningless existence a sociopath leads, any improvement is better than none. Robert Hare agrees with that latter statement.

The matter of missing neurotransmitters in a sociopath is, of course, another problem. Would "waking up" the cerebral cortex eventually stimulate production of these? Or would they have to be synthesized? Only time will tell.

Indeed, for years I didn't really get it. But as one clinic after another rejected me, often with venom and even threats, I began to realize I'd better see what there was about the diagnosis I'd been given that could possibly carry such a terrible stigma.

So, I had no real clue what I was as an individual, until the diagnostician emphatically and angrily told me what I was.

And he said that one of my most insidious actions was to attempt to make contact with and even become friends with other, unsuspecting people.

I tried to tell him I actually wanted to help people and that I simply had a normal need to make friends, but he said he wasn't buying it. Not from the likes of me.

Yet, even though warmth almost never touches my frozen core, I still seek it...

Another psychopath (sociopath) wrote this on another answer:

Sociopaths, though born that way, are people too. To avoid an entire group of people is absurd. That's like saying, "Since these people have dark skin, everyone should completely avert themselves from them." I am a moderate sociopath, and though part of me doesn't want to change, another does. Many times it is really entertaining to see how stupid people can be, especially when they're so gullible as to believe every word that mellifluously flows from my lips. Yes, I am parasitic, but even so, there are some people I would like to stop hurting. I can't find any websites that can provide a way to help my sociopathy. Maybe people like you should stop your self-victimisation and start trying to actually help people like me! I knew I was a sociopath before the age of ten but have only recently had it officially diagnosed. I am eighteen years old now, and I have been lying and destroying others' sanity for a long time. So, please post some helpful tidbits that might help sociopaths resist the sweet urges we get when we encounter weak human beings. When you cut us, do we not bleed? When you kill us, do we not die? Do you honestly think that you're being lied to and manipulated when we sincerely ask for help. Listen to yourselves! This is the internet; ergo, you're safe from our fortified mental grasp.

The essay that follows was written in another answer by another self-admitted sociopath, who actually might not be a sociopath. Still another person added the brief comment to that effect after her tragic essay.

• umm... i kindof am one... just so y'all know, it's not so much fun being one either. i read that sentence up there, "Incapable of real human attachment to another." i don't even know what that is, i see it, i approximate it... it's like being outside a door looking through a dirty window and watching re-runs of people I've seen in love or with children or with friends, and scratching, sometimes banging at the glass to get in and... nothing. I'm fond of people in every sense of the word, their little quirks and habits, the way they see life, except if they went away it wouldn't bother me much other than finding someone else to be fond of. i don't have friends, i only date military men because they're ok with only having a girlfriend for a couple months and i tell them in advance i won't wait for them... i don't know what else to do to limit the damage i inflict on others just as a result of them knowing me, short of moving to the mountains... but i still move between 2-5 times a year :( it's kindof hard walking around knowing I'll never have what i see making other people so happy and running when i can tell someone is getting close just because i don't want to hurt them more later down the road... i'd like it alot to settle down, i WANT to be able to feel more with people, but it's hard to miss what you never had. i want what i THINK it would feel like... it'd be easy to give in and let someone stay because I'm so lonely... but hey, I've written enough, just know i try to be a responsible little sociopath, i won't ever get married or have kids, i practice safe sex, i won't stay in one city for long... everything you all take for granted i will never let myself have just because i WANT to take it for granted. being like this won't go away so hopefully i can limit the amount of hate thrown my way by limiting my interaction with people, i don't know what else to do. and you all might not belive this, but i am sorry, hopefully i can speak for the other people who have damaged your lives.

Comment: The above testimony is clearly notindicative of a sociopath because she seems to make efforts to keep from harming others, even if it doesn't benefit herself.

Comment: It's really interesting that these answers appeal to our pity. Appeals for pity are one of the key hallmarks of the Sociopath as identified by Martha Stout. Ph.D in her book "The Sociopath Next Door".

Generating a 'poor me' feeling is one of the main tactics used by sociopaths to coerce behaviours out of those around them and as such should be a real red flag. It's fascinating that a Sociopath would use the very diagnosis of their condition as one of the main tactics in their controlling arsenal, but not entirely unexpected.

As to saying it's not fair to ignore an entire group of people (Sociopaths) because it's tantamount to racism (using both the 'poor me' and the responsibility displacement tactic) is like saying that locking up people who have committed crime is discriminatory against criminals. Sociopaths should be avoided because they're extremely hazardous to the mental, emotional and possibly even physical heath of those around them. That's their defining characteristic. Last time I looked that wasn't true of skin colour.

because since were all influencing each other subconsiously and evolve so interconnectedly and switch places in communicating to experience similar things so interconnedly- the better we influence others evangelize even at best, the better that benefit can come back to later effect us.

IT HAS BEEN SAID:

Robert Hare, PhD., an expert on psychopaths, made an intriguing discovery by observing the hand gestures (called beats)people make while speaking.

Research has shown that such gestures domore than add visual emphasis to our words (many people gesture whilethey're on the telephone, for example); it seems they actually help ourbrains find words. That's why the frequency of beats increases whensomeone is having trouble finding words, or is speaking a secondlanguage instead of his or her mother tongue. In a 1991 paper, Hare andhis colleagues reported that psychopaths, especially when talking aboutthings they should find emotional, such as their families, produce ahigher frequency of beats than normal people. It's as if emotionallanguage is a second language -- a foreign language, in effect -- tothe psychopath.

Threedecades of these studies, by Hare and others, has confirmed thatpsychopaths' brains work differently from ours, especially whenprocessing emotion and language. Hare once illustrated this for NicoleKidman, who had invited him to Hollywood to help her prepare for a roleas a psychopath in Malice. How, she wondered, could she show theaudience there was something fundamentally wrong with her character?

"I said,'Here's a scene that you can use,' " Hare says. " 'You're walking downa street and there's an accident. A car has hit a child in thecrosswalk. A crowd of people gather round. You walk up, the child'slying on the ground and there's blood running all over the place. Youget a little blood on your shoes and you look down and say, "Oh shoot."You look over at the child, kind of interested, but you're not repelledor horrified. You're just interested. Then you look at the mother, andyou're really fascinated by the mother, who's emoting, crying out,doing all these different things. After a few minutes you turn away andgo back to your house. You go into the bathroom and practice mimickingthe facial expressions of the mother.' " He then pauses and says,"That's the psychopath: somebody who doesn't understand what's going onemotionally, but understands that something important has happened."

Hare'sresearch upset a lot of people. Until the psychopath came into focus,it was possible to believe that bad people were just good people withbad parents or childhood trauma and that, with care, you could talkthem back into being good. Hare's research suggested that some peoplebehaved badly even when there had been no early trauma. Moreover, sincepsychopaths' brains were in fundamental ways different from ours,talking them into being like us might not be easy. Indeed, to this day,no one has found a way to do so.

"Some ofthe things he was saying about these individuals, it was unheard of,"says Dr. Steven Stein, a psychologist and CEO of Multi-Health Systemsin Toronto, the publisher of the Psychopathy Checklist. "Nobodybelieved him thirty years ago, but Bob hasn't wavered, and noweveryone's where he is. Everyone's come full circle, except a smallgroup who believe it's bad upbringing, family poverty, those kinds offactors, even though scientific evidence has shown that's not the case.There are wealthy psychopaths who've done horrendous things, and theywere brought up in wonderful families."

"There'sstill a lot of opposition -- some criminologists, sociologists, andpsychologists don't like psychopathy at all," Hare says. "I can spendthe entire day going through the literature -- it's overwhelming, andunless you're semi-brain-dead you're stunned by it -- but a lot ofpeople come out of there and say, 'So what? Psychopathy is amythological construct.' They have political and social agendas:'People are inherently good,' they say. 'Just give them a hug, a puppydog, and a musical instrument and they're all going to be okay.' "

If Haresounds a little bitter, it's because a decade ago, Correctional Serviceof Canada asked him to design a treatment program for psychopaths, butjust after he submitted the plan in 1992, there were personnel changesat the top of CSC. The new team had a different agenda, which Haresummarizes as, "We don't believe in the badness of people." His plansank without a trace.

By thelate 1970s, after fifteen years in the business, Bob Hare knew what hewas looking for when it came to psychopaths. They exhibit a cluster ofdistinctive personality traits, the most significant of which is anutter lack of conscience. They also have huge egos, short tempers, andan appetite for excitement -- a dangerous mix. In a typical prisonpopulation, about 20 percent of the inmates satisfy the Hare definitionof a psychopath, but they are responsible for over half of all violentcrime.

Theresearch community, Hare realized, lacked a standard definition. "Ifound that we were all talking a different language, we were ondifferent diagnostic pages, and I decided that we had to have somecommon instrument," he says. "The PCL-R was really designed to make iteasier to publish articles and to let journal editors and reviewersknow what I meant by psychopathy."

ThePsychopathy Checklist consists of a set of forms and a manual thatdescribes in detail how to score a subject in twenty categories thatdefine psychopathy. Is he (or, more rarely, she) glib and superficiallycharming, callous and without empathy? Does he have a grandiose senseof self worth, shallow emotions, a lack of remorse or guilt? Is heimpulsive, irresponsible, promiscuous? Did he have behavioral problemsearly in life? The information for each category must be carefullydrawn from documents such as court transcripts, police reports,psychologists' reports, and victim-impact statements, and not solelyfrom an interview, since psychopaths are superb liars ("pathologicallying" and "conning/manipulative" are PCL-R categories). A prisoner mayclaim to love his family, for example, while his records show no visitsor phone calls.

For eachitem, assessors -- psychologists or psychiatrists -- assign a score ofzero (the item doesn't apply), one (the item applies in some respects),or two (the item applies in most respects). The maximum possible scoreis forty, and the boundary for clinical psychopathy hovers aroundthirty. Last year, the average score for all incarcerated maleoffenders in North America was 23.3. Hare guesses his own score wouldbe about four or five.

In 1980,Hare's initial checklist began circulating in the research community,and it quickly became the standard.

At last count nearly 500 papers and150 doctoral dissertations had been based on it.

The fact that some scientists know as muchas they now do about the brain of a sociopath means that solving the problem is nolonger an impossible and obscure wish -- it's moving toward the realmof concrete possibility.

As soon as large numbers of sociopaths begin to be treated in a waythat actually helps them, that corrects as much as possible the chaosof misdirected signals in their confused and disorganized brains, andthen a form of therapy that in addition to that, by necessity, teachesthem to cope with the resulting maelstrom of emotion and impressionthat was formerly impossible, so that they can put it in order andstart to develop the heretofore dormant and silent segments of theirbrains and better use those formerly mixed-up areas where norecognizable order ruled, THEN THE OTHERS MAY BEGIN TO NOTICE WHAT ISGOING ON...and they will know at least this much: instead of "the kissof death," a diagnosis of ASPD (the DSM-IV way of saying sociopathy orpsychopathy) will lead someplace; that there will be things done thatactually make a difference.

Crippled as they are neurologically, sociopaths are yet shrewd, andthey're always looking out for themselves in a way similar to that of aloner predator. Seeing others like them actually benefitting fromtreatment will have to start persuading them that there's something togain in going for help after all. Not being rejected or met with "Wecan't help you; you're evil incarnate," or the equivalent thinlydisguised in euphemistic psychology jargon; NOT being met with asituation where they'd have to substitute symptoms of an "acceptable"illness in place of those they bear in secret -- that would almostcertainly, if gradually, have an effect: if a sociopath can clearly seea benefit coming from admitting his or her real situation, there'snothing to stop him or her from doing just that.

It's already started to happen, if in a tiny, barely perceptible trickle.

Right now, all science has at the ready for them is to use varioustypes of preexisting medication given in attempts to counteract thechaotic way the brain of a sociopath functions. That and types of talktherapy carefully altered to avoid the pitfalls that have in the pastcaused regular therapies to make sociopaths worse instead of better.But the more that scientists such as Robert Hare and his colleaguesdelve into and experiment with the new types of brain scans andlearning what makes sociopaths tick like human bombs, the more likelythat it becomes with each passing year that a means will soon beisolated to defuse those bombs.

The primary source of a sociopath's infamous rage is frustration,of a sort so alien and so extreme that almost no one else canunderstand what it means.

As if all that isn't bad enough, a true psychopath has an extremelypeculiar brainwave pattern: while awake, their brain waves mostresemble a hybrid of normal waking brain waves and alpha-level sleepwaves.

They seem incapable of producing true beta waves.

And they often tend to sleep deeply, although there are also documented cases of severe insomnia in psychopaths.

Emotionally, they are cold, detached, distant, and yet deeplyresentful of normal people.

They know they're missing something, andoften spend most of their typically short, tragic lives avengingthemselves on others for what they cannot ever enjoy.

So they are nottruly emotionless, but they do not love, do not ever know true joy, and arehostile and destructive.

This ISN'T the work of the Devil; it's Nature gone horribly awry.

Once they start getting taken seriously, thatfrustration, and the wild rage it provokes, will lessen, and since itis a primary source of the constant distrust that makes regular therapyfail sociopaths, the defusing of that rage and its maddening causeswill be a huge step in the right direction.

Sociopaths don't always behave as though they're invulnerable. Somehave said, "You don't know this, but it hurts to be me." Peoplesneeringly say to this, "Another of your miserable lies!" But it is infact a miserable truth.

Being angry at them is understandable, but why do people insist onjustifying their anger by dehumanizing the object of their rage?

Sociopaths may seem like aliens, but they aren't.

Perhaps what reallygalls the others is that when they look at sociopaths, in certain tinyways they see aspects of themselves, for everyone has some antisocialthoughts.

Also, sociopaths hurt a lot of people. What seems to hurt most is the idea that the sociopath is breezing happily through life having ablast while a trail of wounded victims struggle to put their shatteredlives back together.

No sociopath breezes through life. They just know how to make itlook like they do. It's part of the sick game they play because theycan't do much of anything else, as they are.

If sociopathy is treated instead of ignored and shunned, this won't have to happen.

Sociopathy is a mental illness misunderstood by most thanks tomisinformation from the media. A sociopath is someone who suffers fromAnti-social Personality Disorder, which means that they do not feelnormal human emotions; they lack remorse, shame or guilt; and theiremotions are shallow.

To answer your question, they are extremely rational, but withoutfeeling. If you want someone completely gone, it is rational to killthem, isn't it? Yet it is human empathy which dictates to us that thisis wrong. A sociopath is uncontrolled by human emotion, and anyappearance of this is a facade with an ulterior motive. This condition is not curable, as you cannot force someone to 'feel'something, and it is a chronic condition that neither gets better norworse. For more information on sociopathy do a web search. I findgoogle most helpful. www.Google.com

If you are a sociopath, you probably are resistant to the idea of change.

Robert Hare, PhD., says that the personality of a sociopath(psychopath) is essentially set in stone, so to speak, by adulthood,and incredibly hard to change.

Recent research on the disparities of brain function in psychopaths/sociopaths yielded some startling results:

Structural and functional hippocampal abnormalities have been previously reported in institutionalized psychopathic and aggressive populations. This study assessed whether prior findings of a right greater than left (R > L) functional asymmetry in caught violent offenders generalize to the structural domain in unsuccessful, caught psychopaths.

Methods:

Left and right hippocampal volumes were assessed using structural magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) in 23 control subjects, 16 unsuccessful psychopaths, and 12 successful (uncaught) community psychopaths and transformed into standardized space.

Results:

Unsuccessful psychopaths showed an exaggerated structural hippocampal asymmetry (R > L) relative both to successful psychopaths and control subjects (p < .007) that was localized to the anterior region. This effect could not be explained by environmental and diagnostic confounds and constitutes the first brain imaging analysis of successful and unsuccessful psychopaths.

Conclusions:

Atypical anterior hippocampal asymmetries in unsuccessful psychopaths may reflect an underlying neurodevelopmental abnormality that disrupts hippocampal-prefrontal circuitry, resulting in affect dysregulation, poor contextual fear conditioning, and insensitivity to cues predicting capture.

Keywords: Hippocampus, psychopathy, MRI, trauma, neurodevelopment, asymmetry.

So it is understandable why many people don't think anything at all can be done to change the sociopath, but in fact, that isn't true. Some keep trying to help them; giving up is not an option. Sociopaths cause too much trouble.

A good therapist can prevent you from victimizing him/her withoutvictimizing you in the process. And, as mentioned above, recent studies made byneurosurgeons and other medical experts have finally begun to pinpointthe things that go awry in the brain that are part of what causessociopathy.

In some cases, such medications as Depakote, Topamax, Risperdal, Dilantin, Pentobarbitol, andeven Lithium are being prescribed, and although some individualtherapists prescribe Ativan and the like, much more research needs Tobe done there on ultimate benefit of drug treatment. It is alreadyknown that drug treatment must be augmented by a very structured andpositive-oriented talk therapy.

Sociopaths can get somewhere in a specialized form of talk therapy if the clinician isself-confident and relaxed, firm but never authoritarian orself-important. It must not ever become an ego-contest.

Once theprocess gets far enough along so that the sociopath is actually able tofeel even a tiny flicker of genuine happiness, that is an impetus thatwill grow stronger if the process continues to move forward.

But a sociopath seeking this must be warned that at some point quitewell along in the process of therapy, there will be an interval inwhich all the newly developing strength is called upon to endure verydeep and long-buried pain. Sticking to it through that takes a verystrong will.

The therapist must repeatedly remind the patient that the process willalso reward him or her with better and better feelings, ultimatelybecoming its own reward: that terrible emptinesscalled 'boredom' or 'static' beingreplaced by feeling, both painful and joyous.

In cases where brain damage is too severe to permit of this on its own,new developments in technology in the next decades will bringimplantable devices that may be able to be used in the brain, alongwith other means including synthetic replacement neurotransmitters, tocarry nerve impulses along paths formerly silent and unused in thesociopath's brain.

Although such devices would have to be used withextreme care to avoid causing violent convulsive seizures, some of theanti-convulsant medications that are already being prescribed tosociopaths in test trials could possibly prevent this unwelcomeside-effect.

In the present, therapy is hard to come by for anybody notextremely wealthy, and for sociopaths, many of whom are unable to work,it is even that much harder to find help. But it exists. And, lookingat some observations posted at other similar questions by others, onecan see that a very popular opinion is that sociopaths, psychopaths,are all "evil" and undeserving of help!

One very important point, therefore, is that, most certainly, no onehelps sociopaths by repeatedly calling them 'evil'! That kind ofresponse cannot possibly help anyone.

Yes, of course sociopaths arouse great anger in people; one must takecare of oneself and make steps so as not to allow oneself to bevictimized. But HATRED is another issue: if hate takes you over, you become that much more like the sociopath.

A sociopath before treatmentcannot trust anyone and must learn the fundaments of trust andinteraction between people. No one who is persuaded to believe that heor she is just plain bad can sustain any hope for change.

It becomes avicious cycle: the sociopath, being told he or she is evil and cannotbe helped, gives up, and in frustration and anger lashes out again atpeople, and in response to that, people say that their original pointis proven.

The main reason sociopaths don't usually seek help is that they can'ttrust, rather than that they like being as they are. Plus, they canoften sense exactly what sort of a response any call for help on theirpart is most likely to elicit from professionals and lay folk alike.

Sociopaths are not breezing along in paradise. It isn't all a game.It's a truly miserable existence. And it can be made better.

Being born with a genetic marker that, for reasons neuroscientistsdon't yet know, causes the cerebral cortex to process information in achaotic way, and to miss much of the emotional information that wouldnormally shape the growing child's mind and start the process ofsocialization.

Robert Hare (see his book,"Without Conscience") worked with existing EEG and brain-scan (PETscan?) technology to show that sociopaths do not process emotionalinformation the way other people do.

It is believed that in childhood,a born sociopath learns to direct such input through other routes inthe cerebral cortex, but as of yet no one knows what blocks theimpulses and signals from following their normal route.

Corticalunderarousal, underactive sympathetic division of the autonomic nervoussystem, and brain waves while awake (on EEG) that resemble thealpha-waves of light sleep, are all common or universal symptoms ofprimary psychopaths.

In addition, more and more research shows thatpsychopaths lack the neurotransmitter Oxytocin (secreted by thepituitary gland) and often have only half as much Vasopressin(antidiuretic hormone) as most people do. Abnormalities are thus notconfined to the cerebral cortex; they can be found in the cingulategyrus and the entire limbic system as well.

ANYTHING THAT AFFECTSNEUROLOGICAL DEVELOPMENT OF THE FETUS CAN POSSIBLY CAUSE THESEDEFICIENCIES. In addition to this, a child's brain developsexponentially after birth, and early development requires physicalcontact and stimulation in order to form the basis for interpersonalbonding; secondary psychopaths are thought to have lacked this; refersto Reactive Attachment Disorder too.

It may notbe "curable" yet, but it most certainly isn't as hopeless as so manypeople say. There is therefore nothing to be gained and much to be lostwhen therapists and lay folk try to ostracize sociopaths from the humanrace entirely! Sensationalism and superstition will only preventprogress.

This was written on another question on the same essential topic as this one, by a self-confessed sociopath (other than me!) --

• Sociopaths, though born that way, are people too. To avoid anentire group of people is absurd. That's like saying, "Since thesepeople have dark skin, everyone should completely avert themselves fromthem." I am a moderate sociopath, and though part of me doesn't want tochange, another does. Many times it is really entertaining to see howstupid people can be, especially when they're so gullible as to believeevery word that mellifluously flows from my lips. Yes, I am parasitic,but even so, there are some people I would like to stop hurting. Ican't find any websites that can provide a way to help my sociopathy.Maybe people like you should stop your self-victimisation and starttrying to actually help people like me! I knew I was a sociopath beforethe age of ten but have only recently had it officially diagnosed. I ameighteen years old now, and I have been lying and destroying others'sanity for a long time. So, please post some helpful tidbits that mighthelp sociopaths resist the sweet urges we get when we encounter weakhuman beings. When you cut us, do we not bleed? When you kill us, do wenot die? Do you honestly think that you're being lied to andmanipulated when we sincerely ask for help. Listen to yourselves! Thisis the internet; ergo, you're safe from our fortified mental grasp.

The essay that follows was written in another answer by anotherself-admitted sociopath, who actually might not be a sociopath.

Stillanother person added the brief comment to that effect after her tragic essay.

• umm... i kind of am one... just so y'all know, it's not so muchfun being one either. i read that sentence up there, "Incapable of realhuman attachment to another." i don't even know what that is, i see it,i approximate it... it's like being outside a door looking through adirty window and watching re-runs of people I've seen in love or withchildren or with friends, and scratching, sometimes banging at theglass to get in and... nothing. I'm fond of people in every sense ofthe word, their little quirks and habits, the way they see life, exceptif they went away it wouldn't bother me much other than finding someoneelse to be fond of. i don't have friends, i only date military menbecause they're ok with only having a girlfriend for a couple monthsand i tell them in advance i won't wait for them... i don't know whatelse to do to limit the damage i inflict on others just as a result ofthem knowing me, short of moving to the mountains... but i still movebetween 2-5 times a year :( it's kind of hard walking around knowingi'll never have what i see making other people so happy and runningwhen i can tell someone is getting close just because i don't want tohurt them more later down the road... i'd like it a lot to settle down,i WANT to be able to feel more with people, but it's hard to miss whatyou never had. i want what i THINK it would feel like... it'd be easyto give in and let someone stay because I'm so lonely... but hey, i'vewritten enough, just know i try to be a responsible little sociopath, iwon't ever get married or have kids, i practice safe sex, i won't stayin one city for long... everything you all take for granted i willnever let myself have just because i WANT to take it for granted. beinglike this won't go away so hopefully i can limit the amount of hatethrown my way by limiting my interaction with people, i don't know whatelse to do. and you all might not believe this, but i am sorry,hopefully i can speak for the other people who have damaged your lives.

Comment: The above testimony is clearly not indicative of asociopath because she seems to make efforts to keep from harmingothers, even if it doesn't benefit herself.

One of the things that would be necessary in the attempted recovery of a sociopath using neurosurgery or medication would be to then try tosocialize the person whose congenital birth defect made such a thingcompletely impossible before. Sociopaths cannot be "resocialized" because they were never socialized to begin with; the parts of the brain that handle that did not develop at all in the sociopath.

Whatever intervention is used, be itdrugs or computer chips or what have you, it would probably -- I'd saycertainly -- be excruciating for the patient at first.

With noknowledge of how to cope with the emotions the rest of the world hasbeen dealing with all their lives, the recovering sociopath would berendered as vulnerable as a baby.

Which makes sense, because some ofthe most basic aspects of the human mind would be developing from theprimordial stasis in which they had remained since birth!

A person thus treated would never be fully normal, but the humanbrain is amazing in the way it adapts and continues to develop allthrough life.

And given the utterly joyless and meaningless existence asociopath leads, any improvement is better than none.

The matter of missing neurotransmitters in a sociopath is, ofcourse, another problem. Would "waking up" the cerebral cortexeventually stimulate production of these? Or would they have to besynthesized?

Only time will tell.

SabrinaSingularity with several other writers.

Suggestion: Better to sign in; better to be a name rather than a number.

The MacDonald Triad is a theory that if a child exhibits three specific behaviors that they are more likely to be diagnosed with sociopathy as an adult. The three behaviors are bedwetting, firestarting, and animal abuse.

Sociopaths do not experience remorse for wrongdoing. Some sociopaths are sadistic; they derive pleasure from causing pain to others. Many engage in thrill-seeking behavior. Some sociopaths torture and kill animals for amusement or for the thrill of it, some "graduate" to crimes against people.

A sociopath is the common term for somone who has Antisocial Personality Disorder. This disorderis classified by having atleast three of the following.

1. failure to conform to social norms with respect to lawful behaviors as indicated by repeatedly performing acts that are grounds for arrest;
2. deception, as indicated by repeatedly lying, use of aliases, or conning others for personal profit or pleasure;
3. impulsiveness or failure to plan ahead;
4. irritability and aggressiveness, as indicated by repeated physical fights or assaults;
5. reckless disregard for Traits_of_sociopathof self or others;
6. consistent irresponsibility, as indicated by repeated failure to sustain consistent work behavior or honor financial obligations;
7. lack of remorse, as indicated by being indifferent to or rationalizing having hurt, mistreated, or stolen from another;