Posted on 03/30/2012 10:34:28 PM PDT by Attention Surplus Disorder
Corbett Thigpen (The Three Faces of Eve) once said that his secretary could spot them faster than he could. Her first tip-off was if she saw Thigpen lending someone money.
They tend to be highly manipulative.
I recognized one I knew well when I realized that this person inspired fanatical loyalty--mine!
I recognized one in my extended family. Her youngest child treated her very badly--spoke abusively to her--aroused the horror of all family and friends. When I finally realized that she was sociopathic, I asked him about this. He replied: "I figured her out when I was a child. She didn't give a damn about any of us." He had no respect for her, and for good reason.
Some people consider sociopaths to be fun, amusing, and charming. I've heard so-called experts say that they're lots of fun at a party. They're not. They are shallow, boring, predictable, unlikeable, and uninteresting.
Another tip-off is if I say: "I do not understand this person. I never have, and I never will." If I conclude that the person is sociopathic and I'm correct, the person immediately becomes easily understandable. As an excellent clinical psychologist once said to me: "Sociopaths are easy to understand." However, unless you know what's going on, their behavior can be confusing and hard to understand.
Another characteristic is emotional shallowness. The way a sociopath speaks of his/her children (or anyone else) tends to be odd (though some are good actors). One I knew well, in speaking of her son, clutched her throat, filled her eyes with tears, and announced dramatically (like a lousy actress in a grade-D movie): "He's mine. He's mine. He'll always me mine." Her entire affect, emotions, and everything else were utterly unlike any normal mother speaking of her child.
When a behavior is rewarded, you have a tendency to get more of it. Sociopathy has been rewarded in government ranks in this country for quite some time now, and it shows, to anybody with a modicum of discernment...
the infowarrior
I agree that they can charm people. That's one of their salient qualities and one reason they inspire fanatical loyalty. But once you know what's going on the charm evaporates and you see the rattlesnake beneath it.
That's another characteristic. I knew one very, very well. She was Hollywood beautiful and immensely popular! But on rare occasions--when something struck a nerve--the mask dropped, and her eyes were the eyes of a rattlesnake.
I saw this a few times.
Her mother saw it once and was in shock. She said that she had never seen anything like that before. She never fully recovered from the experience and never saw her beloved, "perfect" daughter in the same light again.
I particularly like this:
"The quickest way to spot a sociopath is to trust your gut. Most of the time, there’s no “there” there. It’s missing in the eyes."
I grew up with one of these, and you can be sure I kept silent!
This rings true to me. The woman who said: "He's mine! He's mine!" did it with no appropriate affect. Her eyes were not the eyes of a normal mother talking about her child. There was no depth of feeling--in fact no feeling. It was like a very bad actress spitting out memorized lines.
Shapeshifters. Often they are charming,, that is hw they rope people in, but have no real beliefs. Yhey will support whatever they think benefits them the most. They have no conscience, so if you try to appeal to that, you will get no response. They always believe they are smarter than others and if they fail at something, pay it no mind. It only failed because of someone lesser who screwed it up.
They are arrogant and believe the world revolves around them. They can get pretty nasty and resort to scorched earth if they think they have been wronged or disrespected.
I knew one a while back. He had no ability for compassion or self introspection. He had to get some books to see how a person was supposed to act in given situations. Unreal. It just wasn’t there. (think Casey Anthony)
Right on, right on!
Gosh, that poor mom...gives me shivers...how did her daughter hide it so well from her own mother? That’s hard to imagine, unless the mom was wearing heavily-tinted glasses? Plausible.
So it must have been one of the more dramatic denouements, aka: mask-slipping event. Likely the reality the mom had been trying to deny for so long @ her “perfect daughter”...the mom’s denial was so great - that’s why she never fully recovered. Sad.
<<<<shudders
The parallels btwn the various flavors of sociopathy & leftists are impossible to overstate.
As FR often chronicles the left’s hypocritical and childish behaviors, so too does that resonate with the development of these conditions.
One always finds a point where the sociopath “arrested” in development. Usually it has to do with abandonment &/or abuse. All abuse is emotional, so emotional abuse (only) counts too. The age range varies, but you can spot it to somewhere btwn 6 - 14/15.
In a very real sense, they are always “that child”, “that age” (when the trauma occurred)...in adult bodies.
Now how is that so unlike the spoiled rotten ranting leftist loons? How can a Supreme Court Justice Pantload the Boatload of drivel she does? It’s transparent, ridiculous, and appalling all at the same time!
I see no difference between sociopaths & libs.
To understand libs,
study sociopathy.
You & Beast said the same thing, all very true.
“Bad actress” & “He had to get some books to see how a person was supposed to act in given situations.”
Unreal. Right? Most don’t get books and study (man, that’s scary!)...most learn to mirror others’ reactions so as not to stick out and risk being ostracized.
That contributes to the not-quite-right vibe. They’re laughing weird, or a little late. They’re acting strangely silent during intense or sad events. They’re watching how others react to get clues...so they can “look like” they’re sharing the same emotion.
Just listen to your gut for the strange “off-putting”.
They’re charming because they’ve been studying YOU, so they feed you what you want.
You don’t realize you’re just being fattened up for THEIR next meal.
That pretty much says it all.
By the way, those books were given to this person by a psychologist.
In the end, it turned out that all the books in the world were unable to replace what isn’t there.
He lost me when he started pushing Argentina as a place to be. There’s something in his writing and thinking that hits me as kind of a double secret reverse sociopathy.
That pretty much says it all.
By the way, those books were given to this person by a psychologist.
In the end, it turned out that all the books in the world were unable to replace what isn’t there.
"All knowing" statements like this tend to turn me off. But most of the rest is good, and the comments even better.
Or just republicans in general?
We went after Al Qaeda. Singling that out as an example of sociopathology is itself sociopathic.
Again I say, there is some good meat in this article should some of the circumferential fat be trimmed.
Doug Casey was one of the rare winners on the Bre-X gold scandal, which was a complete fraud. AFAIK, he did nothing unethical, he was just on the right side of the trade...short, I assume. Or, very early, and he could afford to exit while the price was on the ascendency. Like 97% of all newsletter authors, his “do what I did and you, too can retire comfortably in [xx] on $350 a month” isn’t for everyone. Nothing is, really.
And, I’m not advocating bailing to another country, though I do not rule it out. It’s certain to mark the emigree as a target, in multiple ways.
Really, the essential nugget I wished to point out by posting the article was just that top-to-bottom, our society has become the reflection of the conclusion that 51% are now predators, takers, and willful saboteurs. There is no longer this exalted principled stance associated with “government service”. “Government service” has become a license to steal and ideally, to build up ones’ bureaucratic defenses against prosecution once one decides to shift the theft from covert to overt. And many of the non-takers are seeing the rewards showered upon the new (not really) uber-criminal class and wondering, “why work for a living?”. It’s pervasive, from bankster to brutha. And it does not bode well.
There’s not a tight fit between clinical descriptions and political actors. You can find some “sociopathic” or “narcissistic” traits in politicians, but as in the general population there’s a distribution, with some people at the extremes and most in the middle. In comparison with the rest of us that middle may be shifted towards the pathological pole, but most politicians aren’t in the extreme, sociopathic range.
It seems that if he is carving out a place in Argentina where he can be safe, he has to be making deals with Christina and the gang. His response to Ferfal leaving Argentina for Northern Ireland, that he's a lower level newsletter writer with an axe to grind, was condescending and pathetic. The man ran for the safety of his family. The same thing bothered me about Harry Browne. Most of what he said made sense, but there was always that the peasants will fend for themselves and I must go organize the wine cellar thing .
Dramatic is hardly the word for it. Her mother was a highly moral, exemplary woman. The event was precipitated when the sociopath asked her mother to keep her children while she went on a vacation with a man she had recently met. Obviously she planned to sleep with him. The mother was horrified. She finally tried to restrain her daughter physically. A very unseemly fight broke out between them in the mother's elegant living room. The daughter was chain smoking, something of which the mother disapproved, and in the altercation she burned a hole in the mother's rug. The mother--a grand lady, who had never experienced or even witnessed anything like that--was absolutely in shock! She had always thought of her daughter as a perfect lady, and most of the time the daughter acted like it. She definitely knew how.
"Likely the reality the mom had been trying to deny for so long @ her “perfect daughter”...the mom’s denial was so great - that’s why she never fully recovered."
That's exactly how it was.
"One always finds a point where the sociopath “arrested” in development. Usually it has to do with abandonment &/or abuse. All abuse is emotional, so emotional abuse (only) counts too."
This has not been my experience.
In my experience, these people have had good, nurturing parents and a normal upbringing. Some have had unfortunate experiences, but in the case discussed above, there was absolutely no abuse, physical, emotional, or anything else. The child was raised by very caring, loving parents and given every possible advantage. And although she was well socialized because of her parents, the sociopathy did appear at a very early age. She tried to murder one of her siblings when she was 4 or 5 years old.
I think it's hereditary. There was another one in the same family. A beautiful girl who spent her life on drugs, alcohol, and promiscuous sex and died young. Even her mother wasn't sorry to see her go. She said so.
great post...It is exhausting, destructive to self and mind bending to work for these people....
I was forced to work closely with a sociopathic man for many years--one of the most highly intelligent, sadistic, manipulative, narcissistic, exploitive, and scary people I have ever known. I managed, probably because I was as intelligent as he was, and I accumulated great riches; so the experience was not without great rewards, but it was exhausting, and when I finally got him out of my life it was as though a heavy burdon had been lifted from me.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.