Therapist Clueless About Sociopaths

[greenleaf]

What was in his childhood that evidenced you that he formed a psychopathic personality disorder?

Anthony -- it's clear that no one here knows his childhood! Have some chocolate.

 

[darrenS]

LOL

 

[Dana1010]

as many children display characteristics and through learned and social behaviours , loving and supportive environments can actually grow out of it

I think these people are born without a conscience and that's it - you can't change that about them. Environment does play a role in how their behavior is channeled. But I've read of children born into loving, normal, affluent homes who are getting into legal trouble by the time they're nine.

 

[anthony]

You didn't answer the question. Growing up with a psychopath gives you some experience of abuse, sure... but you're flustered as to why your therapist won't agree with your diagnosis you've given this person that they're a sociopath.

I'm sorry Dana... but I'm out of this too. You're behaviour is quite dangerous IMHO. I made a mistake many years ago when starting this forum, to have a self-diagnostic tool here for people to use in order to give them an idea whether they had PTSD. The more I learnt about PTSD diagnosis, the more I accepted I was wrong to have that tool online and removed it. Whilst it was around 80% theoretically accurate, diagnosis also requires practical assessment over a period of time, along with theoretical foundations and criterion. I was wrong, so I removed it. Anyone on this forum can read the PTSD diagnostic criterion and tell a person whether they meet criterion A or not, and I mean anyone, as PTSD is the only diagnosis in the world with this unique required criterion to be diagnosed. That is as far as can be stated though theoretically. If a person has a qualifying trauma, then the rest is unknown to everyone else.

Diagnosing people with self evidence, self diagnosing, and all the other nonsense, is a dangerous game IMO which only gives more credence to support how invalid mental health is right now, because there are people out there reading books, blogs and all other sorts of nonsense, walking away believing they can look at people and diagnose them with something, based on their life experience or knowledge, and short-term, limited observations.

Like Darren clearly cited above, personality disorders, and sociopathic / psychopathic types specifically, take a whole bunch of expert assessment over a long period of time, because chances are they aren't going to get that childhood / adolescent foundational information they need from them directly, and if they can't get it from others from their childhood / adolescent years, the only way is lots of assessment, both theoretical and application, by well trained physicians.

Anything else is dangerous, malicious and downright just nasty IMHO.

 

[greenleaf]

This article is interesting...

[DLMURL]http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/the-empathic-brain/201307/inside-the-mind-psychopath-empathic-not-always[/DLMURL]

 

[Dana1010]

@greenleaf, What I heard about psychopaths who are empathetic is that it's raw preliminary empathy that is actually converted to sadism. In one study, psychopaths who scored highest on empathy tests had quite high rates of violent, sadistic crimes like rape (this was in a book by Andrew Dutton). So you have to be careful there.

 

[greenleaf]

the only way is lots of assessment, both theoretical and application, by well trained physicians.... Anything else is dangerous, malicious and downright just nasty IMHO.

Ouch! I can't agree, we often need to make assessments of other people who are showing signs of being dangerous to us or others, and we can almost never get a full assessment in real life.

Dana isn't getting the person fired based on her theory or harming them in any way! She's trying to process trauma with her therapist, and noticing a familiar pattern with the possible psychopath. It will be really relevant for her due to her history any time someone shows similar patterns, I bet. Big difference. (Sometimes our ptsd "abuser radar" can mistake flocks of birds for incoming warheads, but that's a topic for another thread...)

 

[anthony]

That is some solid science @greenleaf... nice find.

The full text study: http://brain.oxfordjournals.org/content/136/8/2550.full?ijkey=CqWen0GPOBYJVDY&keytype=ref

So psychopathic individuals do not simply lack empathy. Instead, it seems as though for most of us, empathy is the default mode. If we see a victim, we share her pain. For the psychopathic criminals of our study, empathy seemed to be a voluntary activity. If they want to, they can empathise and that explains how they can be so charming, and maybe so manipulative.

 

[darrenS]

No the human brain and how we grow is far more complex than that - if we believed that no change could ever be affected then we are all doomed - it is not a simply definable illness , it is far more complex, its not cut and dried like bipolar etc...it is a subset of behaviors tied to an illness, even someone with PTSD can be display what could be viewed as sociopathic behaviours or tendencies -

Many children are born without a conscience , that why we get bullies etc , but not every bully turns out bad for life - and what do we do...we train them its not right - it can be as simple as that - many moral behaviours are taught and re-inforced over years , some children do not get this training adequately or are exposed to constant trauma etc and as such develop Borderline personalIty disorders (BPD) - sociopathy can be defined in specific spectrums of BPD or not at all. It is a small part of a much bigger picture - Normal and Affluence describe an assumption not a reality

 

[Dana1010]

It's a cognitive empathy, not emotional, they use it to stalk prey, that's it.

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/arts...lent-for-recognizing-emotions/article4704549/

 

[darrenS]

(Sometimes our ptsd "abuser radar" can mistake flocks of birds for incoming warheads, but that's a topic for another thread...)

What a great line...im gonna remember that

 

[greenleaf]

That is some solid science @greenleaf... nice find.

There is a lot more out there on this! I was looking for something without success... an interview with a very smart successful researcher of some sort, I think, who was shocked to learn that his brain shows the same patterns to some extent as psychopaths. (Or sociopaths?)

He is married and hasn't ax-murdered anyone; however he can be really manipulative, people around him said. (As I remember this anyhow.) He seemed to have a sense that he could get what he wanted without hurting people generally and did so.

The other researchers were wondering how to treat young people with this brain pattern so that they would become as decent as possible, as adults.

My guess... for some of these people, maybe it wasn't the upbringing that caused the initial brain differences -- which could vary in strength between people -- but add any sort of violence to the environment, probably big trouble results... maybe some can learn to be almost as empathetic as "normals". Ha, I used that word again...

or maybe some actually have their brains modified by certain upbringings to amplify their empathy? I bet people are researching this!!!

By no means am I trying to minimize suffering anyone experienced by getting sort of speculative here, by the way. Also it does seem clear that adult, violent psychopaths could definitely be impossible to change by current means, and smart ones could totally trick "normal" professionals (responding to Dana's later post.)