Has anyone here been diagnosed as a sociopath?

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KevinLA
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21 Jan 2010, 11:27 am

Is there any connection with AS? I have a lot of these traits.

•Glibness/Superficial Charm
•Manipulative and Conning
•Grandiose Sense of Self
•Pathological Lying
•Lack of Remorse, Shame or Guilt
•Shallow Emotions
•Incapacity for Love
•Need for Stimulation
•Callousness/Lack of Empathy
•Poor Behavioral Controls/Impulsive Nature
•Early Behavior Problems/Juvenile Delinquency
•Irresponsibility/Unreliability
•Promiscuous Sexual Behavior/Infidelity
•Lack of Realistic Life Plan/Parasitic Lifestyle
•Criminal or Entrepreneurial Versatility
•Contemptuous of those who seek to understand them
•Does not perceive that anything is wrong with them
•Authoritarian
•Secretive
•Paranoid
•Only rarely in difficulty with the law, but seeks out situations where their tyrannical behavior will be tolerated, condoned, or admired
•Conventional appearance
•Goal of enslavement of their victim(s)
•Exercises despotic control over every aspect of the victim's life
•Has an emotional need to justify their crimes and therefore needs their victim's affirmation (respect, gratitude and love)
•Ultimate goal is the creation of a willing victim
•Incapable of real human attachment to another
•Unable to feel remorse or guilt
•Narcissism, grandiosity (self-importance not based on achievements)
•May state readily that their goal is to rule the world

I found this on another site. I exhibit all of these.

The key characteristics of a sociopath include: (1) having no conscience, (2) inability to treat others as human beings, with feelings and rights and (3) inability to learn from experience, from life. One result of this last is gross immaturity, though it may be hidden unless one knows the person well. A sociopath behaves as if he/she were the only person in the whole world and as if everyone else just existed for their benefit and had no existence in their own right. (4) Sociopaths treat other people as toys and hanker after the power to control and hurt their 'nearest and dearest'. (5) Many are monumentally self-important: they may pretend to be millionaires when in reality they are sliding towards financial disaster. (6) Habitual dishonesty.



Last edited by KevinLA on 21 Jan 2010, 9:33 pm, edited 3 times in total.

amazon_television
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21 Jan 2010, 12:48 pm

"Sociopath" is not something that is categorized specifically in the DSM. It would probably be diagnosed as either psychopathy or antisocial personality disorder, but those characteristics can be present to certain degrees in other categories as well.


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21 Jan 2010, 1:36 pm

Nobody is more fake than a sociopath, so if one is diagnosed they usually keep it a secret.



dddhgg
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21 Jan 2010, 1:54 pm

Actually, quite a lot of these so-called sociopathic traits seem to me to make a person admirably fit to be a successful businessman or politician. I seriously mean this. Many famous entrepreneurs and men of state of the past and the present tick most of the boxes.


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21 Jan 2010, 2:02 pm

I suspect that former president George Bush is a mild sociopath. Before he took office he had many people executed as governor of Texas for one thing.



makuranososhi
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21 Jan 2010, 2:10 pm

dddhgg wrote:
Actually, quite a lot of these so-called sociopathic traits seem to me to make a person admirably fit to be a successful businessman or politician. I seriously mean this. Many famous entrepreneurs and men of state of the past and the present tick most of the boxes.


In all things, it is a matter of degree.


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dddhgg
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21 Jan 2010, 2:18 pm

makuranososhi wrote:
dddhgg wrote:
Actually, quite a lot of these so-called sociopathic traits seem to me to make a person admirably fit to be a successful businessman or politician. I seriously mean this. Many famous entrepreneurs and men of state of the past and the present tick most of the boxes.


In all things, it is a matter of degree.


M.


Not always though. Hitler most probably was a full-blown sociopath, which was concealed by his charm and eloquence of course, and look at how successful he was. Same applies to people like Cesare Borgia, or Joseph Stalin.


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Kaleido
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21 Jan 2010, 2:21 pm

Since sociopaths refuse to accept there is anything wrong with them, I doubt you, the OP, is one since you seem to think you might be like that - strange paradox.

I wonder what the difference is between a narcissist and a sociopath.



bdhkhsfgk
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21 Jan 2010, 2:35 pm

Kaleido wrote:
Since sociopaths refuse to accept there is anything wrong with them, I doubt you, the OP, is one since you seem to think you might be like that - strange paradox.

I wonder what the difference is between a narcissist and a sociopath.


They say that narcissits are "Half sociopaths", which means that they're not as bad as sociopaths, and another thing you should note is that sociopaths literally have NO feelings.



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21 Jan 2010, 3:27 pm

i think sociopaths are usually the opposite of autistics in a way. Autistics have problems with understanding other people, but usually still care about others(it just might not show, because of our lack of understanding). Sociopaths usually understand others extremely well(you have to in order to be sucessful at so much manipulation), but they don't care about them at all. Sociopaths can shallowly fake being a nice and normal person, but we often seem awkward and selfish even if we genuinely care for people.



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21 Jan 2010, 3:28 pm

There is no connection with autism that I am aware of. I have no idea why people seem to connect the two other than the fact that someone with AS might come across as having no emotions and being selfish-- but a sociopath would actually BE these things.



Callista
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21 Jan 2010, 3:41 pm

The OP's list of characteristics contains many peripheral characteristics that can be found in many disorders and often in quite typical people. Most of them are not exclusive to "sociopathy", and not diagnostic.

The core symptoms are:
--Repeated illegal and immoral acts
--Deceitfulness, such as repeated lying or use of false names, for personal profit or pleasure
--Impulsivity; failure to plan ahead
--Irritability and aggressiveness, in the form of physical fights or assault
--Being reckless with one's own safety and the safety of others
--Irresponsibility; refusal to work or support oneself
--Lack of remorse

You have to have most of them to be a "sociopath" (i.e., have antisocial personality disorder).


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21 Jan 2010, 5:07 pm

Hi there,

Welcome to the club! I ask, do you intrinsically feel this way, or do you BEHAVE this way and feel another? Do you behave this way because you feel you need to protect yourself? How long have you been diagnosed/ or considered AS? Try and step outside yourself and be brutally honest. Think of yourself as a child......a child, although may display some traits of sociopathology will rarely manifest itself like an adult. It is true sociopaths/psychopaths that show consistent pathology as children.

I have been labeled as a sociopath with extreme narcissistic behaviour. I have also been labelled with "psychopathic anti-social behavioral issues". Yep, I have had it all thrown at me and the level of trauma and destruction those labels have caused me I cannot determine. I have been ostracised, stereotyped and medicated to the eyeballs with many stints in my fav psych unit. It was needed, but it was horrible.

Please, everyone, I ask that sociopathology not necessarily be thrown in the same sentence as Anti-social Personality Disorder. As with all things there are degrees of the disorder. Just as not all with Narcissistic Personality Disorder are sociopaths.

And the "coup de grace", the final blow......is that since discussing the likelihood of me having AS, all the past horror is in question. And not because all people with AS show the same traits I did, but because I simply could not show remorse, or emotion, or act appropriately and became a very angry person because I did not feel human. It did not mean I was not exploding and crying inside. I just could not process it and could no sooner explain it than fly to the moon. I did not have the skills to recognise that it was happening yet I felt such gross discordancy and sadness at the fact that I knew there was something wrong with me. I just could not define it in any way with satisfaction........enough to get help anyway.

I have sat mutely staring at psychs while they drilled me about consequence and conscience and morality. I have always had good morals and live by quite a strict moral code, but I was one angry person. I understood consequence and paid many karmic dues for the pain I have caused, and forgiven those who have exacted pain on me. But would be brow beaten into some dx criteria, simply because I could not EXPLAIN.

I have lived most of my teenage and adult life believing that I was a monster, that I was not capable of loving, that I was violent because I had no conscience, that it was all about me. When inside, I cried to be loved, to be accepted, to explain my affinity with animals and the environment and the beauty of nature. I was a prisoner in my own mind.......and still am to a degree.

I felt so brutalised as a child, so isolated, so strange with this accelerated mind and obsessions with science. I was told I was stupid(yet taught myself to read at the age of 3), inconsistent, constantly berated for "staring into space", unfocused, demotivated(unless it was something I was interested in), weird, eccentric and solitary. No wonder I became an angry, malignant adult.

I am 36 years old. It has taken 36 years to be finally listened to by my new caring shrinks........the relief is indescribable.......I am on the path to mental and spiritual freedom.

If you feel that you have these traits and they effect your life, see a good psych and get assessed. Do not fall into the terrible pit of destruction as I did. I cannot possibly convey the terrible time I had of it, and all the time I have spent in therapy going down the wayward path. I am not saying I did not learn anything, I did. But it was not the final answer.

Take care of yourself and no guilt. Love thyself, get help and all else shall follow.

Mics


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21 Jan 2010, 5:14 pm

dddhgg wrote:
Actually, quite a lot of these so-called sociopathic traits seem to me to make a person admirably fit to be a successful businessman or politician. I seriously mean this. Many famous entrepreneurs and men of state of the past and the present tick most of the boxes.


I've long suspected that people with those traits do very well in the work world. That includes borderlines and narcissists and in some venues anti-social personalities.


"sociopath" like someone else said, is not an official diagnosis.



BoringAaron
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21 Jan 2010, 5:14 pm

I know an aspie sociopath. He is my enemy. He manipulates girls and toys with their feelings. Then he stalks people. I might see him tonight, if I see him talking to a lady I'll warn her right in his face.

When I was young, I saw the possibility of myself following a sociopath... er... path, but I forced myself to go in the opposite direction. And in situations where I have no feelings for somebody, I would do things as if I did, for the sake of the other.



KevinLA
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21 Jan 2010, 9:31 pm

Kaleido wrote:
Since sociopaths refuse to accept there is anything wrong with them, I doubt you, the OP, is one since you seem to think you might be like that - strange paradox.

I wonder what the difference is between a narcissist and a sociopath.


I am a uniqe individual. I am willing to look for and admit faults with myself to a bigger extent than most people.

I absolutely exhibit 90% of the traits in my original post.

I found this on another site. I exhibit all of these traits.


•The key characteristics of a sociopath include: (1) having no conscience, (2) inability to treat others as human beings, with feelings and rights and (3) inability to learn from experience, from life. One result of this last is gross immaturity, though it may be hidden unless one knows the person well. A sociopath behaves as if he/she were the only person in the whole world and as if everyone else just existed for their benefit and had no existence in their own right. (4) Sociopaths treat other people as toys and hanker after the power to control and hurt their 'nearest and dearest'. (5) Many are monumentally self-important: they may pretend to be millionaires when in reality they are sliding towards financial disaster. (6) Habitual dishonesty.