Is Aspergers the opposite of psychopathy? What's our link?

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KateCoco
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18 Jan 2015, 12:55 pm

Venger wrote:
I know that it's common for autistic people to feel guilty over bad/negative occurrences when they're aware it wasn't even their fault at all. This sounds like the opposite of the way a sociopath/psychopath thinks in my opinion.


That's true.

I explain autism to my friends as being for me a hypo-connectivity to the world - everything outside of me has to go through a layer of translation to get into my brain, and everything in my brain has to go through a layer of translation to get into the world.

I wonder if psychopathy is - in part - hyper-connectivity to the world: psychopaths read, manipulate and deceive people to achieve their purposes with a much greater skill than NTs.



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18 Jan 2015, 12:59 pm

KellyPFranklin wrote:
You have not really said anything. Please theorize broadly and at length WelcomeToHolland. Hell, I am.
Open this discussion up so we learn.


She's talking about the 2 different kinds of empathy. Basically, sociopaths, or generally people with personality disorders, have cognitive empathy (the ability to read ind understand people) but lack affective empathy (the response of feeling what other people feel when you know what they're going through, i.e. caring about them). Autistics on the other hand are the complete mirror opposite of this, they lack the ability to read people (cognitive empathy) but when they do understand, they can still get distressed from others pain (affective empathy).

Look up Simon-Baron Cohen to find out more.



friedmacguffins
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24 Jan 2016, 2:01 pm

I feel that psychopaths are mainly under-stimulated. Their anti-social behavior seems to help them feel anything at all. Here, the Iceman Killer comes to mind.

There's a vulgar essay about how the F-word is a universal adjective, like a seasoning, to make life more interesting, at every possible turn. For psychopaths, it seems to be the lie. Here, my bored nephew comes to mind.

Socially-inappropriate behavior does certainly occur, on the Autistic Spectrum, but as a result of over-stimulation, imho.

My question is about delusions. How far are autistic people willing to go, in order to make the world fit into some preconceived system. Or, do you fool yourself. Can you tolerate a little logical fallacy, so that the world will still make sense.

Irregularities like that, would gnaw at me, personally.

But, these active-shooter people are supposed to be AS.



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24 Jan 2016, 5:33 pm

WelcomeToHolland wrote:
I thought in a very simplified version: psychopaths understand people well but don't care about them, whereas autistic people don't understand people well but do care about them.
So basically, yeah, opposites. Truthfully I haven't put a lot of time into researching this though so I could be wrong.
(Obviously, the degree with which an autistic person "understands people" will vary as will the degree with which they care about people, but that's in general).


I agree with that analysis. I lived with a psychopath and we were completely different, even if he was able to make himself seem similar to me at first.


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Dennis Prichard
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24 Jan 2016, 7:05 pm

I feel this thread connects some how with my proposition that sociopath/psychopaths can be described as "hyper-typical". A phrase that I coined.


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24 Jan 2016, 7:28 pm

Dennis Prichard wrote:
I feel this thread connects some how with my proposition that sociopath/psychopaths can be described as "hyper-typical". A phrase that I coined.


I agree. One thing about sociopaths is they're very shallow while autistic people are "deep". Now, that's not to say bigotry against sociopaths is justified. I think you can be a valuable and moral human being and still be a sociopath, and I believe everyone has inherent value.


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Dennis Prichard
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24 Jan 2016, 8:50 pm

That's interesting I am working on a project which I title "The value based theory of language and mind."

So why would you say that "every one has inherent value"?


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24 Jan 2016, 9:41 pm

Dennis Prichard wrote:
That's interesting I am working on a project which I title "The value based theory of language and mind."

So why would you say that "every one has inherent value"?


Ultimately because people are capable of pain and pleasure. I think the dominant mindset is that people's value is proportional to their "contribution" to society, which of course really just means their power. I would argue all people have equal value as individuals.


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Dennis Prichard
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25 Jan 2016, 12:11 am

"I would argue all people have equal value as individuals."

I wouldn't.


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LaetiBlabla
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25 Jan 2016, 1:26 pm

Opposites attract.



Jarrod
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12 Aug 2017, 12:24 pm

I am Aspie like you KellyPFranklin, we see, hear, smell, taste and feel more than NT's. We see the different thinkers and their pain, I can spot a schizophrenic by demeanour alone. Sociopaths, psychopaths and schizophrenics see us seeing them.

Seeing the whole person brings about an emotional connection. Our desire to help can get us trapped easily.



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12 Aug 2017, 12:51 pm

xenocity wrote:
Aspies can be psychopaths and many have full blown psychosis.

Aspies are believed to be at a higher risk for mental illness as whole.

The point is anyone can be a psychopath, regardless of what else they suffer from.

No, Both psychopathy and sociopathy can't be developed if you have autism. Because the two have different defects in empathy. Autistic people don't have affective empathy, but have cognitive empathy. but Psychopathic/Sociopathic people have affective empathy, but not cognitive empathy. You really can't have both, because they both conflict. On top of that. There is no evidence that you could, have both.


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12 Aug 2017, 3:19 pm

Pieplup wrote:
xenocity wrote:
Aspies can be psychopaths and many have full blown psychosis.

Aspies are believed to be at a higher risk for mental illness as whole.

The point is anyone can be a psychopath, regardless of what else they suffer from.

No, Both psychopathy and sociopathy can't be developed if you have autism. Because the two have different defects in empathy. Autistic people don't have affective empathy, but have cognitive empathy. but Psychopathic/Sociopathic people have affective empathy, but not cognitive empathy. You really can't have both, because they both conflict. On top of that. There is no evidence that you could, have both.


Over 10 years ago, Simon Baron-Cohen proposed that ASD people are "unempathic" due to a malfunction in their mirror neurons. It remains a theory though is repeatedly stated as unopposed fact on WP and elsewhere.

Then, In 2007, the Swiss neuroscientists Henry and Kamilla Markham and a colleague theorised then claimed "the intense world theory" which proposes the very different view that rather than lacking empathy, ASD people are hypersensitive. Some I have met very definitely are.

In 2010, however, Israeli neuroscientist Ilan Dinstein and colleagues studied mirror neuron responses in ASD people and found them to be normal. Dinstein et al concluded that there was no malfunction in the mirror neurons at all, rather that ASD people had "noisy brain networks", that scramble incoming sensory data, making the deciphering of social input more difficult, though the difficulty was not due to any lack of empathic capacity.

ASD people show lots of empathy (of both kinds) in their writing, blogs, comments here, although some don't. We all have a unique history of formative experiences, just like NTs. (Meet one and you have met one). For some first person accounts, have a look at AutismandEmpathyblog. It's very interesting.

At the heart of this topic, which needs to be borne in mind I think, is the fact that we can get flooded/overwhelmed in encounters and then shutdown in order to stop the flooding and to self-set or self-regulate the hypersensitivity. Shutdowns may appear unempathic to onlookers, and makes ASD people targets because of ignorance and misunderstanding of the shutdown response.

Some people, both NT and ASD, seem to have very little empathy at all; the NTs who lack it are called psychopaths, and ASD people get tarred with the same brush, which is hurtful, false and dehumanising.

https://www.newscientist.com/article/dn ... in-autism/
https://autismandempathyblog.wordpress. ... algourmet/
http://time.com/3905841/autism-hyperfunctional/



johnnyh
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12 Aug 2017, 8:45 pm

No, that is not how it works! But Autism may be not the opposite but with schizophrenia, the two may be two sides of a similar coin. One is a disruption in toddlerhood during growth, one is a disruption during adolescence during fine tuning.
It's very rare to have both, but it must be awful is you are unlucky to have both.

As for mirror neurons, they are overrated and the studies showing higher activations in empathetic people point to feelings of empathy activating them, not the other way around.



rick sanchez
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12 Aug 2017, 8:58 pm

KateCoco wrote:
Venger wrote:
I know that it's common for autistic people to feel guilty over bad/negative occurrences when they're aware it wasn't even their fault at all. This sounds like the opposite of the way a sociopath/psychopath thinks in my opinion.


That's true.

I explain autism to my friends as being for me a hypo-connectivity to the world - everything outside of me has to go through a layer of translation to get into my brain, and everything in my brain has to go through a layer of translation to get into the world.

I wonder if psychopathy is - in part - hyper-connectivity to the world: psychopaths read, manipulate and deceive people to achieve their purposes with a much greater skill than NTs.


Nice! I tell people it is like the difference between languages learned as a child and as an adult. If you learn a language as an adult you brain has to translate it to your childhood language.

People are like that for me. I have keep a large part of my brain trying to translate what they are doing into something I can understand and the reverse.


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13 Aug 2017, 12:15 am

While everyone seems desperate to refute any similarities between autism and psychopathy, there are similarities in emotional response (or lack thereof) between psychopaths and alexithymics. And alexithymia is supposedly much higher in the autistic population. While everyone seems to be desperate to refute the idea that autistic people lack empathy (and rightly so, as a blanket statement of every autistic everywhere) some autistics do lack empathy. Especially if you're also in the alexithymic basket. Sharing traits with psychopathy, especially in regards to a deficit in empathy, doesn't automatically = a negative or bad thing.
I wish the generalization would just back up a bit.


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