I agree with you. The trend now is to lump every disorder together.
As I remember it sociopaths are basically emotionless, but aren't necessarily prone to criminal or violent behavior. It's just that they don't show any empathy, and simply do what they want quite literally.
Psychopaths were similarly lacking emotion, but were much more prone to violence, and criminal activity.
The Autism Spectrum, now encompasses damn near everything now. It's really rather meaningless.
I don't understand the reason for lumping everything together, unless there's some underlying legal ramifications at play. Redefining the terms will result in different legal outcomes.
Also, it might result in more people being diagnosed with mental disorders that result in the loss of rights and freedom. I would imagine that is driving the push to put everything together.
Note: I will murder anyone who disagrees with my opinion. It's nothing personal though. (sarc...) 😉👉
Philanthropath is a socio/psychopath masquerading as a philanthropist. (coined by a substacker Margaret Anna Alice.) Thought you may enjoy that term. BG is a perfect example.
This is helping me to think about the phenomenon of people (mainly, but not exclusively, women) who are diagnosed with both Borderline PD and Anti-Social PD. One such young woman is a member of my family, and I believe that diagnosis is accurate.
Such people are often hot-headed, and clearly have access to a broader range of emotions than the psychopath. They are often emotionally dysregulated, they can at least appear to feel wounded, but they go much farther in hurting and exploiting other people that normal range people, and often more than you might think even for a Borderline.
When I contemplate my mother, the closest approximation using DSM language is a full combination of true BPD and Narcissistic PD. But there have been times that she's taken actions that I can't describe in any other way than sociopathic. Apparently conscience-less, and deeply shocking.
But my mother, and the young woman in our family, neither of them are global psychopaths.
I read the article from the bottom up and found the last bits the most helpful. Those who have delved deeper into these materials may benefit from the earlier explanations.
In my training, the psychopath is called the Suppressive Person. This personality is at the root of a subject we call Ethics and Justice. We feel that any public legal system that does not take psychopathy into account is incomplete and faulty.
There is a related phenomenon discovered by Hubbard which he calls the Potential Trouble Source (PTS). This is a person who causes trouble for others by virtue of being connected to a Suppressive Person. The PTS individual is not usually a psychopath, and thus can be cured of their PTS condition. Now these initials have been used by psychiatry for one of their invented disorders. This confuses things for us, which I sometimes think is their primary intent!
I was introduced to the subject of how individuals interact with each other to produce irrational behaviors by Eric Berne, the inventor of Transactional Analysis. Though I believe his theory was too simplistic, it covered some phenomena also described by Hubbard (in his Dianetics work and elsewhere). Hubbard's model of the mind was significantly different than most other models (except maybe Berne's), and so his theory has no obvious analogy among the better known alternatives.
Hubbard postulated the basic mechanism of irrational behavior to be "restimulation." This may be called "triggering" in modern parlance. What gets restimulated (triggered) is an incident stored in the mind but unavailable to the conscious mind. Therapy involves either digging up and confronting the incident until its aberrative influence is eliminated, or strengthening the being so that restimulated incidents will be ignored.
It turns out that certain people are masters of the "art" of restimulating (triggering) others. This should NOT be confused with bad manners or mild teasing (as it often is.). Thus, therapies that handle the mechanism of restimulation are helpful defenses against psychopaths. Meanwhile, we have the option, with examples created by both Łobaczewski and Hubbard, to reform social systems, including the legal system, to better account for the presence of psychopaths in society.
A quick thanks mid-workday for providing these definitions, although I will have to read your piece later, Harrison. I did wonder awhile back if knowing the difference between psychopaths and sociopaths - and now, including antisocials - was a prerequisite for getting the most out of your writings. I feel less like a dope now that you’ve included a write up today.
"Psychopaths are cold-blooded and calculating. Non-psychopathic ASPDs are hot-headed and emotional. Psychopaths tend to use primarily instrumental aggression. ASPDs use primarily reactive or hostile aggression." Helpful distinction.
Really interesting and super helpful breakdown of all of the different terms used in the past and in use today with your descriptions very helpful in seeing the sometimes subtle and sometimes vast differences between them Harrison. I learned alot and this lumping together of different disorders also helps to explain why so many people are diagnosed or possibly misdiagnosed with both ADHD and or Borderline Personality Disorder these days!
I can speak to having OCD as it came upon me suddenly at 21 in the ‘80’s when my boyfriend suddenly out of the blue to me at least turned my world upside down and I went into shock while he was calm, rational, told me he’d been planning it for awhile and had found a place to move but was waiting for my stressful family situation to settle down so as to not “overload”me, how considerate NOT! He was as cool as a cucumber while I was intensely upset and bawling my eyes out and in shock as I had not even an inkling. This experience brought on OCD in me almost immediately after and it was so extremely scary because I didn’t know what was wrong with me. I could think rationally yet I couldn’t control the repetitive movements so I hid it from my parents and friends for years and I went through all my student loan money cause I couldn’t go or work. Btw after the breakup I went to see a psychiatrist to help me process it as prior the same boyfriend freaked me out by the way he was speaking about all of us people running around like ants not being capable of holding a thought in our tiny brains, and he seemed to have a private life from the one we shared, a normal person would say I’m going over to Justin’s to hang out for awhile where he never used names just going to “a friends”for awhile and I knew none of his friends. I remember the psychiatrist mentioned grandiose, and said that he was a ticking time bomb and for me to get as far away from him as I could.
He explained the OCD was caused from me feeling like I had no control over my own life, even having a name for it helped a little. At 27 I met my husband and at 30 we got married so I guess I felt confident enough in him to feel I finally had control of my life again and the OCD finally mostly disappeared as suddenly as it had come upon me. I lost from age 21 to 30, I couldn’t wash a sink full of dishes cause I’d be stuck there for hours repetitively washing one plate.. I couldn’t do laundry as I’d get stuck there too, my linen closet was so perfectly aligned, I counted numbers in my head, it was so debilitating for the first 7 years from normal to that seemingly overnight. Thankfully the intensity of it lessened and improved slowly over time as I gained more control over it as I felt I had regained control over my life again.
I learned much later from my mom that my dad had suffered from OCD too by getting up 3 times to wash the kitchen floor shortly after they married not remembering he’d already washed it twice before. His was caused from being a British young officer who went off to war with Germany and he was severely messed up afterwards including suicidal when my mom met him so I must have inherited similar genes and traits to my dad. Guess neither of us had a strong enough constitution to handle extremely stressful situations.
Sep 15, 2023·edited Sep 27, 2023Liked by Harrison Koehli
Antisocials are clearly, totally different than psychopaths. I can think of three antisocials I knew as a teenager:
> One was a girl skinhead with a chelsea haircut, suspenders and boots. People would ask her if she was a SHARP and she would say "fuck you, sharps are fuckin faggots!" and if someone mistook her for a bonehead, she would say "you callin' me a nazi?" and try to kick their ass. Her dad was an escapee from North Korea who was violent and unstable.
> The second was a gutterpunk with two mohawks that looked like wings, in the style of Keith Flint from The Prodigy. He then shaved off the right one and kept the left, to symbolize his commitment to left-wing politics. This was an excuse to pick a fistfight with anyone who made fun of his wing. His dad was in prison.
> The third had a GIANT afro—the biggest I've ever seen. He was only half-black, so his half-fro was all floppy like Sideshow Bob. It took up so much space that other people couldn't avoid it, and then he would pick a fight with them for "touching his hair." His dad was a Black Panther.
All three of them were violent, remorseless, unable to see fault in their own actions, and 1-dimensional. Their emotional transmission had basically three gears: arrogance ("I'm kickass!") malevolent glee ("Haha what a faggot!") and violent irritation ("Fuck you bitch!").
However, they were NOT psychopathic. They didn't even try to wear a mask of sanity—on the contrary, they purposely broadcast that they were violent nutcases. They understood sarcasm, and they could free-associate in conversation. Their sense of humor was mean-spirited, and they delighted in seeing people get hurt, but they at least understood how jokes work. They didn't seek approval, admiration, or positions of power. They had no spellbinding qualities or "special psychological knowledge". They all ran afoul of the law, were banned from different establishments, and were separated from the normal student body and moved to an alternative school.
The point is, there's no risk of any of these people conning anyone or rising to the top of a pathocracy, but they are useful as thugs and kapos. I think they're different than the 'frontal characteropathy' Lobaczewski describes, which seems closer to BPD (as you've surmised elsewhere).
There's one other kind of 'evil' person that we're overlooking, and that's the moral imbecile. This is someone for whom lack of empathy, insensitivity and emotional immaturity are functions of their general stupidity. But that's a topic for another time.
OK - here is a test for a pscyopath - damn I can't ever spell that word correct....anyhow....here is the simple test that I don't even know myself what I'm about to type next....
1. When is the last time you looked in the mirror?
2. If you did that, what did you think of yourself?
3. If you did not do that, why not?
4. Lets just imagine you are looking in the mirror - what do you sense?
5. Do you want to break the mirror?
~~~
Depending on the answers, I suspect it would be easy to identify the psychopaths, but the reality is they are already know because we know.
Back in the 70s I tried to study psychology and found it appallingly judgemental, based upon assumptions and fear. I put up with it for a season, questioned it and conducted experiments to submit for grades. I disproved enough of it to body-swerve it and swap over to philosophy.
I do not regret that decision. Since then volumes have been written and (undoubtedly) millions have been 'diagnosed' with 'conditions' that are neatly documented in tomes that only the doctors read.
Normal people do not diagnose each other. We deal with difficult people, emotionally stressed people and those who show little empathy all the time without attributing some fancy name to their personality.
If you really think about it - the entire idea of psychological analysis is sociopathic and probably completely inaccurate.
But I would hazard a guess that you will not be able to see it that way.
If you don't mind me being possible perceived as flippant, but what was the "fate" of all those tattooed ones in the image at the top of the article?
At the heart of "psychopathy" metaphorically speaking I think the psychopaths amongst us so harmful are disheartening for folks who don't understand how they could be so heartless. But the reality is they are amongst us and if they are not refuted, rebuked, and rebuffed in the present day, then I'm sad to report it likely spells the end of the human species as "we know it"....
I agree with you. The trend now is to lump every disorder together.
As I remember it sociopaths are basically emotionless, but aren't necessarily prone to criminal or violent behavior. It's just that they don't show any empathy, and simply do what they want quite literally.
Psychopaths were similarly lacking emotion, but were much more prone to violence, and criminal activity.
The Autism Spectrum, now encompasses damn near everything now. It's really rather meaningless.
I don't understand the reason for lumping everything together, unless there's some underlying legal ramifications at play. Redefining the terms will result in different legal outcomes.
Also, it might result in more people being diagnosed with mental disorders that result in the loss of rights and freedom. I would imagine that is driving the push to put everything together.
Note: I will murder anyone who disagrees with my opinion. It's nothing personal though. (sarc...) 😉👉
Philanthropath is a socio/psychopath masquerading as a philanthropist. (coined by a substacker Margaret Anna Alice.) Thought you may enjoy that term. BG is a perfect example.
This is helping me to think about the phenomenon of people (mainly, but not exclusively, women) who are diagnosed with both Borderline PD and Anti-Social PD. One such young woman is a member of my family, and I believe that diagnosis is accurate.
Such people are often hot-headed, and clearly have access to a broader range of emotions than the psychopath. They are often emotionally dysregulated, they can at least appear to feel wounded, but they go much farther in hurting and exploiting other people that normal range people, and often more than you might think even for a Borderline.
When I contemplate my mother, the closest approximation using DSM language is a full combination of true BPD and Narcissistic PD. But there have been times that she's taken actions that I can't describe in any other way than sociopathic. Apparently conscience-less, and deeply shocking.
But my mother, and the young woman in our family, neither of them are global psychopaths.
I also understand Psychopathy as Hare defined it.
Interesting how the majority of murderers are not Psychopaths. Guess they’re all in boardrooms, government, and executive offices 😀
I read the article from the bottom up and found the last bits the most helpful. Those who have delved deeper into these materials may benefit from the earlier explanations.
In my training, the psychopath is called the Suppressive Person. This personality is at the root of a subject we call Ethics and Justice. We feel that any public legal system that does not take psychopathy into account is incomplete and faulty.
There is a related phenomenon discovered by Hubbard which he calls the Potential Trouble Source (PTS). This is a person who causes trouble for others by virtue of being connected to a Suppressive Person. The PTS individual is not usually a psychopath, and thus can be cured of their PTS condition. Now these initials have been used by psychiatry for one of their invented disorders. This confuses things for us, which I sometimes think is their primary intent!
I was introduced to the subject of how individuals interact with each other to produce irrational behaviors by Eric Berne, the inventor of Transactional Analysis. Though I believe his theory was too simplistic, it covered some phenomena also described by Hubbard (in his Dianetics work and elsewhere). Hubbard's model of the mind was significantly different than most other models (except maybe Berne's), and so his theory has no obvious analogy among the better known alternatives.
Hubbard postulated the basic mechanism of irrational behavior to be "restimulation." This may be called "triggering" in modern parlance. What gets restimulated (triggered) is an incident stored in the mind but unavailable to the conscious mind. Therapy involves either digging up and confronting the incident until its aberrative influence is eliminated, or strengthening the being so that restimulated incidents will be ignored.
It turns out that certain people are masters of the "art" of restimulating (triggering) others. This should NOT be confused with bad manners or mild teasing (as it often is.). Thus, therapies that handle the mechanism of restimulation are helpful defenses against psychopaths. Meanwhile, we have the option, with examples created by both Łobaczewski and Hubbard, to reform social systems, including the legal system, to better account for the presence of psychopaths in society.
A quick thanks mid-workday for providing these definitions, although I will have to read your piece later, Harrison. I did wonder awhile back if knowing the difference between psychopaths and sociopaths - and now, including antisocials - was a prerequisite for getting the most out of your writings. I feel less like a dope now that you’ve included a write up today.
"Psychopaths are cold-blooded and calculating. Non-psychopathic ASPDs are hot-headed and emotional. Psychopaths tend to use primarily instrumental aggression. ASPDs use primarily reactive or hostile aggression." Helpful distinction.
Really interesting and super helpful breakdown of all of the different terms used in the past and in use today with your descriptions very helpful in seeing the sometimes subtle and sometimes vast differences between them Harrison. I learned alot and this lumping together of different disorders also helps to explain why so many people are diagnosed or possibly misdiagnosed with both ADHD and or Borderline Personality Disorder these days!
I can speak to having OCD as it came upon me suddenly at 21 in the ‘80’s when my boyfriend suddenly out of the blue to me at least turned my world upside down and I went into shock while he was calm, rational, told me he’d been planning it for awhile and had found a place to move but was waiting for my stressful family situation to settle down so as to not “overload”me, how considerate NOT! He was as cool as a cucumber while I was intensely upset and bawling my eyes out and in shock as I had not even an inkling. This experience brought on OCD in me almost immediately after and it was so extremely scary because I didn’t know what was wrong with me. I could think rationally yet I couldn’t control the repetitive movements so I hid it from my parents and friends for years and I went through all my student loan money cause I couldn’t go or work. Btw after the breakup I went to see a psychiatrist to help me process it as prior the same boyfriend freaked me out by the way he was speaking about all of us people running around like ants not being capable of holding a thought in our tiny brains, and he seemed to have a private life from the one we shared, a normal person would say I’m going over to Justin’s to hang out for awhile where he never used names just going to “a friends”for awhile and I knew none of his friends. I remember the psychiatrist mentioned grandiose, and said that he was a ticking time bomb and for me to get as far away from him as I could.
He explained the OCD was caused from me feeling like I had no control over my own life, even having a name for it helped a little. At 27 I met my husband and at 30 we got married so I guess I felt confident enough in him to feel I finally had control of my life again and the OCD finally mostly disappeared as suddenly as it had come upon me. I lost from age 21 to 30, I couldn’t wash a sink full of dishes cause I’d be stuck there for hours repetitively washing one plate.. I couldn’t do laundry as I’d get stuck there too, my linen closet was so perfectly aligned, I counted numbers in my head, it was so debilitating for the first 7 years from normal to that seemingly overnight. Thankfully the intensity of it lessened and improved slowly over time as I gained more control over it as I felt I had regained control over my life again.
I learned much later from my mom that my dad had suffered from OCD too by getting up 3 times to wash the kitchen floor shortly after they married not remembering he’d already washed it twice before. His was caused from being a British young officer who went off to war with Germany and he was severely messed up afterwards including suicidal when my mom met him so I must have inherited similar genes and traits to my dad. Guess neither of us had a strong enough constitution to handle extremely stressful situations.
Excellent post, and I learned a lot more than I knew I didn't know. Thank you.
Antisocials are clearly, totally different than psychopaths. I can think of three antisocials I knew as a teenager:
> One was a girl skinhead with a chelsea haircut, suspenders and boots. People would ask her if she was a SHARP and she would say "fuck you, sharps are fuckin faggots!" and if someone mistook her for a bonehead, she would say "you callin' me a nazi?" and try to kick their ass. Her dad was an escapee from North Korea who was violent and unstable.
> The second was a gutterpunk with two mohawks that looked like wings, in the style of Keith Flint from The Prodigy. He then shaved off the right one and kept the left, to symbolize his commitment to left-wing politics. This was an excuse to pick a fistfight with anyone who made fun of his wing. His dad was in prison.
> The third had a GIANT afro—the biggest I've ever seen. He was only half-black, so his half-fro was all floppy like Sideshow Bob. It took up so much space that other people couldn't avoid it, and then he would pick a fight with them for "touching his hair." His dad was a Black Panther.
All three of them were violent, remorseless, unable to see fault in their own actions, and 1-dimensional. Their emotional transmission had basically three gears: arrogance ("I'm kickass!") malevolent glee ("Haha what a faggot!") and violent irritation ("Fuck you bitch!").
However, they were NOT psychopathic. They didn't even try to wear a mask of sanity—on the contrary, they purposely broadcast that they were violent nutcases. They understood sarcasm, and they could free-associate in conversation. Their sense of humor was mean-spirited, and they delighted in seeing people get hurt, but they at least understood how jokes work. They didn't seek approval, admiration, or positions of power. They had no spellbinding qualities or "special psychological knowledge". They all ran afoul of the law, were banned from different establishments, and were separated from the normal student body and moved to an alternative school.
The point is, there's no risk of any of these people conning anyone or rising to the top of a pathocracy, but they are useful as thugs and kapos. I think they're different than the 'frontal characteropathy' Lobaczewski describes, which seems closer to BPD (as you've surmised elsewhere).
There's one other kind of 'evil' person that we're overlooking, and that's the moral imbecile. This is someone for whom lack of empathy, insensitivity and emotional immaturity are functions of their general stupidity. But that's a topic for another time.
OK - here is a test for a pscyopath - damn I can't ever spell that word correct....anyhow....here is the simple test that I don't even know myself what I'm about to type next....
1. When is the last time you looked in the mirror?
2. If you did that, what did you think of yourself?
3. If you did not do that, why not?
4. Lets just imagine you are looking in the mirror - what do you sense?
5. Do you want to break the mirror?
~~~
Depending on the answers, I suspect it would be easy to identify the psychopaths, but the reality is they are already know because we know.
~~
BK
Back in the 70s I tried to study psychology and found it appallingly judgemental, based upon assumptions and fear. I put up with it for a season, questioned it and conducted experiments to submit for grades. I disproved enough of it to body-swerve it and swap over to philosophy.
I do not regret that decision. Since then volumes have been written and (undoubtedly) millions have been 'diagnosed' with 'conditions' that are neatly documented in tomes that only the doctors read.
Normal people do not diagnose each other. We deal with difficult people, emotionally stressed people and those who show little empathy all the time without attributing some fancy name to their personality.
If you really think about it - the entire idea of psychological analysis is sociopathic and probably completely inaccurate.
But I would hazard a guess that you will not be able to see it that way.
Yes, but the answer is beyond that. If you care, please contact me. If not, then keep focusing on the drama.
If you don't mind me being possible perceived as flippant, but what was the "fate" of all those tattooed ones in the image at the top of the article?
At the heart of "psychopathy" metaphorically speaking I think the psychopaths amongst us so harmful are disheartening for folks who don't understand how they could be so heartless. But the reality is they are amongst us and if they are not refuted, rebuked, and rebuffed in the present day, then I'm sad to report it likely spells the end of the human species as "we know it"....
So - what side are you on?
BK