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A girlfriend of mine recently recommended a book called The Sociopath Next Door, and I just started reading it. It’s possible that someone on here has mentioned it at one point. I have been calling my stbx a narcissist, but wow, does some of this reading ring scary and true. I never realized the definition of sociopath boils down to lack of conscience. Now, in the long run, he’s an asshole, as are many of them. But for the sake of an academic discussion, what do you think is the greater PD for SA’s: NPD (narcissistic personality disorder), or APD (antisocial personality disorder, aka sociopathy)?
I am so wondering the same thing. To me, a personality disorder label is enough kwim. It is enough to know they are disordered and have no rhyme or reason as to how they relate their pains and joys in life…aka the disorder. Having said that, I would venture to say a Narc has more ability and awareness of social strata to reflect or play a game to the masses…a APD truly has no awareness and is just hungry for a kill, more like a wolf. To me a Narc is like a permanent teenager from hell who is prone to tantrums…an APD is a wolf with a bloody lip and no fear of a predator. Just my thoughts on the topic. But this is something I always truly do wonder about and I am hoping more people will post on here that may actually have training in this arena to detail the differences.
Mine was tested at Minwalla’s. He was high on the narc scale but not high enough to diagnose. He was not diagnosed with a PD. I have the testing results. He was just a run of the mill “jerk”.
Mine was tested for sociopathy and he wasn’t. I knew that. He is far too needy to be a sociopath. Socios are VERY cool tickets and they know how to play to win, because that is their raison d’ĂŞtre. To win.
Mine may be closer to sociopath. He doesn’t need anything. We could all drop dead and he would go to work….
He would play the poor me sympathy card for all it was worth 🙂
Socios do not panic. narcs can….if they are about to suffer a “narcissistic injury” I was glancing through a Psychology Today magazine at the airport. There was an article called “confessions of a sociopath” One thing it did say is socios are undisturbed by prolonged eye contact and will not politely look away. It has been referred to as “the predator’s stare”. Creepy….just like half the guys here.
I think I read that article, Karen. It was written by a woman? A law professor? There was something about that article that bothered me. I finished it and put it down and didn’t really pick at that feeling. I think maybe it seemed almost like this woman was bragging or affected? Not quite cool and professorial. She did not sound at all like a law professor, as I recall. More like it was all staged like a reality TV show, if that makes sense. What did you think?
Also, people can be narcs with sociopathic tendencies. It’s like a sliding scale. So one can have a high degree of sociopathic tendencies without being a sociopath. I’d love to sit and ask some expert about the distinctions and how to tell the difference. I think they have to be pretty dysfunctional to qualify as a true psychopath. I wonder if they would have picked up Ted Bundy’s sociopathy with the Hare test before they knew he was a murderer.
I read that book about a year ago- like much of what I’ve read with PTSD, very little sticks in my brain.
I mean that he does not truly need anything. He would be fine on his own. Now, this little recovery dance he is doing ( and to be fair he means it right now) requires participants.
If we all died, he would only come up with tears for himself……
I think he is so emotionally shut down that nothing could topple him.
zumbagirl love your post. It just so happens I’ve been reading much about this as I strongly believe this is what my SA is. Only took me 10 years figure it out. Here’s a link to the entire post, but next I’m gonna show you some interesting parts of this article that would relate to any of us if our SA is a psycho/sociopath.
file:///C:/Documents%20and%20Settings/Kelly%20Cook/Desktop/jewelkade/research/The%20Psychopath%E2%80%99s%20Emotions%20%20What%20Does%20He%20Feel%20%20%20%20Psychopathyawareness’s%20Blog.htm
Not sure if the link will work, if not just copy and paste in your address bar. don’t let the scary pictures turn you away, read it, it’s very interesting.
4) Consternation. As we’ve seen so far, psychopaths don’t create love bonds with others. They establish dominance bonds instead. When those controlled by a psychopath disapprove of his actions or sever the relationship, sometimes he’ll experience anger. But his immediate reaction is more likely to be surprise or consternation. Psychopaths can’t believe that their bad actions, which they always consider justifiable and appropriate, could ever cause another human being who was previously under their spell to disapprove of their behavior and reject them. Even if they cheat, lie, use, manipulate or isolate others, they don’t feel like they deserve any repercussions as a result of that behavior. In addition, psychopaths rationalize their bad actions as being in the best interest of their victims.
For instance, if a psychopath isolates his partner from her family and persuades her to quit her job and then, once she’s all alone with him, abandons her to pursue other women, he feels fully justified in his conduct. In his mind, she deserved to be left since she didn’t satisfy all of his needs or was somehow inadequate as a mate. In fact, given his sense of entitlement, the psychopath might even feel like he did her a favor to remove her from her family and friends and to leave her alone in the middle of nowhere, like a wreck displaced by a tornado. Thanks to him, she can start her life anew and become more independent.
To put it bluntly, a psychopath will kick you in the teeth and expect you to say “Thank you.” Being shameless and self-absorbed, he assumes that all those close to him will buy his false image of goodness and excuse his despicable actions just as he does. In fact, he expects that even the women he’s used and discarded continue to idealize him as a perfect partner and eagerly await his return. That way he can continue to use them for sex, money, control, his image or any other services if, when and for however long he chooses to return into their lives.
When those women don’t feel particularly grateful—when, in fact, they feel only contempt for him–the psychopath will be initially stunned that they have such a low opinion of him. He will also feel betrayed by these women, or by family members and friends who disapprove of his reprehensible behavior. Although he, himself, feels no love and loyalty to anyone, a psychopath expects unconditional love and loyalty from all those over whom he’s established a dominance bond.
This mindset also explains psychopaths’ behavior in court. Both Scott Peterson and Neil Entwistle seemed outraged that the jury found them guilty of murder. Psychopaths believe that those whom they have hurt, and society in general, should not hold them accountable for their misdeeds. After all, in their own minds, they’re superior to other human beings and therefore above the law. How dare anybody hold them accountable and punish them for their crimes!My SA will seem to show distress at times, but as it says below, is immediately ok. I’ve noticed this especially lately with all that has been going on. Where we struggle to smile and go about our daily activities and be sociable, they are fine. Completely unaffected.
6) Histrionic flashes. I’m not sure if this is an emotion, but I know for sure that the psychopath’s dramatic displays of love, remorse and empathy lack any meaning and depth. If you watch the murder trials on the news or on Court TV, you’ll notice that some psychopaths convicted of murder often put on shows of grief, sadness or remorse in front of the jury. The next moment, however, they’re joking around and laughing with their attorneys or instructing them in a calm and deliberate manner about what to do and say on their behalf. The displays of emotion psychopaths commonly engage in are, of course, fake. They’re tools of manipulation–to provoke sympathy or gain trust–as well as yet another way of “winning” by fooling those around them.
8) Self-love (sort of). Since psychopaths only care about themselves, one would think that self-love would be the one emotion they could experience more deeply. In a sense that’s true, since their whole lives revolve around the single-minded pursuit of selfish goals. But this is also what makes psychopaths’ self-love as shallow as the rest of their emotions. Just as they’re incapable of considering anyone else’s long-term interest, they’re incapable of considering their own. By pursuing fleeting pleasures and momentary whims, psychopaths sabotage their own lives as well. Rarely do they end up happy or successful. They spend their whole lives hurting and betraying those who loved and trusted them, using and discarding their partners, disappointing the expectations of their families, friends, bosses and colleagues and moving from one meaningless diversion to another. At the end of the road, most of them end up empty-handed and alone.
THIS BY FAR IS THE MOST INTERESTING OF ALL…
9) CONTEMPT. I’ve capitalized this word because this is the emotion that dominates a psychopath’s whole identity and way of looking at other human beings. No matter how charming, other-regarding and friendly they may appear to be on the outside, all psychopaths are misanthropes on the inside. A psychopath’s core emotion is contempt for the individuals he fools, uses and abuses and for humanity in general. You can identify the psychopath’s underlying contempt much more easily once he no longer needs you or once his mask of sanity shatters. As we’ve seen, psychopaths hold themselves in high regard and others in low regard. To describe the hierarchies they construct, I’ll use an analogy from my literary studies. I was trained in Comparative Literature during they heyday of Jacques Derrida’s deconstruction as it was being applied to pretty much everything: cultural studies, gender hierarchies, race relations, post-colonialism and the kitchen sink.
Although looking at life in general in terms of “indeterminate” binary hierarchies hasn’t proved particularly useful, this polarized worldview describes rather well the mindset of psychopaths. For such disordered, narcissistic and unprincipled individuals, the world is divided into superiors (themselves) and inferiors (all others); predators (themselves) and prey (their targets); dupers (themselves) and duped (the suckers). Of course, only giving psychopaths a lobotomy would turn these binary hierarchies upside down in their minds. This is where the applicability of Derrida’s deconstructive model stops. Although psychopaths consider themselves superior to others, they distinguish among levels of inferiority in the people they use, manipulate and dupe.
The biggest dupes in their eyes are those individuals who believe whole-heartedly that the psychopaths are the kind, honest, other-regarding individuals they appear to be. As the saying goes, if you buy that, I have some oceanfront property in Kansas to sell you. Such individuals don’t present much of a challenge for psychopaths. They’re usually quickly used up and discarded by them. The second tier of dupes consists of individuals who are lucid only when it comes to the psychopath’s mistreatment of others, not themselves. Wives and girlfriends who are clever enough to see how the psychopath cheats on, lies to, uses and manipulates other people in his life, but vain or blind enough to believe that they’re the only exception to this rule form the bulk of this group.
This brings to mind an episode of a popular court show I watched recently. A woman testified on behalf of the integrity and honesty of her boyfriend. As it turns out, he had cheated on his wife with her (and other women as well). But his girlfriend nonetheless staunchly defended his character. She maintained that even though she knew that her lover was a cheater and a liar, because she herself was such a great catch and because they had such a special and unique relationship, he was completely faithful and honest to her. The judge laughed out loud and added, “…that you know of!”
Women who are cynical enough to see the psychopath’s mistreatment of others yet gullible enough not to see that’s exactly what he’s doing to them constitute his preferred targets. Such women are not so naive as to present no challenge whatsoever for the psychopath. But they’re definitely blind enough to fall for his manipulation and lies. A psychopath will wrap several such women around his little finger. Those who finally see the psychopath’s mistreatment as a sign of his malicious and corrupt nature occupy the third rung of the hierarchy. They’re usually women who have been burned so badly by the psychopath that they don’t wish to put their hands into the fire again.AND THIS IS FOR BEV…. my SA cannot STAND to be alone.
Psychopaths can’t tolerate loneliness. Just as all human beings can’t survive physically without food and water, psychopaths can’t survive emotionally without victims.
Of course, psychopaths regard love with contempt. They view loving and loyal couples as an ugly, undifferentiated blob. Because they can’t experience or even understand love and loyalty, they see moral individuals as weak. They have nothing but disdain for the emotions that normal human beings feel. But at the same time, psychopaths can’t live without feeding upon the real and deeper emotions of people who care about them, of individuals who can love: in other words of the people they use, abuse, toy with, lie to and hurt.
Psychopaths are often sexual predators. But even more often, and certainly more fundamentally, they’re emotional predators. What they want from their victims is far more than possessing their bodies or sex. They need to feed their insatiable appetite for harm, as well as sustain their sense of superiority, by possessing and destroying others inside and out, body and soul. A psychopath’s emotional framework is like a vacuum that needs to suck out the emotional energy from healthy individuals in order to survive. This is why I have called psychopaths real-life vampires, that we need to understand and worry about far more than their fictional counterparts.Ladies, the reason the number of psycho/sociopaths is so low is because they are smart. And they know how to fool any test and especially pass a lie detector. This is not just my opinion, I have read it quite a bit. I mean think about it. Even you or I are smart enough, because we have all become so intuitive, to “trick” one of these tests. Do you think a psychopath is going to say he enjoys causing and watching other peoples pain? C’mon now.
I think there are different degrees for these monsters. I don’t THINK my SA would ever kill another human being. But I have seen him angry enough in the past, when I am interfering with his NEED to go get a fix, or threatening to expose something, where he has become physical to stop me or get me out of his way, and I see the way his eyes change. Become dark and cold and it’s almost as if he’s left his body. There have only been 2 times in 10 years I felt this. But I’ll never forget it. I felt that my life was in danger, and then as quick as it comes on, it is gone and he is fine.
I call it seeing the monster and once you have seen it then that should be enough. It’s like looking straight into hell.
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