Loonies, yes, but not in the context you mean exactly. For the amount of people on paroxetine and venlafaxine and wellbutrin you'd have thought any shame and stigma about mental health would have disappeared long ago. A friend of mine started her psych rotation at a hospital and is having the experience of reading people's suicide notes. And frequently, her thoughts are "Really? This is your last message to your wife and kids? You can do better." She also has the urge to correct spelling and grammatical errors. Maybe she's the sociopath.
Honestly? The chick in the OP sounds more like someone having an untreated manic episode with a few drinks in her, or someone who's done too much coke. Nothing about that description really strikes me as sociopathic. Sociopath's are glib and cunning. Sociopath's are usually quite charming and are usually good liars. Not jackass braggarts. They tend to have a grandiose sense of self and a complete disconnect from right and wrong, and they usually don't see anything as being wrong with themselves... But they can't maintain that if they keep getting caught lying. They learn quickly to tell lies that blow up their sense of self but don't get caught. They tend to be authoritarian and don't like being questioned. They tend to be paranoid and escalate rapidly to aggression. If you'd asked a sociopath if they'd really scored as well on the LSATs, they wouldn't look confused - they'd get pissed at you. It's also rare for girls to be sociopaths, and even more rare to realize that a girl is a sociopath if you aren't looking for it. We have a bunch of social conditioning to be wary of sociopathic guys - lots of the general 'don't date a predator girl!' advice about guys applies fairly well for identifying sociopaths. We're less conditioned to think in those terms about women in general. Also, most people don't really know the warning signs of a sociopath and it's easy even if you do know them to read them as something else. I've spoken with a couple of sociopaths via email and forums. Their perspectives on shit tend to be interesting. When they've been treated and counseled enough to know that they're sociopathic and manage some of the more abhorrent characteristics of the disorder, they tend to be pretty cool people - in that kind of scary way where talking to them is fun but you don't want them to know where you live. You don't really see the crazy so much as you get a distinct sense that they're looking at the world from a very different place. The crazy comes out in other ways. The craziest person I know is I think a sociopath. There's very definitely something wrong with him in a major way. I got to know him before I knew anything about sociopaths. He's been a friend of mine since highschool, and got into the Australian armed forces and then into the SAS for training before he was discharged for 'psychological unsuitability' - which I think translates to someone realized that he was a scary person to be manning an automatic weapon when shit got boring. After his discharge - he eventually found a career in the armed forces that suited him - deploying to Africa with the french foreign legion. When researching where to join up - his criteria was first that he would absolutely get to kill someone. On a fundamental level - the guy is glib, charming, funny, good looking and has every hallmark of being someone most girls would want to date. He was a complete ladies man before the army and got laid more than any of us. He once went from wandering dog to kept man in a relationship and explained to us the economics of how much sex he was getting in a relationship - vs how much sex he was getting with random women and how much effort it took to get that sex vs how much effort it took to be in a relationship with a woman who did what he said... No sign of remorse or consideration or compassion, and every indication that people were just there as his toys and his only concessions to social norms and other people's rights to not do what he wanted, were what he could and couldn't get away with. His charm was clearly a mask - and when you get to know him well enough to see past the mask - he's fucking frightening. His civillian jobs started off doing amateur cage match bouts, but he kept failing to stop when people tapped out and injured a couple of people pretty badly before the league told him he wasn't welcome any more. He went and did security work for a pub that has a reputation for employing scary violent people as security and beating the crap out of anyone who gets out of line. He was fired for almost killing a cop. He was doing security work at a casino until the damage he did to some girl who was cheating was deemed excessive (if you've worked around casino security - that should give you an idea of how far over the line he went). These days he does computer work for the casino's where he's kept far away from violent situations. It wouldn't at all surprise me to find out that he has a secondary off the books income doing something the Casino doesn't mention on it's tax reports. If I wanted an illegal fire arms, or access to non standard drugs like Rohypnol? He's probably the one I'd call. He's beyond question the craziest person I know, and the scariest. But if you met him in the street? You'd just think he's a big, muscular and slightly gruff guy, or if there was a pretty girl around? That he was a charming, funny, generally nice guy. The weirdest part of knowing him is seeing him with his girlfriend. His girlfriend is 4'11 and was a competitive weight lifter who competed internationally and did pretty well. She's about the most adorably cute and cutesy person I've ever met and is incredibly sweet. As broken as my friend is - he genuinely cares for this girl on a level I've never seen in him before. They've been together for a few years. I think however that if anyone ever hurts that girl - they should be on the first plane out of the country and put a lot of effort into disappearing. Lots of my friends talk shit about how they'd kill someone? I think my friend already knows how he'd render someone unconscious, what kind of knife he'd use for the kill, where he'd make the kill cuts and the dismemberment cuts, where he'd dump the body and what he'd keep as a trophy. I don't think he's killed people outside of the armed forces (although I wouldn't be surprised to learn that I'm wrong), but I won't be the least bit surprised when he turns up in the news in a serial killer trial. That said, we've been friends for a long time, and I've never felt anything but safe around him. I also learned early where the boundaries were and what buttons not to push. A few of my girlfriends who've met him were completely creeped out and my (now ex) wife was very firm on the fact that he wasn't allowed to know where we lived and she wasn't to be left alone with him under any circumstances. It was really only after seeing how creeped out she was that I started thinking about him in the context of sociopaths and realized how very closely he fits the bill.
My third cousin, "Rex", is a sociopath (that's what his entire immediate family says). Here is a guy who truly cannot keep still. Not that he's wirey or sketchy or psycho, but he constantly keeps himself busy with jobs and hobbies and whutnot. No kids, no relationship I can think of. Just keeping himself busy is the only thing that I knew him to do. At the same time, the very few times I've hung out with the guy face-to-face he scared the living shit out of me. He talks in long, dream-like sentences when describing just about anything. His eyes flutter at half-mast all the time but he's always aware of his surroundings (he likes sitting or standing against walls like ex-cons do), always staring you directly in the eyes like he's trying to hypnotize you in a really bad way. Opinionated does not begin to decribe this man as well. He is always right, and you either agree or you are WRONG and that's final in his world, and he fights any slight belief he has to the death. It's unnerving and scary, which pretty much describes him to a "T". And skilled at hurting people? Jesus. He had this trick of his he once "performed on me" where he makes you run down the street, and when you get about twenty yards form him he skips an old wooden police nightstick off the ground at you and trips you between your ankles like throwing a bola. He said an RCMP goon taught him how to do it. "The hard way?" I asked. All I can say is, I'm glad this cat is long out of my life. When he enters a room, the temperature drops ten degrees.
I spent a week with a few when I was put in the "happy place" 3.5 years ago. The schizophrenics were much more daffy and entertaining though. Getting up on a table during group to recite Cicero in Latin, the paranoid woman who tout the staff was out to kill her by radiation exposure from their watch dials (she would throw a batshit crazy fit if a watch came within two feet of her), but the saddest was the catatonic. It wa like looking at a big egg in a wheelchair. You knew there was some life going on inside, but had no idea what it was like. MIs are simply horrific places. I worked with some kids this past semester who are in prodromal stages of personality disorders. They got a tough road ahead of them. Speaking of people with SMI, anyone see where Hinkley's lawyers are trying to make a case for his reentry into the community? I wonder if he'll be out in time for the premier of Carnage.
I would have to say that I straddle the line. I used to be the worst kind of person. I used people, manipulated them, mostly women. I would be in multiple relationships at the same time, upwards of three girls. I was good at it. I could seamlessly tell lies, and keep up with every story for every different group of people that knew the different versions of me. I don't think anyone from any of my group of friends knows really who I am, or what I have done in the past. Even my wife is in the dark as to most of my misdeeds, though she is the only woman I haven't screwed around on. I am overly impulsive, have gambling addictions, took on more debts than I at the time could have paid. If you look through the checklist, I meet most of them with the exception of criminal behavior. I am not saying I am one, but I have some pretty big personality issues. This is the main list. Red is me: Glibness/superficial charm Grandiose sense of self-worth Pathological lying Cunning/manipulative Lack of remorse or guilt Emotionally shallow Callous/lack of empathy Failure to accept responsibility for own actions Factor 2 Socially deviant lifestyle Need for stimulation/proneness to boredom Parasitic lifestyle Poor behavioral control Promiscuous sexual behavior Lack of realistic, long-term goals Impulsiveness Irresponsibility Juvenile delinquency Early behavioral problems Revocation of conditional release Many short-term marital relationships Criminal versatility
I had an internship last year in an elementary school and the only reason a little girl (a ginger, go figure) wasn't classified as a full-blown sociopath was because she was too young (you have to be 18 or more to be officially diagnosed). She was in third grade when I met her. At first, she did what I said and seemed very eager to seem nice and smiling. Still, I felt something was off. Two girls followed her all the time and she would tell them what they could do or couldn't do. One of the weaker students (the poor kid almost had a ''bully me'' sign on the forehead) kept telling me she did things to him (hitting him, calling him names, telling him he couldn't play certain games, etc.) but that student had a big tendency to exaggerate things to get attention so I wasn't sure if I could trust him. I was also unable to catch her in the act and her version of the story was ''I didn't do anything to him'' and she showed no remorse or didn't seem to lie. I asked the teacher who was coaching me about her. She told me to be careful around her and closely monitor her behavior, and told me that when she was in first grade, she was caught bullying several other kids. She had built herself a gang of underlings she would abuse psychologically and physically and she would make them do whatever she wanted. She forced one to eat dirty leaves, forced another one to touch dog poo, and other similar stuff. It doesn't seem like much, but it's a big deal for first graders. Remember, she was 6 or 7 years old at the time. Teachers found about it and she was closely monitored for a while. I was also told never to confront her in front of the class. I did it by mistake once and understood why immediately. She changed her body language a little and very subtly brought the other students on board with her. She got them excited enough that I almost lost control of the class and had to focus on them instead of her. The thing is, she didn't do it like a class clown would (like making a fart joke or something similar) and on paper, she hadn't done anything wrong. She was just so good at using her tone and body language she'd make me lose face and use the others against me. Even if she was young, the way she could manipulate and use others was brilliant. Even then, I had a hard time the next time I had to confront her about something even though I made sure to do it away from the others. Every little thing she said or every little move she made made me feel like I was beta and she was alpha. It wasn't aggressive, she just acted... dominant. I was a 24 years old confident adult male talking to a 9 years old scrawny ginger girl with freckles, but still, every fiber in my being was telling me to obey her. There's no way the other kids her age could fight against that. So far, I've never met anyone who could manipulate others that easily or gave off such a powerful ''you're beneath me'' vibe. She had an innate understanding and mastery of human interactions and could play and deceive others at will. Thinking about it, I should have given her 20 dollars and told her to remember me when she'll rule the world (or, at the very least, her own cult).
APD can be preliminarily diagnosed before the age of 18. My mother shared with me at dinner a few weeks ago that all my childhood shrinks thought I was a sociopath, but labeled me with APD because you can't label an eight year old a sociopath. I fit a lot of the criteria, but the hallmark of sociopathy is the inability to empathize or generally feel emotion, which I'm pretty sure I know how to do by now. I think.
My mother classified me as a sociopath when I was twelve. It turns out that she was the sociopath, I was just playing her by her rules. As I grew up and got away from her, I learned that I have a big heart, I just had it under lock and key for a long fucking time. So, that is why PIMPTRESS sees both a psychologist and a psychiatrist, because I am still learning it's okay to be human.
Check. Check. Not really. Check. Check. Check. Check. Check. Huh. Look at that. My ex boyfriend was a sociopath.
Winterbike, did you check her scalp for tatoos? The craziest people I met were people confined in an institution for the criminally insane where I had some of my Psychiatry classes. Very few of them were sociopaths (the majority of them end up in regular prisons), most people there were schizophrenics, oligophrenics and there were a couple of guys with temporal lobe epilepsy. But rest assured the time I spent there convinced me that if one day I commited a crime I would never plead insanity to walk out of jail.
I dunno what my second husband was, but there was something wrong with that man. Delusions of adequacy? Much less grandeur? Yup. The only thing getting that man through the day was the thought that he had once been something amazing, so he was therefore above his station and totally undervalued. Pathological liar? For sure...to the point of mentally re-writing history on a mind-blowing scale. Manipulative? Certainly. Emotional blackmail was a regular occurrence until the emotion was removed on my part. Physical violence? Yes. Withhold affection (see: emotional blackmail)? Regularly. Cunning and strategic in decisions? Yes. Constant martyrdom and victimization? Ugh. Yes. Everything was a sacrifice for that man. I don't know. There was a constant "I'm a failure, I can't believe what a failure my life is...I'm sorry I'm such a failure..." "You're not a failure..." "Yes I am, I'm a failure admit it, don't patronize me, I'm a failure..." "Dude. You've got a home and a great job and blahblahblah..." "I'm a failure, stop lying to yourself and to me..." "*sigh* Fine, you're a failure..." "BITCH HOW DARE YOU I WILL FUCK YOU UP!!!" *fight ensues* Tiresome, people like this. Avoid them.
Glibness/superficial charm - Most people like me when they meet me. Infact I'd say about 99%. Grandiose sense of self-worth - Look above, I also think I'm the smartest person in the room pretty much all the time. Pathological lying - You can't even begin to comprehend. Sometimes it's to the point where I forget what's real. I've told so many people I'm a year older than I am that once I corrected my mom and gave her my fake age thinking it was the right one. Cunning/manipulative - Sometimes, I don't think this one is to the point of a sociopath. Lack of remorse or guilt - A little bit. Emotionally shallow - A lot of bits. Callous/lack of empathy - My second cousin's brother got stabbed to death. He had a lot of misplaced aggression after which is understandable. It still annoyed me and I told him off and cut him out for a while because it suited me. I feel kind of bad now but I never really went back to help him and left him to deal on his own...or at least without me. Failure to accept responsibility for own actions - I'm told I do that, but it might be immaturity. Factor 2 Socially deviant lifestyle - Not really. Need for stimulation/proneness to boredom - Yep, I'm still in school but I quit most jobs after a month or two because I can't fucking stand them. Parasitic lifestyle - Stole from a roomate that helped me out repeatedly (small stuff that I rationalized he wouldn't miss or care about.) Also lived with my best friend for a while rent free and still treated him like shit because he'd let me. Poor behavioral control - I don't think so. Promiscuous sexual behavior - Yes, but I am 21. Lack of realistic, long-term goals - I want to be a stand up comedian (attention whore) but I am in school for computer science as a solid backup. Impulsiveness - No Irresponsibility - Yes Juvenile delinquency - no Early behavioral problems - Not that I'm told of Revocation of conditional release - No Many short-term marital relationships - No. Criminal versatility - Not really. So yeah, I don't think anyone that knows me would describe me as a sociopath but I definitely would. I try to work on it, the worst one is the lying. It's not that I like doing most of those things. I just do them without thinking it's part part of who I am. My name is rbz90 and I might be a sociopath?
Interesting, so do you ever question why/how you're friends with him? Or do you feel like you're friends with just a portion of his personality? Just curious. One person that comes to mind may not actually fit the bill, based on Scootah's in-depth description...I don't know this guy well enough and it's been a long time since we were both in jr high/h.s. together. But he was/is glib and charming and so funny, very well-liked. He also was (is?) a date rapist; he got off on preying on getting the trashy, not in-clique, girls alone with him and making them cry by forcing himself on them. This was in the late 80s, when we were in h.s., and reunions and turning 30, then 35, then 40 always get me remembering him, and wondering WEHT. Thanks to the wonders of the internet, I get a partial answer...he's a family man, and active and well-known church member, what looks like a really well known and successful consultant in his field (where it looks like his charm and personality are key). Awhile back, I used to think about "outing" him somehow, and letting his friends/family know that he was an unpunished rapist, but now I just e-stalk him and wonder how his life will continue to unfold. Again, he seems too successful to fit the sociopath bill, but his ability to lie and commit such violent acts at such a young age, always creeped me out.
I used to study psychology. One of my courses was an internship at a charter school where some of the, ahem, special kids went once they were expelled from public school. Some were functionally retarded, others drugged out and had records, all were violent and desperately lagging in education. One kid in particular was there because he pulled a knife on his teacher. Later found out he was a bully and liked torturing cats. Lovely. Talking to him he just seemed like a kid into sports, but dumb and a bit goofy. Turns out he was just a rotten little shit. A kid I went to highschool with reminded me of him a lot. Mean, loved hurting people. Nowhere near charming or manipulative. Just a complete lack of emotion, compunction, and empathy. From what I remember sociopaths are more overt like these two knuckleheads. The psychopaths are the clever, manipulative ones. There isn't a ton of case study literature on Psychopaths, at least that I found useful. The Sociopath Next Door was about all I found and that was pretty shitty.
I work in probation, and a good part of my caseload is gang members. Sociopathy is the norm. Before that I worked in Special Assault. That's a whole other brand of sociopath on top of sexual deviancy issues. Sometimes I miss my old job, but the gangbangers are truly an interesting bunch. It's easier on the emotions to read about where a gangbanger went bad and started committing crimes than to read about a sexually violent predator and the details of his numerous rapes of women and children. Truth be told, I have a much harder time dealing with the female psychopaths on my caseload than the men. I'll put my gun belt on and keep my right hand near my holster when they're in the office. Something about them is a hundred times scarier and you never freakin' know when they're going to completely flip their shit. I will challenge them and they will melt down within seconds, accusing me of everything under the sun. The male sociopaths, for whatever reason, give me lip but they seem to be easier to handle. One of the worst Crips on my caseload acknowledged that I was a hard PO and that I "jammed him up" constantly but he seems to accept that I have a job to do. The female I saw yesterday...let's just say I needed backup in my office because she started screaming at me when I told her no, she couldn't transfer to another county. Female lunatics are scary.