What are your opinions on sociopaths?

[fred]

I think you should bring him some flowers.

[Meowster]

Hahahaha Rharpe

I've done a bit more reading about sociopaths and apparently there's really no point in trying to get back into contact with him so I won't. It doesn't bother me at all, and the only thing that will bother him about it is that I'm one less person he has any influence over.

I'm amazed that sociopaths are as common as they seem to be...

[rharpe]

Hahahaha Rharpe

See, I made you laugh... that made my day.

*There are girls on this forum now... holy crap, how long have I been away???*

[Play_Pretend]

I don't know about sociopath, but my ex-dad is an asshole for certain.  He sexually abused my siblings, two boys and one girl, was always being distant and angry, then trying too hard to suddenly be all close with us when he felt like it.  He's pompous, hypocritically religious (yeah, I know what kind of porn you look at, Mr. Holiest Than Thou), has referred to different races and social classes from ours as "those people" in derogatory ways, and so on.  Just generally an all-around jerk that blames his jerkiness on other people not understanding him.

Now, I really am a patient, easygoing, nice person.  But after 26 years of putting up with that kind of crap, my sister came visiting for Easter with her three kids.  I was tucking my skinny little 8 year old nephew in to bed, and telling him a funny bedtime story.  Ex-dad comes in, and for some reason starts snapping his fingers and sternly ordering my nephew to lay down.  (He was just sitting up under the covers.)  My nephew doesn't pay attention, because I'm still telling the story.  So suddenly, dad spear-points his hand and hits him, hard, in the head.  My nephew screams, and I knocked that bastard across the room so hard his head hit the far wall without his feet touching the ground.  My nephew ran away screaming, and if it hadn't been for that snapping me out and realizing it would traumatize the kid, I swear I would've put the bastard in the hospital or the morgue.  I still have dreams every month or so about killing him, and I always wake up smiling.

So anyways, that was over 2 1/2 years ago, I haven't seen him since, never will again.  My family keeps trying to push me into it, because they'd rather feel comfortable than face the fact that something's seriously wrong.  I'm literally changing my last name legally as a holiday present to myself, now that I have the money saved up.

So I say, screw him.  What good is a death bed repentance if his whole life was a horrible cancer on other people's?  It just means he did bad stuff and is scared of dying alone, it's just selfishness.  Like the way my grandpa was a jerk, abusive husband and cheater all his life, and now suddenly that he's only a couple years from death, he's trying to be all nice so people remember him fondly.  My grandma (ex-dad's side) just died a couple months back, and I didn't even care...she was just the same.  And I've never believed that you should love people automatically just because you share DNA...even if you're family, you need to *work* at treating each other right and loving one another, or you should break the abusive or negligent person off like you would any other friend or significant other that's gone bad no matter how many chances you gave them.

[iamahauntedhamburger]

I'm gonna probably receive some hate and flake for saying this but I feel feel this needs to be said. Meowster, your entire story seems incredibly one sided and exaggerated. No one is perfect. Most of us all have parents that did stuff while they were raising us that they later. It used to be perfectly socially acceptable to beat your kids as long as no permanent damage occurred (not that its a good thing fuck no). I also question why in his 20 year stint you never attempted to arrange a intervention. My dad got hooked on cocaine and heroine from when I turned 10 to when I turned 19. After a family intervention he went into rehab and he's been clean ever since. It seems to me your dad's been crying out for help for a long time but he didn't know how to say it. I know it may seem like he deserves his situation but that attitude makes you no better than your dad. You can still make it right.


Also, your dad isn't a sociopath. I just brought this to my brother who is a psychiatrist and he confirmed that.

[Dudeman Thingface]

Also, your dad isn't a sociopath. I just brought this to my brother who is a psychiatrist and he confirmed that.

That is because the term 'sociopath' is not a diagnosis. It is a generalised statement referring to several symptoms that branch across several recognised mental disorders that are somewhat similiar (the disorders being similiar, that is).

[Meowster]

I'm gonna probably receive some hate and flake for saying this but I feel feel this needs to be said. Meowster, your entire story seems incredibly one sided and exaggerated. No one is perfect. Most of us all have parents that did stuff while they were raising us that they later. It used to be perfectly socially acceptable to beat your kids as long as no permanent damage occurred (not that its a good thing fuck no). I also question why in his 20 year stint you never attempted to arrange a intervention. My dad got hooked on cocaine and heroine from when I turned 10 to when I turned 19. After a family intervention he went into rehab and he's been clean ever since. It seems to me your dad's been crying out for help for a long time but he didn't know how to say it. I know it may seem like he deserves his situation but that attitude makes you no better than your dad. You can still make it right.


Also, your dad isn't a sociopath. I just brought this to my brother who is a psychiatrist and he confirmed that.

My story isn't incredibly one sided and exaggerated at all. I'm not sure which part made you think that, could you specify? I didn't actually go into detail over most of what he's done because it wasn't a rant at how much I hate my dad. It was a question as to whether there was any chance that his imminent death could give him a kick up the arse and try to make up for everything he's done wrong, or whether as a sociopath, which he certainly is given his absolute lack of any empathy towards animals or other humans and the lack of empathy he has ever shown (even going back as far as his childhood), there was no point.

Permanent damage DID occur to me and my sisters, and to my mum, both mentally and physically. From throwing kettles of boiling water at us to grabbing my hair and smashing my face into my mum's face, and pretty much every nasty thing you could think of inbetween. He picked up my baby sisters and threw them at walls if they didn't stop crying. He told my little brothers to hit my mother if she tried to tell them what to do. He threw my little brother into a patch of nettles when he was just a baby. Man, it even extends to outside the family circle - my main memory of keeping dogs was of him torturing them in some way (putting them in plastic bags and spinning them over his head for 'fun', trying to break one dog's neck in the door because he was in a bad mood, locking them in a dark windowless shed for a week with no food or water).

Why in his 20 year stint I never attempted to arrange an intervention? You think we didn't ask him to stop? When we did say something that offended his idea that he was the cleverest and best man in the world or that his ideas weren't unarguably the best, he would go into dark rages. Let me give you an example of these rages. He took us out of school and forbade us to ever leave our "property" or speak to other children. By the age of about 13 I was desperate to interact with other children and to go to school, so I asked if I could start school. He asked if I really wanted to, and I said yes. So he started screaming about how I was disrespecting his brilliant idea of home education. For the record, we were never taught anything at home, had no lessons or structure - he just didn't want us going to school. This rage spiralled into him throwing parrafin everywhere in the house and threatening to set fire to everything. Then he dragged me outside, covered me in parrafin and held a match to my head, threatening to set me on fire and make my mother watch me burn. When my mother locked him outside he tried to ax the door down, screaming that he was going to kill all of us. He cut the phone lines and turned out the electricity (the box was on the side of the house). My mum called the police on her mobile phone and it was the only thing that stopped him from continuing (because they turned up).

Does that sound like perfectly acceptable social behaviour?

This is the kind of event that met any attempt to ask him to see psychiatrists, or to stop taking drugs, or to stop drinking.

My dad is also obsessed with getting "revenge" on people and trying to maintain an aura of superiority over them. For instance, he phones my mother regularly even now that they are separated, to tell her that he's making loads of money, or he's got a new shiny car, or he's got this "great job... don't want to tell you what it is though because I know you're struggling at university and you've worked all your life, I don't want to make you jealous that I could just step into this great job when you've been struggling all your life to get where you are! But just to let you know, I'm doing REALLY well for myself!" and yes, that is pretty much a word for word quote. He is that obvious when he attempts to gloat! But the worst/funniest part is that it's also really obvious that all these things he says are fabrications and lies to try and make himself seem better than he is. In reality he's never had a job and still doesn't, he lives in a tiny council house in a poor area of town and lives off benefits.

When I was a child, whenever I met new people (which was incredibly rare), I was instructed, pretty much given a script of things to say when asked. My dad would get extremely angry if I didn't learn my "lines" and messed up. When I was as young as 6, I was being told exactly what to say to my Grandma when she asked certain questions. Every aspect of my interaction with people was rehearsed, even ridiculous things like "when she comes in to the room say, "Grandma, I wasn't expecting you to visit today!" or "If she asks what I do for a living, tell her I'm a graphic designer" (in truth he never had a job).

Furthermore he uses the children left at home to try and blackmail my mother. Never does he visit them, or send them birthday cards, or speak to them on the phone... EXCEPT for times when he wants to ask questions like "does mummy have a new boyfriend?". Because of the nature of these interrogations, he'll only ever speak to my youngest sister because he believes, I guess, that she will give away information more easily. This is actually how these conversations unfold: he will call, ask to speak to her, and then I guess not realising it's on speakerphone will say, "Hi honey. How are you doing at school? Listen, does mummy have a new boyfriend? No? Because I saw her in town with a guy today. Does she often go out with guys? No? What about girls? Do you think mummy is a lesbian? Does she have very close female friends?" etc etc. The only other time he seems to remember they exist is when he gets into black rages and calls my mum threatening to have the kids taken away from her if she doesn't lend him money or whatever.

Why didn't my mother leave him? Because like so many sociopaths, my dad was brilliant at manipulation. Everything, from fully convincing my terrified mother that he would gain custody of the children or kill her parents by setting fire to their house, to having "good spells" where he'd lavish my mother in love and attention and empty promises. Like so many sociopaths, he was a master of manipulation. He knew exactly how to use a suicide threat to keep my mother under control.

Wow, I could go on and on and on. I'm quite offended by your post, it is the kind of thing I would actually expect my dad to say in defence of himself or something. Also taking this to your "psychiatrist brother"? There is no way I offered enough information in my first posts for any psychiatrist to judge anything other than that he's a dick. Suggesting that I'm no better than my dad if I choose not to indulge his attempts to manipulate people is a real offensive thing to say, too.

Sorry for the long post everyone but honestly I had to set this guy straight. One sided and exaggerated? Jesus christ.

[Nacho]

I have no "tools" to know if it is exagerated or no... Honestly, I think it is not.

What I think is that "internet" is not an appropiate place for discussing such an important decission as this. Family, boyfriend, friends, even a psychologist might help. We (AGS mates) are basically blind and we can't really help.

[Meowster]

Ah but some people here have been of help! People who have experienced similar situations - the only question I'm asking is whether or not there is a point in trying to make peace with a sociopath, and I've found some of the replies from people who have experienced similar situations to be very helpful. I don't know anybody personally who has experienced this kind of thing, and that is why the internet is a great tool for asking this particular question.

The fact it is the internet made me exclude most of the 'gorey' detail from my first post, however, for hauntedhamburger to make quite an offensive judgement based on so little evidence is pretty irritating, so if he wants to he can read just a little of the terrible shit my dad did and then think again about whether his reply is appropriate.

Yes it's the internet and nobody can be sure that someone else isn't exaggerating, but giving such opinionated and offensive advice (saying I'm no better than my dad if I don't "make up" with him!) based on the assumption that I am exaggerating is a bit much for me to take, without at least showing hauntedhamburger how bloody wrong he is!

Also, this kind of domestic violence is not all that uncommon. It irritates me when I meet people who deny such things happen. I really do meet people sometimes who think that cases like that are exaggerated, because they don't understand why the wife didn't leave the husband or the children didn't stop the father or whatever. Or people who have lived with one parent who was a "bit shite" but they managed to deal with it, and then assume that all people could do the same in their situation - which is exactly what hauntedhamburger seems to think. It's an attitude that I absolutely hate.

[Nacho]

Whatever the replies are, Meowster, they are just a "roschard" test. You' ll finally end doing what you really want to do, following your intellect and your heart. The only thing we can do is sit, and hope you take the correct decission, if it really exist.

[Andail]

I'm gonna probably receive some hate and flake for saying this but I feel feel this needs to be said. Meowster, your entire story seems incredibly one sided and exaggerated. No one is perfect. Most of us all have parents that did stuff while they were raising us that they later. It used to be perfectly socially acceptable to beat your kids as long as no permanent damage occurred (not that its a good thing fuck no).  It seems to me your dad's been crying out for help for a long time but he didn't know how to say it. I know it may seem like he deserves his situation but that attitude makes you no better than your dad. You can still make it right.

What exactly gives you the right to call the testimony of another person, whom you know absolutely nothing of, one-sided and exaggerated? Let us who know Meowster better make such judgments.
What makes you believe her father was not a sociopath? Such destructive people exist, you know. One of my closest friends during childhood had the exact same situation. It's not unique to have sociopaths/psychopaths in your family. It's not a ghost or a troll or something you can choose not to believe in; these people are very real.

I also question why in his 20 year stint you never attempted to arrange a intervention. My dad got hooked on cocaine and heroine from when I turned 10 to when I turned 19. After a family intervention he went into rehab and he's been clean ever since.

Jesus, get off your high horse. Are you blaming the victim now? I'm sure your brother the psychologist (?) would be proud of you. Just because something worked out in your family doesn't mean it has to work with everyone. Grow some sense, really.

Also, your dad isn't a sociopath. I just brought this to my brother who is a psychiatrist and he confirmed that.

Another miraculously arrogant statement. I'm surrounded by people with varying degrees of psychological expertise, including my father who's been a psychologist for some 25 years, and I challenge the entire mindset of you and your brother, and I hope nobody ever consults any of you.
God day.

[Shane 'ProgZmax' Stevens]

And a God day to you, sir!   

I'm more amused than offended by hamburger's post, personally.  I mean, he makes this quick post to say 'Oh yeah, my psychiatrist brother just made a pap diagnosis of your dad who he's never examined and guess what, he's fine!' 

Maybe next he'll have his brother register an account to 'defend himself' against these comments.  Something like Psychiatrist172.

[Nacho]

One question from someone who knows 0 about psychology... Does a bad person necesarilly have to be "something"? (Being a sociopath, had a difficult childhood, having "less hormon of whatever glandula", etc...)

Can' t bad people just be bad people?

***I admit it's totally off topic, and I am not refering at all to Meowster' s case...***

[Andail]

One question from someone who knows 0 about psychology... Does a bad person necesarilly have to be "something"? (Being a sociopath, had a difficult childhood, having "less hormon of whatever glandula", etc...)

Can' t bad people just be bad people?

***I admit it's totally off topic, and I am not refering at all to Meowster' s case...***

It all depends on where you want to place the border between free will and determinism, really. You can always argue that social and genetical conditions govern all aspects of our personality.
Another philosphical question is the meaning of "bad". Loving and caring towards your friends and family, but selfish and inconsiderate towards strangers? All bad? Feeling an urge to torture people, but never indulging in it? Acting like a saint throughout your life, but only because you believe God will reward you in afterlife, just good or selfish?

But even in a merely psychological perspective; you probably won't turn downright, altogether bad without a reason. If a person can choose, they'd choose to be good.

[Nacho]

Interesting There' s no doubt that it is a thrilling debate...

[MillsJROSS]

I think in general the term "bad person" implies a lack of caring or concern for people other than yourself. Which happens to be one of the signs of being a sociopath. We have terms like sociopath because of our need to quantify and qualify everything around us. We need to know what causes such destructive behavior in hopes of eventually eradicating it from society.

I think we need a breather, though...the tension is so thick, it feels like elevension. While I agree that iamahauntedhamburger made some bad assumptions and conclusions from your previous posts, in the end, he was simply trying to help you with how he related to his father. The fly by night conclusion that your dad isn't a sociopath seemed, at best, obtuse, considering what lack of information he's had on your life. I think it's safe to say his intentions were not to offend, though.

As to whether or not you should have posted this here. I think it's perfectly healthy and should be encouraged. It's cathartic to talk about our baggage. In life there's very few people that you meet that you get more than a cursory view of their life. Society tells us to keep it to ourselves, everyone has problems, but I think we should be open and honest, and those who want to stay ignorant of your life can do so by simply not reading this thread. Our ability to sway your decision one way or the other is irrelevant. You might make the same decisions when push comes to shove, but maybe you'll have more information as to how to actually handle what you're going to do.

-MillsJROSS

[Meowster]

One question from someone who knows 0 about psychology... Does a bad person necesarilly have to be "something"? (Being a sociopath, had a difficult childhood, having "less hormon of whatever glandula", etc...)

Can' t bad people just be bad people?

***I admit it's totally off topic, and I am not refering at all to Meowster' s case...***

I think this is an interesting question.

It is hard to be "bad" in a sense of being wicked to other people. Since most people do have empathy for others, it is difficult to be cruel to an animal let alone another human being, when you can understand the pain and humiliation that they are feeling. Ironically, one reason I have never attempted to have any kind of "revenge" on my dad by telling his acquantainces the truth about him (besides that I am not a mean or vengeful person of course!) is that as a sociopath he can feel only for himself - and I understand and empathise with the humilation and sorrow he would feel if I destroyed his few connections in life. I couldn't even do that to my dad who is actually pretty deserving of such a thing!

I think we can all think of those moments when we've either felt extreme guilt for hurting someone, or put ourselves in the shoes of others and felt overwhelming sorrow for them.

So it seems VERY unnatural to me that anybody with a fully healthy mental state would WILLINGLY and GUILTLESSLY hurt others, without there being some other psychological factor behind it.

I don't think I've ever met anyone who is truly "bad" without believing there is some underlying psychological factor to it, be it a difficulty to emphathise properly or whatever. I think that we try make a label for any kind of deviance from what we consider normal, healthy social behaviour, and as Mills says, this is so we can avoid, treat or eradicate  those with such labels. 'Cos it's destructive behaviour and ultimately benefits nobody. My dad will never be truly happy and neither will anybody involves with him, it's a lose-lose situation.

Oh man, here is a rubbish story: I had a boss who was obsessed with spreading rumours about me and other people. She eventually got sacked for it (we all made a joint complaint, and amonst the complaints raised with her when she was being sacked was that she had told everyone that I had been sleeping around with people in the office!). Even 7 months after this (she's moved away and hasn't even seen me since) she's still obsessed with me! People keep telling me that they've heard I'm pregnant and don't know who the father is, they heard I have incurable STDs, they heard I got fired from my job, they heard a bunch of insane stuff, because she's still obsessed with trying to "get revenge" (revenge is not the correct word though since I never did anything wrong...). I don't think this displays what anybody would consider normal or healthy social behaviour, ie., her obsession with having revenge and her point blank refusal to accept that her behaviour was cruel and unwarranted. In fact instead of assuming responsibility or showing guilt, her reaction to retribution for all of this is anger that she got caught and blaming the victims for telling on her! I'm sure that nobody in a fully healthy state of mind would have even started rumours in the first place, let alone had this reaction when caught.

I didn't even choose to associate myself closely with this woman, we were thrown together in a work environment, yet my brief interaction with her has caused me months and months of stress and misery trying to rebuke all these ridiculous rumours that she's spreading about me. Even the briefest initial encounter with "bad" people can cause bloody months or years of trouble for the "victims". My dad once got obsessed with friend of a friend he met once at a party who he thought he'd seen "laughing" at him. They didn't even speak, but my dad imagined that she'd been having this conversation with her mate about him and snickering and laughing snidely. Maybe she was, I have no idea but it seems unlikely (knowing my dad's paranoia over such things). Nonetheless, they never spoke and never had any contact prior to that or even really after it. Despite this my dad became something of a stalker, found out where she lived and for the next three years tried to do things like break her house windows or pour paintstripper on her car. Every so often something nasty would happen to her and I don't even know if she knew it was on purpose half the time.

So yeah as Mills says,

We have terms like sociopath because of our need to quantify and qualify everything around us. We need to know what causes such destructive behavior in hopes of eventually eradicating it from society.

And the reason is because they are the kind of people who do the crap described above

I don't think any good or nice person like you or I would do that stuff.

[Nacho]

As said, it' s a difficult topic. I think there is a lot to discuss about some of your previous statements (People, of possible, would chose being "good", most people do have empathy, etc...)

I think people will finally do what is better for survival. In the XXIth century survival is almost guaranteed if you follow certain rules of society, probably because of that "people is good". But let' s think in the Nazi Germany in 1939. Survival was based in "following the party", so everybody did. Were all of them sociopaths or "bad"? I don' t think so. Same when somebody is bullied at school, or is the targed of lame jokes. Nobody usually does anything, since "survival" is to laugh of the poor guy who is being beaten by the thug (And sigh in relief for not being him). The example can be pushed forever: In the far west everybody had guns and was socially accepted to use them for saving the life. In the middle ages you could be killed by assaulters in a short walk from a town to another. I don't  think people were basically "worse" than us... Only different enviroment.

And what about extreme cases of evil or good? We have examples of that at any period. We had Rudolph HöB, but also Max Kolbe. How does that explain? Some wicked version of the "survival theory" can be applied here as well: The "bad guys" want their genes to survive, and only their genes. The "good guys" want the race to survive, even in danger of their own survival.

If that theory doesn't work... We have gaussian distributions.

[Stupot]

Same when somebody is bullied at school, or is the targed of lame jokes. Nobody usually does anything, since "survival" is to laugh of the poor guy who is being beaten by the thug (And sigh in relief for not being him).

I was bullied heavily at school.  And when I was getting beaten up, I certainly didn't have any respect for the standers by who laughed and egged the bullies on... I wouldn't call these standers by sociopaths though... but the bullies themselves could be.  I know at least two of my former bullies have gone on to become herion addicts and pretty much fit the description of a Sociopath... Good luck to the lawless cunts, I hope Santa brings them an overdose for Christmas.

On the very rare occasion, somebody would step in, tell a teacher or even try to stand up to the bullies on my behalf...  I would like to reserve a place further up the 'Goodness scale' for my helpers than for the people who stood there and laughed.

So it isn't realla a matter of bad and good... it's a sliding scale.  And I would suggest that as a general trend* the closer somebody is to the "bad" end of the spectrum, the more likely he or she is to be a sociopath...

*I selected the word 'trend' carefully, because that is by no means a solid rule.

[vict0r]

Permanent damage DID occur to me and my sisters, and to my mum, both mentally and physically. From throwing kettles of boiling water at us to grabbing my hair and smashing my face into my mum's face, and pretty much every nasty thing you could think of inbetween. He picked up my baby sisters and threw them at walls if they didn't stop crying. He told my little brothers to hit my mother if she tried to tell them what to do. He threw my little brother into a patch of nettles when he was just a baby. Man, it even extends to outside the family circle - my main memory of keeping dogs was of him torturing them in some way (putting them in plastic bags and spinning them over his head for 'fun', trying to break one dog's neck in the door because he was in a bad mood, locking them in a dark windowless shed for a week with no food or water).

Seriously, had you not said that you would not want to screw things up for your father, I would have offered myself to have people "take care" of your father, brutally and violently (yes, I do know these people). I have not much more to add to this discussion other than that you should avoid trying to reconsile with your father for his sake.