[knuththetruth]

It’s touched on obliquely, but psychopaths are impulsive and in constant need of stimulation, which, because of their diminished emotional responses, they largely derive from anti-social behavior. Its adrenaline inducing response is one of the few ways they can “feel.” High functioning psychopaths will often pursue long-term relationships because they provide a consistent source of this kind of stimulation, while also allowing them to modulate and practice the “masks” they use to deceive others.

The interviewee more or less admits this in speaking about how her “friend” would frequently ask if she was unwelcome around the interviewee, despite her not doing anything explicit to suggest this. It’s a typical psychopathic lapse into bragging about one’s ability to manipulate or inspire fear in others, albeit under the guise of the ability to “feel concern.” I guess it’s kind of a clever manipulation within the context of the interview itself, if again, it wasn’t so remarkably predictable. Few psychopaths can seem to go very long without slipping in examples of their inherent superiority or delighting in some prior act of sadism.

[anothergoogler]

The authoritative tone of your comments bothers me. What are they based on? The claim that psychopaths pursue long-term relationships doesn't jive with the antisocial nature of this condition. I'm also troubled by your view that any engagement with a psychopath is wasted. Psychopathy does not exclude reason. A premise of your views is that you are able to unambiguously diagnose psychopathy in others, and that it is appropriate to treat those people radically differently based on your casual diagnosis.

To be frank, I feel like I'm reading paraphrases of Pieter Hintjens' self-help book "The Psychopath Code" which is quite popular with this website's users. The book is no longer open source, but I read a fair bit of it when it was. It struck me as a dangerous work that teaches how to perceive your foes as psychopaths, and then to cut them out of your life. I can see how the practice is empowering, but it irresponsibly elevates the armchair psychologist reader.

I think your comments should be be composed like the opinions they are, and not made to sound like objective truth.

[XorNot]

The much more interesting version of this article was the neurology researcher who scanned his own brain and found it matched exactly the structure of criminal psychopaths who he was studying.

The guy otherwise had a wife, children and positive social environment, so it was something of a surprise discovery to him. It was much more introspective and informative on the possible nature of the condition - https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/the-neuroscien...

[DanBC]

He's mentioned in the submitted article, and there's some dispute about his findings. There's a bunch of stuff that affects brain function, and "psychopathy" is only one of them.

> Similarly, he takes issue with neuroscientist James Fallon’s calling himself a psychopath because his brain imaging profile matched that of psychopathic individuals.

> “Just because the amygdala shows hypoactivation does not make you a psychopath,” says Neumann. “This is a characteristic that’s associated with psychopathy, but biology is not destiny. We believe that the syndrome, the personality disorder, is a coming together of these four major domains.”

[baza89]

Just thinking out loud: As for long term relationships, they provide easily accessable sex for instance, so no hassle in constantly looking for partners. Also having someone always around is consistent source of other forms of (anti)social stimuli.

But I generally very much agree with you, (m)any of the psychopathy traits listed in the article can be, or even are to a certain degree, present in everyone. So there is real danger in stigmatazing just about regular people.

And sure interaction with a psychopath doesn't need to be destructive for everyone, that'd have to be some kind hard working super villain to be able to hurt everyone around them.

And to emphasize, antisocial behaviour or just put plainly being a bad person is something everyone is guilty of.

So if this psychopath term is to be considered real it would just mean that psychos do a certain combination of (bad) things to a much higher degree than everyone else.

But if it all comes down to a degree, it makes me wonder if there really is no therapy for these people? Can they really not change? Can they really not learn to accentuate wider spectre of emotions?

Regular people can change their behaviour albeit it can be really hard, and they need to want it. Thus I'm not really buying the whole it's a fixed thing, it's brain chemistry-morphology whatever narrative.

[dnomad]

This is pretty silly. But then the article is also really silly. Psychopaths are not superheroes. They don't have magical powers. And, believe it or not, they are absolutely not narcissists who need stimulation from other people.

In simplest terms psychopaths are people who do not "get" the particularity of human relationships. To a psychopath, relationships are always and everywhere abstract conceptual power relations. They don't get jealous (but they can fake jealousy), they don't fall in love (but they can fake love) and when people leave their lives it's more like losing money on a bad investment then, you know, losing one's best friend or lover. This is not magical or antisocial or deviant. Psychopaths are just everyday people who never really miss other people. They are just as stupid and irrational as everybody else but in different ways.

There is an argument here to be made here that just as society is welcoming of people who fall in love at the drop of a dime it should also be welcoming of people who can't fall in love. It's the sort of thing, like homosexuality, that people might think is a big deal but is really not and eventually will just be sort of normalized.

[baza89]

>In simplest terms psychopaths are people who do not "get" the particularity of human relationships.

Well now, I'm pretty sure you can't use this as a definition for psychopathy, as many other types of disorders fit this definition.

In my comment I was thinking of the definition given by this article, and the list of traits it provides.

So going by that definition I have to disagree with your argument: "...that people might think is a big deal but is really not and eventually will just be sort of normalized."

If someone checks all the boxes from the points raised in this article I would really hope that that sort of behavior never gets normalized because these traits are the exact opposite of what people should strive for in their lives.

[dnomad]

> If someone checks all the boxes from the points raised in this article I would really hope that that sort of behavior never gets normalized because these traits are the exact opposite of what people should strive for in their lives.

I don't see any cause for concern. Putting aside Hollywood nonsense there doesn't seem to be any reason why psychopaths would inherently engage in destructive behavior. In reality psychopaths are quite probably among the most interesting and charming and entertaining people you will ever meet.

Psychopaths can be very manipulative but there's no inherent malicious intent behind this manipulation. They need to be manipulative because all human relations are based on manipulation and so to get anything done they have no choice but to "play the game."

Again, psychopaths are just people who don't get jealous. There are so many stories (really, all of them, from the Bible to virtually every pop song) about jealousy, where jealousy plays a central motivation for virtually all the characters, but to a psychopath, reading stories about characters motivated by jealousy is like reading stories about aliens. Abstractly it makes sense as a motivation but there's no actual 'there' there. Saying "I did X because I was jealous" is like saying "I did X because the voices told me to."

The problem for psychopaths is that virtually all human relations are motivated by jealousy. All of the politicking, the status games, the in-group/out-group and intrapersonal power dynamics that define so much human experience come down to this. And so psychopaths, out of pure necessity in order to participate in such relations, will quickly learn to fake jealousy, to deliberately inspire it in others or carefully suppress it in those they care about it. This is no different from everybody else does, really, they're just doing it for different reasons and are perhaps a bit more deliberate about it.

At this point it's also important to understand the difference between psychopaths and sociopaths. This comment [1] lays it out well. Note the end result here: both psychopaths and sociopaths end up being manipulative of those around them but while sociopaths are often consumed by jealousy and paranoia and will do anything to ensure they "win", psychopaths, more often than not, are seeking a generally optimal or neutral solution, they have little real interest in hurting or helping you in any given encounter.

[1] http://www.thecut.com/_pages/cjkmuv88b00500xy6u0morj7n@publi...

[serversytem]

Narcissists can get really jealous. So how come psychopaths can't be jealous?

[dfraser992]

His comments are reflections of all the extensive reading I've done, though he explains things better than I ever could. So I didn't have a problem with his authoritative tone - in general, I never have a problem with an "authoritative tone" when there is actual content and it matches up with what I know for myself, or it looks like it can be double checked (and is).

I guess for me I find it easy enough to ascertain the emotional drivers behind what someone is saying (or I think so). From that you can tell where they're coming from and what their motivations really are. A useful skill one gets in spades once you've dealt with an actual psychopath...

[knuththetruth]

>The authoritative tone of your comments bothers me. What are they based on?

A moderately extensive reading of the popular and professional literature on psychopaths. I know this is an internet message board, so it’s best to doubt such claims, but that’s the answer.

>The claim that psychopaths pursue long-term relationships doesn't jive with the antisocial nature of this condition

You’ll notice that I prefaced that with “high functioning.” High functioning psychopaths often come from financially and emotionally stable families/backgrounds, which help inhibit what we’d think of as overtly anti-social behavior (e.g. violence). And as you say, psychopaths are not without reason. Given a set of sufficiently pro-social developmental circumstances, some can learn to delay their “gratifications” to obtain greater “rewards,” just like anyone else.

>I'm also troubled by your view that any engagement with a psychopath is wasted.

It’s not so much wasted, but about reducing your exposure to harm. And it’s not my view, you can find the same stated in the work of people like Hare, Stout, and Babiak.

>A premise of your views is that you are able to unambiguously diagnose psychopathy in others, and that it is appropriate to treat those people radically differently based on your casual diagnosis.

I claim no such ability. I’m speaking only to a fuzzy heuristic intended to reduce my own exposure to psychopaths after damaging experiences with people who quite consistently match their patterns of behavior.

>To be frank, I feel like I'm reading paraphrases of Pieter Hintjens' self-help book "The Psychopath Code" which is quite popular with this website's users.

I’ve never read this book, so I can’t speak to it. Again, you’re well warranted in your skepticism because it’s the internet.

[dnomad]

> It’s touched on obliquely, but psychopaths are impulsive and in constant need of stimulation, which, because of their diminished emotional responses, they largely derive from anti-social behavior. Its adrenaline inducing response is one of the few ways they can “feel.”

Another way to look at this is that psychopaths seek and respond to different kinds of stimulation. They have little interest in gossip, hanging out or generalized bonding rituals. Instead they may be drawn to competitive, "results-oriented" games where individuals or groups have a clear objective. They may also, on the whole, be more drawn to "high-stakes" games because they perceive less downsides and more potential upsides to such games. Again, this doesn't suggest any real malicious intent. Psychopaths are just using different risk metrics. While some people may shy away from high-stakes status games because they are very sensitive to the potential loss of status, to a psychopath, "loss of status" isn't a thing and so such games can be perceived as pure upside.

> It’s a typical psychopathic lapse into bragging about one’s ability to manipulate or inspire fear in others, albeit under the guise of the ability to “feel concern.”

Again you seem to deliberately attributing some kind of malign intent without justification. This woman is trying to explain how she relates to others and why. There's no reason to think she is lying or that she cannot actually feel concern.

[serversytem]

How can loss of status not be a thing to psychopaths when they are narcissistic?