[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?