Have you ever had to deal with a sociopath or in a profession that trains you for this possibility?

Sociopaths are actually quite rare only 3 % of the population on average are diagonsed as truly sociopathic.

I think it is just another go-to, over-used, generalization used by people who don’t really know much about the actual diagnosis or behavior itself to name it in relation to an actual person or real life events or examples in demonstration.

Read here

This can describe many traits of many other disorders as well. The unfeeling or uncaring aspect might be a case of something completely unrelated. It is best to be cautious at best with such strong words.

Mostly sociopaths are confused with antisocial behaviors, autism, asperbergers… You really have to be careful because these are things that people can’t help and to be called a sociopath when you have something that is a disease because some of the symptoms look similar… is not nice and not fair.

Which is which

My ex husband was a for sure, pathological and passive aggressive narcissist and, I believe, had sociopathic traits as well. They are very good at keeping the mask on for quite awhile.

I think there are far more sociopathic types than the stats say. Read ” The sociopath next door” by Martha Stout. A real eye opener.

@Coloma That is the link I posted above… LOL

@GabrielsLamb
Haha…oops!, well…read it twice! lol

It’s okay… More Lurve♥ to you my dear…

I love that book, much like you say about your ex, I have one in my family that is literally incorrigible!

Just guessing but I suspect very strongly that @Buttonstc knows very well what a sociopath is.

@janbb From the way the question is worded, I’m very sure she does… My answer is a direction for anyone reading it who is considering making that diagnosis on someone in their life. Just a precautionary addition to the question I suppose?

I cannot say absolutely I have come across sociopaths, but I suspect I have. My work allows people to hide behind the anonymity of the internet and cause disruption and discomfort to the other people in the groups I work with.

The people I suspect may at least have sociopathic tendencies are very intelligent, they don’t care about the hurt or disruption they cause and seem to think it is their absolute right to behave as they do. They seem to think they are impervious to the rules the rest of the group are expected to follow. They bully and intimidate anyone who challenges them. Interestingly, they can also attract the adoration of others. People who will follow and join in with their behaviour.

It is highly unpleasant to deal with and I am dealing with someone of this type right now actually. I have had to remove their access to the group, at least temporarily but I suspect I may need to do so permanently if the behaviour returns when they do.

Honestly, I think that these “super predators” are increasing, it’s been said they have the evolutionary advantage and, I see it as the ultimate in the battle between good and evil.
Seriously, don’t laugh, it makes sense to me. We can’t let the lizard brains win!
Fight ‘em to the death with duck masks! LOL

@Coloma HONK! or erm, I mean QUACK! You give me geese on the brain.

That’s why I put my post up though, to show the differences and how tricky they are. Lots of people read a description in a book and start looking for things that like I said are sometimes attributed to unrealted disorders.

How unfair would it be to pin a sociopath’s tail on someone with Aspergers? It’s kinda of easy to do and that makes self diagnosis unless you have proof difficult and potentially problematic.

I hear that a lot in society, I heard it on a show just yesterday, it has become unfortunate how people throw out accusations of “Bi-Polar” onto anyone who exhibits confused or contradictory emotions in a moment.

I think it’s best left to the professionals. Unless you have actually lived with one then you kinda know

I was showed this once by an aquaintence who was a scientologist I found it an interesting take on the situation.

here

This being the most disturbing aspect because apparently and I believe this they replicate themselves by driving other people around them nuts on purpose.

5. Surrounding such a personality we find cowed or ill associates or friends who, when not driven actually insane, are yet behaving in a crippled manner in life, failing, not succeeding.

Such people make trouble for others.

When treated or educated, the near associate of the antisocial personality has no stability of gain but promptly relapses or loses his advantages of knowledge, being under the suppressive influence of the other.

Physically treated, such associates commonly do not recover in the expected time but worsen and have poor convalescences.

It is quite useless to treat or help or train such persons so long as they remain under the influence of the antisocial connection.

The largest number of insane are insane because of such antisocial connections and do not recover easily for the same reason.

Unjustly we seldom see the antisocial personality actually in an institution. Only his “friends” and family are there.

I’ve only met one person I strongly suspect is a sociopath. I think the term is very overused.

I’ve been acquainted with him for years, still am. We’ll never truly be friends for obvious reasons, and I don’t think I’ll ever need to sever ties with him due to the distance I’ve kept.

I’m 99% sure that husband in one of my “couples friends” is one. I had to put up with him for years, but when they divorced, well, let’s just say it was an easy choice to decide which friend to ‘keep’.

While I was obligated to be around him, I mostly just kept our interactions light-hearted. He was very hurtful when you got on his bad side, so I tried my best to stay on his good side.

@Gabriel

Are the statements you’ve made regarding the characteristics of sociopaths and Aspies coming from a professional viewpoint? If so, in which discipline were you trained, ie: mental health, social worker, teacher, etc.?

Have you routinely encountered a lot of people tagging an Aspie as a sociopath ? Have you encountered this in many case studies?

I appreciate your input very much, but find myself quite frankly puzzled by one significant aspect of what you said.

I’m curious about the basis of your positing that it’s VERY easy to confuse the affect and actions of an Aspie for those of a sociopath. That would seem to suggest that it’s quite common and happens routinely. Huh?

To do that , one would have to know next to nothing about sociopathy and LITERALLY NOTHING about those with Aspbergers (not even a cursory viewing of Rainman).

The skillset of a sociopath goes hand hand with that of a pathological liar. I can see those two being conflated quite easily Obviously not every liar is a sociopath. But sociopaths are deceivers by nature. Its a good (for them) substitute for the conscience they dont have The only difference is a matter of degree.

One of the standout characteristics of those on the Autism spectrum is their typical frankness and utter lack of guile (many times to their OWN detriment) The MO of the sociopath is to the detriment of all those around them, but certainly not to themselves.

I doubt that there’s an Aspie to be found with the cunning to be able to pull off being a pathological liar. It’s just not part of their natural skillset and I don’t think they could manage it even if they WANTED TO.

Cunning and deception for a sociopath is as natural as breathing. They don’t even think about it. It’s their home turf.

So I’m honestly trying to figure out where the idea came from that it’s so very easy to conflate Aspies with sociopaths. As if it’s done all the time.

I agree totally that one should not be overly hasty to slap labels on people. Definitely.

But I’m honestly trying to figure out who could possibly confuse an Aspie with a sociopath?

Granted, Aspie behavior can be rather puzzling to people upon meeting one (especially the first time.) And their candor and sometimes brusque manner is unsettling to those who are comfy with wearing a PC social mask. But their outspokenness and cluelessnesd has a unique disarming charm to it precisely because of it’s utter honesty. There is not a fake bone in their body.

A sociopath can only try to impersonate honestly Actually being honest is totally foreign to him and he really doesn’t have any desire for it to begin with.

Hopefully you can clarify that point for me. I appreciate the intent of your comments, but the Aspie part of it kind of came out of left field for me.

I know that we have some Aspies and parents of those on various parts of the Autism spectrum as part of the Flutherverse here who have shared a lot with us regarding their challenges.

So if there are any reading this Q, I would really appreciate some comments from your experience. Have you or your child ever been mistaken for a Sociopath? If it happens much more than I’m aware of I’d really want to know that. Feel free to chime in with your viewpoint and views. Thanks and lurve to all.

@Buttonstc No, not from a “Professional” standpoint. What I am saying is that if you read the characteristics from a compiled list like off the internet, one of the symptoms or signs of a sociopathic personality is showing little empathy and seeing the self and not being able to feel for or be sensitive to the needs and expressions and feelings of another person.

Somtimes to different levels of severity, Aspies can LOOK like that to someone uninformed and just reading off a description on the net or even out of a book. Obviously those in the know understand the differences so it is with caution that these terms should be tossed around as character traits because they can be confused as other things based on descriptions alone.

I am not saying that Aspys are sociopaths, I am not saying that sociopaths are aspys, I’m saying that uninformed people might confuse the two.

I am no expert @GabrielsLamb, not even remotely, so I could be completely off track here.

I would say that while someone with Aspergers may show limited empathy to other people, they are not manipulative and dishonest. In fact, I thought (and please correct me if I am wrong anyone who has more knowledge than me on this topic) that a person with Aspergers is likely to be very honest. Even to the point of bluntness. Their lack of empathy is a lack of awareness of the pain they may cause rather than a lack of care. In contrast, a sociopath is likely to be both manipulative and dishonest in order to obtain their goal and they don’t care about how that behaviour affects others.

I hope someone will correct me if my understanding is wrong and your question is fascinating @Buttonstc. Can I ask your motivation for asking the question? Are you doing research in this field? Also, what is your experience with and/or interest in Sociopaths?

@B

Oh how I wish it were merely academic research ! If only !

I hate to put too much detail on a public website because my Fluther SN is known in RL to the protagonists of the situation because I use it for practically everything I do all over the Internet.

After it’s resolved and I’m out of easy reach (one way or another) I’ll be more than happy to update. It’s a fairly convoluted situation (impractical for multiple PMs) that was not of my choosing and it took me quite awhile to pin things down precisely. I didn’t want to jump the gun on something as serious as this.

But after multiple inner little alarm bells going off, it’s clear that some definitive action is called for which will cause significant upheavel. It remains to be seen who gets “upheaved” the most and precisely how.

And for the rest of your Q, I doubt that I’ve encountered any more Sociopaths in my personal life than any of the rest of us. It’s not like you find them under every bush and tree and I’m not the type to make mountains out of molehills.

And as a teacher, there just weren’t a whole lot either, not even a handful out of hundreds and hundreds of students over the years. It really is not that common. And the one kid who stood out the most likely as tending toward sociopathy to both myself and the school nurse wasn’t all that clearcut either. After quite a while with both of us trying to reach him and make some kind of connection, She dug a bit deeper into his medical background and home environment (inner city project housing) and felt there was a strong likelihood that he had suffered very early exposure leading to lead poisoning as a toddler and I concur. But that type of severe early brain damage is not reversible, unfortunately.

Given the total circumstances, its really impossible to separate out for either sociopathy or lead poisoning brain damage. Where does one begin and the other end (and what practical result would produced even if it were possible) ? Neither is curable.

His mother was extremely caring and cooperated with us in every possible way. I encountered her about ten years later at the wedding of a mutual friend. He was in prison for a pretty long stretch (drugs and multiple offenses). Such a heartbreaking scenario.

There were certainly enough other little snots and bullies but they were just garden variety nasty. Plenty annoying but not sociopaths.. And at that age kids personalities are so malleable and not fully formed that its hard to make accurate predictions. And just as well we don’t.

But they were definitely a Royal PITA. (and I’m not talking flatbread :)

Oh I am sorry to hear it is about a real experience. As I said, I have some experience of this myself and it is very distressing. I hope it is resolved soon for you. I really do.

Thanks, for right now I’m just lying low choosing a minimum of any interaction regardless of how mundane. And lying low isn’t so difficult when one has a DVR chock full of programs to clear off So I’m certainly not bored.

And, I really do have enough brain cells left to rub together to know that there is no point to telling someone that they are a sociopath right to their face. I’m neither crazy enough or suicidal enough to do that :)

And for the record, your comments on Aspies are basically correct.

@Gabriel

Regarding the last paragraph of your most recent post.

I totally get what your saying in the first sentence and I never believed otherwise. You are not the one conflating the two and I never suggested otherwise.

Respectfully, I strongly still disagree with your last sentence even though you ameliorated it slightly from the original assertion that it’s VERY EASY.

But simply failing to reiterate the word VERY still leaves the basic premise intact and I simply don’t think it’s likely at all.

In order for anyone to think that way they would have to LITERALLY know nothing about the autism spectrum. That’s extremely unlikely in this day and age. In the 50s or so that wouldn’t be uncommon. But we are no longer in the 50s. It’s the next century and you just don’t encounter a plethora of people who know so little about Aspies that they would fail to realize that the two are POLAR OPPOSITES.

Merely having one characteristic that could sort of be interpreted as being kinda similar is hardly sufficient.

Perhaps there could be the occasional nitwit so ill-informed and totally devoid of simple observational skills to mistake an Aspie for a sociopath but there are hardly enough of them for a quorum or to even be a blip on the lpstatistical radar screen.

I have no idea where your assumption comes from that there are that many dimwits for this to be a common occurrence. Did you just pull it out of your butt? Have you ever met even one?

What I’ve written may not change your opinion one iota but there are plenty others who will read this and I just couldn’t allow your assertion to stand unchallenged.

I appreciate your warnings about slapping labels on people top easily. I just think you chose a very poor hypothetical situation as an example to bolster your point. And it tends to obscure the strength of your basic point. It totally clouds the issue and tends to undermine it a bit.

I strongly suspect that many people (perhaps most) instinctively realize that the example doesn’t fit the premise at all and that sets up a kind of cognitive dissonance that’s rather jarring. It just doesn’t really fit.

And that distracts from a very true point about the dangers inherent in being too quick to label.

But I still lurved you an A for effort :)

I’m the type who doesn’t necessarly have to agree with someone in order to toss some lurve their way :)

I’m just kinda profligate that way.

@Bellatrix, Though @GabrielsLamb has left the collection I would like to address this for any future readers…You said:

In fact, I thought (and please correct me if I am wrong anyone who has more knowledge than me on this topic) that a person with Aspergers is likely to be very honest. Even to the point of bluntness. Their lack of empathy is a lack of awareness of the pain they may cause rather than a lack of care.

Yes, that is almost a textbook definition of Aspies.

I have two of them here in my home.
There isn’t even a remote possibility either of them could keep a secret, let alone tell a lie or as a sociopath would, a series of lies.

@SpatzieLover

I agree, apples & oranges.

Thank you @SpatzieLover and @Coloma, glad my understanding is correct and for your confirmation.

Many people don’t see the similarities between Apple iOS and Android either. Rationality and facts mean nothing because perception is reality.

That said, I have been accused of being insensitive merely for not understanding why something is a big deal. The fact that I see things differently and may hold opinions that others find objectionable (like, “The 9/11 hijackers were brave because it takes balls to fly into a building.”) also has earned me the “Sociopath” label.

While us Aspies are quite different from Sociopaths (we are actually quite sociable, merely socially inept), I can see how someone who doesn’t know any better may get their wires crossed.

@jerv

Having an off the wall sense of humor and being sociable have nothing to do with being sociopathic.
The sociopathic personality has no CONSCIENCE, they use, abuse, exploit, lie, cheat, deceive, steal, and feel NO guilt or remorse for their actions.

These are the Bernie Madoffs of the world along with countless thousands of others from the corporate world, wall street, government, as well as friends, family, co-workers, husbands and mothers that murder their children.

It is a serious disorder, there is no cure, no treatment, and out of the thousands of these types only a few are actually serial killers.

If you are not a compulsive liar, deceiver, con-artist personality, you are not a sociopath.

@Coloma But how many people actually know that that is what “sociopath” really means? That is my point.

@jerv

Well, usually only those of us that have dealt with them. It becomes a quest for knowledge, as knowledge is power. lol

@Coloma

Ha ha. I think all of us here are certain that jerv is not a sociopath (merely a bit of a grumpy PITA when dealing with those whom he perceives as “Deluded Apple fanboys” who’ve drunk the Kool-Aid”) :D

Jk. You know I luvsya.

And I did specifically request for any Aspies to weigh in on their own experiences with whether OTHERS regard them as Sociopathic.

I just don’t think there are a plethora of people dimwitted enough to conflate the two.

But if jerv’s own experience would indicate otherwise, then that’s straight from the horse’s mouth so to speak.

Plus even one Aspie’s own experience carries more weight than someone who posts Scientology links as authoritative sources and just kind of pulls stuff out of their butt.

@jerv

I don’t know if you’re aware of this, but your opinion on those who flew into the towers is one also shared by none other than Bill Maher on his ABC show and nobody was calling HIM a Sociopath.

But they did cancel his show.

Why they were so shocked that this was being expressed by the host of a show titled “Politically Incorrect” is a mystery to me. Go figure.

But he got a much better deal at HBO anyway.

But our jerv doesn’t get a deal for an HBO show He just gets namecalled by nitwits. There really is no justice in this world, is there?

@Buttonstc I also avoid much of the media scrutiny and autograph-seekers, so it’s not all bad ;)