To wonder how many Sociopaths you have come across?

[Impsandelves]

Just read The Sociopath Next Door by Martha Stout after hearing it mentioned in another thread.

I feel as though I could list possibly 2 family members, a couple of friends past and present, as sociopaths to some degree.

Am I being unreasonably paranoid?! Or do you feel you have come across a few too?

The man I was involved with ^ ended up stalking me and eventually assaulting me pretty seriously. He was arrested for assault but not convicted due to lack of witnesses. However, he was forced to attend counselling and be assessed by a psychiatrist and I do know he was diagnosed as being a sociopath. That was in Japan though- I don't know if they have different diagnostic criteria over there. The "justice" system certainly works differently. Not a great experience overall.

Bloody hell, lunabelly, what did she do?!

I'm not at all clear where being an evil bastard ends and psychopathy begins.

I've known a few, but then I worked in sales. It's an area where sociopaths excel, apparently.

I've stayed in a psychiatric hospital.

You haven't seen anything until you've been in one of those.

I reckon most of you have met who who just aren't good people. Few of them will actually be sociopaths. As the other poster said, amateur psychology is dangerous.

Possibly someone I used to work with. Extremely manipulative, compulsive liar, would be superficially nice to you until you ended up in a position to call her out on her lies, lack of professional competence or bullying behaviour to others. In which case, she would go after you, sabotage your work and make up things about you to try and get you sacked. Fortunately, the boss saw through her fairly quickly.

Her lack of empathy was matched by her lack of self-awareness: she didn't seem to realise that others noticed that she would be talking normally to someone one minute, then verbally attacking them. Her lies were also really spectacular, and she must have known at some level that she was contradicting herself and not making sense. It must have been arrogance that stopped her from checking herself.

I've also got suspicions about my friend's husband. Like the above woman, he moves around a lot and reinvents himself in similar, but different roles. He is prone to violence but always manages to turn it round onto other people. He is obsessed with money and status. Most unpleasantly, he tries to control my friend's access to other people (including me) who he sees as "negative influences". Apparently I have a "bad attitude", which means that I don't agree with him. He too is an accomplished liar, even to the point of contradicting his own stories and having people believe them.

Phew, some of these stories are scary and sad.

Don't think I know anyone like this, I hope not anyway...

I really want to know why people feel qualified to be able to diagnose somebody with such a serious mental health disorder.

I think people are divulging their suspicions and experiences rather than claiming to make accurate and professional diagnoses here. You are right, of course Edna, that mental health diagnoses should be left to the professionals.

My younger brother fits the bill. The day before my mother was discharged from hospital he asked her if he could bring someone to visit. My mother, thinking it was only for an hour, said yes. He then moved some woman that he'd met off the internet and her 2 year old child into my mother's house! My sister tried to speak to him about this and he turned on her. They pay no rent, don't contribute towards the bills and leave the child to run around all day, expecting my severly disabled mother and her carers to look after the lad.

I've known a few sociopaths, I run a mile.

Its not even a properly delineated condition by professionals, coming under the sub-heading anti-social personality disorder.

Some people are just cunts. But MN'ers love to label........

If you look at the criteria, most of the people in the UK are sociopaths.

I agree with Edna. If 4% of the UK population is sociopathic, how come nearly everybody on this thread knows between one and half a dozen?

There's no credibility to this really, is there? Just an overwhelming sense that some people have an almost obsessive compulsion to apply labels to other people without the knowledge to back it up. Now that's frightening.

A person who does horrid things is just that... it doesn't take away the horrid things that they do nor belittle their victims in any way.

cross-posted with ParanoidAndroid

Its actually thought that 1% have an anti-social personality disorder, which would include sociopaths (not that sociopath is a possible official diagnosis anyway).

Well, if 4% of the population of sociopathic then it would make complete sense that everyone on here knows one. Assuming most people know over 100 people. If everyone on here knew 100 people (which is realistic), then, on average, everyone would know 4.

My ex was a sociopath .... He was very charming but not in a obvious way , the type that makes you feel that you are always "in" on their private jokes . Over a period of 3 years by means of slowly and cleverly manipulating me he gained complete control over me and then he started cheating and behaving badly in many other ways. I was very confused at the time because I knew I wasn't the type of person to tolerate bad behaviour yet I felt I couldn't leave , and then I found his diary .... In it he detailed and planned and plotted all the emotional "tools" he would use against me to make me feel trapped , he also made little charts of my progress! So it turns out what he had wanted all along was to have a nice girlfriend to live with , but also behind closed doors have a variety of prostitutes and "bad" girls on which he could experiment sexually . I confronted him and he showed no remorse , he didn't even understand why I was upset . To him there was nothing wrong with purposefully breaking down another human being as long as it served his purposes

But they aren't, mixed berries.

If it quacks like a duck it's probably a duck. I fail to see how calling someone a cunt or a nasty bastard is any less of a label tbh.

I think I've only ever seen sociopaths portrayed in films and books. Hannibal Lecter et al. Your common or garden wanker would like to think they're a well 'ard sociopath, but generally they're just inadequate little weasels that melt in the sun if exposed

They may not be paranoid, I don't know the stats. I was just using "LyingWithinTheWardrobe*'s stat of 4% and saying that if her assertion "4% of the UK population" were correct, then it would be reasonable to assume that most people do know more than one.

Oh God, typing failure. Sorry! I hope you can read it anyway.

You have to know what a duck is though.

Cunt is a label anyone is qualified to attach. Setting yourself up as an armchair analyst and trying to give serious medical and psychiatric labels is something else altogether,

It's not my assertion, it was further up the thread. MN is not the sum total of the populatio though, it's not even a representative sample, in my opinion.

Applying labels to people just makes you (general) sound silly.

There is a difference between a psychopath and a sociopath - I know someone who has sociopathic tendancies but is not what I would call a true sociopath. He is definately not a psychopath.

True psychopaths tend to be quite rare as they are devoid of empathy and compassion. They lack remorse or guilt but are often very intelligent and have a great understanding or the way emotions work, which is why they can manipulate people with such ease.

Basically, a psychopath knows what they do is wrong but doesn't care and does it anyway, sometimes planning things meticulously in advance.

A sociopath lacks impulse control and is more likely to do things on impulse without realising or thinking about the consequences!