Do you know any psychopaths? Tell me about them, please?

[FreshwaterPlimpies]

Have just read Jon Ronson's The Psychopath Test and am now examining everyone I know for psychopathic traits

Do you know anyone who you're convinced is a psychopath/sociopath? What are they like? I really am curious to see if it's as common as is stated.

Link to the Hare Checklist
www.sociopathicstyle.com/traits/classic.htm

Just for fun of course. Am pretty sure you'd need a qualified professional to diagnose anything for certain.

Have posted this in chat too.

Thanks!

I worked in a high school in Milton Keynes where one of the teachers was definitely one!!! He thought he was so manly, being as evil as he was, but really he was taking the Michael.

A very, VERY evil man! He installed his kids and his awful wife in the school...and drove his secretary to having a nervous breakdown. He was disgusting....St Paul and all the disciples could not have helped this evil man.

Had one working for me.

Lied, stole, divided the workplace, vindictive, vain & lazy.

Almost bit her hand off when she offered her resignation based upon the fact that I no longer tolerated her shit & consistently pulled her up, professionally, when she made an error.

Turns out she thought I was going to beg her to stay after she handed in her notice, told me what she thought of my 'telling her what to do', said I had promoted someone else over her (who held an entirely different role within the business ) then listed out her accomplishments and how loyal she was .

Needless to say I kept quiet, accepted her resignation and told her she could use the remainder of her holiday entitlement during her notice period as mentioned in her contract. This insulted her no end and she enlisted another employee to attempt to persuade me that maybe we could sort it out.

I wrote out her acceptance letter, a professional one and a private one just for me.

The final line was;

Good luck in your new job.

The private one said....

Good luck to your new employer, they are going to need it

Disclaimer: I am not a mental health professional, I just employ people and we deal with the public. It teaches you a lot about personalities.

I brought up ASD because it was mentioned upper thread and my ds has ASD to try and explain the difference for people with ASD how they read emotions sometimes wrongly. FanTT summed it up well, from personal experience thanks FanTT. My DS has possibly more emoathy than a NT boys of his age, as I have taught it to him the correct rules for lots of different behaviours for each situation. I wanted to point out difference that People who have ASD have empathy but get the rules wrong sometimes ie may laugh when someone falls and they shouldnt etc bit of rule training can help but with ASPD their is not any at all. A total block of empathy (this is down to neurological difference in brain).
Yes Shallow you are correct we are all on theASD and ASPD spectrum too but at lesser ends! It is when on a 'spectrum' someone meets the criteria enough points it is then classed as then a diagnosis/ enough impairment that effects their functioning in life.

kitty in UK they dont have sociopath anymore and in USA the name psychopath and sociopath is interchangable! From what I read a psychopath is more cunning and clever. So I guess it is IQ difference or higher ranking in serious behaviours! It confused me for a long time too!

The entire human race has sociopathic traits, we're all capable of lying, manipulation, arrogance etc. The problem with lists like this is that it's very easy to start seeing the traits all over the place.

tinytoy yes! that male sounds exactly like text book! One author described it as 'throwing a relationship away like an empty candy wrapper!' or was it crip packet!? You get my drift!
Who mentioned arson up thread? Yep this a common behaviour too!
God my DS df sadly was textbook too. But at the time when the superfalse charm is on you dont tend to get Bob Hares book from Amazon...knew their was something not right! It was when I challenged him the mask dropped and his eyes turned black and he was drippling and spitting as he screamed in face threatening to throw me down the stairs at 5 months pregnant I realised too late what was niggling me for months! You dont have to be trained in these checklists just listen to your intution or gut feeling you cant go wrong! I didn't!

I am mainly marking my place to post more tomorrow.

My dad is a sociopath. I have two other family members who are as well.

I thought there was a difference between psychopaths and sociopaths though..

www.diffen.com/difference/Psychopath_vs_Sociopath

www.psychologytoday.com/files/attachments/112693/psychopathy-versus-sociopathy.pdf

Should have read the whole thread as I see this has been touched on already.

Not all psychopaths are horrible people. They are capable of being more horrible, more quickly, than the rest of us but there are plenty who choose not to. I do, though, suspect that this choice tends to be made by those who were diagnosed & counselled early on. Psychopaths who are aware of their condition, and choose to live harmlessly by it, have to avoid intimate relationships because they just lack the neurological functions that make intimacy work for both sides. They can be incredibly successful in work, though, due to their fearless decision-making. (Psychopaths don't recognise the emotion of fear.) Some psychopaths are even great philanthropists - without feeling any empathy, they're capable of intellectually disliking inequality and choosing to correct it.

Up to 80% of criminals convicted of violent crimes are psychopaths. This does not mean that 80% of psychopaths are violent criminals!

There's a lively, long-running debate over the term 'sociopath'. Currently it's acceptable to use it for any Axis 2 personality disorder. But it will probably go out of use altogether. Strictly speaking, it means having a disorder that adversely impacts the subject's ability to engage with their social culture.

That would be my husband
But it's not 'just for fun', I'm living it right now