Have you ever come across a Sociopath / Psychopath?

[Bursarymum]

I've been reading 'The Sociopath Next Door'. And it got me thinking. Psychopathic killers are rare but it seems those without any conscience are not so rare.

The P I was involved with used to look down at me and do this strange, maniacal grin. Often with only half his mouth. It was very unsettling. The thing I have always found strange about him is that he looks different in every photo. Except that his eyes have no/very little expression.

Thank you both. Even as I was typing it out I thought how ludicrous and far fetched it sounded.

By the way he really did have this horrible dead-eyed, blank-faced stare. I genuinely can't think of another way to describe it. Whenever I got the 'stare', I knew something awful would follow.

Gralick your poor mum, and you. I can't imagine how awful it was growing up in that environment.

Example of violence being ok for them

Teenaged foster child threatens her foster carer with a knife in front of carers 8 and 10 year old children.

When social worker ( who was a bit dim ) pointed out that the children who witnessed the attack were traumatised and suggested that the teenager should feel guilty , she said it was the foster carers fault because they didn't prepare their children adequately for the challenges of fostering.

When she got into an argument with another pupil at school and they pushed her , she slapped their face. And demanded that the other pupil be excluded for pushing her .

So violence is ok for them to use, but totally unacceptable when it's directed at them

Stacey that makes sense. My XP was not violent (although I was 'restrained' on a couple of occasions, 'for my own good') but behaviour that was acceptable from him was not ok for me.

Cruelty to animals is another marker, isn't it. I've mentioned this before on here but once he picked up our lovely, soppy old cat and threw him on the sofa (in front of me). I was sobbing and begging him to stop. He also mentioned holding his pet hamster under the water for thirty seconds as a child (not very young 12 or 13 so old enough to know better) - he was angry because the hamster had bitten him.

Yes, cruelty to animals is a marker. They will often say that they did it to teach the animal a lesson

Or conversely that they were just curious to see what happened to a hamster when you hold it under water for a while, they weren't trying to hurt it and were genuinely suprised when it drowned .

My half brother is a psychopath. Scores over 28 on the Robert Hare test. He also makes his money doing something illegal, which he justifies as a service to the community. Fortunately, I don't live in the same country as him. He was also capable of justifying hitting his girlfriend after she aborted "his" baby. Just the once, but that is always one time too many. He is, however, very charming and intelligent.

I don't remember the exact detail of the conversation, but I know he did it because he was angry with the hamster. It's weird but I don't remember my own reaction - cruelty to animals really upsets me. Once I read a horrendous story about some poor animal in a newspaper while were having lunch together (this was back when you read papers to get the news so a long time ago). I had to stop eating because it disturbed me so much and made me feel quite ill. His reaction was irritation and boredom. That's not a normal reaction, is it?

I'm afraid I do believe you about the suicide thing flippinada and gralick

I'm so sorry.

Thank you Meerka.

As I've said..I'm not sure my XP is a sociopath...but he certainly has some traits. You would never think it on meeting him though. He seems very ordinary.

Charis you are factually incorrect. Baren-Cohen's test 'Reading The Mind in The Eyes' is used widely by psychologists, psychiatrists and other medics to test levels of empathy. The test shows only pairs of eyes. The rest of the face is blanked out. A majority of NT people can work out from the eyes alone what mood the person is displaying: sadness, anger, tiredness, surprise etc. It is very widely recognised that eyes are not just present in the pedantic, biological way you described them, but convey emotions between humans.

It is therefore perfectly possible that people who have lived with Ps have identified what they describe as a deadness - an absence of empathetic emotion in those eyes. Many people use this term. It is not just a figure of speech. It is a widely accepted and recognised term. The people who use it know what they mean and what each other mean. they are describing a specific lack of emotion which manifests just as present emotions manifest in people's eyes. I have heard DSis use it of someone she worked with who is a P.

Well Charis I will raise your year spent in a psychiatric hospital and a cousin or whoever it was with 17 years spent living with a psychotic as a stepchild. He was violent and abusive in many ways so you develop a bit of a sense of presevation. For yourself. And your siblings. And your mum.

I don't know the scientific terms nor am I particularly interested in them. I just know that when his eyes were 'gone' you shut the fuck up and got out of the way and you took the little ones with you and mum if she would. Or could.

Oh, thanks for that, lastlines! I scored 29/37 on Reading The Mind in The Eyes - I thought I was bad at this, but it seems I'm about average for a woman :)

I just did the test and got 32 out of 36 (I'm a sucker for tests).

Thinking again about eyes, I remember distinctly that the first thing I noticed about my XP were his eyes; they made quite an impression on me.

With XH2, his eyes were the only thing anyone noticed about him. I once asked a couple of strangers to look out for him in a jam-packed bar (I had to go to the loo) and all I said was "He looks totally normal, with blue eyes." They spotted him straight away.

The thing everyone noticed about XH1 was his clothes! He was the narcissist. They both ran true to form, had I but known it.

I got 30/36. Yes I remember there was a test of some kind - thanks for posting it.

I'm not going to over-generalise here but I have read, and other people have remarked, that quite a few psychopathic types and successful criminals look so ordinary, they're extraordinarily ordinary. It was the case with XH2 - not fat, not skinny, not tall, not short; neither smart nor scruffy; brown hair in an ordinary cut ... he also had no 'presence' except when he was projecting something. In woo language, he was a receiver. Even after 7 traumatic years I would fail to spot him in a crowd. Thinking back, I wonder if that's why he got annoyed if I commented on the colour of his eyes? They were unusual, and perhaps his mission was to be unremarkable.

Mind you, he got annoyed at a lot of things I said

I have/had FLEAS.

Interesting read.

Yeah, definitely. The ditziest person in the world, reading the complete fucking works of Saki just because? I don't think so.

Lurking with interest on the thread, I have a few people I suspect are sociopaths at work, luckily they are quite senior so I don't come into contact with them much, but it does discourage me from progressing my career and risk getting rolled over by them. I scored 32/36 in the test, I think it's harder if you just see their eyes in isolation, it's the mismatch between the rest of what they say and do which sets my alarm bells off.

wow, the senior level meetings must be interesting. Are they allowed to put their hands below the table at all?

Meerka.

Hmm, I scored 34/36. So it would seem I'm good at this. I wish it was in any way proving to be a useful skill!

Oops, posted too soon.

I think an ex of mine had something very "off" about him. I knew him from our student days and I had always disliked him because I found him very arrogant.

We reconnected a few years later through friends and I decided to give him a chance as he was very keen (and with hindsight I realise I was probably on the rebound after being messed around).

He was still very arrogant, unapologetic for anything, very manipulative and controlling - especially regarding sex. He made me very uncomfortable, but seemed to enjoy it. He was quite scary when attempting to get his own way.

When I left him he made a very big and very public show of being "heartbroken" but there was no real emotion there. I think he was more baffled that he hadn't successfully controlled me "well enough".

I don't know if he fits into the category but it still gives me cold chills to think of him now.

Yes, unfortunately.

My father . And some (surprise surprise) journalists/people I met who worked in the media industry.

There was something broken about them, like they were in a place where the world was a theatre and they were just moving pieces round? (generally other people).

Even a show of emotion was calculated in order to manipulate something out of the situation?

Occasionally, if called out, you'd get this immense flash of rage/defensiveness/anger at the person who had called them out.

You were certain they were very, very capable of doing damage to other people if the law didn't exist.

I'm not sure there ever was anything authentic about them: or if there was, it had vanished at some point and everything was just covered with lies/self-deception as they grew up.

They were like some raging child playing a game of the Emperors New Clothes - if I can hide my evil or project it onto someone else, then I'm alright. I'm not sure if there is a crossover with narcissism here btw.