psychopath MRI

paraphrasing from 5.15 onward : mri results suggest psychopaths have a very superficial view of the world, not deep affective thinkers

strange thing about psychopaths that like hitler, or some others can be extremely cruel and evil, but on the other hand very caring and lovely to people the like.

a guy i know has the mark psychopath on his mecical status, hes officially a psychopath now, i know him, but hes been in the foreign legion, and live his days by strict routine, but he has more an inner agression.

but strange thing is, i dont know the guy so well, but hes the first to help if im in trouble or wathever, so its very very strange disorder

Very interesting. Superficial thinking as a key characteristic of the psychopathic thought process. It matches spot on with my own messing around with psychopathic modeling in the past. It resulted in some very powerful states of mind. From which I reached the point where it seemed best to back off, because it was becoming a little too real. Anyway, a key thing was "seeing things as they are" deliberately refraining from projecting as little as possible but what is directly apparent onto things. In other words, fairly superficial thinking.

Possibly, when successfully doing this, you also take away a large part of the basis for empathy. They are no longer people. Just "things." There is very little projection of a personality or a thought process onto others. Ruthless pragmatism becomes easy. Coupled with a high degree of selfishness and sadism it became, quite something...

It's like the character Vincent in the movie 'Collateral' that I watched again last night. Life is very cheap to him, and life itself almost seems pointless. Interestingly though, he touches on some Daoist philosophy in the film and indeed the further you get into Eastern spirituality the more it becomes obvious that there is NO meaning to life. But maybe that's for another thread...

tacpro wrote:

It's like the character Vincent in the movie 'Collateral' that I watched again last night. Life is very cheap to him, and life itself almost seems pointless. Interestingly though, he touches on some Daoist philosophy in the film and indeed the further you get into Eastern spirituality the more it becomes obvious that there is NO meaning to life. But maybe that's for another thread...

I got the impression from the film (and its art so its open to interpretation) that Vincents allusions to eastern philiosphy, mixed with "beat zen", darwinism and jazz- chaos, i ching, the tao, adaption and that ... was written as just a thin veneer of hodge podge bullshit he used to cover the fact that he was essentially empty inside

Many sociopaths will use eastern or psychedelic philosophy to justify their actions- it lends itself to that kind of abuse beacues its deliberately amoral.... but can a nutjob determine the difference between amoral and immoral? not according to these MRI scans!

Jamie Foxx's character, the procrastinator who thinks a lot but gets nothing done is the ying to Vinces yang, who tries not to think at all but just keep doing a lot- Foxx's character calls him for it right before they see the wolf cross the road

when Foxx's character actually does what Vince has been bullying him to do "adapt , improvise, take control, DO something" guess what? Foxx crashes the taxi and Vince doesnt like it!

I have seen this little dance played out with Sociopaths displaying Narcisstic personality disorder numerous times: the effort they make to "teach" and cajole (bully) people they see as "weaker" than them is nothing more than a shallow display of how much "stronger" they percieve themselves as being- they dont REALLY want you to improve or learn, because then you wont need them as a "teacher " anymore and they wont get to see their brilliance reflected in your incompetence any more. Sociopaths with NPD use people as mirrors (narcisstic sources).

and in case you didnt get it YES I am drawing parallels between the Vince character and some martial arts instructors- just be careful, being an instructor / being in a postion of authority attracts sociopaths with Narcisstic personailty disorder (NPD) and many behaviours, teaching , philosophising, "helping" are just power displays masquerading as an effort to teach ("but if dont humilate or hurt you how will you learn?" they innocently whinge when pulled for it)

the root intention isnt to assist or "better" the student it is to display their power and dominate

In the end Vince's philosophy rings rather hollow when we see he is a heartless individual with no empathy (what does Foxx say? "there are bits of you that should be there that arent, people are things to you"- something like that) who is motivated by self interest and "the job" (the movement, the hysterical goal acheiving that covers his neurosis)

but we also see that if a man like Foxx's Taxi Driver takes a little of Vince's Nike "Just DO it" philosophy and "lets the chips fall where they may", imperfectly, in an improvised jazz flavour, that he can achieve alot... eventually getting the girl (Jada Pinkett ) killing the assassin and presumably getting the balls to start his own chauffering business

I love Michael Mann films, but this one is close to my heart (can you tell? ) because I was that eternally procastinating taxi driver, driving around drunks and stinky idiots thinking "I can do better"- in the end I did start my own chauffeuring business after a lot of cowardly proacstination with the help of a narcisstic sociopaths advice, but I didnt have to kill a grey haired scientolgist to do it nor get anywhere near Will Smiths wife. Shame really.

Incidentally the chauffering business was the most boring business "success" Ive ever had in my life, sometimes the things you think you want just arent as good as you thought they would be when you get them.

Its actually not quite true to say that to sociopaths "life is cheap".

WHat you should say is that to the sociopath the lives of others are cheap. Their life isnt cheap! And as chulo points out its normal for psychopaths to have "favourites"- this gives them an opportunity for "RISK FREE" affection/emotion and contact. Sociopaths will usually show love to beings they deem as inferior (dogs, children, nuerotically submissive women as in Hitler's case) or distant enough for it to be non threatening. Like the sociopathic security boss who will commit random acts of kindness for certain "favourites" when he is on a magnanomous "upswing".

Quote :

and indeed the further you get into Eastern spirituality the more it becomes obvious that there is NO meaning to life. But maybe that's for another thread...

I dont think you're really grasping Eastern spirituality if thats the impression you've got. Certainly not the more mainstream schools like taoisim, buddhism or sufism- they might be light on instruction but nihilstic they are not!

Richard, my man, you are the shit. (That's a good thing believe it or not). Your understanding of psychology obviously goes WAAAAYYYY beyond the basic self-protection instructor knowledge of fight/flight/freeze and operative conditioning etc. Your post really fascinated me actually. Worryingly some of what you've attributed to the sociopathic tendencies reminds me of my former self

With regards to the Eastern philosophy, the reason life is 'meaningless' is because it is beyond meaning. Meaning for most people usually equates to a tangible thing in the world of 'form' that the ego would like to grasp on to. The essence of our existence (the dao, tao, void, infinite consciousness etc) is in fact not a thing but is also not 'nothing'. It is instead no-thing. This no-thing-ness is the realm of emptiness. "Emptiness if form, form is emptiness" and all that

Anyway, you know all this I'm sure. Which means you also know that words can never really do the job in explaining it. As with all things zen-like, it has to be experienced.

Take care mate


Sharif

Quote :

The Tao that can be spoken is not the eternal Tao
The name that can be named is not the eternal name
The nameless is the origin of Heaven and Earth
The named is the mother of myriad things
Thus, constantly without desire, one observes its essence
Constantly with desire, one observes its manifestations
These two emerge together but differ in name
The unity is said to be the mystery
Mystery of mysteries, the door to all wonders

the tao that can be spoken isnt real taoism... so by definition the tao te ching itself isnt realy taoism... its just a signpost ... it points towards a truth... like a finger pointing to da mooooon ...

Quote :

Your post really fascinated me actually. Worryingly some of what you've attributed to the sociopathic tendencies reminds me of my former self

mate these sociopathic / narcisstic tendencies remind me worryingly of my CURRENT self which is why Im studying them at the moment.Ive been complaining for a while that everyone I choose to have a close personal bond with has Narcisstic Personality Disorder

Im like a magnet for sociopaths... but then you have to consider that relationships function like mirrors and what we most hate in others is what we most hate in ourselves projected outward onto a scape goat, and that if I fall for a narcissist who has fallen for their own self image I must also be falling for that image too and therefore feeding their narcissism- our "problems" are self created and behind all pain is a lesson, the slower you are to learn the more pain you get so... my idea is to learn it, deal with it and get over "it" as swiftly as possible.

More recently through chatting to other people who have suffered abuse at the hands of sociopaths with NPD I've learnt that we are all on a sliding scale of sociopathic /NPD tendencies... so Im aware that Im a little healthier now than I was 5 years ago but you still have to root out the weeds

I suspect this is a cultural phenomena (my fascination is psychology but my philosophical stance is that we are pack animals and if YOU are sick its because your tribe is in some way sick, no mind stands alone - so I take a sociological stance on psychological issues) and that sociopathic NPD will be the mental health issue of choice of generation x, and will be worse in generation yhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Generation_Y

who grew up in a much more child focussed, spoilt, whingey, "opinion is as important as fact", fame obsessesed, consumerist, materialistic, cycnical, pornographic time with a head full of ridiculous expectations shovelled in by well meaning lilly livered spineless simpering morons... sad times, we are watching the death of a culture, we are slowly being diluted and weakened, values and principles boiled away until all thats left is a pimped out myspace page


which is why my alter ego formed Fight Club... no, hang on a second....

Great thread ... as I have come to expect from this 'ere forum.
It certainly will be interesting to see where society goes next. I live in the center of personal introspection, obsession with facade, and general whiny tendencies that life is just not about ME enough ..that would be California to those that haven't worked it out, and that's why I enjoy my time spent interacting with the irreverence and humor on this forum because it is not so common where I live.
Now, it's not all bad .... there's lots of good here too, a sense of possibility, imagination and openness to new ideas that I love. Do the 2 things go together ...?
Anyway, my point is that everything is always in motion and evolving - the only constant is change and all that - and there are positive and negative possibilities in all knowledge. However, information is not knowledge, and knowledge is not wisdom, so it will indeed be interesting to see what is gained and what is lost as we go forward, yadda yadda yadda ....
The BBC Radio programme, Forum, was on today talking about chaos, black holes, space and the uncertainties of the future. If nature gives you a perspective, then super massive black holes really brings it all into focus ..... (where's the tiny weeny insignificant organism emoticon?)

There is a lot I could say here, but it's almost 1am and I'm dozing off so I'll just say this...

People who are really insane don't know they are insane. In this mad world, we should take comfort in the fact that all the madness out there makes us feel crazy. Because those blind, sleepy people who can feel happy in such a world of madness truly are fucking nuts (ie, brainwashed)

Richie some very good points in general, and glad to see someone else thinks there is a strong cultural-sociological dimension to things.its interersting to note that those countries with the highest standards of living have the highest suicide rates.Those who are poorer need other people to survive,thus they are never alone with themselves, but always have others around them.I believe so many have NPD because our society simply glorifies it,and combines it with an alienated form of individualism( ie other people demand time and energy this takes away from your possibilites to gratify yourself) which produces people operating at a very low level of thought and action.