The Life of a Psychopath

Let's face it: a Sociopath a.k.a. Psychopath typically lives in a world that is very hostile.

The childhood of a sociopath sucks on many levels (sorry, no other way to put it). A sociopath would likely come from a household that is dysfunctional on some level: with being abandoned or neglected by the father as the most common case. Sociopathy is highly hereditary and the odds of a sociopath having a sociopath for a parent are very high. Not being able to form social bonds naturally, a sociopathic child would likely be bullied at school. Sociopaths can't comprehend and are incapable of violence without a clear tangible purpose, so the reasons for them being bullied would completely escape them.

As sociopaths can't naturally form in their minds a cause and effect relationship between doing something that is perceived by others as bad and receiving a negative stimulus, they don't respond to punishment normally. Any punishment that they may receive is seen as an act of senseless aggression. And furthermore, as the person delivering the punishment would not see a normal emotional feedback, they are more likely to intensify punishment in hopes to incite this feedback. But a sociopath is simply incapable of such a feedback and this situation may well spiral out of control. And as the positive stimuli don't really work either, such a child is likely to get totally demotivated, leading to study problems and delinquency. Forcing such a child to apologize for something or demand remorse from him or her is also seen as an act of emotional violence.

Having essentially the same emotional needs, dealing with all of this may be very hard and consequently sociopaths are suicidal and are very likely to inflict some form of self harm. Such a child is likely to adopt very early a mindset of "the whole world is against me" and will be very hesitant to ask anyone for help and always try to rely only on him or herself. This in turn may lead to petty crimes as doing so may seem as the only reasonable way of getting something they may need. A sociopath will not commit crime or cause any physical or emotional harm for fun.

Well, if a sociopath reaches adulthood alive and without a criminal record, it may become a whole different story. Though carrying a massive baggage of childhood trauma, a sociopath is likely to have a set of natural traits to be successful in life. By adulthood, a sociopath may have acquired emotional intelligence/people skills on an unparallelled level. This manifests in charisma and an ability to understand emotions and motivations of others. The analytical and decision making processes for a sociopath are largely unaffected by emotions, allowing to make objective risk assessments and decisions even in the situations that would be very stressful for other people. And there are many jobs out there where these capabilities are key.

As for the personal life of an adult sociopath, it is likely to still be pretty miserable. I discuss the reasons for this here. My personal way of dealing with this generally is honesty and transparency. As sociopathy actually is a medical condition with clear biological causes, I would tell those, who may be affected by my condition, about what my condition is, what it means, how to treat me in different situations, what to expect and, more importantly, what to not expect of me in different scenarios. I know, this approach is not for everyone with this condition. As for the success rate of people actually knowingly accepting me, it is fairly good at around 25%. On the other hand, I clearly understand, that being close to me may weigh hard on people, so I try to accommodate to the extent possible. But acting in an open manner has been generally worthwhile for me. At least I have the peace of mind, if not all of the relationships that I wanted.

Psychopaths and Relationships

Contrary to the popular belief, many Sociopaths a.k.a. Psychopaths do want and need meaningful relationships. Sociopaths are human and have the same basic human needs of being accepted socially and personally. The problem being that such relationships are exceptionally difficult to maintain. There are several reasons for this: emotional and physiological in nature.

The primary reason being the discomfort that a sociopath may feel when other people are close to him or when there are people inside his "safe zone" at home or work. All the sociopaths that I know, including myself, experience various degrees of discomfort when around other people. The degree of discomfort tends to increase the closer those people are, culminating with immediate family, relatives, roommates and love partners. The discomfort may be very intense, up to the point of experiencing pain and revulsion at physical contact. Though, if there is sufficient personal space available, this discomfort may be at a tolerable level and manageable even in the long term. This discomfort may manifest in sociopath being irritable or reserved. Importantly, whatever happens in the relationship, a sociopath is extremely unlikely to display any physical violence - even much less likely than a normal person. Sociopaths do not commit "crimes of passion" because their capabilities to have strong emotions such like rage are very limited.

Secondly, the abnormalities in the orbitofrontal cortex of sociopaths affect the processing of certain stimuli. Particularly this concerns processes relating to empathy, leading to sociopaths being viewed as "cold" or "callous". Empathy itself is extremely important for the human species and is the key component upon which the bonding within social groups and between people occurs. Within relationships emotional feedback tends to be very important for the relationships to be stable. But these are the things that a sociopath may be completely incapable of. Unlike many autists, sociopaths can clearly perceive normal social interactions and understand what is required for such interactions to occur.

This in fact creates the biggest problem in the life of a sociopath. Though a sociopath may desire a normal and meaningful relationship, the sociopath lacks the natural tools for it to happen at the most basic biological level. To deal with this sociopaths exclude themselves from the society as much as possible and imitate the responses they think that expected of them in the setting that they are in. As sociopathy is something that one is born with and being perceptive by nature, it is very likely that by adulthood, a sociopath may be exceptionally good simulating the required responses. But this task is very demanding in terms of energy.

So, in order to fulfill the natural human desire to be accepted socially and personally, a sociopath is often required to use tools that are frowned upon by the society at large or even deemed immoral by many people. When it comes to relationships, the choices actually available to a sociopath are pretty bad and have major drawbacks: to be excluded from the society or to simulate the required responses.  On the other hand, it seems to be difficult for normal people to understand this situation and the real motivation behind the deemed "deception" if it comes to light.  So, to put this lightly, misunderstandings happen.

What is a Psychopath/Sociopath

Firstly, and most importantly, we are talking about a medical condition, which is biological in nature and a condition that is already present at birth and will affect the person throughout his life. Nobody chooses to be a sociopath, and typically it is not something that one develops later in life, though it may manifest itself to other people at any age. There is no viable "cure" or treatment for this condition, especially past childhood. This condition has very many similarities with autism, which people seem to be more aware of and should be regarded quite similarly.

Sociopathy is characterised by certain abnormalities in the orbitofrontal cortex of the brain. These abnormalities cause certain stimuli to be processed differently, leading to the observable differences in behavior. The affected areas, among others, are primarily connected to social interactions like empathy and reactions to punishment, as well as the feeling of remorse. According to many of the researchers the condition is highly hereditary. I would recommend to read up on this here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychopathy

Secondly, Sociopathy is not a uniform condition, with each case being unique. There are differences in empathy levels between sociopaths, whether antisocial or violent tendencies will manifest or not, stress tolerance levels et c. Similarly to Autism, there is a spectrum to sociopathy. There have been numerous attempts to create a system for classifying and rating sociopathy. The most prevalent approach is the Psychopathy Checklist, Revised (PCL-R), created by Robert D. Hare. Though, since much of the research and statistics on the topic have been done within the penal system, they tend to be more focused around the more severe cases: people with manifested antisocial tendencies and and clear existing problems with integration into the society. This further contributes to the public's misunderstanding of the topic

At the same time, many of the sociopaths integrate into the society successfully and display no antisocial behaviors. Those people have hardly been studied, and the awareness of their condition and the challenges they are facing in their everyday lives is virtually non existent.