M. Thomas: Confessions of a Sociopath

This theory matches up with what I’ve observed in my own upbringing, and that of other successful sociopaths I know and hear from on my blog. Our genes and childhoods may have made us sociopaths, but we’re not destined for lives of unfettered evil. Instead, with the right kind of care, children like us can learn to do great things—even if they never learn to fully empathize with others:

I’m no world leader, but I do have a well-paying professional job in a Fortune 500 company rather than languishing in prison, so I guess you could say I am a successful sociopath. I’m as capable as anyone else of learning from mistakes. I certainly never learned empathy, but I’m intelligent enough to learn rules and learn that breaking them often has consequences that are unpleasant. As to wanting to follow the rules, if following them benefits me sufficiently, then I’m fully capable of following them. If breaking them will bring consequences I don’t like, then I don’t break them. No empathy is involved, simply a logical examination of cause and effect.

It is becoming increasingly clear that it is possible to be a sociopath and still be successful in normal society. Dr. Stephanie Mullins-Sweatt’s research into successful sociopaths confirms this, suggesting that a trait as simple as “conscientiousness” can make all of the difference between a successful and a criminal sociopath.

I believe that sociopathic traits can be managed and even changed, particularly via early childhood intervention. This belief, although still not popular within the psychological community, is finally getting some traction. I believe that the existence of successful sociopaths suggests that this is true, that sociopaths are incredibly malleable and impressionable. Sociopaths are not influenced in the same ways as empaths, but sociopaths are just as susceptible to their own range of outside influence, perhaps even more susceptible. In research involving the propensity of toddlers to share, psychologist Ariel Knafo of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem has researchers spend an hour of quality time with the toddlers. During a snack break, the researcher brings out two bags of a popular peanut-butter-flavored Israeli snack—Bambas. The youngster opens his pack to see the proper number of Bambas, twenty-four, but the researcher opens his to discover only three, to which he exclaims, “Mine has only three!” Some of the toddlers volunteer some of their own Bambas. Interestingly, the toddlers most likely to share are the toddlers who have a gene variant highly correlated with antisocial behavior in children. Leading researcher in child development Jay Belsky explains: “These genes aren’t about risk, it’s about a greater sensitivity to experience. If things go well for you when you’re young, the same genes that could have helped make a mess of you help to make you stronger and happier instead. It’s not vulnerability but responsiveness—for better or worse.” It’s this “for better or worse” aspect that is concerning when considering the possibility of raising a child genetically disposed to sociopathy.

When I consider the possibility of having sociopath children and how I would raise them, I think the ideal situation would be for child sociopaths to be exposed to both a sociopathic parent or adult figure and an empathic person. An empathy role model is important for a sociopath in order to learn to respect how most of the world thinks. Steinbeck describes the origins of the sociopath Cathy’s mind-blindness to others:

Nearly everyone in the world has appetites and impulses, trigger emotions, islands of selfishness, lusts just beneath the surface. And most people either hold such things in check or indulge them secretly. Cathy knew not only these impulses in others but how to use them for her own gain.

It is quite possible that she did not believe in any other tendencies in humans, for while she was preternaturally alert in some directions she was completely blind in others.

This description is particularly poignant for me because it provides a readily understood explanation for why Cathy cannot respect the inner worlds of others in a way that would allow her to check her antisocial behavior. All she sees are people’s frailties, which, when hidden from the outside world and only acknowledged and indulged in private, drive Cathy to conclude that people are gross hypocrites. She does not respect them, does not even consider their needs and wants worthy of her own consideration, largely because she cannot see the many ways in which empaths are worthy of her admiration and respect: “to a monster the norm is monstrous.”

This is why I think it is so important for sociopathic children to be consistently exposed to a loving and admirable empathy figure, in order to realize that empaths are much more than the sum of their basest desires. A sociopathic child would need someone like my friend Ann, who, after I spent decades objectifying all other humans, finally got me to see that empaths were just like me, but different. And after I understood that basic fact, I was finally able to trust that things like “love” and “goodwill” were actual concepts that empaths felt and not just window dressing on lives lived in a collective delusion.

I think that sociopathic children, like the schoolchildren who are learning empathy from babies, should be sensitized to the fact that there are others out there who are different from them, and in fact that most people are different from each other. I think most child sociopaths grow up thinking, first, that everyone is like them, but just not as good or smart or skilled; later they think they’re entirely alone and no one else is like them. If children sociopaths grew up realizing that they were different, and more important, that other people are also different from each other, I think they could be taught to respect those differences in a way that would make them uniquely sensitive to the needs of normal people.

I also think a sociopath child should have a sociopath role model in his life. A fellow sociopath would help the child to know that he is not alone, that he is not a monster, “only a variation.” A sociopathic role model could help him guide some of his impulses into positive, pro-social activities. Children have legitimate needs and wants, and a sociopath role model might be able to address the special needs and wants of a sociopath child without alienating him with hints of moral repulsion. According to psychiatrist Liane Leedom, the author of Just Like His Father , the sociopath child’s needs must be acknowledged as legitimate but limited in socially acceptable ways through the use of redirecting the child’s attention to acceptable substitutes until the child can learn to meet his own needs “in a way that is productive rather than destructive.” It’s not a complete cure, but it is probably the best that can be hoped for.

Who knows how children should be raised, really? In a New York Times Magazine article titled “How Do You Raise a Prodigy?” Andrew Solomon speaks of a prodigy as “a monster that violates the natural order,” who presents his parents with unique difficulties as “bewildering and hazardous as a disability.” Parents fear that they might either fail to cultivate their child’s unique gifts or push too hard and break their child’s spirit. These parental anxieties are even greater when it comes to children who are labeled special or different.

With the benefit of adult hindsight, I believe that my parents remarkably managed to strike a proper balance for me. I’ve hated them sometimes, but for the most part, I’ve loved them the way one loves the sky or the ocean or home. I recently read an interview with the virtuoso and former prodigy Lang Lang in which he described what it was like to grow up with a tyrannical father: “If my father had pressured me like this and I had not done well, it would have been child abuse, and I would be traumatized, maybe destroyed. He could have been less extreme, and we probably would have made it to the same place; you don’t have to sacrifice everything to be a musician. But we had the same goal. So since all the pressure helped me become a world-famous star musician, which I love being, I would say that, for me, it was in the end a wonderful way to grow up.”