 On February 25, the New York Times published a piece by David Marchese called, "What It's Like To Be a Sociopath." The piece is an interview with Patric Gagne, the author of "Sociopath," a book which Marchese describes as "her buzzy forthcoming memoir, to try to correct some of those misunderstandings [about sociopathy] and provide a fuller picture of sociopathy, which is now more frequently referred to as antisocial personality disorder."
My comment, which follows, has received 521 recommendations. ::::: As a prosecutor who specialized in murder cases for more than a quarter century I would agree that sociopathy, technically anti-social personality disorder, doesn’t necessarily mean violent or criminal behavior. The best way to describe it as that if someone were genuinely colorblind, they may not be able to see certain colors on the spectrum. The sociopath doesn’t share the same emotional spectrum, and as the author admits, are free of the social constraints that restrain most of us.. The vast majority of the people I prosecuted were not sociopaths, but people with substance abuse disorders, lazy, or unlucky. The next, smaller cohort are people who knew what they were doing was wrong, but simply made a considered decision that selling drugs or robbing banks was an easier way of making a living than traditional methods. True sociopaths constitute a single digit of the criminal population, and can be particularly terrifying and fascinating. Just as many other social behaviors are learned, so are what this author calls “neurotypical” responses to something like a small animal or baby. The significant difference is that the sociopaths that I dealt with genuine pleasure out of hurting other living things and people. Ultimately I can have nothing but pity for the person who lacks the emotional bandwidth to understand empathy, and all that goes with it. ###END |