Psychopath.

holnrew

I'm on the spectrum and I'm very sensitive and empathic. A lot of us take things very personally when there's no harm intended. I have a close friend who's also autistic and he's similar, only with people he cares about. He has no time for strangers and can be quite mean. It's not all self obsession.

Anyway OP, who do you vote for? :P

cacophony

vote as in elections?.

nobody, i have never voted. there's not a party out there i'd piss on if they were on fire.
i'll save my vote until somebody deserving comes along. i'm not holding my breath!.

professorben

paulnb57 said:

I worked as a Prison Officer for 35 years, so Yes, I've met a few.....

Colleagues don't count. 

Evilmags

Sociopaths, planty of them, full on psychopaths, don´t think so. 

Emp_Fab

I was the partner of one almost four years.  .. And I'm being sincere rather than attempting a joke.

There is a great deal of misunderstanding around the term.  People usually equate it with 'serial killer' but while a few serial killers are undoubtedly psychopaths, the overwhelming majority of psychopaths aren't serial killers.

Which is nice.

CloudNine

Wouldn't worry about it.

Put on some Huey and relax.

TheBlueWolf

I know a few people with Aspergers or schizophrenia but no psychopaths that I'm aware of.
 
An ex friend would probably score highly on a psychopath test though.

thomasross20

CloudNine said:

Wouldn't worry about it.

Put on some Huey and relax.

Absolutely brilliant!!

midlifecrisis

i suspected my nextdoor neighbours either side of me to both be psychpaths so i killed them both and buried them under each others patios.

cacophony

just on the lighter side, one of my female colleagues, yawned in front of me and two others, the other two also 'sympathy yawned' but i didn't. the original yawner laughed and said "omg! you didn't yawn!! that makes you a psycopath!!" i laughed it off. but she explained she had read somewhere that people with psycopathy often display this trait, as part of the 'empathy' thing. little did she know

frank1985

My therapist said I have psychopathic traits....so I ate her liver with some fava beans and a nice chianti.

VimFuego

frank1985 said:

My therapist said I have psychopathic traits....so I ate her liver with some fava beans and a nice chianti.

gah, this really galls me no end. In this country we call them broad beans. Is nothing safe from the americanisation of our culure?!?

frank1985

I tell you I've eaten someone's liver and you're more concerned about the americanisation of culture.

cruxiform

I've known my fair share, but then I work as a nurse in mental health so...

Freebird

Jcacophony said:

Do you think you know a psychopath?. serious question, the reason i ask is, about 4 or 5 years ago, on channel 4 (i think) there was a documentary about psychopathy. it said, iirc that there are reckoned to be around 500,000 to 750,000 psychopaths in the uk today.anyway, this fascinated me and i recorded it and watched it. it seemed that many of the traits they described seemed very familiar to me. the whole thing was part of a research project by the psychology department at liverpool 'john moores' university.

they asked people to fill in an online questionaire and send it back. to my surprise i got another e-mail asking me to fill in a much more detailed series of questions.this i did , they contacted me and asked if i could contact them by phone. turns out i fitted the profile at somewhere between 75 and 85% . tbh it didn't really surprise me , as i do think i am 'different' to most people i meet.
they asked if i would be willing to take part in a series of further tests should they not get sufficient numbers of volunteers who had scored higher than me. this they must have done as they only contacted me a few months later, thanking me for my participation and saying that if i had any questions or worries i wasn't to hesitate to contact their psych. department.

i could spend an hour on here retelling what they told me, but being of a psycopathic leaning doesn't make anyone dangerous, unless it combines with other personality 'disorders', they reckoned that anyone who has got to the top in big business, probably has more traits than an average person for example.amongst which are, you are more willing to take risks, have less empathy/sympathy for others, tend not to display emotion as readily, consider yourself 'above' or better than all others around you, which come over as arrogance, and more. when i told the wife and my two daughters (14 and 18) they were actually quite relieved as they had an explanation for some of my attitudes and behaviour down the years, but they keep it a secret within our family no-one else knows,

so even after a few years i still keep this to myself, it is strange to be afraid, of people being afraid. if that makes sense. and this is the first time i've written all this down anywhere, maybe as i'm getting older and am more used to thinking a different way to many now, i feel more comfortable, especially on an anonymous internet forum!!.

Wise move keeping it to yourself and not mentioning it to anybody else 

BTW do you know the difference between a psychopath and a sociopath?

VimFuego

frank1985 said:

I tell you I've eaten someone's liver and you're more concerned about the americanisation of culture.

how was the liver?

frank1985

VimFuego said:

frank1985 said:

I tell you I've eaten someone's liver and you're more concerned about the americanisation of culture.

how was the liver?

Totally rad, man.

Tavernor

Ah this reminds me of my psychology days; studied this quite a bit. Psychopathy in its true form is really fascinating, sadly pop psych (don't get me started) has massively jumped on the bandwagon of labelling virtually everyone a psychopath (incorrectly). Most of the traits people they think they identify with are pretty much Barnum statements and has created a lot of 'experts' in the field. It is true that psychopathy is prevalent in high flying CEO types though.

Bucket

I think I did know someone who was.

He was in my class at uni until some time in the first half of second year, when he disappeared - kicked out, I believe. He was in a bit of bother with the police for some rather nasty things he did.

Let's look at a list of traits displayed by psychopaths:

 - Superficial charm - definitely. He was fairly nice when talking to you, a bit overbearing perhaps but seemed genuinely involved and interested in the conversation. Talked a lot of shit.

 - Inflated sense of self-worth - definitely. He thought he was a genius. I never saw much evidence.

 - Constant need for stimulation - definitely. Sex, drugs, bodybuilding, playing guitar as fast as possible...

 - Lying pathologically - yes. Never knew quite what the truth was of what he was saying, because it was often far-fetched but he was so weird that I imagine his life could quite easily have been like that.

 - Manipulative - yeah. Seemed to get off on it.

 - Shallow emotions - no idea. He was almost unreadable emotionally.

 - Callousness and lack of empathy - definitely. In particular, I remember he undertook a campaign of sexual harassment of his ex-girlfriend, which occasionally crossed into the public realm - hence the issues with the police. He also got in trouble for repeated inappropriate behaviour towards one of our younger female teachers - he seemed to delight in making her uncomfortable. We all got very sick of it - once, in a lesson, a classmate of mine confronted him about how he was wasting everyone's time and making himself look like a tosser, and he wouldn't back down from trying to defend his completely indefensible stance. He once told me, without an apparent hint of irony, that he believed all Italians should be hung, drawn and quartered.

 - Poor control over behaviour - most certainly. He was a loose cannon.

 - Promiscuous sexual behaviour - definitely. Used to take pleasure in showing people videos he'd recorded as well. Nice.

And so on. The thing is, I don't know how much of this was just acted - he was such a bizarre person that he almost came off like a character, a caricature of some sociopathic bodybuilding head case. He was like a living cartoon.

Fucking nutter. Glad I don't have anything to do with him any more. He will end up either committed or arrested.

Handsome_Chris

Bucket said:

I think I did know someone who was.

He was in my class at uni until some time in the first half of second year, when he disappeared - kicked out, I believe. He was in a bit of bother with the police for some rather nasty things he did.

Let's look at a list of traits displayed by psychopaths:

 - Superficial charm - definitely. He was fairly nice when talking to you, a bit overbearing perhaps but seemed genuinely involved and interested in the conversation. Talked a lot of shit.

 - Inflated sense of self-worth - definitely. He thought he was a genius. I never saw much evidence.

 - Constant need for stimulation - definitely. Sex, drugs, bodybuilding, playing guitar as fast as possible...

 - Lying pathologically - yes. Never knew quite what the truth was of what he was saying, because it was often far-fetched but he was so weird that I imagine his life could quite easily have been like that.

 - Manipulative - yeah. Seemed to get off on it.

 - Shallow emotions - no idea. He was almost unreadable emotionally.

 - Callousness and lack of empathy - definitely. In particular, I remember he undertook a campaign of sexual harassment of his ex-girlfriend, which occasionally crossed into the public realm - hence the issues with the police. He also got in trouble for repeated inappropriate behaviour towards one of our younger female teachers - he seemed to delight in making her uncomfortable. We all got very sick of it - once, in a lesson, a classmate of mine confronted him about how he was wasting everyone's time and making himself look like a tosser, and he wouldn't back down from trying to defend his completely indefensible stance. He once told me, without an apparent hint of irony, that he believed all Italians should be hung, drawn and quartered.

 - Poor control over behaviour - most certainly. He was a loose cannon.

 - Promiscuous sexual behaviour - definitely. Used to take pleasure in showing people videos he'd recorded as well. Nice.

And so on. The thing is, I don't know how much of this was just acted - he was such a bizarre person that he almost came off like a character, a caricature of some sociopathic bodybuilding head case. He was like a living cartoon.

Fucking nutter. Glad I don't have anything to do with him any more. He will end up either committed or arrested.

@Bucket , is this person you?