Non-violent sociopaths

Tempo wrote:

justonemoreperson wrote:I'm assuming that as none of us are currently incarcerated then most of us comply with that.

Or that some of us are good at getting away with it.

For me it's both, I currently am not violent, haven't committed a violent crime in over three years now, but I did do a lot of violent things in the past and got away with almost everything. I had a dysfunctional upbringing, my childhood was chaotic and very traumatic in a lot of ways, and there is a very long history of mental illness, drug addiction, and violence in my family. I inherited a temperament that was very spontaneous and had a hair trigger temper that was well suited to violence and my childhood environment nurtured it and I used to act on the aggressive and violent urges a lot, I usually got away with it.

Then I had a pretty bad experience in being caught for a violent crime about a month and a half before I turned 20 years old and it resulted in me being locked up in a psychiatric hospital and I had a miserable experience there and it was a form of incarceration that I never intend to go through again.

I have since found other outlets for my impulses, not all of them are healthy but it keeps me violence free and I feel a lot more organized this way, also since 2009 I've become much more self educated and self aware so I understand myself enough to avoid actual violent acts and I can still be free and do my thing and enjoy myself without physically harming others, and I also realized from looking back at every violent thing I've ever done that it never actually benefited me psychologically, I felt no emotional reaction while doing it and it never satisfied the violent urges in my head, I'm guessing even escalating to lethal violence wouldn't have given me any satisfaction either so I concluded on my own there is no point for me personally to continue to be violent. The actual real life experience doesn't actually relieve the urges at all, just makes it a recurrent cycle that never gives you the rush you'd expect, so it made sense to just quit altogether and try other things, and I'm pleased with my decision.

Little Boy Lost wrote:Different skills, interests, desires, and temperaments. I agree with jomp that upbringing is usually the cause but not always. Some people are sadistic and violent with seemingly no environmental influence that can explain.

I see some of your reasoning, but in general I think everyone is putting too much emphasis on childhood and enviroment.

I think the other, prhaps larger, piece of the puzzle is intelligence, social skills, risk-awarness, the ability to plan forward and predict the outcome of various events. I'm sure it was the sole reason why I was exceedingly violent as a child, gradually becoming less violent and today I'm pretty much a totally non-physically violent person alltogeather.

Why? Because I knew perfectly well as a kid what I can get away with, or at least get away with reasonably small punishment. I was often violent, beating kids up, even braking bones at times. But taht's because I knew the worst thing taht could happen was being sent to teh principal's office to get a "stiff reprimend" or whatever.

I don't engage in any such acts now not because my personality is in any way changed, but because the consequences for such actions would be drastically different than those when i was just a child. As an adult, I could get imprisoned for aggravated assault and whatnot.

I always detach to analyze a situation from multiple perspectives, including risk-to-reward ratio assessment. That's how I am, that's how I was as a kid too. Only part of the equation that changed is the said risk-to-reward ratio when it comes to violence.

Now, if the law and police system would magically cease to exist one day, you would likely find me not shying away from murder, torture and whatnot.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qc98u-eGzlc

You do consider yourself a violent person, Sabratha? I thought you said you didn't engage in violence because you took no pleasure in it and had nothing to gain from it.

Twinkling_Butterfly wrote:You do consider yourself a violent person, Sabratha? I thought you said you didn't engage in violence because you took no pleasure in it and had nothing to gain from it.

You don't have to enjoy violence to be a violent person.

Twinkling_Butterfly wrote:Is it possible that he meant he doesn't have violent or murderous desires? People who spend a lot of time on criminal psychology can get into a habit of thinking of "aggression" in only that way.

I don't understand the thought of murderous desires as an extreme form of violence/aggression. I'd say I'm a very peaceful and benign person, and I have murderous thoughts pretty much every day. I think they help me relax a little bit, and remain peaceful.

Sabratha wrote:Now, if the law and police system would magically cease to exist one day, you would likely find me not shying away from murder, torture and whatnot.

Not an exclusivity of sociopaths. Not even an exclusivity of PD's, I'd say. I mean, who wouldn't kill someone else if they could safely get away with it? (Which, on the other hand, supports your point about intelligence and awareness.)

Tempo wrote:I was reading something interesting: http://www.askdrrobert.dr-robert.com/self-serving.html

Why do you think some sociopaths turn out to be violent while others don't? What plays an important role in that character development? Is it simply a matter of interest or is there another reason, such as being exposed to violence at a young age?

psychopaths are greedy, really greedy. They want it all and they don't want to work for it. this disposes them to violence as a means of getting what they want, but the ones that are born into privilege where what they want can be obtained easier and faster through nonviolent means, then they'll be nonviolent.

Little Boy Lost wrote:Different skills, interests, desires, and temperaments. I agree with jomp that upbringing is usually the cause but not always. Some people are sadistic and violent with seemingly no environmental influence that can explain.

Clifford Olson is a criminal who wasn't abused, raised by both parents, normal family life. Two evaluators independently scored him 38/40 on the pcl-r a decade apart. He was a career criminal with an endless list of arrests, a substance abuser, a child killer, and dangerously violent man. his parents were normal people who were none of those things.

I'm violent guy and I never was treated violently, nor did I witness it around me. I really do not know why.

Same here. Good upbringing. Sadistic and violent anyway. No idea why but i blame it on human nature.

Firstly, any personality trait, or cluster of traits, exists on a sliding scale. Even if violence is an inherent part of a particular personality type - or personality disorder - it doesn't mean all who are of this type will express it with equal intensity.
The same can be said - as I'm sure everyone here already knows - for the personality disorder in and of itself. A PD is basically just a set of maladaptive coping mechanisms. The "strength" of the disorder in any given person is going to be measured by 1) how much stress is necessary to trigger the coping mechanisms and 2) how rigidly ingrained and 'cleanly' expressed the coping mechanisms are when they are triggered.
The point is, not all so-called psychopaths are equally psychopathic.
Secondly, Mr. No One made a very good point when he said, "Violence is addicting. Just like every other indulgence of the flesh". The more an urge is yeilded to, the most control it's likely to exert on the 'addict'. Similarily, the more restraint that's placed on an urge, the less addicting it'll be. Where would such restraint come from? From exactly where others have already said - environment, upbringing, etc. Also, though, it could come from physical limitations. A very physically weak person isn't likely to go out picking fights, after all.
Survival instinct may also play a role. Yeilding to that urge is very dangerous. I have my own "theories" on what "it" actually is and why it's so clearly felt by those with this disorder - and by those around them - but I'll save it for another thread.

LordOfEchoes wrote:The more an urge is yeilded to, the most control it's likely to exert on the 'addict'. Similarily, the more restraint that's placed on an urge, the less addicting it'll be.

Unless the urge is a natural appetite gone wrong, like binge-eating. Then too much restraint could make it more intense.

Carl Sagan wrote:In our adolescent males, we can still recognize the young hunter, the aspirant warrior—leaping across apartment rooftops; riding, helmetless, on a motorcycle; making trouble for the winning team at a postgame celebration. In the absence of a steadying hand, those old instincts may go a little askew (although our murder rate is about the same as among the surviving hunter-gatherers). We try to ensure that any residual zest for killing does not spill over onto humans. We don’t always succeed.
[...]
So, if we’re stranded a few hundred centuries from when we long to be—if (through no fault of our own) we find ourselves, in an age of environmental pollution, social hierarchy, economic inequality, nuclear weapons, and declining prospects, with Pleistocene emotions but without Pleistocene social safeguards—perhaps we can be excused for a little Monday-night football.