How Societies Deal with Psychopaths & Sociopaths

Did you know that about 5% of any large enough population group will be found to suffer from either psychopathology or sociopathology?

That sounds high, doesn't it?

Psychopaths are born, whereas sociopaths are made, so as one would expect, the incidence of those considered psychopaths hasn't really changed much since there has been any record kept of it. There's just a certain percentage of people who are born that way, just like some people are born near-sighted, far-sighted or with any physical condition. Their brains are just different.

There is disagreement over rates of change for the incidence of sociopaths. Different societies also produce sociopaths at different rates during a given period in history as well.

Here is a chart that breaks down the differences between the two disorders according to some sources.

Source

As a previous therapist myself, I can say that I don't 100% agree with this breakdown. For one thing, I think sociopaths are capable of remorse (it just doesn't stop them), and neither has to be violent. They are violent when it is useful to be.

I also have observed that there is a difference in their motivations in general. The psychopath takes delight in observing the emotional distress they have inflicted on others. The sociopath sees it as exclusively a means to an ends that can be tolerated if necessary, but that is unfortunate... "So sorry to have to kill you to get away with my theft."

Differences of assessment aside, as you can see in the chart, there are both similarities and differences between the two conditions. In addition to the difference of genesis, which you can't necessarily know about someone, there are different characteristics for how they present in society.

Most notable to me is that the psychopath tends to be more successful. In fact, they can be some of the most successful people. They are often also quite charming and well liked. Think of Ted Bundy. If you know anything about him, he seemed like the perfect neighbor. (Just don't dig in the back yard.)

Or think of some politicians. Psychopaths actually do extremely well in a number of well-paid or well-regarded professions. Think of Wall St.!! Or how about law?

Distinguishing from Narcissists

The main thing to keep in mind here is that a narcissist may or may not be a psychopath or sociopath, but every sociopath or psychopath is a narcissist.

Think you've got the 3 clear now? Let's test.

Consider the news of those teenagers in FL who laughed from the shore while they watched a disabled man slowly drown, while frantically calling to them for help. It would have inconvenienced the boys a bit to go out and pull him back to shore where his wheelchair was, but they found it more appropriate to watch him drown.

Narcissists, Sociopaths or Psychopaths?

If you said sociopaths, you would be correct. I know it may sound more like psychopathology in that they laughed at his distress, but actually the situation to them was something other than how a healthy person would interpret it. And that something else was the product of the environment in which they were raised, not biological determination.

You see, to us they must have been taking delight in watching him drown, because they were laughing. But from their perspective it was just a lack of empathy. They saw something that probably did look funny, watching someone flail about in the waves, bobbing up and down, yelling like crazy. The only thing that would stop a healthy person from seeing that humor was understanding that they were watching another living thing die while struggling for life. Empathy would be triggered and their instinct would be to care enough to try to save the person, even at risk to themselves.

A sociopath has had that empathy trained out of them by an environment that has brutally and consistently punished any signs of it. These are children who are ridiculed or even beaten when they say anything or do anything that makes them appear "soft" or for boys "sissies." They are praised and embraced (which feels like safety in an unsafe world) when they express emotional insensitivity, toughness, even violence to a torturous degree. What is considered "manliness."

The Threat to Any Community

Given the way both engage in anti-social behavior, they tend to have a net negative effect on any community they are a part of.

That's because they never stop scheming for what benefits themselves and never have any thought of what might benefit others. They also have no compassion and in the case of the psychopath, no remorse.

As noted previously, sociopaths can be very self-condemning, experiencing guilt and shame. It just doesn't stop them from relentlessly pursuing their benefit at the expense of everyone around them.

Sociopaths can also sometimes be reformed. They may never truly feel empathy, but they can form emotional bonds with one or two people that motivate them to change to make a success of that relationship. And if they see that they must learn to act out empathy to do that, they can in fact learn the appropriate responses to make the other person feel like they are receiving empathy. The sociopath can only develop skill in acting the part, but often that can be enough for them to become a contributing member of a society. At least someone you don't have to worry about stealing the funds raised for the funeral of a well-liked, poor old lady's dead son and fleeing town with the loot. (True story.)

Psychopaths cannot be reformed. And when they do learn to "act the part" of someone emotionally healthy, they actually become more dangerous, not less so.

Source

At the extreme, they can be a life threatening danger, but more often it is more the threat of how they degrade community norms. Remember, these are not people who are perceived as unhealthy. In fact they are often perceived as the most competent and admirable. People look up to them and follow their lead.

And where they lead people is the decline of what might be called "goodness." Morality, ethics, compassion, cooperation, these are all impediments to the psychopath and must be diminished in the value system of the community they are in. They don't want to have to compete by standards they can never dominate in.

Instead they promote the values of success, of winning, of having more money, of being clever, of being cut throat.

(Does anyone come to mind?)

How Societies Contain the Threat

While the incidence of sociopaths vary, across time and around the world, there have always been psychopaths. Yet somehow societies have survived and virtue has not been completely stamped out in the world. How?

Well there are as many ways as their are cultures, but a few include:

• Religious training that played a dominant role in prescribing behavior, with strong social reinforcement for this code, including severe punishments for breaking it
• Laws and prisons (or before that stonings, drownings, hangings and other forms of capital punishment)
• Exile, in which the problem individuals were simply driven out of town by a mob or as we became more "civilized" by military or police orders
• Ostracism, which didn't force anyone out, but made if very difficult to remain. No one would hire the person or patronize any business of theirs. Eventually they would generally move to some new place where no one knew their evil past. (This is one of the reasons people used to be so unwelcoming towards strangers, particularly a single person. They suspected this reason for the change of location and lack of family.)

What Do All These Responses Have in Common?

What is consistent is that it took a coordinated community response.

So long as any prominent/powerful community member would defend the ne'er do well, the person was safe to go on doing harm with impunity. Many a psychopath cultivated relationships with wealthy benefactors for this very reason, sucking up to them however necessary to maintain that protected position. In fact, psychopaths are masters of reading the values and motivations of others and presenting themselves in a way that gains favor when they want it.

Or in the case of community ostracism, so long as even a few people were willing to patronize their business, or even one was willing to hire them or sell to them, they could go on living among people who found them toxic indefinitely.

It always required a fair amount of community agreement to rein the psychopath in. Failing that....

When Psychopaths Have Free Rein

Think of wars.

Think of the rich getting richer and the poor getting poorer.

Think of everything that has ever led to revolution.

That's the world that psychopaths make. The only question is time; how long does it take? How much power do they have? What is the gestalt of the moment in which they live, and is the situation ripe for their influence to find full effect?

Psycho-social studies of the population of the United States and Germany showed that by every measure of fascist sympathy, Americans were more ripe for the rise of Fascism in the 1930s than the Germans were. So why did only they have the rise of the 3rd Reich? Because only they had a Hitler. America lacked the psychopath to lead the populace into that moral decay with righteous enthusiasm.

(How's America doing by this measure these days?)

In Summary

Whether online or off, people will always be confronted by psychopaths and sociopaths in their midst. The question is only how the community will rein in their influence so that the community can thrive, how it will recover if it fails to at first, or how it will end.