The Partial Psychopath by Elliott Barker and B. Shipton

[CZBZ]

Excerpted from: The Natural Child Project
http://www.naturalchild.com/elliott_barker/partial_psychopath.html

The Partial Psychopath

by Elliott Barker, M.D. and B. Shipton, Ph.D.

 
In our experience, the dimension that correlates most closely with psychopathy and which has been identified or is implicit in all definitions of the illness is the concept of empathy, but empathy defined in a specific two-part way.

Empathy is loosely thought to be the capacity to put yourself in another person's shoes. But this seems to be only one part of what constitutes empathy in relation to the psychopath. What is different about the psychopath is that he is unaffected or detached emotionally from the knowledge that he gains by putting himself in your shoes. Thus, although he is able to very quickly glean during the briefest encounter with another person a lot of very useful information about what makes that person tick, this knowledge is simply knowledge to be used or not as the psychopath chooses. What is missing in psychopaths is the compelling nature of the appropriate affective response to the knowledge gained from putting himself in another persons shoes, in the way that this happens in the normal person. This essential missing aspect of empathy, even in the severe psychopath, is not in my experience easily seen and one does not often get a second glimpse of it if one has been treated to a first one by mistake.

A rather crude example might suffice. A young psychopath who had inflicted multiple stab wounds on an elderly woman, and was charged with attempted murder, appeared subdued and appropriately sad about the offence during the early stages of a first interview. His eyes were moist as he accurately described how the woman must have felt during and after the attack. But later in the same interview, after good rapport had been established, this boy blurted out, "I don't know what all the fuss is about. The old bag only had a dozen scratches." To my knowledge, in all his subsequent years in the psychiatric hospital, he stuck to all the right lines of remorse which he quickly learned were more appropriate and useful. The bright psychopath, the experienced psychopath, doesn't stumble like that very often.

With luck and the right question about how the other person's feelings affected him there will be a barely perceptible pause, or a puzzled look, or even – rarely - the question, "How am I supposed to feel?"

The second part of this two-part empathy for the normal person is the automatic, compelling, intuitive, appropriate response to what the other feels - not the acting out of a chosen script. The psychopath can follow the same script as a normal person, usually with all the subtle nuances of a skilled actor - if he chooses to do so. An untrained observer is very unlikely to note any difference from the real thing.

Thus the second part of this two-part empathy in a psychopath is the choosing and acting of a script. Unlike the normal person, he can choose what script to follow. He is not compelled intuitively or automatically to react to the way he knows you feel. And unlike the normal person, he has been told, or learned by observing others, what he is supposed to feel.

As he rapes you or strangles you he is not compelled to feel your pain, your terror, your helplessness. There is no automatic, compelling, intuitive connection between what he knows you feel and what he feels. There is no way he must feel. Thus there is none of this kind of restraining force on his behavior. Therein lies the danger of psychopathy.

Are experiences in the first three years critical in developing this two-part type of empathy? Yes - if you accept that psychopathy can be created in the first three years.

For about half a century, we have known one unfailing recipe for creating psychopaths -- move a child through a dozen foster homes in the first three years. There are probably other things - genetic, organic, or biochemical, that can sometimes predispose a person to psychopathy. But that should not lull us into forgetting the one never-failing recipe. More importantly, we should be mindful that less severe disruptions of attachment, like a dozen different caregivers in the first three years can create partial psychopaths.

If we had an unfakable way to measure this two-part type of empathy we would be able to correlate such findings with clinical impressions of severity of psychopathy, whether we are speaking about psychopaths in prison, in politics, in business, or the day before they kill.

To take the issue further, if a relative incapacity for this two-part type of empathy is a key ingredient in the makeup of psychopaths, what are the consequences for society if large numbers of individuals are functioning without it? Isn't a capacity to be affected by what is happening to others a necessary component in the makeup of a majority of persons in order for a group to function as a group? From a sociological perspective, isn't this one of the functional prerequisites of any social system? Is there a critical mass for this type of empathy for a society to survive?
 
 

Excerpted from a paper presented at the 68th Annual Meeting of the Ontario Psychiatric Association, 1988.

Elliot Barker Library http://www.naturalchild.com/elliott_barker/

[Cornfield]

CZ, this article brought up an old, supposedly dead issue with me from the 1990's which I thought I had clear in my mind at the time.   But now I think not!

When my husband accidently ran over my leg and almost cut it off with the disc behind the tractor, because he never looked back to notice where I was standing, there was eventually a number of public expressions of sympathy from my friends in the community.  I thought this was quite normal, but expressed suprise at the fact that my husband had told them of the accident.  That was not at all like him.

I expressed surprise when friends told me just how sorry Husband was that he hurt me, but my friends insisted he felt just terrible about putting me on the couch with the injury.  So I felt gratitude at his sudden empathy towards me, which was the period after the children left home and he was drinking secretly,  often to cope with his personal business stress.    My spirits were buoyed by the thought that he might actually care, as it was just the two of us in the family now.

After reading the article, I feel much differently about his attitude and apparent empathy toward me.  I now think his remorse was the old copying of an attitude that would win him support and erase any iota of guilt in his behavior.  If you are sorry in public, you certainly must care about and love your wife.  Not really!

He never was sorry for me and I suffered for months to heal, doing my gardening as best I could, and carrying on with my usual responsibilities in the home.  He never cooperated in taking on any of the work load which would have been a sign of remorse.  He avoided me as much as usual, and the decade of the nineties turned out to be the steep decline in relationship that led to my confronting him about the drinking and threatening to leave him if he didn't get help.  He stopped drinking for a few months but returned to social drinking the following Christmas, as it was a public behavior he felt obliged to do at  social gatherings.   He always had his justifications ready for any  addictive behavior he wished to do.

I am just now beginning to understand the depth of how much he fit into the psychopathic personality model fifteen years before his illness and death.  I can no longer deny the fit when I read these articles and see myself and my stories in a new light after considering the real motivations of the man I thought I knew at the time.

I didn't know the man at all.  I am so fortunate to be free and alone to make new relationships in the world and so quick to back off relationships without the normal responses one would expect.  I am not paranoid, just knowledgeable and careful.

It is the new me and it is difficult but necessary to be wise when red flags pop up.
I don't analyze or have much patience in relationships.  I look for normalcy now.

[CZBZ]

"I now think his remorse was the old copying of an attitude that would win him support and erase any iota of guilt in his behavior.  If you are sorry in public, you certainly must care about and love your wife.  Not really!"

Dear Cornfield,

I suppose an admission of responsibility would alleviate the guilt he felt for having harmed his wife. As long as he admitted he was sorry about the accident, he felt better about his inattention. As we all learn the hard way, the only thing that matters is how the narcissist 'feels'. If he felt better after telling people about the accident, then that's all that mattered. You felt terrible, he felt good, get back to work and don't talk about it. 

Like you wrote, his public apology does not mean he empathized with you. When you were unable to perform your usual duties, I'd imagine he'd ignore your pain and suffering so he didn't have to feel 'bad' about himself. He may have even suggested your slow recovery meant you were 'begging for sympathy' because of course, that puts responsibility back on YOUR shoulders, not his.

"It is the new me and it is difficult but necessary to be wise when red flags pop up. I don't analyze or have much patience in relationships.  I look for normalcy now."

I love what you wrote, Corn! Normal relationships do not require 'analysis' and excessive thinking about WHY or HOW COME or WHAT-THE-HELL??? Normal relationships have usual disagreements but they aren't likely to throw us in a tailspin obsessing on someone's behavior. In a normal relationship, we have a problem and we talk about it and by the time we're finished revealing our thoughts to the other person, both people feel BETTER.

In my experience, I feel even more intimately connected afterwards. Maybe that's because both people were operating on a Good Faith Agreement, believing the other person cared about my welfare as much as their own; was committed to the relationship; was focused on mutual cooperation; was willing to take responsibility for their fair share of the problems.

I think the fact that your spouse never took over your chores, says a lot about his inability to empathize and bear the burden NORMAL people bear when they accidentally harm another person. They certainly don't expect that person to behave as though they were never injured in the first place. But a N will do exactly that---expect us to gloss over the whole thing and act as if nothing happened.

Or maybe, expect us to apologize to them for being INATTENTIVE to what THEY were doing! If you had been paying careful attention, Cornfield, he never woulda run over you with his tractor! That's the kind of thing a N says when he or she is responsible for harming someone else.

This is just my understanding of course, but I think psychopaths are 'coldly indifferent'---they are not inclined to feel guilty or ashamed like a narcissist. The N will perform psychological acrobats denying responsibility. Narcissists evacuate their shame, blame and fault because they cannot process these miserable emotions. They feel ashamed of themselves and their only recourse is to project their shame on a handy target.

This is where we get tangled up though because we don't understand 'why' they are blaming us for something 'they' did. And voila! The old obsession routine begins as we peer within ourselves for fault when we really should be peering outside ourselves instead. I think it's very hard for us to know how psychopathic or narcissistic someone may be but hopefully, educating ourselves about pathological people will at least allow us to stop blaming ourselves for someone else's dysfunction.

Nice to talk to you on the forum, Cornfield!

Hugs,

CZBZ

[NewWings4MeNow]

Reading this article and Corn's reply to it, I've been reminded of an odd experience I had years ago while living w/XNH in the mountains of CO -- not long before we moved away.

I always tried to be active and contributing in my neighborhoods, and so joined the homeowners association board, was its secretary and published a new newsletter for the community.  My left hand was in a cast when the association took a tour of the mountain in the back of a truck to see to maintenance matters.  In spite of the fact that I was just back from medical treatment, clearly couldn't hold anything and couldn't get into the truck without assistance, the association president, in front of a dozen people, handed me the clipboard and told me to take notes.  It completely JARRED me that he'd do such a thing, and the men around me looked at him incredulously and at each other, then at me.  I started to object but he told me it was my job, so I did it.  I recall that NOBODY spoke up to this man to tell him that such a demand was inappropriate; nor did anyone offer to help me.  XNH was not with me.  A short time later, as we were moving but tried to keep our house and create a B&B adding 5 vehicles/day to the mountain, the lawyer who owned an unfinished earthship (tire house) next door had gathered all the neighbors together to sign a petition against our B&B (without our knowledge).  After we were presented with this document I showed up at a board meeting, let them know what I thought of them, and resigned.

Empathy?  I think not.  Would NOT liked to have been the association president's W at home, and now I wonder how he treated her.  I never got to know them.

WHOA BABY.  What I know now that I didn't know then.

NewWings4MeNow