What is the opposite of sociopathy?

[Flash]

Posted by Dennis Leahy (here)

Posted by Flash (here)
...

Dennis, one of the problem for understanding sociopathy ...

Well, then, my question was poorly stated. I figured the prompting of mentioning hillary clinton's heinous behavior, (antisocial personality disorder/sociopathic) as one end of a spectrum would be enough to examine the other end of the spectrum (the healthy behavior we would all want to aim toward.) I wouldn't have thought of emotional dependency as the opposite of clinton's behavior, for example.

I was looking for heart-centered responses, and got a lot of those. Some other responses seem more head-centered (intellectual) than what I was going for, but I think the head-centered responses added to the collage. :~)

lol how can you have a heart centered response when talking of sociopathy?? we have to consider something that has no heart to start with.

Heart centered? this is the problem... it puts you in the wrong track when about sociopath. I feel some disconnect here. Dennis, it seems obvious to me that you have little experience with true sociopath. Am I wrong?

By the way, Clinton has no heart. She is a true sociopath in my views.

Are sociopath environment created while psychopath genetic? I would say it is on a sliding spectrum. What I observed us that psychopaths have other mental illnesses, such as neurosis, psychosis, etc while sociopaths do not. But I am pretty sure both have some genetic components.

[Dennis Leahy]

Posted by Flash (here)

Posted by Dennis Leahy (here)

Posted by Flash (here)
...

Dennis, one of the problem for understanding sociopathy ...

Well, then, my question was poorly stated. I figured the prompting of mentioning hillary clinton's heinous behavior, (antisocial personality disorder/sociopathic) as one end of a spectrum would be enough to examine the other end of the spectrum (the healthy behavior we would all want to aim toward.) I wouldn't have thought of emotional dependency as the opposite of clinton's behavior, for example.

I was looking for heart-centered responses, and got a lot of those. Some other responses seem more head-centered (intellectual) than what I was going for, but I think the head-centered responses added to the collage. :~)

lol how can you have a heart centered response when talking of sociopathy?? we have to consider something that has no heart to start with.

Heart centered? this is the problem... it puts you in the wrong track when about sociopath. I feel some disconnect here. Dennis, it seems obvious to me that you have little experience with true sociopath. Am I wrong?

Considering that I am convinced that the humans that control planet Earth are or mimic the behavior of sociopaths/psychopaths, such as the example I offered of hillary clinton, we ALL have a great deal of experience with sociopaths. They have murdered, tortured, imprisoned, raped, robbed, and impoverished hundreds of millions of other humans in our lifetimes. And, yes, I also have one-on-one experience with sociopaths, as well as sociopathic behavior from individuals that may not exactly fit the DSM IV definition but still exhibited sociopathic behavior. I think there are accepted aspects of society that train people into sociopathic behavior, even if they are not technically antisocial personality disorder. Almost everything that we think of as a dichotomy is really a spectrum, and so there are people who range from expressing love to people expressing sociopathy - a full range where at one end the behavior gets closer and closer to a john bolton, or a hillary clinton, or a john mccain, or a barack obama. What's the behavior at the other end of that spectrum? The good end of that spectrum.

I'm asking about (the opposite of) sociopathy, in general, not the opposite of John Doe the sociopath that I experienced or a technical discussion of DSM IV symptoms. You know that story about the Buddha in front of a group of monks, and the Buddha held up the lotus blossom, and one monk smiled instantly, and the Buddha handed him the flower and named his successor. Like that. Your instant, gut-level response for how you would describe the other end of the spectrum from sociopathy. What's the opposite of sociopathy?

Whatever you say is OK, it's right - this is all opinions.

[AutumnW]

The opposite of psychopathy is borderline personality disorder. Psychopaths are fearless, cold and do 't bond emotionally. Borderlines are fearful (of abandonment primarily) and bond hysterically.

Strangely, both extremes end up treating others really badly, though the interior states of mind are radically different. Of all the disorders Borderlines suffer the most and psychopaths the least.

[Flash]

Posted by Dennis Leahy (here)

Posted by Flash (here)

Posted by Dennis Leahy (here)

Posted by Flash (here)
...

Dennis, one of the problem for understanding sociopathy ...

Well, then, my question was poorly stated. I figured the prompting of mentioning hillary clinton's heinous behavior, (antisocial personality disorder/sociopathic) as one end of a spectrum would be enough to examine the other end of the spectrum (the healthy behavior we would all want to aim toward.) I wouldn't have thought of emotional dependency as the opposite of clinton's behavior, for example.

I was looking for heart-centered responses, and got a lot of those. Some other responses seem more head-centered (intellectual) than what I was going for, but I think the head-centered responses added to the collage. :~)

lol how can you have a heart centered response when talking of sociopathy?? we have to consider something that has no heart to start with.

Heart centered? this is the problem... it puts you in the wrong track when about sociopath. I feel some disconnect here. Dennis, it seems obvious to me that you have little experience with true sociopath. Am I wrong?

Considering that I am convinced that the humans that control planet Earth are or mimic the behavior of sociopaths/psychopaths, such as the example I offered of hillary clinton, we ALL have a great deal of experience with sociopaths. They have murdered, tortured, imprisoned, raped, robbed, and impoverished hundreds of millions of other humans in our lifetimes. And, yes, I also have one-on-one experience with sociopaths, as well as sociopathic behavior from individuals that may not exactly fit the DSM IV definition but still exhibited sociopathic behavior. I think there are accepted aspects of society that train people into sociopathic behavior, even if they are not technically antisocial personality disorder. Almost everything that we think of as a dichotomy is really a spectrum, and so there are people who range from expressing love to people expressing sociopathy - a full range where at one end the behavior gets closer and closer to a john bolton, or a hillary clinton, or a john mccain, or a barack obama. What's the behavior at the other end of that spectrum? The good end of that spectrum.

I'm asking about (the opposite of) sociopathy, in general, not the opposite of John Doe the sociopath that I experienced or a technical discussion of DSM IV symptoms. You know that story about the Buddha in front of a group of monks, and the Buddha held up the lotus blossom, and one monk smiled instantly, and the Buddha handed him the flower and named his successor. Like that. Your instant, gut-level response for how you would describe the other end of the spectrum from sociopathy. What's the opposite of sociopathy?

Whatever you say is OK, it's right - this is all opinions.

well, in that case, what many have said here is it:

on the sick side, the ultra dependent is the other end.

but the true other end is the mentally healthy, hearty person. No less no more. Someone who has a heart. Human emotions being the first step.

Mara the dog is much healthier than any sociopath. She has emotions of joy, happiness, she can suffer through loss of a loved one, and she has an elemental heart, can sacrifice herself for her human friend. Name me any sociopath that can do all that.

The answer is so simple that I still have problems to see the purpose of your question. Anyhow...

If you were talking of highly spiritual people, this would be another topic altogether.

For almost all of us, we have no problem understanding and seeing the other hand of the spectrum. The problems we have is in accepting the no emotion, no love, the non human amongst us humans.

[edina]

Posted by edina (here)
In his book, Change Your Brain, Change Your Life, Dr Daniel Amen offers several cases where he was able to help people who had become violent, due to brain trauma.

Looking at the brain scans of the various conditions of the brain is very enlightening.

(I have a pdf of that book, but haven't figured out how to share it on the forum. I think the file is too big to upload?)

As luck would have it, I just stumbled onto a link to an earlier version of this book in pdf form, for anyone who may be interested in reading it.

http://avalonlibrary.net/ebooks/Dani...ulsiveness.pdf

Lots of food for thought in this book.

It's in a pdf archive library.

[AutumnW]

Posted by Flash (here)

Posted by Joe from the Carolinas (here)
If the question is tweaked a little to, what is the pathological opposite to sociopathy, I would think unhealthy dependency.

yes, it is

Dennis, one of the problem for understanding sociopathy is precisely that we give it normal human feelings: hatred vs love, feelings all human have at one point.

We fail to understand that basic human emotional parameters are our greatest hindrance to understand it.

Sociopathy, and mostly psychopathy, means NO EMOTIONS. One of the feelings they have is thrill, the adrenaline feeling, but those are feeling, body based mostly, not emotions. And forget about anything higher than emotions.

Why would very very big dependency (emotional dependency is almost always unhealthy imo) be the opposite of sociopathy. Because big dependency means lots of emotions. Sociopathy means none.

It is the absence of love that is sociopathic. Believe me, I met a few in my life. And the absence of love is much more painful than hatred. The later is still a human being albeit in pain.

Psychopaths have emotions, just dialled way way down. So to say they have no emotions makes sense as a kind of shorthand.

As far as opposites go, if a lack of intensity of emotion (not buried, not suppressed) is the hallmark of psychopathy. It's opposite would be intense emotion of any kind. The psychopath doesn't hate you when he or she discards you, often without warning of any kind -- they simply feel nothing. That void of apathy, being dumped out of a warm bed right into an arid wasteland, is the worst of Hells.

Is the true opposite of all extreme states of emotion, the void? Is the opposite of love really hatred? Hatred indicates a potential for change to another extreme state. But apathy, not caring? That seems like an end point, the end of the story.

Metaphysically, it may represent a spiritual vanishing point a non-being. When the highest emotion one being can feel for another is withering contempt, they are well on their way.

[Flash]

Posted by AutumnW (here)

Posted by Flash (here)

Posted by Joe from the Carolinas (here)
If the question is tweaked a little to, what is the pathological opposite to sociopathy, I would think unhealthy dependency.

yes, it is

Dennis, one of the problem for understanding sociopathy is precisely that we give it normal human feelings: hatred vs love, feelings all human have at one point.

We fail to understand that basic human emotional parameters are our greatest hindrance to understand it.

Sociopathy, and mostly psychopathy, means NO EMOTIONS. One of the feelings they have is thrill, the adrenaline feeling, but those are feeling, body based mostly, not emotions. And forget about anything higher than emotions.

Why would very very big dependency (emotional dependency is almost always unhealthy imo) be the opposite of sociopathy. Because big dependency means lots of emotions. Sociopathy means none.

It is the absence of love that is sociopathic. Believe me, I met a few in my life. And the absence of love is much more painful than hatred. The later is still a human being albeit in pain.

Psychopaths have emotions, just dialled way way down. So to say they have no emotions makes sense as a kind of shorthand.

As far as opposites go, if a lack of intensity of emotion (not buried, not suppressed) is the hallmark of psychopathy. It's opposite would be intense emotion of any kind. The psychopath doesn't hate you when he or she discards you, often without warning of any kind -- they simply feel nothing. That void of apathy, being dumped out of a warm bed right into an arid wasteland, is the worst of Hells.

Is the true opposite of all extreme states of emotion, the void? Is the opposite of love really hatred? Hatred indicates a potential for change to another extreme state. But apathy, not caring? That seems like an end point, the end of the story.

Metaphysically, it may represent a spiritual vanishing point a non-being. When the highest emotion one being can feel for another is withering contempt, they are well on their way.

where did you get this information about psychopaths having emotions, being able to emote? they learn to imitate emotions this for sure. But having emotions, where did you get that? Seems to me you took it from Mattiuzzi https://www.huffingtonpost.com/paul-..._10287312.html

I think he is confounding feelings and emotions and antisocial disorder versus real psychopaths - psychopath can feel, they feel people 24/7 if they want to be able to exploit us. They can detect other's emotions and even imitate those emotions. But at some point, we will find them ackward in their imitation. It may take time to discern, but at some point we finally see something. Theirs are is feeling a relation, not emoting such as joy, love, etc.

They feel jealousy, envy, resentment. They do not emote it. Emotions are basic stuff such as love, joy, anger, sadness, fear. A psychopath will feel pleasure (body oriented), will feel stress and be exhilarated by it, will feel thrill, but will not have the accompanying emotions. This study dates from 2013. Again here, they do not distinguish between antisocial personality disorder leading to horrendous crimes, and psychopathy leading to horrendous crimes too. Those with personnality disorder to emote at least two main emotions that the psychopaths do not have (studies from 2018)

Please, read this whole text where the psychopaths brains were scanned. It seems they chose not to emote for others, the default brain position being not to emote nor empathize. So in real everyday life, they do not emote, an automatism, which can be by choice. Our default position is to empathize automatically, to emote automatically. We have to chose not too when doing a surgery or acupuncture for example.

here an extract;

https://www.theguardian.com/science/...s-a-psychopathSo psychopathic individuals do not simply lack empathy. Instead, it seems as though for most of us, empathy is the default mode. If we see a victim, we share her pain. For the psychopathic criminals of our study, empathy seemed to be a voluntary activity. If they want to, they can empathize, and that explains how they can be so charming, and maybe so manipulative. Once they have seduced you into doing what serves their purpose, the effortful empathy would though probably disappear again. Free of the constraints of empathy, they is then little to stop them from using violence.

Then you have this study done in 2017, which shows that the psychopaths brains are different, lacking some neuronal connectivity. They did not distinguished between antisocial behavior or antisocial personality disorder (those do have emotions, even if often called psychopaths, they are not true psychopaths) and psychopathy as such. But interesting nevertheless.

That region of the brain, the ventromedial prefrontal cortex, is really important for perspective-taking and it's thought to be important for empathy, because it has the general function of simulation. It simulates other people and their mental states, it simulates ourselves in the future.

So the fact that this brain region appears not to work quite as well in psychopaths, and that it has weaker connections with other brain regions — like the ventral striatum in our paper, or the amygdala in other papers — suggest that this knocking-out or disrupting of this key node for simulation might have broad effects on behavior that include decision-making and interpersonal relations.

https://www.wbur.org/commonhealth/20...n-scans-neuron

The most interesting article being this one in my views. It explains that antisocial behavior - antisocial personnality disorder (ASPD) - is divided in two groups when brains are scanned. Here are the findings, from 2018. More it is studied, more we see that psychopaths lacks at least two emotions everyone else has:

“The cold-hearted psychopathic group begin offending earlier, engage in a broader range and greater density of offending behaviors, and respond less well to treatment programs in adulthood, compared to the hot-headed group. We now know that this behavioral difference corresponds to very specific structural brain abnormalities which underpin psychopathic behavior, such as profound deficits in empathizing with the distress of others.”

The researchers used magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) to scan the brains of 44 violent offenders diagnosed with ASPD. Crimes committed included murder, rape, attempted murder and grievous bodily harm. Of these, 17 met the diagnosis for psychopathy (ASPD+P) and 27 did not. Those that met the antisocial personality disorder but did not meet the psychopathy criteria (via the Psychopathy Checklist) were referred to as the ASPD-P group by the researchers. They also scanned the brains of 22 healthy non-offenders.

The study found that ASPD+P offenders displayed significantly reduced grey matter volumes in the anterior rostral prefrontal cortex and temporal poles compared to ASPD-P offenders and healthy non-offenders.

These areas are important in understanding other people’s emotions and intentions and are activated when people think about moral behavior, the researchers noted. Damage to these areas is associated with impaired empathizing with other people, a poor response to fear and distress, and a lack of self-conscious emotions such as guilt or embarrassment.

“Identifying and diagnosing this sub-group of violent offenders with brain scans has important implications for treatment,” Blackwood continued.

“Those without the syndrome of psychopathy, and the associated structural brain damage, will benefit from cognitive and behavioral treatments. Optimal treatment for the group of psychopaths is much less clear at this stage.https://psychcentral.com/news/2012/0...ies/38540.html”

For psychopathy, I much prefer to rely on actual research and brain scans correlated with behaviors than our own judgment. I think we cannot comprehend those behaviors, we are not equiped to comprehend what is lacking in someone else's brain.

Now FOR DENNIS

The opposite of psychopathy or sociopathy would be, on a scientific research based level, a brain that would have many more interconnectivity than the average person in and between the specific regions that are lacking in psychopaths.

[Constance]

Posted by edina (here)

Posted by edina (here)
In his book, Change Your Brain, Change Your Life, Dr Daniel Amen offers several cases where he was able to help people who had become violent, due to brain trauma.

Looking at the brain scans of the various conditions of the brain is very enlightening.

(I have a pdf of that book, but haven't figured out how to share it on the forum. I think the file is too big to upload?)

As luck would have it, I just stumbled onto a link to an earlier version of this book in pdf form, for anyone who may be interested in reading it.

http://avalonlibrary.net/ebooks/Dani...ulsiveness.pdf

Lots of food for thought in this book.

It's in a pdf archive library.

Thanks very much for that Edina, greatly appreciated