The Sociopath Takes What Doesn't Belong to Her

I write you this letter to explain something to you. You have a serious personality disorder whose very symptoms, paradoxically, may leave you unaware that you have it.

Or, you may be “aware” of your disorder in an “intellectual” sense but consequent to your disorder, you lack appropriate alarm and shame over its expression.

People who do not have your disorder, if they were told they had it (and of its nature), would feel extremely unnerved and shamed to hear this feedback.

You, on the other hand, neither feel nor react with expected levels of uneasiness to learn of your disorder. Your reactions, expressing either calm indifference, an attitude of smug superiority or, alternatively, extreme irritation and indignation, add credence to the diagnosis.

You were probably not “born” with this disorder, but it’s also probable that you brought a biological tendency to it whose eventual emergence your upbringing probably encouraged or elicited.

Your disorder is called a number of different names that can be confusing, among them sociopath, psychopath, antisocial personality disorder, malignant narcissist, and more informal names. Although there may be some useful distinctions between these terms, the confusion they produce probably exceeds the usefulness of these distinctions.

More important are the common elements between them which describe a similar phenomenon – a human being like yourself who, while intellectually aware of common standards and laws of “right and wrong,” nonetheless grossly, chronically violates the boundaries and integrity of others with deficient remorse, deficient empathy, a deficient sense of accountability and, typically, with an attitude of contempt, or indifference towards the experiences and suffering of those you’ve violated.

You might recognize yourself in this description, but you may not. If you do, as I’ve suggested, your recognition of yourself as having this disorder will not produce an appropriate response.

But if you don’t recognize yourself from this description it’s likely to be a function of more than just your denial. Rather, your failure to see yourself, truly, as a sociopath probably reflects to an extent, an aforementioned feature of your disorder: I refer again to your deficient empathy as a consequence of which you are actually incapable of feeling more than superficial, transient concerns about, and remorse for your hurtful impact on others.

It is possible that hurting others is a primary goal but it’s also likely hurting others is a byproduct of your primary aim (and lifelong pattern) of taking something from others that doesn’t belong to you.

In other words, you may or may not intentionally seek to hurt others, but in either case your condition leaves you depleted of normal, inhibiting levels of compassion, sympathy and empathy towards others.

Your disorder has other essential features. The reason you can take from people, steal from them – their property, possessions, money, their dignity, sometimes their lives – and suffer so negligibly, if at all from your abuse of them, is that you do not respect them.

Your condition fundamentally leaves you with a characterological disrespect of others.

You view the world as a competition ground for gratification. People around you are thus players in this metaphorical drama; players from whom your principle inclination is to take, cajole, exploit and manipulate whatever it is that will leave you, not them, in a more comfortable, satiated condition.

You feel that your gratification – your present security, status, satisfaction and entertainment – takes precedence over everyone else’s. Your gratification is simply more important than anything else.

In your mind, you are entitled to the gratification you seek – in whatever forms you presently seek it – even when it costs others a great deal of pain towards which, as we’ve established, you bring a disordered lack of empathy and concern. This is a very twisted notion – specifically, the conviction that your gratification and its pursuit are virtually your inalienable right – a notion that supports the rationalizing of the chronic expression of your abusive, exploitative attitudes and behaviors towards others.

Finally, this makes you, your organized Crime Ring, and any accomplice who carries-out your “assaults” a remorseless violator of innocent people.

In an effort to put a stop to your destructive acts and mitigate injury to others, I am willing to get you help for your severe mental problems.

I have booked you an appointment at the department of criminal psychology at UBC for a formal “diagnosis”, but as you may or may not know, your disorder is notoriously unamenable to known “treatments." 

A more viable option to protect others from your criminal behavior and escalating psychological violence is for you, and your partners in crime, to live out the rest of your miserable days in a cage.  

I will continue to pursue every opportunity available to make sure this happens. 

Source: Steve Becker