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Comment by surprisetalk | Hacker News Reader

I think I've only met 1-2 people who seemed to be sociopaths. One of them, oddly enough, was a little girl around ~10 years old.

Does anybody here have personal experiences with folks suspected of sociopathy?

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I was in a relationship with someone that had all of the “dark triad” traits for a long time. I don’ didn’t realize it, because the reality is so different from the cultural and media stereotypes.

In reality, the lack of empathy was mostly just a disability that harms their ability to relate to people. An inability to form deep emotional connections with people, and doing things that others felt were aggressive or cruel without even realizing it.

If I may ask, did these traits make the relationship unviable, or did it end for other reasons? Do you think treatment (CBT, etc.) would have helped?

I suppose treatment could have helped, but she would not have accepted any kind of therapy or intervention where she had to do anything differently. I had my own issues that mirrored hers (read about codependents and narcissists), but I eventually came to be conscious of the dynamic, and worked on fixing my side of it, which immediately made the relationship impossible.

Thanks for sharing.

That must've been hard -- sorry to hear that.

I hear "lack of empathy" both applied to people with autistic-spectrum traits and sociopathic traits.

I tend to categorize this difference as "inability to understand" vs. "inability to care". Is there a difference?

There is a huge difference in the persons internal experience, but they might look similar to other people.

The guy I knew was extremely charismatic. He could talk to anyone for 5 minutes and you'd be convinced he was your best friend and would do anything for you. He also wouldn't hesitate to use you to his advantage, leaving you in the dust. Friendship meant nothing to him. He actually spent time in prison for participating in a scam where he'd call older people, form a friendship with them, then scam them out of their money. I'm sure he was absolutely brilliant at it.

Was he Saul Goodman?

Knew a guy who I clocked as a textbook case before he even told me that he used to knock over liquor stores as a kid (for some reason liquor stores draw them like moths to a flame). Very charismatic so he quickly made friends (particularly with women) but no real long-term relationships of any kind. He was never violent and basically law abiding, but couldn’t seem to maintain a job because he’d get cross with employers (often do to fraternizing with the ladies at work). Never has had a problem finding another job.

He was the most interesting one I’ve met, the others are all just run-of-the-mill executives at large companies.

Edit: just remembered he liked to start bar fights so I guess was violent. I mostly meant not violent to people who didn’t want to participate in it; I’m led to believe he also mostly lost the fights so I’m not sure what it was about.

Yes. All higher IQ. Most recognized it early on. It's a feature and if unchecked a bug.

Really? I feel like I've met quite a few people who were consistently immoral shitheads. Unless I'm misunderstand the technical definition, it seems to be fairly common, especially among dysfunctional people. It also seems like something that people may grow out of. Psychopathy on the other hand appears extremely rare and pretty much a lifelong condition.

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