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Sociopathy is an Anti-Social Personality Disorder
“Sociopath” is not a clinical definition. The Clinical entity is Anti-social Personality Disorder(ASPD). An antisocial Personality disorder is defined in DSM–5 with code 301.7, and ICD-10 with code. (F60.2). This is a personality disorder where an individual has a high degree of social anxiety. The individual lags the social awareness, ability to calibrate to social situations, and is not congruent in stressful social situations. They fail to manage and maintain relationships.
Following are very important traits of ASPD
- No sense of boundaries. They don’t understand any boundary of the self or the others.
- The identity lacks a core, rather is formed by opinionated stories. For example “I am an Alpha man” or “I am a strong independent woman”. We need to behave differently depending upon different social settings. However, with stories, they have to always try to keep the story true. So they avoid social settings.
- Addiction:— Because of lack of social circle, most ASPDs develop addictive disorder like drinking, watching news, gambling etc.
- Ego distortion:— They don’t have a stable sense of self, and so the ego is either low or high. They at times self trash or at times chest-thump.
- Anxiety:— ASPD has a high degree of anxiety which may result in rahe and aggressive response if you do not adher to their opinion. They may rage any times.
- Due to anxiety, they want to know everything, about you, about everyone. Like reading others messages, checking diary, recording phone calls.
- Repeatative work:— They are not very good at taking risk as stressors trigger their anxiety. So they are super good with repeating same task over and over again.
- Mood swings:— Opinion, distorted ego, anxiety, lack of social cycle makes it hard for them to have a hold on their mood for very long time.
- One way talk:— With them it is never both way communication. They talk and you listen. Of they listen, they do so to gather information. They are too precious to have any interest in random talks.
- No closure:— They would keep everything open ended. They won’t give you closure in anything. They will define the problem but not the solution.
What Advises Do Sociopaths Give?
- Dscussion about their domain:— They are good as long as you discuss about what they know and accept their superiority and let them share with you their knowedge.
- Boundary Violation:— In a relationship, they may tell you that there is no individuality. They may demand your transparancy on your location, whereabouts.
- Virtue signalling :— They may virtue signal you based on their opinionated stories so that they don’t have to deal with any individual choice of yours.
- People trashing:— Because of their inherent core they may explain you how bad other persons are.
- Negativity:— No matter what you do, they may always give you a negative possible consequence of the situation.
Conclusion
All in all, there is not much that you get out of an ASPD. Stay away if you can. Minimise conversation if you can(which anyways is mostly one way talk). Engage them in their domain knoledge. You can get good knowledge out from their area of expertise. This is because they are well read and well informed in their area. When it comes to life, most things thave no meaning when some doesn’t have a stable state and ego.