With the release of Mary Jo Buttafuoco’s book, Getting It Through My Thick Skull: Why I Stayed, What I Learned, and What Millions of People Involved with Sociopaths Need to Know
Now labeled under the DSM-IV as Antisocial Personality Disorder, lay people often assume that the term “Sociopath” refers only to people who kill.
True, many killers are sociopaths but not all sociopaths are killers.
I have some experience with this too because in my psyche 101 analysis, I believe that my mother was (and is) a sociopath. She possesses a complete lack of empathy or concern for others and only engages with people as far as it goes to get something from them. For one example, when I was in a serious car accident in 2006 in which I broke my neck in 2 places, my mother didn’t even pick up the phone to inquire about my well-being. It didn’t even cross her mind. That’s just her – and it is only one small example. I have many more examples that can (and hopefully will) fill a book one day (a funny one… don’t worry… tragedy=comedy). I understand this kind of behavior in the present but it sure did a number on me while I was growing up, as it is apt to do when people get involved with sociopaths.
Let’s get real. Most people know or encounter sociopaths in their daily lives. We can’t help it. They live among us. Our interactions with them often leave us baffled, hurt and wondering what happened. According to Dr. Martha Stout, a Harvard psychologist and author of “The Sociopath Next Door,” about 4 percent of the population (1 in 25) is someone who lives in this world without a conscience. They can’t help it either. They were born that way.
What this means to us is that he or she has no ability to feel “gut-checking” emotions that guide and censor behavior such as shame, guilt and remorse.
A sociopath cannot empathize, cannot feel anyone else’s feelings, including his or her own. This differentiates a sociopath from someone with narcissistic personality disorder as a narcissist can feel his or her own feelings deeply, but has an absolute inability to feel or have empathy for anyone else.
In the aftermath of encounters with such people, we are left only with the painful memories and the psychiatrist’s bills as we try and pull our lives back together.
