I wrote about the reactions I have received from normal (neurotypical) people on the Internet when I told that I am a diagnosed psychopath. Today I will describe how Other psychopaths react.
Other psychopaths usually recognize me as easily as I recognize them. Depending on the topic and what viewpoint and approach each of us decide to take, it can happen fairly quickly, or it can take a little longer.
I’ve never had any confrontations with other psychopaths, though both they and I have once in a while made half hearted attempts to provoke a confrontation. But never leads anywhere, we know our own ways too well and simply do not react to provokations.
In forums for and about ‘AsPD’ or ‘sociopathy’ psychopaths who participate usually know very well what they are, and they know the definitions just as well as I do.
There is no sense of ‘cammeraderie’ between psychopaths, not on the Internet and not off the Internet. We don’t exchange supportive words of mutual understanding, as is so common for f.x. sociopaths but also for many other groups of people. We mostly go about our business as usual and do not attempt to converse each other. And the reason for this is we know – explicitly or “instinctively” – that we don’t have anything to give to each other…
What psychopaths want, and what psychopaths seek, is something other psychopaths simply cannot provide. They are things we can only get from people who are not like us. In that way we’re an unusual minority, and this is a trait about us which is very likely the reason why there’re no forums or organisations where psychopaths gather, we have no common goal or sense of community and we rarely enjoy each other’s company.
That is not to say that psychopaths cannot join in a common effort to achieve some short term goal. Even on forums can it sometimes happen that two of us form a temporary alliance, but it lasts only until that very immediate goal is reached. And when it happens we don’t have to say anything to each other, we know pretty much what the other one thinks and what they will do (largely speaking).
I described in Part 1 that normal people sometimes would think that I couldn’t possibly be a psychopath, which was usually because they didn’t think I fit the description of what most people think a psychopath is. When I meet other psychopaths they sometimes test me, pretending to disbelieve my word when I say I have the diagnosis, and there have been those who actually didn’t believe it simply because they had the very same prejudice that so many others have, and which I too used to have, but mostly it is based on a form of suspicion toward my motives because it truly is very rare that someone with my personality, my condition, will step forward and do what I am doing.
It is like a hitman who gives up all his weapons and ammunition knowing full well that it means he’ll be executed immediately afterwards.
And it is a very understandable way of reasoning because 99.9% of the time that is really what will happen if you are open about being a psychopath (or being diagnosed as one)! However, I have my reasons, and I believe what I’m doing will eventually turn out to be a good thing, hopefully in more ways than one.
On a second note: What I do may be rare, but there have always been exceptions to the rule about not going public about being what I (apparently) am, just as there have always been criminals and outlaws who made a public name as criminals. I’ve no doubt that some, if not many, of them were psychopaths too. Al Capone, the infamous Chicago crime boss of the 1920s, f.x., was such a criminal, and from the little I know about him he may very well have been a psychopath, and if not a psychopath, then he most certainly was a sociopath. Jack Abbot, author and murder convict in the late 1970s was clearly a psychopath. And then we have the current equivalent in Israeli author Sam Vaknin, who doesn’t have a known criminal past (to my knowledge), but who was filmed on location when he was diagnosed as a psychopath.
My conclusion has to be that yes, going public with something that will give the individual a stigmatizing label and be likely to render you notorious instead of famous, isn’t common, but it is not unheard of either. There have always been a few who, out of the less trodden paths, choose an even lesser and more rarely trodden path, and I am such a person.
Hang on for the next article about how people react to someone who openly talks about being a diagnosed psychopath…
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