That, and co-dependency, of course. FOCUS: A guy that calls himself my best friend, and was in fact my best man, but that I don't know if I could trust not to fuck my wife if ever given the chance. He's constantly exaggerating things, very charming and glib, very emotionally manipulative towards the women in his life. The girl he's with now is my wife's best friend, and so far seems to be keeping him in check. He manipulated his now ex-wife into becoming a caricature so that he could claim she was batshit crazy (which wasn't hard to do) and if I have my cards right, planned a way to make my wife's friend fall in love with him. I fear for all involved, and the shit of it is, I still consider the guy to be my boy. But he sure as shit ain't my best friend.
Had a sociopath in one of my classes in tech school. The first time I met him, he was the scribe for the I-strand avionics training company. Standard motard - screaming high-and-tight haircut, moto tats on both arms, said "Oorah" every other sentence. I wrote him off as a standard toolbag. He was a bully. He enjoyed using his position of power (The scribe is the person responsible for assigning guard duty and making working parties) to fuck with people. He would talk shit to pretty much everyone; if they responded in any way that wasn't cringing / kowtowing, he would put them on duty. Doesn't sound too bad, except he liked to do it on the weekend and do six on, six off. That means you were on duty 12 hours a day, half of which was at night, for the entire weekend. Lots of fun. Anyway, he was a charming person to anyone who was a sergeant and above. The command refused to believe that their golden boy was an asshole, so they kept giving him more power to deal with the "dissenters." Things got steadily worse after that. He had a little posse of similarly inclined dipshits who would haze the people who stood up to him. He was an expert at manipulation. Someone would stand up to him, and he would simultaneously isolate him from his friends, embarrass him in front of the command, put him on duty, and then physically haze him with his gang. They'd be completely stuck, with nowhere to turn. We got lucky; there were a couple sergeants who figured out what was going on after a month and a half. They sneaked into the barracks, caught him being an asshole, and stripped him of his billet. He then got caught with a tongue ring, and they NJP'd him. I ended up graduating from I-strand and went to C-school, which was six months of class in Pensacola. Guess who was in my class? That guy. He ended up getting married to a slutty Navy girl who liked hanging around the Marine barracks. During breaks, he would openly boast that he was "breaking her down" and "putting her in her place." She was stuck; she'd gotten kicked out of the Navy, didn't have a job, and her family had told her straight out, "We don't support you getting married to this guy." He'd also isolated her from all of her friends. Every night, I'd walk by his room and hear him alternating between screaming and sweet-talking her. He wasn't angry; he would be carrying on a completely normal conversation with people on Call of Duty between his outbursts. He was just fucking with her emotions. He eventually admitted to raping her, ("Hey, she's my wife. She owes it to me") and we had a serious conversation amongst ourselves about what we were going to do. We ended up deciding to do nothing. She'd burned a couple of our friends in relationships, and we decided that they deserved each other. We pointedly ignored the issue for the rest of our time there, graduated, and went our separate ways. It's been eight months since I left Pensacola, and that still eats at me. She was a bitch, and I'm pretty sure the rest of my class gloated about her getting her just desserts. But we sat there and said, "That dude's a nutcase, and she's up shit creek. What are going to do? Okay, nothing it is. Fuck her." Maybe I'm a soft-hearted wimp, but I think about what we did pretty often, and I'm ashamed of it. Anyway, he's in Cherry Point now. Fuck that guy.
I read that book and didn't think it was shitty. I thought the case studies were interesting. If life experience ever leads you into that section in the book store and you find yourself reading books about liars, narrcissist, people with ADP, or outright sociopaths? Chances are? Your allready fucked.
I work for a plastic surgeon. The people who call in are certifiable. For example, we had a guy call in to see if he could get foreskin surgically attached to his penis. There is also a woman who has been coming in for the better part of a decade. She's had 3 boob jobs (implants, removal and new implants, and then again so she could go bigger) liposuction on her thighs, an abdominoplasty, a facelift, botox, a labiaplasty, and a vaginoplasty (I'm not entirely sure what the difference is between the two is, but she has had both.) I've seen some things. It's not sexy.
Not sure everyone here knows what a sociopath is. The guy scootah described is definitely a sociopath. You can tell because anyone who enjoys killing people - random people - usually is. The guy omegaham describes may also be a sociopath. However, one is not a sociopath simply because you have loose morals, "hate people," are "anti-social," or are often a raging asshole. That would describe a lot of people, particularly those in the tech or IT industry. I kid, I kid.... but seriously. They aren't sociopaths. A sociopath is a person that has absolutely no empathy, moral impulses, or moral concerns whatsoever. If you are a sociopath, you honestly don't care about putting a bullet in anyone's head. You would rape any attractive woman - and strangle her, too - if you knew you could get away with it. Hell you would find nothing morally reprehensible - or would not hesitate --- pouring bleach down a woman's throat just to see what it did. What the fuck do you care. Still think you might be a sociopath? The guy Scootah described certainly sounds like one. Look up the exploits of Private Steven Green in Iraq, too, if you feel like having a depressing read about child rape. Apparently this guy took out unarmed civilian Iraqis at a border checkpoint with his high powered rifle "as if he were ordering a pizza." Now, obviously, most sociopaths are not that obvious. That's because they learn at an early age to conceal their lack of empathy and morals. They are quite aware of what they can get punished for and what will get them in trouble - in fact they may be very astute to it. So the play the proper part in public. I mean, most of their worldview is manipulating others, as objects, to get what they want and pleasure themselves. Of course they are going to come across as charming, upstanding citizens. However, I doubt any true sociopath would ever admit to being one. Society shuns them. I mean, it's not really their fault they were born without a sense of morality, empathy, or right and wrong. It's not like they are choosing evil. They just have no sense or conception of it, at all. But what is society to do with them? They clearly can be dangerous if left to their own devices. I don't know. Personally I would keep them at arm's length- and would never trust any 'sociopath' as anything more than a temporary, when-it-suits him ally, like an ally you might have in a game of Risk.
The guy who wrote "The Men Who Stare at Goats" wrote a book recently called "The Psychopath Test". I haven't read it, but saw him on Conan, and apparently 1 in 100 people are psychopaths, and about 98% of them are really good at hiding it and are undiagnosed. Now, i haven't researched these stats, but taken at face value, I find it pretty surprising they are so common.
Taken at face value, most statistics have a margin of error of 3 percent, really good statistics are able to achieve 1 percent.