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| DATE | 2024-03-16 |
| FROM | Ruben Safir
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| SUBJECT | Subject: [Hangout - NYLXS] The latest trend in the Insanity Coefficient...
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Essay | I Always Knew I Was Different. I Just Didn’t Know I Was a Sociopath.
Patric Gagne
7–9 minutes
March 14, 2024 7:00 am ET
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Whenever I ask my mother if she remembers the time in second grade when
I stabbed a kid in the head with a pencil, her answer is the same:
“Vaguely.”
And I believe her. So much about my early childhood is vague. Some
things I remember with absolute clarity. Like the smell of the trees at
Redwood National Park and our house on the hill near downtown San
Francisco. God, I loved that house. Other things aren’t so clear, like
the first time I sneaked into my neighbor’s house when they weren’t home.
I started stealing before I could talk. At least, I think I did. By the
time I was six or seven I had an entire box full of things I’d stolen in
my closet. Somewhere in the archives of People magazine there is a photo
of Ringo Starr holding me as a toddler. We’re standing in his
backyard—not far from Los Angeles, where my father was an executive in
the music business—and I am literally stealing the glasses off his face.
I was not the first child to ever play with a grown-up’s glasses. But
based on the spectacles currently perched on my bookshelf, I’m pretty
sure I was the only one to swipe a pair from a Beatle.
To be clear: I wasn’t a kleptomaniac. A kleptomaniac is a person with a
persistent and irresistible urge to take things that don’t belong to
them. I suffered from a different type of urge, a compulsion brought
about by the discomfort of apathy, the nearly indescribable absence of
common social emotions like shame and empathy.
I didn’t understand any of this back then. All I knew was that I didn’t
feel things the way other kids did. I didn’t feel guilt when I lied. I
didn’t feel compassion when classmates got hurt on the playground. For
the most part, I felt nothing, and I didn’t like the way that “nothing”
felt. So I did things to replace the nothingness with…something.
This impulse felt like an unrelenting pressure that expanded to permeate
my entire self. The longer I tried to ignore it, the worse it got. My
muscles would tense, my stomach would knot. Tighter. Tighter. It was
claustrophobic, like being trapped inside my brain. Trapped inside a void.
Stealing wasn’t something I necessarily wanted to do. It just happened
to be the easiest way to stop the tension. The first time I made this
connection was in first grade, sitting behind a girl named Clancy. The
pressure had been building for days. Without knowing exactly why, I was
overcome with frustration and had the urge to do something violent.
I wanted to stand up and flip over my desk. I imagined running to the
heavy steel door that opened to the playground and slamming my fingers
in its hinges. For a minute I thought I might actually do it. But then I
saw Clancy’s barrette. She had two in her hair, pink bows on either
side. The one on the left had slipped down. Take it, my thoughts
commanded, and you’ll feel better.
I liked Clancy and I didn’t want to steal from her. But I wanted my
brain to stop pulsing, and some part of me knew it would help. So,
carefully, I reached forward and unclipped the bow. Once it was in my
hand, I felt better, as if some air had been released from an
overinflated balloon. I didn’t know why, but I didn’t care. I’d found a
solution. It was a relief.
These early acts of deviance are encoded in my mind like GPS coordinates
plotting a course toward awareness. Even now, I can recall where I got
most of the things that didn’t belong to me as a child. But I can’t
explain the locket with the “L” inscribed on it.
“Patric, you absolutely must tell me where you got this,” my mother said
the day she found it in my room. We were standing next to my bed. One of
the pillow shams was crooked against the headboard and I was consumed
with the urge to straighten it. “Look at me,” she said, grabbing my
shoulders. “Somewhere out there a person is missing this locket. They
are missing it right now and they’re so sad they can’t find it. Think
about how sad that person must be.”
I shut my eyes and tried to imagine what the locket owner was feeling,
but I couldn’t. I felt nothing. When I opened my eyes and looked into
hers, I knew my mother could tell.
“Sweetheart, listen to me,” she said, kneeling. “Taking something that
doesn’t belong to you is stealing. And stealing is very, very bad.”
Again, nothing.
Mom paused, not sure what to do next. She took a deep breath and asked,
“Have you done this before?”
I nodded and pointed to the closet. Together we went through the box. I
explained what everything was and where it had come from. Once the box
was empty, she stood and said we were going to return every item to its
rightful owner, which was fine with me. I didn’t fear consequences and I
didn’t suffer remorse, two more things I’d already figured out weren’t
“normal.” Returning the stuff actually served my purpose. The box was
full, and emptying it would give me a fresh space to store things I had
yet to steal.
“Why did you take these things?” Mom asked me.
I thought of the pressure in my head and the sense that I needed to do
bad things sometimes. “I don’t know,” I said.
“Well… Are you sorry?” she asked.
“Yes,” I said. I was sorry. But I was sorry I had to steal to stop
fantasizing about violence, not because I had hurt anyone.
Empathy, like remorse, never came naturally to me. I was raised in the
Baptist church. I knew we were supposed to feel bad about committing
sins. My teachers talked about “honor systems” and something called
“shame,” which I understood intellectually, but it wasn’t something I
felt. My inability to grasp core emotional skills made the process of
making and keeping friends somewhat of a challenge. It wasn’t that I was
mean or anything. I was simply different.
Now that I’m an adult, I can tell you why I behaved this way. I can
point to research examining the relationship between anxiety and apathy,
and how stress associated with inner conflict is believed to
subconsciously compel people to behave destructively. I believe that my
urge to act out was most likely my brain’s way of trying to jolt itself
into some semblance of “normal.” But none of this information was easy
to find. I had to hunt for it. I am still hunting.
For more than a century, society has deemed sociopathy untreatable and
unredeemable. The afflicted have been maligned and shunned by mental
health professionals who either don’t understand or choose to ignore the
fact that sociopathy—like many personality disorders—exists on a spectrum.
After years of study, intensive therapy and earning a Ph.D. in
psychology, I can say that sociopaths aren’t “bad” or “evil” or “crazy.”
We simply have a harder time with feelings. We act out to fill a void.
When I understood this about myself, I was able to control it.
It is a tragic misconception that all sociopaths are doomed to hopeless,
loveless lives. The truth is that I share a personality type with
millions of others, many of whom have good jobs, close-knit families and
real friends. We represent a truth that’s hard to believe: There’s
nothing inherently immoral about having limited access to emotion. I
offer my story because I know I’m not alone.
Patric Gagne is a writer, former therapist and advocate for people
suffering from sociopathic, psychopathic and antisocial personality
disorders. This essay is adapted from her book, “Sociopath: A Memoir,”
which will be published April 2 by Simon & Schuster.
--
So many immigrant groups have swept through our town
that Brooklyn, like Atlantis, reaches mythological
proportions in the mind of the world - RI Safir 1998
http://www.mrbrklyn.com
DRM is THEFT - We are the STAKEHOLDERS - RI Safir 2002
http://www.nylxs.com - Leadership Development in Free Software
http://www.brooklyn-living.com
Being so tracked is for FARM ANIMALS and extermination camps,
but incompatible with living as a free human being. -RI Safir 2013
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