“Think of [psychopaths] as aliens — it may help you understand them” — Lovefraud

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By Donna Anderson, at lovefraud.com:

” . . . here is the most important lesson to learn about sociopaths: You cannot interpret their behavior in the same way you interpret your own behavior.

Sociopaths are fundamentally different from the rest of us. They have a personality disorder, and this disorder reaches to the core of their beings. Here’s what this means:

  1. Sociopaths cannot feel empathetic connections with other people.
  2. Sociopaths do not have the ability to love.
  3. Sociopaths are interested only in power, control and sex.
  4. Sociopaths’ main motivation is to win.
  5. Anything that comes out of a sociopath’s mouth could be a lie.
  6. Sociopaths have no conscience.

You could think of them as aliens. I’m not saying that they literally are aliens (although there are people who believe that). But sociopaths are missing the characteristics, traits and abilities that make us truly human.

For most of us, this realization is a shock to the system. They look just like the rest of us. They appear to be so normal, talented, fun and exciting. They keep proclaiming their love. It’s so hard to believe that they are simply acting. It’s all a charade, a mirage.”  https://lovefraud.com/think-of-sociopaths-as-aliens-it-may-help-you-understand-them/

There is that often quoted saying that ‘to understand another, walk a mile in their shoes.’  But you can’t with psychopaths, their world is that alien.

The dead eyes of an extreme psychopath — Paul Horner news hoaxer dead at 38

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https://duckduckgo.com/?q=paul+horner+death&t=opera&ia=web
An obvious at a glance psychopath.  Anyone with these looks is also a psychopath.  If you ever hear an interview please note his affectless voice — an obvious by ear psychopath.

Here’s Skylar Deleon:

Vicitims Tom and Jackie Hawks, top, their boat – “Well Deserved” – convicted killer Jennifer Henderson, bottom right, and her ex-husband, former child star Skylar Deleon, bottom left. Pictures: AP

My own NYPD-badged secret psycho cyberstalker/stalker

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This ad has only shown up three times over the years.  Usually too fast to be able to grab a screenshot.  There is simply no way this ad could be innocent.  Why would he brag about hacking Adwords?  For the same reason teenage psychopathic criminals film their rapes of school mates or beatings of homeless victims.  Psychopaths aren’t self referential (one of their arrested development traits), they need feedback from the outside world to assure themselves of the worth (or wickedness) of their deeds.  Plus what good is it to get over someone without letting them know.  Thus when he started giving an ex of mine tours of my apartment almost 20 years ago, he used to turn electronic devices on and off, it’s called gaslighting.  Solid proof to me, unbelievable to others (such as PAAs, police administrative assistants, who take complaints).

The death threats started showing up during my NYPD FOIL application seeking details and source of a character assassination campaign against myself — I believe he is the source and his response supports that.  They’ve gone through various stages after I mentioned them in the same FOIL application, and in complaints to the CCRB, NYPD IAB, the AG’s office, in court filings and to an officer assigned to investigate the matter.  First the ads mostly featured guns and other weapons, then ‘dangerous looking’ flashlights (I’m not kidding, see below), then “Rest in Peace” ads, then ads featuring the words ‘dead’ or ‘kill’.  And every once in a while he brings old ones back.

 

This one was a ‘two-fer’, so are bodies.

The two ads above are curious.  For a while dry ads regarding Peyronie’s disease were showing up.  Then this one with the humorous graphics appeared.  What does it mean?  I don’t have Peyronie’s of course, I’m normal.  Oh wait, we are all normal to ourselves.  Maybe I should check.  Hey anybody have a Playboy and a Viagra?!  That’s the ticket!  This may be a serious matter however.  For framing purposes it helps to have distinguishing details such as birthmarks, moles, individual physical traits, etc.  There have already been a couple pick-up attempts by women I barely knew, within sight of their NYPD plainclothes handlers (I kid you not).  Will they be content with failure or will they cook up something?

(It should be noted that there was an extreme sexual charge between these ladies and their NYPD handlers.  So they were trying to please a lover.  They should sue the NYPD for rape.  Or advertise and make it a class action suit.  Of course at the time they wouldn’t have felt it was rape, but once slammed down for being of no use perhaps they changed their minds.  ‘Whatever it Takes’, ‘By any Means Necessary‘ are the mottos of psychopathic law enforcement units.  Sex means nothing more to them than taking an inflatable doll to bed or two people scratching each other behind their elbows simultaneously.  Of course I find it disquieting that by being friendly to me these ladies became prey for badged lizard Lotharios.

Psychopathic Don Juans are simply out of this world skillful, almost unbelievably so — emotional shapeshifters of quantum speed.  Perhaps they were coached by an Officer Eugene Depasse, if he is in fact an NYPD officer.  I was introduced to a Eugene Depasse (De Pas?) at a wedding between members of my ex’s therapy group (Nancy Becker, therapist) as I recall.  Also I was told privately that Gene had stated that he had come to therapy in order to stop living the womanizer life.  Ha, ha, ha.  Most likely, this psychopath was trying to understand his failures, join art to science, become an even more talented womanizer.  All psychopaths, no matter their intelligence, essentially live as strangers in a strange land, surrounded by others doing things for reasons they can’t understand.  So group therapy with normals could be very useful to them, but extremely dangerous to the normals.  Not being an insider I don’t know if Gene surreptitiously took over the group (as they often do places of work) but I believe Ms. Becker allowed him and probably other psychopathic clients to ruin the lives of clients.  I do have some memory of being told he was some kind of officer, perhaps it was NYPD.  The two NYPD Lotharios in question here, were one, a tall, 6′ 1″ or 2″ good looking Caucasian young man with solid brown hair, the other, a sort of roly poly individual in his forties, 5’ 8″to 10″ of Mediterranean complexion, both very arrogant.)

The appearance of this last ad was chilling.  It appeared on the evening of August 23, within an hour of my having bought an 4-pack of an identically packaged similar diet drink.  It would seem the murderous, psychopathic punk is stalking me.  I don’t understand why I can’t get protection from his Cape Fearing, cyber and otherwise.  This is a rogue, bad apple, criminal cop who should be arrested — for stalking, issuing death threats, trying to derail a FOIL and Art. 78 proceeding by same, investigated for possible attempted murder, and, though it may be hard to prove, for phone tapping and black bag entry for purposes of providing info/entertainment to an ex.

This one was even more chilling.  

It appeared the day after I had gone to a 24 hour flat fix joint late at night after finding a screw in my tire tread.  What does this ad mean?  That he was following/stalking me?  That he had placed that screw there (again) and was laughing at me because I couldn’t prove anything (https://pathwhisperer.info/2014/09/09/is-there-a-training-day-crew-in-the-nypd-and-are-they-targetting-me/)?  It has since appeared five or six more times.

Of course it’s another ‘two-fer’, he’s also calling me a slime.

For a brief period in May I was shadowed by a particular unmarked police car while dog walking.  Sometimes the occupant would even wave from close behind his illegally dark front window.  I could see his waving hand and arm, but nothing else of him.  He had parallel parked his car in a tight parking space.  I considered his action then, and consider it so now, to be a threat of imminent attack.  For awhile similar police cars also had illegally dark license plate covers in addition to the illegally dark front window, but the Village Voice’s Nick Pinto seems to have put an end to that. This car had plate number NYS EGR 6154, I believe, a smallish red Chevy, probably an Impala.  Perhaps this is my perp.

UPDATE, Oct. 9, 2017:  My mother and sister report that they have been receiving numerous hang up calls.  It should be noted that they no longer live at home due to a major fire.

“How do mirror neurons work in psychopaths?”, from Quora

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Is Quora going to save the world?

A lengthy quote follows (https://www.quora.com/How-do-mirror-neurons-work-in-psychopaths).  For the purposes of this blog, I moved the claimed debunking opinion to the end.

Natalie Engelbrecht
 How do mirror neurons work in psychopaths?

Mirror neurons play a significant role in observational learning, and such neurons also play a central role in empathy (Lacoboni, 2009; Ramachandran, 2000). However, psychopaths are skillful in copying other people’s reactions or behaviour (i.e. seem to have more and/or more active mirror neurons).

As with all my answers on psychopathy and the dark triad (sociopathy, NDP and machiavellism, my answer begins by operationalizing the term psychopath from a previous answer I wrote:

Natalie Engelbrecht’s answer to What is the difference between sociopathy, psychopathy, and antisocial personality disorder (ASPD)?

V. S. Ramachandran is a neurologist and an author, who discusses the mysteries of the human brain and is a huge advocate for mirror neurons. Mirror neurons were first discovered in the 1990s by a team of Italian researchers studying macaque monkeys. Motor neurons fire in a monkey’s brain when the monkey reaches for a peanut. Interestingly, a subset of these neurons, called mirror neurons,also fire when the monkey watches another monkey reach for a peanut. They found that mirror neurons are a type of brain cell that respond equally when we perform an action and when we witness someone else perform the same action.

For example motor neurons fire when we poke a person with a needle, but a subset of these neurons, the mirror neurons, fire when we witness someone else being poked with a needle. These mirror neurons appear to be our way of empathizing with another. They are the mechanism by which we put ourselves in someone else’s shoes and are the basis of our empathy. As such, they may be the basis for human ethics.

Ramachandran notes that autistic children appear to suffer from mirror neuron dysfunction, resulting in a lack of empathy and an inability to relate to others. A separate article about mirror neurons notes that psychopaths and sociopaths have impaired functioning of the mirror neurons. Interestingly the MAOA-L gene, which I have previously written on is present in both psychopaths, people with ADHD and also those with autism.

Natalie Engelbrecht’s answer to What are the effects of having MAOA?

“Recent advances in social neuroscience suggest a link between empathy and the mirror neuron system (MNS). Impaired empathy is one of the core diagnostic features of psychopathic personality disorder…. Consistent with previous data, observation of the painful stimulus was associated with a significant reduction in the amplitude of the TMS-induced MEP. Interestingly, the level of corticospinal excitability modulation was positively correlated with individual scores on the coldheartedness subscale of the PPI, such that individuals with the greatest MEP reduction were the ones scoring highest on the coldheartedness measure. These data suggest the existence of a functional link between ‘motor empathy’ and psychopathy.”

Psychopathy and the mirror neuron system: preliminary findings from a non-psychiatric sample.

This research contradicts what a senior FBI profiler, tells Kevin Dutton (author of The Wisdom of Psychopaths): “Sadistic serial killers feel their victims’ pain in exactly the same way that you or I might feel it. They feel it cognitively and objectively, and emotionally and subjectively too. But the difference between them and us is that they commute that pain to their own subjective pleasure. Studies have also shown that some psychopaths have more ‘mirror neurons’ (empathy brain cells) than normal people. Further prosocial psychopaths can be more altruistic than the rest of us. Studies have shown that psychopaths are quicker to offer help to people in need than everyday folk.”

Thus the verdict is out. I suspect that born not raised psychopaths have more mirror neurons, as the MAOA-L gene research indicates, while sociopaths and others of the dark triad have less. Until, the terms are operationalized for research, the research will continue to be contradictory.

The role of shared neural activations, mirror neurons, and morality in empathy – A critical comment

Do Mirror Neurons Give Us Empathy?

The mind’s mirror

Ryan J Farrick

I read an interview with Ramachandran and he explains his hypothesis quite well. You can read the exchange here:

Do Mirror Neurons Give Us Empathy?

Ramachandran explains how, when we engage in physical activity, our brain fires off neurons which travel from our central nervous system to body parts. “Motor neurons” help our organs function and our muscles move. They are, in essence, responsible for our ability to breathe and interact with the world around us.

When we perform an action, our motor neurons activate our musculature in an appropriate way via synapses and a synaptic connection called the neuromuscular junction. Mirror neurons, which activate upon simply being shown a stimulus, provide a similar trace response. Your brain uses them to effectively “feel” an observation. That’s part of the reason why we cringe during violent movies and get nervous for flagging athletes – we can, in a very tiny and distant way, go through what they’re going through.

Ramachandran, being a professor at the University of California at San Diego, does a much better job explaining the implications:

A subset of these neurons also fire when I simply watch another person—watch you reach out and do exactly the same action. So these neurons are performing a virtual reality simulation of your mind, your brain. Therefore, they’re constructing a theory of your mind—of your intention—which is important for all kinds of social interaction.

His hypothesis is that the ability of “mirror neurons” to subtly simulate an observed action underlies our capacity to feel empathy and, figuratively, put ourselves in another person’s shoes.

It turns out these anterior cingulate neurons that respond to my thumb being poked will also fire when I watch you being poked—but only a subset of them. There are non-mirror neuron pain neurons and there are mirror neuron pain neurons.

So these [mirror] neurons are probably involved in empathy for pain. If I really and truly empathize with your pain, I need to experience it myself. That’s what the mirror neurons are doing, allowing me to empathize with your pain—saying, in effect, that person is experiencing the same agony and excruciating pain as you would if somebody were to poke you with a needle directly. That’s the basis of all empathy.

While Ramachandran talks at some length about a link he speculates exists between mirror neurons and autism, he doesn’t touch upon the subject of psychopathy in his easily-understandable interview. However, it doesn’t take much imagination to draw the conclusion that a person who either lacks sufficient mirror neurons or who has defective mirror neurons might be less than empathetic.

Other studies (http://www.psy-journal.com/artic…) have contributed to the idea that a lack of emotionality can be correlated to a lack of reponsiveness from mirror neurons. The cited paper, linked to in the parentheses, describes how persons who scored high on the Psychopathic Personality Inventory had certain reactions to images of hands being poked with needles or knives. Specifically, individuals who had higher-than-average “coldheartedness” marks on the Inventory were observed to have experienced a stronger reduction in “TMS motor evoked potentials” versus those who had scored normally or lower than average.

That doesn’t prove that there’s a link between mirror neurons and psychopathy, but it does suggest that mirror neurons can either affect or be affected by traits associated with the label.

(apparently the study had a small sample size and a weak correlation between coldheartedness and strength of reduction in TMS-MEPs: Mirror Neurons in the Sociopath)

Mirror neurons are not well-understood and would not likely adequately explain psychopathy. Deformations and abnormalities in the amygdala also correlate with high scores on the PPI. Since the amygdala is at least partially responsible for our ability to deduce the meaning of facial expressions and read social cues, it makes sense that an un-empathic person might have structural deficiencies.

That link seems to have more evidence underlying it. Research suggests that a “global volume reduction” in the amygdala would positively correlate to the exhibition of psychopathic features in relation to the amount of shrinkage. Checking out (http://www.psy.cmu.edu/~scohen/S…) also shows that test subjects with larger amygdalae also had larger and more complex social networks than those with smaller amygdalae.

The conclusion of https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc… was that the posited link between amygdala volumes and psychopathic traits was valid. However, NCBI isn’t a perfect resource for peer-reviewed articles, and I didn’t do a validation check.

Psychopathy is a condition about which much remains to be explained. Speculation about the role of mirror neurons is exciting, but should be taken with a grain of salt.

If you have any interest in how the theory of psychopathy came into existence, I’d recommend checking out Hervey Cleckley’s book “Mask of Sanity” and Robert Hare’s “Without Conscience: The Disturbing World of Psychopaths.” Both are quite easy and interesting to read and provide a sold informational foundation about the condition and its psychological components.

Nicolò Muller

Recent advances in social neuroscience suggest a link between empathy and the mirror neuron system (MNS). Impaired empathy is one of the core diagnostic features of psychopathic personality disorder.

A study investigated whether psychopathic personality traits in a non-psychiatric sample were related to MNS function.

Healthy participants viewed short videos known to activate the sensorimotor MNS for pain (a needle penetrating a human hand) while transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS)-induced motor evoked potentials (MEP) were recorded as a measure of motor cortex excitability. Individual psychopathic personality traits were assessed using the Psychopathic Personality Inventory (PPI) and correlated with the MEP findings. Consistent with previous data, observation of the painful stimulus was associated with a significant reduction in the amplitude of the TMS-induced MEP. Interestingly, the level of corticospinal excitability modulation was positively correlated with individual scores on the coldheartedness subscale of the PPI, such that individuals with the greatest MEP reduction were the ones scoring highest on the coldheartedness measure. These data suggest the existence of a functional link between ‘motor empathy’ and psychopathy.

 

Yohan John

I think a lot of nonsense has been spread in the media about mirror neurons.

There is very little evidence that mirror neurons have anything whatsoever to do with empathy. They are found all over the brain , and seem to have something to do with the ability to recognize or categorize actions. There is a huge gulf between recognition/categorization and the concept of empathy. Even imitation is not an indicator of empathy. You can, for example, imitate a person you are mercilessly making fun of. So mirror neurons can easily be considered a basis for imitation without empathy.

Why should the mere fact of a neuron firing when you do something and when I do the same thing have anything to do with empathy? We’d need a fully fleshed-out neural theory of emotion and motivation in order to make such a leap. No such theory exists.

“In fact we do not yet have the research to show that mirror neurons are vital for human empathy, and there are reasons to believe that empathy is possible without them.”

A Calm Look at the Most Hyped Concept in Neuroscience – Mirror Neurons

In fact mirror neurons haven’t even been directly observed in humans: all the evidence comes from monkeys. This is because we are very rarely able to stick electrodes into people’s brains: this only happens for a small group of epileptic patients.

So we can’t even make any inferences about mirror neurons’ function in humans, let alone in the specific sub-group that is psychopaths. You can speculate away, but the actual neuroscientific evidence is extremely slim.

_____

For more on the concept of mirror neurons, see this essay I wrote, in which I break down some key misconceptions and confusions.

Do mirror neurons explain understanding, or is it the other way round?

Also see the following:

  • Mirror Neurons — The unfalsifiable theory — Talking Brains
  • What’s So Special About Mirror Neurons? — SciAm
  • Mirror Neurons: The Most Hyped Concept in Neuroscience? — Psychology Today

In fact a neuroscientist named Greg Hickok recently wrote a book debunking much of the mirror neuron hype:

The Myth of Mirror Neurons

Related Questions

Related Questions

Country of Liars ceased publishing in 2016. Anyone know why?

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Anybody know the writer, Larry?
https://web.archive.org/web/20160702201703/http://country-of-liars.com:80/

Earlier post:  https://pathwhisperer.info/2012/03/11/from-country-of-liars-character-assassination/.

Another tool for the bad guys

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Scarily convincing fake video tool puts words in Obama’s mouth

New technology enables scarily realistic lip-sync Obama video

A computer program that can edit videos of people speaking to realistically make it look like they said something else has been created, raising fears of clips being tampered with online.

Researchers at the University of Washington have lip-synced a video of former US president Barack Obama using the program to superimpose new audio onto the clip.

The realistic results put words in Obama’s mouth by converting audio sounds into mouth movements and blending them onto an existing video of speech.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/2017/07/12/scarily-convincing-fake-video-tool-puts-words-obamas-mouth/

Soon it will be possible to animate millions of face and body pixels to create videos of individuals doing absolutely anything.  What a happy time for psychopathic elements of “law enforcement”!

Earlier:  https://pathwhisperer.info/2017/04/26/oh-great-bad-guys-gain-powerful-tool-for-framing-and-character-assassination-lyrebird-voice-software/

That damned Overton Window, how do we smash it, or rather, smash it and the wall holding the window?

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That window that shows the only acceptable opinions respectable people can hold.  Self imposed, open to manipulation.

“

Americans Are Living Under “Intellectual Martial Law”

by Tyler Durden
Jul 10, 2017 4:40 PM

Authored by James Howard Kunstler via Kunstler.com,

The disgrace of America’s putative intellectual class is nearly complete as it shoves the polity further into dysfunction and toward collapse. These are the people Nassim Taleb refers to as “intellectuals-yet-idiots.” Big questions loom over this dynamic: How did the thinking class of America sink into this slough of thoughtlessness? And why – what is motivating them?

One path to understanding it can be found in this sober essay by Neal Devers, The Overton Bubble, published two years ago on TheFuturePrimaeval.net — a friend turned me on to it the other day (dunno how I missed it). The title is a reference to the phenomenon known as the Overton Window. Wikipedia summarizes it:

“The Overton Window, also known as the window of discourse, is the range of ideas the public will accept…. The term is derived from its originator, Joseph P. Overton (1960–2003), a former vice president of the Mackinac Center for Public Policy….”

Devers refines the definition:

“The Overton Window is a concept in political sociology referring to the range of acceptable opinions that can be held by respectable people. “Respectable” of course means that the subject can be integrated with polite society. Respectability is a strong precondition on the ability to have open influence in the mainstream.”

This raises another question: who exactly is in this corps of “respectable people” who set the parameters of acceptable thought? Primarily, the mainstream media — The New York Times, The WashPo, CNN, etc. — plus the bureaucratic functionaries of the permanent government bureaucracy, a.k.a. the Deep State, who make and execute policy, along with the universities which educate the “respectable people” (the thinking class) into the prevailing dogmas and shibboleths of the day, and finally the think tanks and foundations that pay professional “experts” to retail their ideas.

The Overton Window can be viewed as a mechanism of political control, demonizing anyone who departs from the consensus of respectable thought, and especially if they express their heresies in public speech.

This has consequences.

Deavers explains:

“The trouble with the Overton Window as a mechanism of political control, and with politicization of speech and thought in general, is that it causes significant collateral damage on the ability of your society to think clearly.

If some thoughts are unthinkable and unspeakable, and the truth happens in some case to fall outside of polite consensus, then your ruling elite and their society will run into situations they simply can’t handle….

An unwise political elite is one incapable of thinking clearly about their strategic situation, acting in concert, or sticking to a plan….

An insecure political elite is one which has either no sufficient mechanisms of political power short of the politicization of speech and thought, or is faced by such powerful but somehow never decisively powerful enemies that they need to permanently escalate to a state of vigorous politicization of speech and thought. We can compare this state to “intellectual martial law” for its structural similarity to the physical-security equivalent.”

We’re now living under that condition of “intellectual martial law.” The consequent degradation of thinking means that the polity can’t construct a coherent consensus about what is happening to it (or devise a plan for what to do about it). This is exactly the point where the Overton Window turns into an Overton Bubble, as described by Devers. The bubble comprises ideas that are assumed to be self-evident (though they actually aren’t) and notions that are potentially destructive of society, even suicidally so.”

Re: Overton window – a perfect tool in hands of pathologicals

The Overton Window concept was developed to describe the options of policy makers, but it can easily be extended to the control of the perception of reality.  I’m not crazy about the term ‘window’, it’s too passive.  ‘Bubble’ implies it will burst, why should it?  I’d prefer ‘lens’ or ‘blinders’.

It’s a description of mental illness or emotional/psychological maladaptation.  As such it’s a choice.  In the way the depression is a choice — a choice between attacking the gods (mom and dad) or turning the fury inwards.  It’s a mechanism of imposing blinders on the populace.  “Psychopaths, I’ve never met any.”

Similar concepts:  humans as herd animals (which we are), go along to get along, the cool crowd dictating what’s cool, normalcy bias, etc., etc.