First of all, are you sure that he is a sociopath? I taught several sociopaths during my teaching career in special education, and what you are describing could or could not be one. So be careful of that. A sociopath has no conscience. These are the people who kill without thinking twice about it. Charles Manson. This person sounds like he is a product of your grandmother, from what you say about her. If a young child is constantly exposed to that type of person, unless there is intervention fairly early on, they WILL turn out with a lot of the same traits (unless you know your history, meaning understand it and get past it, you are doomed to repeat it. I think you are right to emotionally distance yourself from him. It doesn't sound like he's ready for help anytime soon. And if he seems like he will act out.....stay away from him. That's just my two cents, of course.

correction, the person you described Beckeroo is a psychopath.

sociopaths don't derive intense pleasure from harming others, they just use people with no conscience and are also capable of killing, but they are less likely to go to those extremes. they will however, if they think it is necessary for survival. they are bad, but not quite as evil as a psychopath.

a psychopath actually gets a sick pleasure from what they do.

many sociopaths and psychopaths are not murderers and also have too much intelligence to go through with committing such a severe and terrible kind of crime because they know that it will ruin their lives for them...

however, there are varying degrees, and certainly it is true that many psychopaths are murderers and wretched individuals.

they are born with differently shaped brains and inner chemistry.

a good example of sociopathy is the movie " resevoir dogs "

they are not nearly as evil and terrible as a psychopath, but they are still extremely dangerous and a threat to society. they will use you and spit you out without a thought... but there isn't the level of malice that a P holds.

these people learn to mimic emotion, both S's and P's and they do not feel the way a regular human being feels, they lack empathy ( as has been expressed, ) drain people of their resources, and live without conscience.

they are usually extremely charming and can even come off with the presentation of having more humility than most average people. they are incredibly well practiced actors, and will usually fool people for a very long time. they know how to act to get what they " need. "

they always need a " source " or " sources, " they get bored very easily and often have alcoholism.

a psychopath will turn on a dime after having only one drink. their behavior is irrational and unexplainable, and SCARY. often they look possessed while drinking and will say and do very strange things. odd behavior beyond the normal drunk. or even person who has one strong drink! examples of this are climbing a tree naked, urinating in public ...strange. and not the kind where you are having fun and joking and putting on a show for your friends... odd and antisocial.

these two classifications of personality disorders are both antisocial, but come off as social to their " associates, " acquaintances and sources/ victims ... they will come off as charming and likable to these people ...shaping their mask to fit whichever group and group standards the group or source/victim has in order to suck the source dry of supply, and then discard and move on to the next. if they live in a family, they could keep the act up the whole time, their whole lives.. because they know they HAVE TO.

it does not come from a place of love, it comes from a place of vampiric darkness.. a hollow, compassionless void that needs to be filled with energy constantly because they cannot make or create their own.

p's and s's use a cycle on their victims... idolize, devalue and discard.

they thrive off of any kind of attention usually, negative or positive... depending on the p or s... some p's and s's need to keep a good guy act up all the time to get what it is that is particular to their needs/wants/desires and also what is available and attainable to them

however, at some point the mask falls off... it can be a quick reveal, or it can take almost their whole life into their old age for the truth of who they are to be uncovered.. sometimes, it never is.

it can take up to a year in some instances for the most highly trained psychiatrists to diagnose a p or s.

therapy and psychiatric help are extremely dangerous for these types of individuals, because they will " play " their doctors and therapists, and know very well how to fool even trained and seasoned professionals - often! they learn about psychology and use it to manipulate everyone around them.

often they will fail many things in their life... lose jobs, not show up for appointments... skip on child support, have numerous affairs sometimes simultaneously... actually, very regularly they will be having several affairs going at once.

they are master liars and deceivers.

often, you can not tell that someone is one. many go undetected their whole lives. their victims do know however, they can put up a front for the whole community and then go home and emotionally dismantle and abuse their spouse.

spiritual, physical, emotional, mental, physiological.... are all forms of abuse they are capable of and likely to do. but they could do it very, very craftily... so that only some victims are being exploited to the incredibly extreme degree that gives them their source, but the rest of their social circle(s) don't have a clue.

the other members of the circle will often think the victim is the one to blame, or that they are lying themselves.

i was in a relationship with a psychopath for seven years and didn't know that's why things were so wrong. i had no clue. i just thought he was a damaged alcoholic. he has never murdered anyone and probably never will. most probably. he is too smart. he still likes to ruin and destroy people though, and derives pleasure from it in a very sick and sadistic way.

these types will often defame and criticize and trash talk everyone in the world but themselves ( unless they are trying to make you think they have low self esteem and need pity )

they do not startle, ever. you cannot startle one of these people. if you sneak up on them and try to scare the shit out of them they don't flinch.

i have known both an s and a p personally, and lived with both.

they are the most arrogant things on the planet. their arrogance is astounding.

they will use the accomplishments of others as their own. they think they are a gift to the planet... they never think that they are wrong, ever. they never, ever mean it when or if they say sorry.

they will act likable in order to get what they want, but they are cold, heartless shells.

they have a strange charisma, often.. that is very evil, like a snake, they hypnotize.

if they land in jail for robbing a bank... they will not blame themselves. they will find a way to blame anything but themselves.

they have selective memory and only live in the present. they tend not to think about the past or the future- it holds no purpose to them- only deriving the supply they need NOW is what is important.

but they can take great care in order to really dupe a source or sources and get what they want, and as i have said, sometimes they can keep this up for quite a time... or at least in the eyes of some.

http://www.dailystrength.org/groups/victims-of-psychopaths-sociopaths/news

if you scroll down there is also the definition for sociopath

( oh yeah, they don't get/experience anxiety, either )


they will put on acts to try and show they experience emotion like others, but they do not. the don't get nervous our feel remorse or guilt.

they may get agitated, but it is not upset in the way you or i experience.
they could even cry... but it's a shallow, vapid kind of expression for them.

Beckerroo, I agree with the second poster, lionne noir, he IS a sociopath.

I am so certain that I feel pretty much zero doubt about it. And a sociopath is not as extreme as a psychopath, for whom, I ave understood more obviously destructive acts are more likely. He is not as bad as this.

Further: he has young children. One is just over two years old, is the splitting image of him and acts like this: I was over there house for a birthday lunch, was in the playroom with the two boys. They kept pushing that I make certain Lego things for them. I gave in to the hounding, actually got even caught up with it (it was surprisingly fun) and yet, here is this two year old, he runs off and Smithers as if he has 'fooled' and dominated me.

This is his young son. So very very much like him. ...and it causes me to think that, even given how utterly horrid his upbringing was ( the subject of an essay, since it is amazing that he is just an 's' as Lionne calls it,when given how appallingly he was raised he really should ave been a 'p'... And this is not an exaggeration. For wjphatever perverse reason, God inflicted a true horror of a parent, in the form of my Grandmother, much closer to a true psychopath, given just how very many lives she has affected for the worst... And as fantastic as this may sound, I assure you that it is all sadly, very true.) but my cousin I believe just has that gene for sociopathy/ warrior gene (that Elaine Aron refers to, and to an extreme of sorts).

But I do not have doubts about this.

More important is how I deal with it. ...I would prefer to forgive.

Overall, I can only feel immeasurably sorry for him and his sister in how they were systematically abused when, after the sudden death of their mother in a car accident, my truly psychologically warped, and quite possibly as close to evil as I have personally known, grandmother came to look after them.

In short, she was highly emotionally abusive to the both of them.

It is a wonder that my mae cousin has not turned out worse, when I genuinely see how, like with his toddler son, he appears to just have a gene for insensitivity. With upbringing by a woman who would deliberately give him things in front of he female sister who she would pointedly deny ...this is how fucked this woman was... It is a genuine wonder that both of my cousins have turned out so well.

And my grandmother has destroyed more lives than this... Her children she has poisoned towards each other. My mother and brother do not talk. And his children, in following the whole warped pattern, have a thing against our whole side of the family.

My female cousin is at total war with my mae cousin (who is the subject here) and it really was all designed by my horror of a grand parent, who really should have been sterilized ....I don't care if this denies my life and that of the majority of my family: she simply did NOT deserve to ever have or raise children.

The proof of this is the legacy that she has left to this day: broken relationship after broken relationship...

She is, in reality the true psychopath.

I write on an iPad which spell corrects any slight mistake, so where it says 'Smithers' my intention was to in fact write 'sniggers'.

One thing that amazes me: he a true injustice and abuse can get swept aside, just because the people so affected by it have been deprived of seeing clearly just what it is that as happened.

My family, my non-immediate family is in ruins, with also brothers and sisters who cannot s much as talk to ne another. And me and my siblings - perhaps the luckiest of the lot- nonetheless have parents with the baggage of cold, heartless relationships with at least one f their parents'. And this, in turn, affects my relationship with them.

And it is all so very sad.

Sterilization or some sort of license to be a parent ....this seems a rule that should be made.

There are quite simply individuals that deserve to not have the right to raise children. My mess of a grandmother, being certainly one such person.

I hated her from an early age... One reason is because we clearly share some genes: I look like her. But it was also her warped treatment of me as her clone. I rallied against this for more than one reason..

I believe she was extremely, extremely narcissistic. She was definitely obsessive compulsive. Anxious to the point of you would go insane having to live with her. Massive, massive control freak.

Understandable that I rallied against her seeing herself in me.

She was in short: a piece os shit of a human being. Almost a non-human being.

I should be more forgiving... But I am angered by how she was allowed to get away with so much for so long, by so many.

I remember that when she died, I was the only one to keep her company ...she smacked her head on our tiled floor and whilst my parents werecalling 000 they were also too scared to just be with her. I was with her.

And after the funeral... A long extremely perverse shoe of despair, certainly on the part of my mother... Afterwards, my 'Eric Cartan like - Arequipa of an uncle' (who my mother finally decided not to talk to after years of his abusive behavior) criticized me for suggesting to my sister that we go out to a cafe. I was then questioned: "Aren't you sad that your grandmother has died?" ... I replied "No" ...firstly she was in her mid eighties, secondly she was a horror of a person, who had in fact permanently damaged most of her off spring and also even their children... Also, I simply found he to be a pathologically self center non- being of a person, who existed only to tell off and otherwise be a colossal pain oh, especially regarding anything remotely sexual, would she try to embarrass and shame you: never mind that she got pregnant before marriage during her teens.


....you are probably sick by now of reading this, if you have even managed to get so far.

The take home message is that, however ducked your family is: mine is definitely at least "up there". And, with all sincerity of heart and goodness, it nonetheless fubdamentallycomes down to the horror of a person that I am supposed to call my grandmother.

99% of the time, she never was one. And I will not feel guilt for saying what is truth.

Lots of spell checks there, an iPad is a bit of a lability to write on...

Anyhow, I am just shocked at how much one person has negatively affected so many.

And it feels like there is almost NO voice of reason. That, at best I may hear quiet voices tell of what an abusive witch my grandmother was... Whilst all the carnage of the wars she started still wage on.

I feel like God needs to show up and set all my relatives straight. Still, they are under this mindless spell - aggressors and victims, equally, of a war that she orchestrated ...why? - just because she wanted the attention.

And generations of people are paying for her pathological selfishness.

I meant to also write that during that exchange with my uncle, after the funeral of my grandmother, that I had answered that was not sad that she had died... Not a nice thing to say, and yet... My own mother smiled.

It was a strange, manic sort of smile.

For me, my answer came down to the fact that, despite several years of living with het, I had almost no relationship w ugh her. The closest thing to a conversation I ever experienced with her, was when I was doing a school assignment on my family tree, and her input was along the lines of how she was the most 'beuatiful woman in her village'... That was my only ever experience of any conversation with her.

She was incapable of conversatiion. Everything, and I mean everything HAD to be about her.

So when I admitted the truth that I did not in any real way mourn the loss of her after she had died, the strong smirk that appeared on my mother's own face was n accident. The poor thing had endured such creature for a parent.

I got old off, of course, frwantng to visit a cafe, bu my uncle. Who half a minute later stated that he was going to go to a cafe himself.

He is a make you see. And my fucked up grandmother was Itlan, and so the male was allowed his every him.

i'm so sorry you've been through all this.

Circe.....that's what I originally said.....a sociopath......I worked with several (not as co-workers, as students).....and I researched it high and low for years......I think you are right, that he is a sociopath......but I am not a psychiatrist, etc., so I could possibly be wrong.

Beckeroo

i'm sorry, and was not trying to be rude... i just know that Charles Manson is a psychopath.. that's all.

that's wht i meant.

Is remorse and guilt a good thing? I've thought about this a little. Shame, guilt, secrets...all of these I would make as a duty to myself to abandon as best I could because it harms To me, the consciousness of sensitive people becomes almost a universal Kantian duty: I see great injustice in that... I'm not saying I condone a psychopathic consciousness however, I am convinced we could all learn something from the way they brush aside obstacles.