I’m seriously confused about what these mental disorders are, and how they work.
No-one really knows what these mental disorders are, or how they work. Worse, it’s by no means clear that this is a mental disorder at all, at least in any meaningful sense of the word. Even by the standards of psychiatric medicine the definition of ASPD is vague and value-laden. To the extent there is a condition, it exists pretty much entirely in the fact that third parties are unhappy with their behaviour.
Are these people genuinely figuring out what humans care about by looking?
But sociopaths are humans too. They know what they care about. They just care about different things than you, or at least are willing to take different courses of action to achieve them.
What makes you think that sociopathy is in need of an explanation? In my view it’s essentially the default, that we are all sociopaths when no-one’s looking. Non-sociopathy is what needs an explanation.
No, I don’t think we are all sociopaths when no one is looking. It’s true that psychiatry is not a precise field, but that does not mean many disorders it studies are not real.
No-one really knows what these mental disorders are, or how they work.
I’m going to call fallacy of grey on that. Yes, the human brain is a large mystery. But there’s been an awful lot of work done in the field of psychology, and I have a very limited knowledge of psychology, relative to people who work in that field. And some of those people may be on less wrong.
it’s by no means clear that this is a mental disorder at all, at least in any meaningful sense of the word. Even by the standards of psychiatric medicine the definition of ASPD is vague and value-laden. To the extent there is a condition, it exists pretty much entirely in the fact that third parties are unhappy with their behaviour.
To the extent that there is a condition, it’s that there are a substantial number of people in the world who seem to exhibit similar personalities. Clusters in personality space, so to speak. So yes, default human nature does need an explanation. But we also need an explanation for that particular cluster.
I’m going to call fallacy of grey on that. Yes, the human brain is a large mystery. But there’s been an awful lot of work done in the field of psychology, and I have a very limited knowledge of psychology, relative to people who work in that field. And some of those people may be on less wrong.
And I’m going to call fallacy of composition on that. Sure, some psychiatric disorders are fairly well understood. Sociopathy/Psycopathy/ASPD, however, are not well understood by anyone.
To the extent that there is a condition, it’s that there are a substantial number of people in the world who seem to exhibit similar personalities. Clusters in personality space, so to speak.
But that’s not what we mean by a medical condition. All sorts of things are clusters in personality space—e.g. “nerd”, “extrovert”, and “workaholic.” Generally speaking, if you aren’t unhappy with something, and it doesn’t inhibit your functioning in the world, it’s not a medical condition. If Mr. X says “I wish I wasn’t such an extrovert, please fix me doctor” then arguably Mr X. has a condition. But if Mr. Y says “I wish Mr. X wasn’t such an extrovert,” but Mr. X is fine with his personality, then it’s much harder to argue that Mr. X has a condition. This is doubly so if there is no known working treatment. This works equally well if you substitute “sociopath” for “extrovert.”
Typically, sociopaths do not believe they have a problem. Well, OK. If they break the law, they should be sanctioned/punished/etc. And to the extent that behavioural therapy/compulsory drugs/whatever can force them to behave more lawfully, then great. But we shouldn’t pretend that we are treating them for any problem they have—we’re training/forcing them to comply with our ethical norms, and that’s all there is to it.
Sociopathy/Psycopathy/ASPD, however, are not well understood by anyone.
Here’s a different way of putting it. I have no particular background in psychology. I have never taken a class on it. I have read, over the course of my life, a few books on topics in psychology that I found interesting. These were books intended for a lay audience, not for people who actually wanted to seriously study the field. I have never read a textbook. The extent of my knowledge of sociopathy/psychopathy/ASPD is from reading the wikipedia page on those topics, and TV shows/movies.
Now I have been in bookstores and I have seen books written about sociopathy. Books that looked to be a couple hundred pages long. And there were multiple books in this section. Unless every single one of those books is a word for word restatement of the wikipedia page, there is information about sociopathy which is known, and yet I do not know it. The little bit of information which I do know confuses me, and I do not know, at the moment, whether my confusion is a general confusion, which is shared by people working in the field, or if I would understand the specific questions I’m stuck on if I had only read those books. I posted this hoping that someone who had read those books, or maybe somebody with actual psychology training, could tell me what that was. Just because sociopathy is not fully understood by anyone doesn’t mean that I personally understand everything that someone working in the field understands.
Unless every single one of those books is a word for word restatement of the wikipedia page, there is information about sociopathy which is known, and yet I do not know it.
To be fair, I’ve read books hundreds of pages long which contained less information than a reasonably complete Wikipedia article. There’s almost no limit to how much you can write about a limited data set if you’re at all good at storytelling. This is truer than usual for pop science, and especially true for pop psychology.
That being said, and clusterfuck though it is, ASPD and related disorders are probably the most intensively studied cluster in personality-space—the study of “criminal insanity” (from which there’s a more or less direct line to the modern understanding of ASPD) considerably predates Freud. The DSM criteria are purely descriptive and probably don’t describe a natural kind with any great precision, but volume of data is not going to be a problem here; can’t say the same for interpretation, though.
No-one really knows what these mental disorders are, or how they work. Worse, it’s by no means clear that this is a mental disorder at all, at least in any meaningful sense of the word. Even by the standards of psychiatric medicine the definition of ASPD is vague and value-laden. To the extent there is a condition, it exists pretty much entirely in the fact that third parties are unhappy with their behaviour.
But sociopaths are humans too. They know what they care about. They just care about different things than you, or at least are willing to take different courses of action to achieve them.
What makes you think that sociopathy is in need of an explanation? In my view it’s essentially the default, that we are all sociopaths when no-one’s looking. Non-sociopathy is what needs an explanation.
No, I don’t think we are all sociopaths when no one is looking. It’s true that psychiatry is not a precise field, but that does not mean many disorders it studies are not real.
I’m going to call fallacy of grey on that. Yes, the human brain is a large mystery. But there’s been an awful lot of work done in the field of psychology, and I have a very limited knowledge of psychology, relative to people who work in that field. And some of those people may be on less wrong.
To the extent that there is a condition, it’s that there are a substantial number of people in the world who seem to exhibit similar personalities. Clusters in personality space, so to speak. So yes, default human nature does need an explanation. But we also need an explanation for that particular cluster.
And I’m going to call fallacy of composition on that. Sure, some psychiatric disorders are fairly well understood. Sociopathy/Psycopathy/ASPD, however, are not well understood by anyone.
But that’s not what we mean by a medical condition. All sorts of things are clusters in personality space—e.g. “nerd”, “extrovert”, and “workaholic.” Generally speaking, if you aren’t unhappy with something, and it doesn’t inhibit your functioning in the world, it’s not a medical condition. If Mr. X says “I wish I wasn’t such an extrovert, please fix me doctor” then arguably Mr X. has a condition. But if Mr. Y says “I wish Mr. X wasn’t such an extrovert,” but Mr. X is fine with his personality, then it’s much harder to argue that Mr. X has a condition. This is doubly so if there is no known working treatment. This works equally well if you substitute “sociopath” for “extrovert.”
Typically, sociopaths do not believe they have a problem. Well, OK. If they break the law, they should be sanctioned/punished/etc. And to the extent that behavioural therapy/compulsory drugs/whatever can force them to behave more lawfully, then great. But we shouldn’t pretend that we are treating them for any problem they have—we’re training/forcing them to comply with our ethical norms, and that’s all there is to it.
Here’s a different way of putting it. I have no particular background in psychology. I have never taken a class on it. I have read, over the course of my life, a few books on topics in psychology that I found interesting. These were books intended for a lay audience, not for people who actually wanted to seriously study the field. I have never read a textbook. The extent of my knowledge of sociopathy/psychopathy/ASPD is from reading the wikipedia page on those topics, and TV shows/movies.
Now I have been in bookstores and I have seen books written about sociopathy. Books that looked to be a couple hundred pages long. And there were multiple books in this section. Unless every single one of those books is a word for word restatement of the wikipedia page, there is information about sociopathy which is known, and yet I do not know it. The little bit of information which I do know confuses me, and I do not know, at the moment, whether my confusion is a general confusion, which is shared by people working in the field, or if I would understand the specific questions I’m stuck on if I had only read those books. I posted this hoping that someone who had read those books, or maybe somebody with actual psychology training, could tell me what that was. Just because sociopathy is not fully understood by anyone doesn’t mean that I personally understand everything that someone working in the field understands.
To be fair, I’ve read books hundreds of pages long which contained less information than a reasonably complete Wikipedia article. There’s almost no limit to how much you can write about a limited data set if you’re at all good at storytelling. This is truer than usual for pop science, and especially true for pop psychology.
That being said, and clusterfuck though it is, ASPD and related disorders are probably the most intensively studied cluster in personality-space—the study of “criminal insanity” (from which there’s a more or less direct line to the modern understanding of ASPD) considerably predates Freud. The DSM criteria are purely descriptive and probably don’t describe a natural kind with any great precision, but volume of data is not going to be a problem here; can’t say the same for interpretation, though.
Well now we’re running into the same problem from the opposite direction. The volume of data possessed by humanity != the volume of data I possess.