A few years ago, I happened across an article that kind of blew my mind. The author, M.E. Thomas (a pseudonym) claims to be a sociopath, and she proceeds to convince the reader by giving a series of unsettling anecdotes from her life. As the article’s preamble says:
She’s a successful law professor and a Sunday school teacher, with a host of family and friends. But her interpersonal calculus centers on how to manipulate and outmaneuver the many people in her life. Welcome to a world of ruthless cost-benefit analysis, charm, and grandiosity.
Her first line of the article itself? “I have never killed anyone, but…” How’s that for click bait? The voice of the sociopath! I was fascinated by the whole article, but the thing that really got me was later in the article when I discovered that this sociopathic Sunday school teacher was… a Mormon!
Sociopaths had always been “the other”, in my mind. They were the serial rapists and murderers of TV crime shows, and even though I hadn’t really thought about it consciously, they represented evil incarnate.
They certainly weren’t Mormons. Sociopaths were the diabolical schemers, the master manipulators with no sense of guilt who would do anything to get what they wanted, including commit atrocious crimes. What better description of evil can you think of? And the funny thing is, reading her article didn’t entirely disabuse me of that notion. She was a master manipulator, and she didn’t have a sense of guilt as she deliberately messed with people and watched them suffer. But she also managed to humanize herself somehow, at least to me, even though the way she wrote made it clear I shouldn’t lower my guard. When she said “The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints is a sociopath’s dream”, I immediately pictured a bunch of sheep being surveyed by a wolf, but she continued by saying
Mormons believe that everyone has the potential to be godlike—I believe this includes me. Every being is capable of salvation; my actions are what matters, not my ruthless thoughts, not my nefarious motivations. Everyone is a sinner, and I never felt that I was outside this norm.
And suddenly, I felt a sense of kinship. That’s what we Mormons do, try to choose good in spite of our natures, and trust that we can be saved, right? But then in the next sentence, she talked about how trusting BYU students were and the myriad opportunities to scam, and it makes me think that allowing that sense of kinship is dangerous.
So what exactly is a sociopath?
The terms psychopathy, sociopathy, and anti-social behavioral disorder seem to be used interchangeably these days, though the term psychopath is usually associated with violence. 
I learned from Jon Ronson’s The Psychopath Test: A Journey Through the Madness Industry that that the earlier versions of the DSM (Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders) used by mental health care professionals didn’t have psychopathy listed as a mental disorder. Ronson said something about how that was because psychopathy wasn’t an illness and couldn’t be treated. It was thought to be a basic personality type. The latest version, though, has Anti-social Personality Disorder listed, but it’s apparently under dispute whether that’s really the same thing.
A centerpiece of Ronson’s book is his attempt to identify psychopaths using the Robert Hare Psychopath checklist. I can’t link to it because it’s copyright protected — you have to pay for that.
In fact, the word is that Hare sued to prevent publication of a peer-reviewed article evaluating it (he has outspoken critics among mental health experts). However, Ronson did share several items on the checklist: a sense of grandiosity, strong tendency toward manipulation, a lack of empathy, a lack of remorse, a history of trouble as a youth (you know, like torturing animals or getting in fights), sexual promiscuity, lack of long term relationships, etc.. Every item on the checklist could point to any number of mental/emotional disorders, but each item is scored, and if the total score exceeds a certain limit, that indicates that the person is likely a psychopath.
In a Radio Interview with Rob Krall, M.E. Thomas described sociopaths thus:
They tend to be superficially charming, they tend to be kind of glib, they tend to not really have strong emotions, you know, except maybe primitive emotions. They tend to be manipulative, they’re, they lack empathy is probably the biggest one. They don’t respond in the same sorts of emotional ways, to emotional stimulus as most people do. And they also, their own emotional world seems to be stunted to the extent that they don’t feel guilt, and because they don’t feel guilt, then they don’t really have a conscience either. The same way most people have a conscience that is largely informed by their feelings of guilt.
Ronson eventually arrived at a single question to determine if someone was a sociopath: if you came upon a car accident, say with an overturned vehicle and dead body hanging out the broken windshield, how would you react? Normal people would flinch with horror, feel ill, freak out, etc.. The sociopath? She would just be fascinated.
Sociopath’s do have some advantages, though. They lack a certain kind of fear. They have no problem looking people in the eye, they’re charming, and they perform particularly well under pressure. They make fantastic trial attorneys. Their self-esteem is usually off the charts, and they’re very resistant to depression. They’re good at dispassionately evaluating facts. All these things put together can make them effective leaders, and Bob Hare speculates that a good number of our politicians and CEOs would score high on his psychopath checklist.
One big question to ask is why did M.E. Thomas out herself like that? Doesn’t it seem like a self-defeating thing to do?
Well, it turns out that it wasn’t just an article — she’s trying to sell her book. But again why, considering she had no problem making money, would she write such a self-defeating book? [1] The obvious answer is narcissism, which is a part of sociopathy. She was just so remarkable that she had to be written about. But I think there’s more to it than that. I get the impression that she’s trying to figure herself out. I think she’s recognized a void in her life that she wants to fill, and that there’s still somehow a deeper longing for human connection and a desire to be… well, good. Of course, Robert Hare would say that’s the Mormon empath in me talking, projecting myself onto her, and that sociopaths don’t feel such things. [2] M.E. Thomas just says that she likes feeling authentic, not having to hide who she is. [3]
The thing that stood out to me the most though, from a Mormon perspective, was the lack of a sense of empathy or guilt. We’re taught that the Spirit of Christ is given to every man to know good from evil, and I’d always figured that was our conscience, or at least, a major component of it. What is our conscience, if not a sense of empathy and guilt? Sociopaths apparently don’t have a conscience, at least not like I’m used to thinking of one. If Moroni meant his statement all-inclusively rather than simply expansively, then they’re either people or monsters, and if they’re people, shouldn’t they still have the Spirit of Christ somehow?
M.E. Thomas points out that although she doesn’t have emotional empathy, she has cognitive empathy:
I’m 90% understanding, day-to-day success rate, with cognitive empathy. I’m able to recognize people’s facial expressions and emotions. It’s what makes me so good at manipulating, probably.
Sociopaths definitely don’t have emotional empathy. They do have the cognitive empathy. They are able to do a thought experiment, a hypothetical. What would the typical person feel like in this situation, or what would I feel like in this situation, or what is the likely result emotionally of doing this particular action? And they say people with Asperger syndrome are the opposite. They have emotional empathy—they’ll cry when someone else cries—but they are not able to cognitively understand the worlds of others. Normal people have both types of empathy. (Interview with the Rumpus)
But cognitive empathy doesn’t seem to cut it. It doesn’t seem adequate to enable one to “mourn with those that mourn”, for example. In fact, cognitive empathy without emotional empathy seems a recipe for evil — the tool to create a master manipulator, which is what M.E. Thomas claims to be.
But I can’t help it. I think M.E. Thomas does have the Spirit of Christ, even with her disorder, and I think there’s a part of her that longs for God and deeper human connection. She let on as much, even using the word “feel” to describe her progress with her therapist:
I feel better than I have, but it is still true that I don’t really have the same sort of moral reasoning that others do. I still don’t feel guilt. I still don’t feel empathy. But I am more aware of my own emotional reactions that I have. Before I used to be like, Who cares? Emotions…
And largely, he’s Mormon, so he uses church, gospel principles from Mormonism. “You were a person before you came here” is a fundamental doctrine. Reincarnation people believe that we existed before, but I think most Christians believe our soul was created when we were conceived. Mormons, no. You were a spirit in the spirit world before you came here. He keeps saying, “You just got put in this body with this brain and in this environment, this childhood environment, and they have distorted who you truly are.”
His whole thing is if you find your sense of identity, and you do have one, and there actually is one, if you find your identity, all of your other problems will be solved. And it is kind of true, and it is a little bit counterintuitive. He’ll say things like, “In order to not manipulate, you need to be aware of what your true preference in that moment is and then act as if nobody else exists. Just act on your true preference because if you do that, you will not manipulate.”
I think it’s funny because most people would say that is not what good people do. Good people take into consideration everyone else’s preferences and make sure everybody else is happy, but I can’t do stuff that way because if I do then it’s manipulative, and I’ll start seeing them as objects, just chess pieces in my game of trying to make sure everybody’s happy and gets whatever else they need in order to ultimately satisfy me, but not being aware of my true preferences.
It’s influenced the way I think a lot, and in a lot of ways it has really colored the way my disorder manifests. I try to be honest about that, that I don’t think I’m at all the prototypical sociopath even though I do have the essential traits. (Interview with the Rumpus)
So maybe the Spirit of Christ isn’t manifest in conscience, or just in conscience, but in some sense of eternal identity that her therapist is using to help her. And, as she continues, this sense of identity has clearly worked in her:
Maybe I’m not a sociopath because there’s this very specific type of very evil person who really does deserve to die. I’m open to the possibility, but I just have never encountered that, and I have strong suspicions that that’s not true, that there is not a 100% evil person out there who manifests all these traits to the extreme. Maybe they exist, but probably not. Somebody who can’t benefit at all from any type of treatment, somebody who is just the way they are. That’s the way they are hardwired. That’s the way they’re going to be. There’s no behavioral therapy for them. There’s no anything. I just can’t really believe that. That doesn’t make any sense to me.
It’s weird that other people just believe it, like, Oh, these people are just evil. We should lock them up or kill them because there’s nothing else we can do, and they’re just going to kill us if we don’t do it to them. That’s a weird thing. (Interview with the Rumpus)
From what I know now, my feelings are conflicted. On the one hand, I don’t think I’d want to have anything to do with a sociopath. Too risky. My empathic self could be easily manipulated and hurt. Yet, on the other, that same empathetic self wants to cry out that maybe sociopaths are people too, we just need to find appropriate ways to interact with them (as with people with other disorders), and that they can still be taught and choose to be functionally good.
I’ve never identified someone as a sociopath, but M.E. Thomas claims that about 4% of the population are sociopaths [4]. If that’s true, that’s 1 out of 25, which would mean I must have bumped into several, though
I’ve certainly never been aware of it. But considering they’re generally charming and blend in with society so well, maybe one of my Sunday school teachers was a sociopath. In fact, couldn’t they theoretically serve in any calling? Could it actually be an advantage in a calling? Say your ward’s compassionate service leader was a sociopath — would it help to only have cognitive empathy rather than emotional empathy, so that she can identify and react to needs without bringing the emotional burden back to her own family? What about a sociopathic bishop? Should a lack of empathy immediately disqualify him? Anybody out there have experience with a sociopath, especially at church?
[1] The word on the web is that she was found out in the process of changing jobs, and that she lost a promised faculty position at the BYU Law School because of it.
[2] In her interview with Dr. Phil (scroll to the bottom; she’s the woman in the blond wig), she claimed a “period of self-exploration” and he called her on it — sociopaths don’t “self-reflect”, he said. “That’s inconsistent with sociopathy”, he said, basically implying she’s a fraud. He seems to think she’s not truly a sociopath because “they’re just users and abusers”.
[3] Except she’s still trying to hide her identity and may even have changed names in order to protect herself and her family. (which is why I’m not linking to any of that)
[4] According to an article in Slate, Robert Hare claims 1%, and they’re almost all male: “Psychopaths, according to Hare, make up an estimated 1 percent of the male population; among women, they are almost nonexistent (though still present)”
My cousin was murdered by Ted Bundy. For many years I was interested in reading everything I could about his crimes. I have long since moved beyond it. But I sort of think of him as the proto-typical psychopath.
Ted Bundy was baptized into the LDS church during his killing binge in Utah and Colorado. He did not participate very much if I am not mistaken. He might have wanted to use this membership to gain better access to victims but he really didn’t need it.Somewhere out there are the missionaries who “converted” him. He was also excommunicated and somewhere out there is the bishopric who had to do that.
Ted Bundy was an escape risk. He escaped twice after arrest in Utah and extradition to Colorado and went on to kill more young women. This is a litmus test case for the moral arguments surrounding capital punishment.
Ann Rule, a friend and initial defender of Bundy (who wrote what I consider the best Bundy book) relates that he could be really nice. They worked together on a suicide hotline all night long many times and Bundy helped many people not kill themselves. He had somewhat normal relationships with several shack-up girlfriends. He could be quite charming and was extremely intelligent. Did he have any value as a human being? It would seem so.
The younger brother of my murdered cousin had one goal in life after Bundy was arrested in Florida. He wanted to figure out a way to be put in prison close enough to Bundy to kill him. After Bundy was executed he spun out of control . He was killed when his car ran into a freeway bridge at a high rate of speed in Salt Lake. The authorities determined it was an accident but most of the family believed it was a suicide. He left behind an unwed mother of his child. The collateral damage to the families of Bundy’s victims is far greater and lasts longer than most people imagine.
Side note: Over 15,000 people were murdered last year in the US. That was a 4% jump from the previous year. A few large cities played an out-sized role in this increase and leading that list is Chicago and Baltimore. I wonder what happened there? How many police were killed in the line of duty in the US last year? How about 146 of which 63 were gunfire, many of the rest were automobile collisions. (And 34 police dogs were killed last year. )Here is a list of all of them- https://www.odmp.org/search/year/2016 And people are taking a knee to protest police brutality. (Jumping off soap box).
Few psychopaths are that dangerous. More common are the under-diagnosed petty psychopaths among the larger collection of troublemakers at church and in the community who create havoc.. But they all raise difficult questions that defy our religious precepts and challenge our moral reasoning.
That was interesting.
My abusive ex-husband was a psychopath. He had been extremely successful on his mission to England, baptizing a lot of people at a time when most couldn’t baptize one. He rose in the ranks as zone leader and assistant to the president. He was extremely charming and well-liked. I had seem a couple fits of temper (not directed at me) in the two years we dated, but he was very manipulative and convinced me that he was just having a really bad day on those days. Once we were married, he became so cruel. I kept trying to project empathy on to him, to assume that he was operating in the same space of love that I was operating in, to believe he was trying to change, and sometimes, during the honeymoon phase, he was pretty good at saying the right things. But I distinctly remember this one time, after he absolutely demolished me and I was curled up in my bed sobbing, I could hear him in the other room laughing jovially at some sitcom as if nothing had happened ten minutes ago. It was then that it started to dawn on me that he was never really sorry, and he never really cared about the pain that he caused me. I also saw in his cruel and even violent interactions with strangers (almost always women for some reason) that he showed no remorse and was only concerned with not being reported to the police.
After a couple of years of that, I decided that I couldn’t stand to be sealed to this man for eternity and decided to leave (with initially, very little support from family or the Church.) He threatened to kill me and I had to go into hiding. My whole life I had been overly forgiving and very eager to see the best in people. In some ways, that experience sobered my up. I can honestly say that I am never allowing a psychopath into my life again, let Christ try to work with them, it’s no longer my responsibility (it’s crazy to think that I ever believed it was.) I’ve read about the brain science surrounding psychopathy, and maybe he can’t be held responsible for his behavior. Our daughter (who still sees him) seems to think he’s redeemable, and in my better moments, I still like to think he is as well, and then I hear some horror story about how he’s abused his latest girlfriend and I start to doubt that sincere repentance is ever going to happen for him in this life.
He was insanely successful, the most popular employee who had a massive following. He made everyone laugh-almost all the time and ran mental circles around the most credentialed and powerful persons in our community. After beating someone (physically) or grabbing more power at work, he would spend hours celebrating and bragging. Many professionals unofficially described him as a sociopath, or at least someone w/ strong tendencies. To this day there are victims who don’t perceive themselves as such, but cower or comply in fear as well as devoteed admirers. He makes people think that his entourage is big and loyal that speaking up is not only futile, but suicide. And yet many did and continue to do so. True sociopaths might comprise only 1% or less of the population, but there are exponentially more people who have tendencies-who, if they aren’t completely deaf to compassion and empathy, are tone deaf. I marvel at how many powerful administrators and business persons revel in the pain and demise of the persons they step in as they claw their way to the top.
There are two kinds of Mormons: Abusers, and enablers.
Several siblings and I believe our father is a sociopath.
He definitely has the narcissism thing down, to the point that he declared himself “the least narcissistic person I know.” He’s the kind of person who isn’t joking and doesn’t see the irony when he brags about how humble he is, or insists that he doesn’t believe he’s the best at his job even though (according to himself) he is.
I’ve read that the cycle of an abuser is to explode violently and then show remorse, but he never showed remorse. The closest he ever came to saying sorry was when he said he supposed he should apologize for punching me in the face, “but it sure was fun.” He’d often dole out punishments disproportionate to the crime: When I was four he picked me up and threw me for not understanding what exactly he wanted me to pick up off the floor. When I was school aged, he backhanded my nose for slurping. He dragged me around the house by the hair and threw me into walls because he thought I faked fainting. For me squabbling with my brother, he grabbed me by the ears and dug his nails into the skin behind them until it bled. I don’t remember what I did to get thrown down the stairs. We’d just get more “discipline” if we cried about it, so I don’t think he had any empathy.
As for charming, I think he tries to be, but his social skills are not up to it.
Manipulative: check. He has a way of convincing my mom that she is the one being cruel when he is demeaning her. In response to a CPS investigation, he sat us all down and scared us about how badly we would be treated in foster homes if CPS found out about the definitely-not-abuse we experienced. I bawled and bawled, which I thought was the intended effect, but he, unmoved, ordered my mom to “shut that kid up” and kept on scaring us. Somehow the investigation was dropped after a CPS rep came and talked to him (but never us kids), so I always suspected that he managed to talk his way out of it.
Troubled childhood and sexual promiscuity — check, although, as far as I know, his promiscuity ended when he joined the church. His fixation with our sexual purity (he’d call me a slut even though I rarely even spoke to boys, and insisted I was going to get myself pregnant in high school) made more sense when I learned about his past.
I think the church has mitigated his behavior in the sense that keeping commandments feeds his sense of moral superiority, keeping him somewhat in check. But it also gave him the idea to use God as a weapon against us and fed his sense of absolute authority over his children and wife.
Laurel, I am so, so sorry that you had to go through that! He definitely sounds like a psychopath to me.
I had a Bishop and a Branch President who you would call sociopaths. The one beat his family black and blue, his 45ish year old son still has scars on his back-i’ve seen them. He was out of control, apparently has calmed down but he fully believes the Government is after him, they bug his toothpaste, monitor his house., etc. He is all into conspiracy theories, he knows the secrets though so we are ever grateful someone knows them….oh yeah he told us maybe 2 years now that the Government knows how to control winter, he knows but was sworn to secrecy by a Prof. at a local university. The last guy molested his daughter and was abusive to his wife but put on a brave face to us guys, his wife “deserved it” his daughter was teasing him how could he resist? she should know better. His wife complained of course, got told he wouldn’t do that he’s such a good man. I was friends with the daughter. After his stint as a Branch President he became a Temple Presidency member in the Regina Temple. He has since passed on and boy was I surprised to see his wife at church, visiting here, a few years ago. Like, after all you’ve been through you still come to church? I say sociopaths as the first guy his brothers are equally unreal, one of them just got put on the High Council, which amazes me, but the bigger you are the harder you fall I guess.
Martin,
I would recommend reading Kevin Dutton’s, “The Wisdom of Psychopaths”. Very informative book and will cause you to view the personality very differently. He compares the features psychopathy to an audio sound mixer. There are 14 distinguishing characteristics and as long as a select few are not dialed all the way up the individual will be able to function in society.
I score very high on the scale— I’m a 22. I don’t feel guilt but I do have regrets. I can listen to tales of woe endlessly but only connect with them on a cognitive level (usually my mind immediately begins problem-solving 30 seconds in). I am extremely adept at fulfilling my wants and desires without having to resort to violence. You also are likely not going to be successful at manipulating me because I know all the tricks. What I love most about my personality is that in have a keen sense of cold empathy. I can read people very quickly and know exactly how they are feeling and can also read emotional changes in real time which is very useful when attempting to pursuade someone.
In know who and what I am. I’ve studied a lot of Gottman in order to better show empathy. For example, when listening to tales of woe from my children I force myself to just listen and then sprinkle in words of understanding all the while by brain is thinking you should have done X and now you need to do Y but if Z happens then you need to….and so on. Cognitively understanding how to show more warm empathy has helped me help those around me feel more connected to me and it has enriched their lives.
One fun fact from the book. If you are really in need of help you’re going to need to rely on someone scoring high on the psychopathy scale. It’s not understood why but empaths are statistically less likely, by a wide margin, to provide acute assistance to those in need.