Where do psychopaths lie on the SP spectrum?

[Mezanti]

What color would you say Psychopaths are.. obviously many will say RED but that would mean that they could evolve out of their psychopathy?

[Cocolove]

I've always wondered about this, modern psychology seems to think psychopathy is not a temporary stage

[SFRL]

From what I have read Psychopaths are born that way and can not change. 

Sociopaths are developed that way and show the same behaviours as Psychopaths. But it is life experiences that makes them act that way. It's learned behaviour. And can be unlearned. 

I think some degree Psychopathy and Sociopathy is beneficial for reaching great success in society. But eventually at some stage of personal development it will need to be dropped to develop any further. (Very high levels of development). 

Basically I think it has been evolutionary  beneficial to be emotionally detached to some degree. Like when you had to kill your opponent who tries to steal your stuff. 

[Shadowraix]

@SFRL I question whether they are even capable of going past orange. Green largely hinges on empathy. 

[Mezanti]

@Shadowraix yeah, i would love to hear what Leo thinks of this.

[Forestluv]

@Mezanti

“Psychopathy is a personality disorder characterized by persistent antisocial behavior, impaired empathy and remorse, and bold, disinhibited, and egotistical traits.”

Based on this definition, Orange would be the last bus stop.

[Shadowraix]

@Serotoninluv Do you think an awakening could rewire this lack of empathy? Surely merging the divide could transition self care to others? 

[Leo Gura]

This is an independent factor from Sprial Dynamics. I would call it a type, similar to masculine/feminine or personality types. A type should theoretically exist at any stage. But some types might be too limited to rise to the highest stages in practice. I doubt you can have a stage Yellow clinically retarded person.

Remember that SD is a model which tracks averages. It will not address all the weird edge-cases of the human psyche. There are some serious freaks of nature who must be considered uniquely.

[Shadowraix]

@Leo Gura this is good advice. I often try to fit people into a the best model I can but it's good Is good to remember life dynamics are more complicated 

[Omni]

3 hours ago, Leo Gura said:

This is an independent factor from Sprial Dynamics. I would call it a type, similar to masculine/feminine or personality types. A type should theoretically exist at any stage. But some types might be too limited to rise to the highest stages in practice. I doubt you can have a stage Yellow clinically retarded person.

Remember that SD is a model which tracks averages. It will not address all the weird edge-cases of the human psyche. There are some serious freaks of nature who must be considered uniquely.

Interesting perspective.

I recall you saying a few times that people can move up the spiral but not down - i've had objections to this, but if i'm being honest they are somewhat face-value objections - as far as i can remember you didn't give that much attention. It's difficult for me to see the impossibility due to the fact that we all backslide and have stagnant moments with growth and more so that some people find a pit stop in life and settle in until they're dead.

Would you mind expanding on this briefly on why you'd say it's not possible to regress back down the spiral?

[Leo Gura]

@Omni In my Spiral Dynamics - Important Nuances video I actually mention how regression might happen. Regression occurs when survival is severely threatened, but it should bounce back once the survival threat is handled.

For an individual regression might happen if your business or marriage suddenly collapses.

For a society regression might happen if there is a nuclear war or an economic depression.

It also depends on how well established you are in a stage. If you're deep established regression will be much less likely than if you are just at the entry point of a stage.

But generally speaking, a stage Yellow person is never going to regress to a stage Blue fundamentalist.

[Omni]

1 hour ago, Leo Gura said:

@Omni In my Spiral Dynamics - Important Nuances video I actually mention how regression might happen. Regression occurs when survival is severely threatened, but it should bounce back once the survival threat is handled.

For an individual regression might happen if your business or marriage suddenly collapses.

For a society regression might happen if there is a nuclear war or an economic depression.

It also depends on how well established you are in a stage. If you're deep established regression will be much less likely than if you are just at the entry point of a stage.

But generally speaking, a stage Yellow person is never going to regress to a stage Blue fundamentalist.

That actually helps clarify a lot, thanks for that.

[possibilities]

Leo is right.

Venn diagram of various things from psychopathy to MBTI overlap onto spiral dynamics in terms of working out how other things fit in context with this model, which isn't perfect. Cross sections make closer approximations, but again, even then its not perfect.

Overlaps here describe sub-expressions, meaning the kinds of expressions of a particular SD stage in the context of other models.

There's no reason they couldn't be stage Orange, linear progression from stage to stage as far as I'm aware is something people are assuming as a good rule of thumb as opposed to an absolute truth.

For the sake of talking about it, a perfect model of ego development would need to be axiomatic from the context of working out and organising what reality is, at least from the perspective of our perception. This would then allow us to make predictions about not just where humans or a human may fall from a spiral dynamics point of view but where literally any living thing falls including potential future evolutions of humans (based on the assumptions of that evolution and what underpins it).

Edited August 20, 2019 by possibilities

[possibilities]

Also psychopathy is just "lack of affective empathy", that's literally pretty much it (in a nutshell, there's more to it though but that to me would be the clear differentiator). Lack of affective empathy leads to many other consequences that we take for granted. SD doesn't have neuroscientific grounding, so an improved model could easily be made if well developed neuroscientists very familiar with SD or people in SD had a high grounding in neuroscience spent the necessary amount of time to create one. There's no reason why a psychopath wouldn't be able to go through various high levels of ego transformation (beyond what you'd normally think or assume) actually in light of understanding the flaws of SD, a flaw in SD or any model is a window of opportunities for all the things that fit through that gap, in this case, the growth of a psychopath which is an important thing to imagine to develop not only ones thoughts on what a psychopath is, firstly its merely another model with its own flaws, but what the limits of ego development are as well as how different sub-types of 'personality' uniquely fit into that realisation.

Edited August 21, 2019 by possibilities

[Rilles]

A very extreme form of Red.

[possibilities]

@Mezanti

Of course you'll have to keep in mind that you're not asking this question on a really reliable forum so you'll receive answers ranging from those that are informed to those that are not. I can assure you however that I am pretty well versed and would happy to engage in further questioning if needed. I doubt much others here could say the same or at the very least perform to the same level if called upon.

There's a lot of misunderstanding about both SD and psychopathy as a model, mix misunderstanding of two models together and you only get even further away from the truth, of which the model was meant to be at least predictive of.

A good analogy in these situations is ask a blind man the way out of a cave he's never ventured out of and you'll only get more lost, ask two blind men at the same time and you'll only get not only more lost but more confused in the process.

Its of course why we ask doctors to get a medical degree. Even though we still experience this problem in the medical profession (so we're bound to experience it on a forum like this - we still have plenty of plastic surgery botches, misdiagnoses, wrong prescriptions and so on for example) it was far worse in earlier periods of history. I mean can you imagine the dissonance some patients experienced!

 

Edited August 20, 2019 by possibilities

[Skanzi]

19 hours ago, SFRL said:

From what I have read Psychopaths are born that way and can not change. 

Sociopaths are developed that way and show the same behaviours as Psychopaths. But it is life experiences that makes them act that way. It's learned behaviour. And can be unlearned. 

I think some degree Psychopathy and Sociopathy is beneficial for reaching great success in society. But eventually at some stage of personal development it will need to be dropped to develop any further. (Very high levels of development). 

Basically I think it has been evolutionary  beneficial to be emotionally detached to some degree. Like when you had to kill your opponent who tries to steal your stuff. 

Being a very emotionally detached person myself, I see something like psychopathy more something like a combination of  repressing our softer, empathethic feminine side along with repressing our compassion. I really don't think it's as simple as saying "oh you're a psychopath and you will stay that way forever". I think psychopathy, for a good part of it, is more of a "mode" that people get into, a sort of identity. 

Compassion, by the way, is in my experience not something that has so much to do with being soft and feminine, as i would call "empathy", but more about a feeling of shared responsibility for one another. I feel that that is more than simply a belief saying "I should be a good person". Speaking from own experience, I lack a lot of "empathy" in the sense that I lack the capacity to connect to others, to listen and be attentive to others when they are speaking, the ability to console others etc... But I have a great sense of responsibility for the general well-being of people and I am very dedicated to helping people and raising their level of consciousness. I care, but I don't empathize. You could call it "hard love". I want to give people what they need, what they truly need, and sometimes that may include be a little bit rough and direct on them. But I am not the kind of person to console and "mother" others. I think Osho is a very good example of a person that has a lot of compassion, but that does (generally) not show that much mother-like empathy and softness. He does a lot of what is needed, but certainly not always what is "nice".

Psychopaths, however, got very identified with the stance that life is a game of "survival of the fittest", and therefore they believe that being selfish is the way to go. And they are naturally very good at tuning into their masculine, detached way of being. I do believe they have a sense of compassion, a sense  (note, i'm not saying empathy), but that they repress that sense of compassion because they don't believe that it will serve them. I believe every person in the world has a basic sense of compassion but I feel like many people repress it. By the way, I believe that someone who is generally more feminine and empathetic can also lack of lot of compassion or get very selfish. For instance, you can sort of pamper someone who is portraying a strong victim-mindset, and by you consoling them, hugging them and saying sweet words and what not you can in fact reinforce such a victim-mindset. I don't think that's compassion because even though you may be consoling, it is no real benefit to do such a thing because you keep them stuck in a victim-mindset by pampering them and it is no benefit for the greater good. And often much of the reason you believe you should be pampering them is then you get to reinforce your ego-identity as a good, virtuous person who is very 'beneficial'. And if that is the reason you are pampering, you are in essence doing it for selfish reason. You may show empathy in such a situation, but it is not compassion. Compassion looks at what the situation requires considering the greater picture instead of coming across as "pleasant".

By the way, my inability to show a lot of empathy is however something I still do have to work on so that I at least have the capacity to show and express it. Human relationships is still something I've got tot work on; There is still something incomplete within me. Empathy does have its place in certain occassions. 

Anyway these are just some thought-currents of mine. Make of them whatever you want. I don't claim to guarantee you that what I'm writing here is 100% accurate and do not have further demarcations or nuances to it.

Edited August 20, 2019 by Skanzi

[Skanzi]

3 hours ago, Rilles said:

A very extreme form of Red.

If we would relate psychopathy to spiral dynamics, which I'm not sure would be very accurate, wouldn't you then say it's more orange-like? Psychopathy seems far more intelligent and subtle than red does. Red seems just very crude, whilst orange seems much more calculative and cunning. My picture of psychopaths at least is people who are a bit more clever and intelligent than I would expect red to be. Maybe I should look up the word in the dictionary.

Edited August 20, 2019 by Skanzi

[possibilities]

@Skanzi

Its important to differentiate between genetic demographic and cultural demographic, psychopaths fall into the former category and sociopaths as well as narcissists fall into the latter category where they have expressed characteristics brought about by environmental influences (I've brought these two extra subtypes up of the "Dark Triad" because well, they're all a part of that spectrum, that is, "The Dark Triad of Personality" - you can punch that into google if you like). The clear difference here is that a psychopath was always going to be a psychopath but a sociopath or a narcissist, with the right environmental variables, may never have developed those or enough of the symptoms to be classified as such. All psychopaths have something in common, they all have extremely similar genetic heritage there, however like narcissists and sociopaths they're going to all express themselves extremely differently only overlapping on those core characteristics. Be careful not to confuse correlation with causation (i.e. believing that psychopaths think in terms of survival of the fittest would be evidence of this).

In short: if you want to achieve accuracy on this subject you have to ignore most of what you've learned from culture (a lot of misguided notions) and instead examine the latest data on psychopathy, neuroscience and personality. Assumptions on this subject are riddled with error given how poorly culture represents the related ideas.

For exaple not all psychopaths are intelligent of course, in fact many could be below some national average, further if we say were able to gather all the brains on Earth and then compare psychopaths across everyone who knows, maybe it would show them to be less able. If the opposite were true then perhaps there might be some cross correlation occurring, meaning for a certain demographic it proved a survival advantage and in saying so was passed onto the next generation among (certain demographic) intelligent people. But for me there's literally no need to believe this, I would have to do more research, moreover I could simulate it occurring in some instances already under some hypothetical conditions, like say there's a class of psychopaths in the US that breed in their own environment (not genetic inbreeding just cultural inbreeding) but this has a few flaws. Firstly, how do you get two psychopaths to fall in love and have children? That would be impossible as psychopaths are incapable of expressing and feeling genuine love. For the sake of argument, the entire relationship would have to be completely transactional for the couple and there aren't too many plausible scenarios where I could see that occurring enough times for a class of people. That would be pretty far fetched.

 

Edited August 21, 2019 by possibilities

[Shadowraix]

@possibilities Well you hen you're mapping out a general progress of human growth you are more concerned about the. Global progress than a small percentage of nuances.