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Ettina
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14 Jan 2011, 1:10 pm

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It's not going to be as rare as a sociopath with Aspergers (THAT would be a sight to see, a guy that blends in well and doesn't interact well)


There are autistic psychopaths. (See Rogers et al 'autism spectrum disorder and psychopathy', since it won't let me post links.) They don't blend in well. Basically, autistics don't understand other people, psychopaths don't care about them, and autistic psychopaths neither understand nor care. On tests of moral reasoning (eg telling the difference between things you shouldn't do out or social convention, and things you shouldn't do because they hurt someone) the autistic psychopaths scored like non-autistic psychopaths, on tests of social understanding (eg Sally knows that Anne knows that she knows X) they scored the same as non-psychopathic autistics, and on a test where both psychopaths and autistics have trouble (recognizing facial expressions of fear and sadness - psychopaths have trouble recognizing these emotions specifically) they scored worse than both conditions alone.

They didn't study this specifically since they had a high-risk sample (kids at a school for autistic kids with significant behavior problems) but it seems like psychopathy probably is about as common among autistics as among non-autistics.



emtyeye
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21 Jan 2011, 11:54 am

my understanding of NPD after reading about it to try and understand someone I know well, is that a core feature is that people with it feel a deep sense of superiority to others . They seek to control others or affect them not just to some specific end but because they enjoy the idea of control or get off in some way by looking at their effect. They see themselves as perfect, above any critisism and they feel no need to change. Therefore, they rarely seek therapy or help unless forced to or at some crisis point. They blame others for anything that doesn't work in their life and don't look at what they could change. They need narsissitic supply, which is a kind of excessive admiration or the idea that others are seeing them as perfect, too, as they see themselves. They don't feel sorry for anything they do. They can tune into a person's phsycological vulnerability and then have no qualms about exploiting it or just messing around with the other person's mind.

It seems to me there are two kinds of narcissists, autistic based and NT based. Both are caused by either being excessively praised or critisised in childhood. But autism's core feature is an inability to "get it" with the social world, so an autistic narcissist's sphere of infuluance is limited. An NT though, with good social skills can go on to wreak deeper havoc on people or society and can engage in more devious games of deceit. I do think autism is a big stumbling block to lying on a regular basis. We seem to be very concerned with the truth. And it seems like most people with genuine NPD have no hesitation to lie at the drop of a hat.

It also seems like there is a big difference between egocentrisim, whrere you are stuck some how in your own perspective and can't get out of your own head and narcissism but they might look a lot alike from the outside.