watching an interesting documentary on psychopaths

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[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3HKnbE2b4D8[/youtube]


There is the advert for it above.

What was really interesting was psychopaths are on a spectrum and the vast majority are not killers.

Many psychopaths can do high pressure dangerous jobs and the world would be a worse place without them.

What was so interesting about this documentary was about 1% of the population are on the psychopath spectrum.

Was is interesting to me is we expect people to understand that autism is a spectrum and we are not all Rain Man.

Well I have to confess I had no idea about psychopaths and I only knew the stereotype that they were all mad killers.


That condition is very different to autism but like autism it is on a spectrum and there are as many people with that as autism.

We talk about NTs lack of understanding maybe we should make it our business to inform ourselves about other groups who have been totally misrepresented.

Just as somebody with Autism might be that person who finds a cure to some sickness.

A psychopath may be a hero firefighter who pulls somebody from a burning building.

At one time, or perhaps in the future, Asperger people were called psychopaths it seems.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autistic_Psychopathy

Lorna Wing is credited with widely popularizing the term "Asperger's syndrome" in the English-speaking medical community in her 1981 publication[14] of a series of case studies of children showing similar symptoms.[1] Wing also placed AS on the autism spectrum, although Asperger was uncomfortable characterizing his patient on the continuum of autistic spectrum disorders.[5] She chose "Asperger's syndrome" as a neutral term to avoid the misunderstanding equated by the term autistic psychopathy with sociopathic behavior.[15] Wing's publication effectively introduced the diagnostic concept into American psychiatry and renamed the condition as Asperger's;[16

Apaprently, "autistic psychopathy with sociopathic behavior" was giving off the wrong impression.

We I knew very little about autism or a few years ago.

It turns out I have been on the autism spectrum all my life and I had no idea.

It turns out we are a diverse and varied group of people linked by some common traits.

I know lots about Autism now.

It seems only fair we show another diverse group the understanding we crave for.

I remember being new to autism and I thought they were all non verbal and said very little words and were locked in their world and never played with other kids or with any toys and they only screamed when touched. I also thought they could all crack codes like Simon could in Mercury Rising and that was the only good thing about autism. I didn't even know I was on the spectrum.

When I first started learning about Asperger's, I went by what my mom said about it so I thought they were all cold and uncaring and rude people and like Cruella De Vil personality wise and I couldn't imagine being that kind of person. Then I started to wonder if every bully out there has AS or if Cruella had it or every person out there that are not nice people and my school counselor told me those people just choose to do it, someone with AS doesn't understand what they are doing so that is the difference. I also thought psychopaths had it too because they didn't care about people so I would wonder if they were AS too and thought people with bad AS killed people or tortured people because they don't understand. Then when I actually started reading about it online and looking it up and reading posts by aspies, I realized none of this was true what my mom said and I think she confused as*holes and psychopathy with AS. Bu that tells me the impression people get about us too when they read about it or know someone who has a bad case of it.

Yes League Girl I totally understand your post.

Many people have all their information on Autism from Hollywood movies and the same can be said for psychopaths.


I remember watching the movie The Mummy and Cairo is a small town and to my surprise when I really visited the place and it is a city of 20 million people.

An estimated 40 percent of all prison offenders are Sociopathic, so lets not get carried away with the heroic fireman example.

Always remember that functional psychopaths are still selfish jerks that hurt people for their own ends (without care too).

Yeah, they lack fear, which means they can do seemingly heroic feats (though is it really heroic if you don't have fear? Nope).

I don't think the world is a better place with that disorder around.

There's a book you might like--The Psychopath Test by Jon Ronson. It's an interesting read.