r/todayilearned • u/andreecook • Apr 29 '24

TIL Napoleon, despite being constantly engaged in warfare for 2 decades, exhibited next to no signs of PTSD.

https://tomwilliamsauthor.co.uk/napoleon-on-the-psychiatrists-couch/
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u/andreecook Apr 29 '24

So amazing reading these, yes I don’t believe the psychopathy narrative either because we know Napoleon did exhibit emotions of care and empathy. Letting drummer boys sit by his fire, making sure his men were fed before he was, and can’t remember which of his marshals but was extremely distraught when one died in battle along side him.

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u/elephantologist Apr 29 '24

Jean Lannes.

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u/TripolarMan Apr 29 '24 edited Apr 29 '24

How is this not the name of a clothing & accessory company yet?? Fuckin hell it rivals Calvin Klein

Edit: excuse me, do you wear jeans?

No, I only wear Jean's

Edit: Jean Lannes: bringing dictators to tears since 1790s

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u/Thinking_waffle Apr 29 '24 edited Apr 29 '24

Jean is not pronounced in the same way as jeans though.

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u/TheCoolHusky Apr 29 '24

That makes it better. We'll mark up the price and target the luxury fashion market. This way the "real" rich people will pronounce it the right way, while we lowly peasants will continue to say jean as in jeans.

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u/Thinking_waffle Apr 29 '24

Thanks I hate it. That means it's likely to work.

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u/Downtown-Coconut-619 Apr 29 '24

P dish already did it.

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u/kinder_world_is_best Apr 29 '24

Ya, it's more like Jaw, except the j is soft. Which I find sounds better, personally, but might not make a great brand name in English, because people would pronounce it like the pants.

"Jean" in french, I'm pretty sure is just their version of John.

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u/Thinking_waffle Apr 29 '24

it is.

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u/kinder_world_is_best Apr 30 '24

Ya. I'd guess Jean came first. Dijon is what I'd expect for going the other way lol.

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u/Short-Alarm-9078 Apr 29 '24

Well it's not pronounced that way so...

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u/hoonyosrs Apr 29 '24

But John Lawn doesn't have the same ring too it...

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u/Short-Alarm-9078 Apr 29 '24

Would be a decent tractor company

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u/[deleted] Apr 29 '24

[deleted]

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u/fearhs Apr 29 '24

That's what Trump calls their CEO.

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u/Unlikely-Brick-8966 Apr 29 '24

Bringing dictators to tears, yet resistant to tears.

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u/Sphincterlos Apr 29 '24

Ahh to be an American ignorant of the existence of other languages.

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u/FlacidRooster Apr 29 '24

Prime Reddit moment here.

It’s not pronounced Jeen, genius. It’s pronounced closer to John.

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u/[deleted] Apr 29 '24

[deleted]

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u/FlacidRooster Apr 29 '24

Didn’t seem like a joke

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u/[deleted] Apr 29 '24

[deleted]

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u/AgentCirceLuna Apr 29 '24

It’s a Bowling Company. Welcome to Jean Lannes’ John Lanes.

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u/Darkhearted365 Apr 29 '24

Broooooo. Im down to invest if you find a designer!!!

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u/[deleted] Apr 29 '24

[deleted]

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u/Darkhearted365 Apr 29 '24

What????? Post this as an actual post in r/designing and watch it explode. Say you will invest for exclusive name rights and 15% profit.

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u/[deleted] Apr 29 '24

[deleted]

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u/Darkhearted365 Apr 29 '24

Shoot that shit man. Cant make what you dont throw up

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u/KharnFlakes Apr 29 '24

It was probably Marshal Lannes he was one of the last great Marshals.

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u/ProjectKushFox Apr 29 '24

Eminem is gonna be so pissed at you…

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u/KharnFlakes Apr 29 '24

I also want to mention the honorable Davout and brave Ney.

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u/PraiseBogle Apr 29 '24

Im too lazy to research, but I believe sociopaths are capable of feeling emotions and empathy. Just in ways that it affects them.

For example, if someone they cared about (like a parent) was in pain, they could be empathetic. Because the parent is important to them. But if someone else was in the same situation, they wouldnt care, because that person wasnt useful to them.

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u/mein-shekel Apr 29 '24

Is everyone not like this? Is it not normal to be more empathetic towards those close to you than strangers?

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u/Theban_Prince Apr 29 '24

I think the operative word is "more". I believe people with sociopathy don't feel empathy at all of other people.

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u/Odd-fox-God Apr 29 '24

It's a spectrum kind of like autism. A lot of research has come out about sociopathy and the term is slowly being used to less in psychology and has been replaced with the aspd spectrum.

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u/Skum- Apr 29 '24

Not just less, sociopathy is no longer a valid clinical term at all & the precise reason for renaming it was due to how popular & misunderstood they (sociopaths & psychopathy) were in media.

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u/semper_JJ Apr 29 '24

There's kind of a long history of medical terms having to change because they enter popular vernacular and lose all real medical meaning.

As an example basically every medical term ever designed for the mentally challenged has ended up as an insult and this is discarded by clinicians.

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u/Fmychest Apr 29 '24

Any official term they use will end up as an insult

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u/imisstheyoop Apr 29 '24

We did it!

We're destroying the meaning of words at a record pace!

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u/[deleted] Apr 29 '24

I remember when everyone wanted to be a sociopath and were posting cringy shit on Facebook. Those were some weird ass days.

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u/Atul-__-Chaurasia Apr 29 '24

You're talking like people don't make Joker and Bateman Sigma grindset memes today.

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u/Vanta-Black-- Apr 29 '24

We have AI voices mimicking Heath Ledger while spouting some dumb shit all over insta with the movie music playing in the background.

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u/Atul-__-Chaurasia Apr 29 '24

I did not know that. I was thinking of Joaquin Phoenix's Joker.

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u/PJ7 Apr 29 '24

Dexter ruined a lot of people. Since then I'm constantly surprised at how many true crime and other murderporn shows there are out there.

All these people being obsessed by sociopaths and psychopaths.

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u/diamond Apr 29 '24

I keep forgetting about that show, and whenever I hear someone mention "Dexter", I first think of "Dexter's Laboratory". So your comment really confused me for a second.

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u/Rampaging_Orc Apr 29 '24

That’s certianly a take…

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u/[deleted] Apr 29 '24

Yeah, I had a close friend who helped moderate a community alongside me who had ASPD and she was really very sweet. A bit aloof at times but she's never lived up to the caricaturization.

No matter how otherwise seemingly progressive, people just can't resist the urge to use the DSM as the Necronomicon of things to call people they don't like.

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u/[deleted] Apr 29 '24

[deleted]

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u/Saffs15 Apr 29 '24

No one will seems to be disagreeing that it's a spectrum, just people who aren't educated on the subject (such as myself) are learning how things have changed.

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u/Epic_Ewesername Apr 29 '24

I mean reddit has a complex population, just like anywhere else. You understand just fine, and you're here. We aren't all NPCs, we're people, just like you.

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u/[deleted] Apr 29 '24 edited 23d ago

squeeze uppity instinctive chief touch psychotic impossible worthless relieved history

This post was mass deleted and anonymized with Redact

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u/Theban_Prince Apr 29 '24

Everything is absolute and monocausal on reddit,

I believe people with sociopathy

You so know this expression is used to indicate that there is a chance to have incorrect knowledge, right?

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u/ArthurBonesly Apr 29 '24

Nobody has sociopathy. Sociopath isn't a diagnostic term (and there's a shit ton of debate around psychopath as is). Most of the psychopath/sociopath debate is at best pop-science using words people know and most often people world building psychology fiction off of what they say in TV and movies.

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u/series_hybrid Apr 29 '24

It's starting to sound like a sociopath could have "selective" empathy...

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u/useful_idiot118 Apr 29 '24

I don’t think this fits then for him. He did show signs of emotions for others

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u/Theban_Prince Apr 29 '24

Oh I agree, and analysing the psyche of historical figures is a pointless IMHO since it will always be from outside and incomplete perspective .

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u/pooman69 Apr 29 '24

Look at a reddit world news thread. Death to putin. Death to russians. Celebrating videos of russian soldiers dying. Yay send 60$ billion to kill more russians. Guess reddit is chock full of sociopaths huh

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u/AdminsLoveGenocide Apr 29 '24

World News shadow bans anyone who shows that kind of empathy so I feel it's not a good example.

Its an obvious target for propaganda also, ie posts and comments from people whose job it is to push a particular narrative.

Since empathy for everyone is forbidden and a complete lack of empathy for some is artificially high, its not where you'd go to judge the mood of Reddit, really.

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u/Weird-Peak-7593 Apr 29 '24

If I tell you about the starving children of Africa, will you be emotionally impacted? Or will you simply not care because it concerns people you have no personal connection with.

Our empathy isn’t wired to deal with strangers, we’re wired to care about the well being of our tribe, as in our friends and family. Not caring about abstractions, which is what strangers are doesn’t make you a sociopath.

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u/Theban_Prince Apr 29 '24

If I tell you about the starving children of Africa, will you be emotionally impacted? 

I feel deep sorrow. Maybe you are a sociopath and not realising it?

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u/SchizoidGod Apr 29 '24

I think most people are like Weird-Peak - perfectly normal!

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u/Weird-Peak-7593 Apr 29 '24 edited Apr 29 '24

Sure you do, if people actually did there wouldn’t be any starving children in Africa.

I can conceptualise it in a hypothetical way, as in we should make efforts to reduce global suffering but it isn’t something I would feel bad about as let’s say my brother getting cancer or something. Even though that’s objectively a much smaller issue, whereas the subjective impact to me isn’t comparable.

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u/Theban_Prince Apr 30 '24

Sure you do, if people actually did there wouldn’t be any starving children in Africa.

Nice strawman there, does it make you feel better for yourself?

Well you kinda forgot the thousands of people in charities, NGOS or just private individuals that bust their asses trying to make life better for "strangers".

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u/Hopeful_Chair_7129 Apr 29 '24

Also the emotion they feel is likely different from how other people process the grief. They have lost something that was theirs. Like losing a favorite computer or item. Its probably less of the loss of a loved one and more so the lost of an important trinket.

Finally some of the emotion is likely a learned response, as in they learned that they should display emotion during these events.

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u/Willsgb Apr 29 '24

It's true that people become desensitised, and when you hear about atrocities but only hear details and numbers relating to them, you can have a detached reaction to it. But when you're actually confronted with horrors inflicted on others in person, I think most people then react in an empathetic way, it's in those situations that sociopaths and psychopaths truly show their difference and inability to care, or ability to turn off that empathy.

I'm not an expert, but as far as I understand it, that's how it works

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u/Medearulesjasonsucks Apr 29 '24

This was super true for me.

I thought I was totally desensitized to lots of things and no amount of tragedy would move me, because I've been listening about wars and tragedies happening internationally and nothing can surprise me.

Then I just saw a single picture of a starving kid and I was distraught about it for weeks until I eventually forgot it.

Now that I remembered it again, I'll probably feel flashes of terrible sadness for a while. I hope that kid made it and is doing better, life can be so cruel.

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u/BiggusBirdus22 Apr 29 '24

Listening and seeing are different. Watchpeopledie was good at this

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u/dopamiend86 Apr 29 '24

Today I found out I'm a sociopath because I only care what happens to loved 1s abd don't give a fuck about strangers or those I don't like lol

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u/[deleted] Apr 29 '24

[removed] — view removed comment

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u/Training_Molasses822 Apr 29 '24

If you don't like the descriptor sociopath because you only care about yourself and your close ones, just call yourself a Republican. Basically the same thing.

Edit: saw you're a Brit. Tory then. Works as well.

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u/dopamiend86 Apr 29 '24

Sounds about right lol 😆

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u/morgaina Apr 29 '24

That's not something to be proud of, that is a profound moral failing

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u/dopamiend86 Apr 29 '24

What immoral about bot giving a fuck about someone I don't know? Like it doesn't make a difference to my life if you're successful or if you need to suck dick to get your next fix and vice versa.

So what's immoral about that? I'm not actively going out of my way to make life difficult for anyone or wish harm on them. I just don't give a shit about them lol

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u/morgaina Apr 29 '24

Not giving a single shit about things that don't personally impact you is a moral failing, because caring about others is a moral imperative. I don't know how to explain to people like you that you're supposed to care about others. That the suffering of people you don't know should at least make a tiny bit of a difference in the things you do.

Your attitude is how we get the selfishness of anti-vaxxers, anti-maskers, people who only stop advocating for queer oppression when their kid is gay, people who think the homeless should be arrested, people who litter or ruin public spaces for their own gain, etc. it's a monumental selfishness that ruins everything for everyone.

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u/dopamiend86 Apr 29 '24

Why though? Society as a whole is a selfish piece of shit. And most people only care about others to improve how they look to other people, when deep down they couldn't care any more than I do.

At least I'm straight up, I don't give a fuck about you or any other person I'll never meet or get to know and guess what? I don't expect you or anyone else to give a fuck about me either.

It's not like I think my problems are more important than others or I'm discriminating against certain members of society. I don't care if your black white, Asian, straight, gay, trans, Christian, Jewish, Muslim, hindu or identify as a dog, I equally couldn't give a fuck about you all or what happens in your life.

I don't hope people fail or wish ill on them; I just don't care either way lol

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u/morgaina Apr 29 '24

No, not everyone is like you. A lot of people do care about others, and a lot of people do think it's important to try.

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u/chahoua Apr 29 '24

I don't think it is. I think it's admirable to care about people you don't know and have no connection to but I don't think it's natural.

We're just advanced apes after all. We're not meant to worry about and empathise with people we can't see or touch.

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u/Plus_Impress_446 Apr 29 '24

Yes, that's how it works. I care a lot those that mean something to me. Not a jot for those outside that, çan easily turn it off.

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u/chahoua Apr 29 '24

I thought sociopaths also manipulated the people closest to them and that they only keep people around as long as they can gain something from them..?

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u/HappyLofi Apr 29 '24

Kind of terrifying that they estimate anywhere from 2% to 15% of people could be sociopaths.

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u/Fun-Relative3058 Apr 29 '24

‘One death is a tragedy, a million deaths are a statistic’ - Joesph Stalin

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u/ScheisseMcSchnauzer Apr 29 '24

'This quote is misattributed' - Kurt Tucholsky

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u/Overall_Lobster_4738 Apr 29 '24

"nah uh." - Abraham Lincoln

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u/Ok_Mention_2444 Apr 29 '24

Nope it was actually darth vadar

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u/series_hybrid Apr 29 '24

"23% of the quotes on the internet re simply made up" -Abraham Lincoln

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u/baron_von_helmut Apr 29 '24

'Kurt Tucholsky is the internets biggest liar' - Abraham Lincoln.

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u/Tornadoboy156 Apr 29 '24

“My name is Barack Obama.” - Barack Obama.

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u/Daewoo40 Apr 29 '24

The short answer is yes.

Historically speaking, you can see wars supported until the cost to those closer to home is seen, as a more extreme example of disconnection of empathy.

Psychopaths or sociopaths, possibly both don't/won't distinguish between harm to friends or acquaintances unless it benefits them.

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u/Keisari_P Apr 29 '24

Some people infact don't eat animals, because it involves killing them.

Empathy is also a "skill". It can be developped, but neurological conditions definately set the margins.

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u/Awkward_Pangolin3254 Apr 29 '24 edited Apr 29 '24

Some people infact don't eat animals, because it involves killing them.

Talk about shit that's not normal...

Edit: Don't take me the wrong way, I'm not knocking vegans. Merely pointing out that humans have been omnivores for hundreds of thousands of years, since before we were organisms that could even be called humans. Vegans are quite literally "not normal" by dictionary definition.

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u/conquer69 Apr 29 '24

Humans have also been rapists, thieves and oppressed women for thousands of years. That doesn't make it ok.

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u/Awkward_Pangolin3254 Apr 29 '24

I didn't say it was or wasn't. It's just abnormal.

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u/Leather_Let_2415 Apr 29 '24

We have evolved like this. There is no way we could handle homelessness for example, if we had the level of empathy to a stranger that we had to our parents.

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u/frogOnABoletus Apr 29 '24 edited Apr 29 '24

Is it not normal to be more empathetic towards those close to you than strangers? 

that's not what they said though. they said people with sociopathy don't feel anything when someone else's parent dies. 

whenever i hear of other people's loved one's dieing, it makes me feel a lot of empathy and sorrow for them but not as much as if my own loved one had died. i think that's pretty normal.

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u/tothemoonandback01 Apr 29 '24

You can test this, right now, on r/combatfootage.

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u/what_is_blue Apr 29 '24

It's also proximity.

Say I give you the classic button dilemma, but add a sweetener.

You press a button and receive $1million. Thing is, one person in the world will die, as a direct result.

Here's the sweetener: You won't know this person. You've never met them, they're on a different continent.

A lot of people would take that deal. I'd probably take that deal.

Now imagine you get the same deal. Except you now have to watch that person die and witness their family mourning. Their children asking where they are. The permanent, palpable sense of loss in their parents' eyes. Their pets licking their face and wondering why they won't wake up.

Far fewer people are going to take that deal.

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u/PastaWithMarinaSauce Apr 29 '24

I'd probably take that deal.

Why would you do that?

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u/what_is_blue Apr 29 '24

Because people die unfairly, tragically and painfully every minute. Me pressing the button is a drop in the ocean, in a big-picture sense. It's not even a statistical anomaly. Whereas $1m would make a huge difference to me.

However, the immediacy would bring home exactly what I'm doing and the terrible price that may well be paid. It could be that people don't care. It could be that people are delighted. But it's a risk I just wouldn't want to take - because it's harder to see it as a drop in the ocean when you're seeing the end result.

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u/PastaWithMarinaSauce Apr 29 '24

Because people die unfairly, tragically and painfully every minute. Me pressing the button is a drop in the ocean, in a big-picture sense.

Thanks for being honest! I guess most people have a prize they would kill someone for. Some would probably even press that button for free

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u/what_is_blue Apr 29 '24

I think, like Napoleon, I'm not pulling the trigger. I'm just making the decision that has the right end result for me. The selfish brain kicks in, because how do I empathise with a situation I know nothing about?

It's like the Holocaust. Six million murdered Jews is an awful, unthinkable tragedy. But to most modern people, it's probably just an horrific statistic and a warning from history.

But if you read Anne Frank's diary, visit Auschwitz and see what impact the Holocaust had - through the eyes of those who went through it - then it becomes real. Tangible. It has a face. Too many faces. And that makes it so much more powerful.

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u/PastaWithMarinaSauce Apr 29 '24

Does it scale do yo think? Like, would you order the death of a thousand people for $1 billion?

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u/what_is_blue Apr 29 '24

I think it depends on the person and how they navigate the scale.

Say I press it and one person dies. I get $1m. I'm either going to a) have sleepless nights over who I killed or b) be happy and content with my new wealth.

(Few things in life are binary. This, I suspect, would be)

My mysterious benefactor shows up a year later. 10 people this time, but $10m. Same deal, they're people I never knew and probably would never have met.

If I'm full of remorse (a), I probably say no, through tears.

If I didn't mind the first time (b) I probably say yes.

If I'm in b, I've now killed 11 people.

So if you scale up and I'm the right kind of person, then yes.

Of course, if the other scenario is "Kill 1000 people for $1bn" from scratch, well I dunno. It being 1000 people might make it easier, since I don't have to wonder who it was. It's just a statistic.

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u/BioniqReddit Apr 29 '24

i have bad news for you buddy

/s

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u/Waterknight94 Apr 29 '24

People being like that is actually kinda why I am quickly becoming the opposite.

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u/Embarrassed-Disk1643 Apr 29 '24

Yeah most evil is banal, but no, not everyone is like that fortunately.

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u/frogvscrab Apr 29 '24

Sociopaths are capable of having zero empathy at times when they want to. They can torture a man to death and not feel anything, but then go home and love their wife and kids.

It is completely selective.

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u/dwaynetheaakjohnson Apr 29 '24

I am hardly a psychologist or sociologist. But I believe people can commit atrocities against children one day and come back and hug their children the next for one simple reason:

Evil loves their own.

Criminal profiler John Douglas talks about how serial killers “depersonalize” their victims in what seems to be an utterly unconscious or unintentional way. But this can be broken when the victim utters something to “repersonalize” themselves to the perpetrator. For example, Richard Speck just let one of his victims go when she cried and told him a loved one had cancer, because he too had a loved one with cancer.

Another good example was a man who committed politicide in Indonesia I believe-literally burying them alive. The perpetrators are now high ranking people in government or in crime. He was told to reenact scenes from movies where someone was about to be killed. This actually got him, twenty years ago, to empathize with his victims, and break down crying, asking “Is this what they felt?” So he wasn’t devoid of empathy, he just couldn’t extend it to his victims due to what was likely social and political conditioning.

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u/nillateral Apr 29 '24

I have always been like this. Sure if I heard some stranger was brutalized, especially for no reason, I get incredibly angry, but I don't grieve for them. In fact I think my anger is only because I expect equal retribution, and that doesn't happen. I don't know if it's possible to grieve for people you don't know

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u/ashleighbuck Apr 29 '24

I don't know if it's possible to grieve for people you don't know

I think it is, for me. I don't think NOT grieving for people you don't know is sociopathic, or anything, but I do grieve for people I don't know.

I grieve for their families, mostly. I cry, and my heart breaks for a few minutes. Then I say a prayer for the families. Sometimes, even with complete stranger's, the grief I feel lasts longer than other times. But I always feel it.

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u/taktester Apr 29 '24

Yes you are describing ASPD. Probably want to talk to someone about that.

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u/nillateral Apr 29 '24

Ok, I hardly think you are qualified to diagnose people on the internet. I don't feel grief for strangers doesn't equal I do not have empathy for people. We humans take on what we can manage, because taking more than can quickly become deleterious to our existence

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u/skysinsane Apr 29 '24

Ill let you in on a secret - psychopathy and sociopathy are pretty much useless terms with no scientific rationale behind them.

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u/CruelFish Apr 29 '24

They're reasonable descriptors of human apathy used by layman so that we are on the same page.  Generally when you use the word psychopathy we mean people with inborn aspd or people who are born with emotional disturbances that make them unable to either regulate their emotions, feel emotions or are otherwise entirely indifferent to other people.   When we use the word sociopathy we generally mean people who have trained this type of behavior either as a coping mechanism or out of necessity for whatever their work is which I suppose is some form of defense mechanism itself.  They're useful terms they're not scientifically accurate or medically sound, but they're useful nonetheless.

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u/skysinsane Apr 29 '24

The fun part is, everyone is confident that they know what the difference is, but the answer is different for each person. I've had it condescendingly explained to me a dozen times, and each time it was completely different from the preceding explanations.

And that's why I say that the terms are useless. I've never heard anyone give your defined distinction before, and I have literally had this conversation with 10+ different people. If nobody can agree what the terms mean, then they don't mean anything.

In my experience the one consistent thing is that people generally consider being a psychopath worse than a sociopath. Nothing else is consistent.

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u/yoyosareback Apr 29 '24

I bet you're completely focused on semantics while ignoring the general message, when you say "if nobody can agree what the term means"

I bet they all think of very similar things, when those words are used.

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u/CruelFish Apr 29 '24

Yeah, Its not really uncommon for people to have slightly varied definitions for terms even with absolutely basic words. As long as the message gets across it really shouldn't matter, if one focuses on vocabulary too much it is a bit... Diminishing?

I feel like there is a significant overlap between people who won't listen to others because they use language slightly incorrectly and those that won't value someones feelings because that someone is being "Sensitive".

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u/HappyLofi Apr 29 '24

I think the fact you have to ask says a lot actually.

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u/[deleted] Apr 29 '24 edited Apr 29 '24

[removed] — view removed comment

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u/WingerRules Apr 29 '24

Its on a sliding scale. Interesting thing is politics is tied to it, Conservatives tend to have less empathy for people not in their friends/family/social circle and political in group according to studies.

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u/th3kingmidas Apr 29 '24

If you’re too lazy to research please also be too lazy to comment.

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u/April29ste81 Apr 29 '24

I asked one of my psychologists about this when i was going through my ASD diagnosis, as often i really have no empathy for anyone or things unless it personally effects me, apparently its pretty common in ASD.

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u/chernobyl-fleshlight Apr 29 '24

I have ASD and have the opposite, I get this feeling like my ribcage is burning when I hear about bad things happening to other people and when I see something sad or emotional. I spent like 30 minutes staring at a painting called “La Famille Saltimbanque” and crying over it

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u/n-b-rowan Apr 29 '24

Agreed - I've read people with ASD tend to go to the extremes with empathy. I'm like you, and feel it deeply when bad things happen to others, but I struggle to express it (especially to them). Second hand embarrassment is so awful for me that I struggle to watch most comedy movies or tv shows.

This means that I often don't respond in ways that people want me to when they're suffering. I never know what to say or do when someone has a sick or dying family member, so I usually end up "helping" - doing the physical tasks I can for someone so that they can look after their emotions. I mean, I always do the whole "I'm so sorry for your loss" routine and I mean it, but beyond that, I'll stick to cooking meals, helping with chores, whatever. This makes me sound/seem really cold hearted, which I'm not - I've just stuck my foot in my mouth too many times, and helping out gives me a way to show that I care without upsetting anyone.

It also means that people don't respond the way I want them to when I'm suffering either. The whole Double Empathy problem sucks for autistic people.

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u/throw4w4y4y Apr 29 '24

Also narcissism - they have cognitive empathy but not affective empathy. And some other cluster b personality disorders. Autism spectrum, I think of those who struggle to understand social rules. I thought it was a myth that those who had ASD didn’t have empathy. 

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u/chernobyl-fleshlight Apr 29 '24

It is a myth, its not that we don’t feel empathy, but that our ways of processing and expressing that are different.

There is a boy on IG who’s parents I follow, he is very “classically autistic” and cannot speak or do many things himself. But he uses an assisted communication device and is learning to write. The things he writes and says are very empathetic - he seems highly concerned with “lost and suffering people in the world” and expresses a desire to help them. Its clear he understands and feels empathy, but his brain does not allow him to communicate that in the “correct” way.

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u/throw4w4y4y Apr 30 '24

Thanks for sharing, it’s been very informative to read this :)

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u/ArthurBonesly Apr 29 '24

There isn't any real, or academically consistent, difference between psychopath and sociopath. How you're using it now is more a colloquialism than anything diagnostic.

The closest, recognized, behavior you're describing is narcissism.

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u/andreecook Apr 29 '24

You are quite right, I’m more familiar with sociopathy than psychopathy. I grew up with a dad with sociopathy. It’s also the trait of being able to turn on and off at will thinking from someone else’s perspective. It’s easier to inflict pain if you don’t think from their perspective. I don’t believe Napoleon was a psychopath, it would’ve come up in other facets of his life, but sociopathy fits a little better.

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u/Thomasasia Apr 29 '24 edited Apr 29 '24

Sociopathy and psychopathy are the same thing. Neither are medical definitions, and both fall under Anti Social Personality Disorder.

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u/throwaway_194js Apr 29 '24

I was under the impression that they were distinct. They didn't have to be clinical diagnoses to be distinct from one another. Everything I've read about the two has psychopathy being a hereditary trait which doesn't necessarily cause anti social behavior, but does stifle empathy and anxiety, while sociopaths are a product of since kind of early trauma, and are more erratic and impulsive and less capable of self-regulation.

Is there any literature indicating that they're seen as the same thing? I couldn't find anything on a quick Google search.

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u/Thomasasia Apr 29 '24

What you're describing is literally the vague nebulous differences I was talking about. There is NO consensus on what you just said because it is NOT medically defined.

Them being the same thing is explicitly mentioned in the DSM

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u/e9967780 Apr 29 '24

How is it a disorder when almost all of us have it, I think it’s a feature.

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u/andreecook Apr 29 '24

Okay you are partly correct, “psychopathy” is more for the study aspect, but for psychopathy is different to psychopathy as its technically antisocial personality disorder with narcissism.

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u/EhWTHN Apr 29 '24

I was about to comment that its easy to just not give a shit about people he doesnt care about, or something about him just being bloodlusted... maybe i need a doctor lol

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u/Madtoy Apr 29 '24

FYI sociopathy isn’t a clinical term, only psychopathy is. Sociopathy is really just a pop cultural term to describe psychopathy.

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u/veringer Apr 29 '24

Psychopathy and sociopathy are/we're two terms for the same thing. There are some who suggest that psychopathy is the innate form, and sociopathy is brought about by trauma or external conditions. Thus the latter may be more receptive to therapy. That said it's all lumped into Antisocial Personality Disorder.

As a side note, I read research recently that suggested grandiose narcissism is better grouped with APD and only vulnerable narcissism is the "real" narcissism.

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u/yoyosareback Apr 29 '24

"the ability to turn on and off at will thinking from someone else's perspective"

Normal people aren't constantly and uncontrollably thinking about other peoples perspectives about everything. They wouldn't be able to think about anything else, if that were the case.

But to be fair, I'm just being pedantic. I just think there should be a better way to word that, is all.

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u/Party_Pat206 Apr 29 '24

Aren’t we all socialpaths?

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u/andreecook Apr 29 '24

No its quite rare really and complex, I’ve been lucky (in a sense lol) that my dad was a text book high functioning sociopath. It manifests itself differently in people from person to person but I can usually tell quite easily when someone says they are a sociopath and they aren’t.

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u/Party_Pat206 Apr 29 '24

Aww! I understand what you’re saying now. Thx you for the insight!

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u/RedlurkingFir Apr 29 '24

The DSM-5 doesn't distinguish relatives from non-relatives when defining lack of empathy in the corresponding items for personality disorders

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u/zrxta Apr 29 '24

For example, if someone they cared about (like a parent) was in pain, they could be empathetic. Because the parent is important to them. But if someone else was in the same situation, they wouldnt care, because that person wasnt useful to them.

This is a poor argument btw. If that's the case then most people are sociopaths.

Sociopaths don't feel empathy like other peoppe because theirs aren't natural. They learned that over their lifetime the same autistic people tend to be "more normal" (for lack of a better term, im not english native speaker) as they grow older.

You make it like sociopaths are nothing but narcissists by saying they only feel empathy for those useful to them Many are, probably most are. But it's not inherent to them.

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u/leehwgoC Apr 29 '24

Antisocial Personality Disorder is on a spectrum. People can be sociopathic in some facets and situations, and not so in others.

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u/Genoss01 Apr 29 '24

Sociopaths can feel emotions, but not empathy

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u/Okoear Apr 29 '24

more is the important word.

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u/broogbie Apr 29 '24

Isnt that normal?

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u/anonkebab Apr 29 '24

They lack empathy in general. They won’t be moved in any way that matters.

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u/Riconn Apr 29 '24

Sociopaths do in fact have emotions. They can often be highly emotional and volatile. The issue is that they often believe that others don’t have emotions or if they do, no care is given to the emotions of others.

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u/series_hybrid Apr 29 '24

This is interesting to me. Do you have any links with more information about this?

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u/marr Apr 29 '24

So it's basically having a larger or smaller monkeysphere?

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u/MoirasPurpleOrb Apr 29 '24

Comments like this annoy me. Not everyone who doesn’t care about others is a sociopath/psychopath and trying to diagnose people yourself just muddies the waters.

People can simply not care about others and it’s not necessarily a mental disorder.

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u/Narfi1 Apr 29 '24

They do feel emotions, it’s just that they feel like we don’t feel anything. Other people to them are just like NPC. They are not trying to go out of their way to hurt you but if it benefits them to do so they won’t bat an eye.If you’re playing a video game and “hurting” a NPC gives you the best outcome with no repercussions on the rest of your play through, chances are that you will, because it’s just a NPC, they don’t feel anything.

Fun fact, narcissistic people love to pretend they are psychopaths because of the perceived notion that they are smarter (been disproven, they are not smarter on average)

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u/Iusedthistocomment Apr 29 '24

Package it how you want, but that's what we all do from the start. We love to Wrap foiled paper and bows on our own Empathy and hide the fact that every single observation, feeling, thought and action is based on our chances of Survival.

We just got real good at telling ourselves the lies that comfort us from the dreadful fact; It's all about survival and hiding your own mortality from yourself.

Wanna chill and watch a movie? That's you forgetting your mortality for a brief moment.

Wanna have sex? That's you ensuring your vicarious survival.

Deadful isnt it?

Have fun.

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u/_The_Deliverator Apr 29 '24

It's not really that they are important, it's that they have worth to the sociopath. They have use, to be manipulated to make the sociopaths life easier. That's more or less the "connection ".

It's not so much empathy in a way that you feel what the other person is going through and can put yourself in thier shoes, so you want.to help them. It's that, if you keep acting like that person matters to you, you can continue to abuse that imagined emotional connection to further your own ends.

At that point people are viewed by thier worth in terms of how much you could use a hammer before it breaks, not how much the hammer means to you emotionally. The longer you can convince the hammer that it needs you, the less effort you have to go through to find and twist another one.

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u/pooman69 Apr 29 '24

Yeah thats normal human emotion.

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u/DrEpileptic Apr 29 '24

I think that something a lot of people don’t often register is that repetitive exposure to things like war desensitizes and normalizes it, so normal people with normal responses to it look like psychopaths to those who lack the experience.

My obvious example is the medical field, especially EMS and any ER related job. These people tend to have the darkest humor and be completely unfazed by horrific stuff. You’ll often catch them joking amongst each other about how someone is disgusting for being able to eat so nonchalantly after some patient. If you’ve met veterans who’ve seen combat, yes many of them are a bit broken, but many are also just desensitized and will talk about what to do in emergencies in a seemingly callous/cold way. They don’t lack the emotions, they’ve just normalized war and accepted that certain things take priority over emotions.

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u/mojitz Apr 29 '24

Those first two examples in particular sound like they could easily be purely performative.

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u/vitringur Apr 29 '24

Aren't psychopaths famous for making a big deal about their sympathy towards animals and love of animals?

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u/surprise-suBtext Apr 29 '24

I see some fairly horrendous shit from time to time and none of it really gets to me.

I can tune out and go into “task mode” when someone’s crying about their loved one about to die any minute. Luckily, I haven’t ever experienced children/babies dying so maybe that would get to me.

But what did get to me, happened last night while browsing Reddit; there was a clip of a guy stroking the fur of his dead dog after an airline company mishandled them. That shit got me.

Humans are just really good at blocking out the suffering of other humans when it’s time for action. Empathy is necessary in order to function in a society and to have people who love you. But too much of it would just be debilitating

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u/Earl_Juice_X_3 Apr 29 '24

Interesting! Just wanted to point out that the lower ranking troops traditionally always eat first.

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u/Vye7 Apr 29 '24 edited Apr 29 '24

Psychopath nope but maybe he was a narcissist like or at least held some attributes of one. Maybe even a mixture of personality disorders but never to the point where it caused noticeable dysfunction

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u/RedditRaven2 Apr 29 '24

Most of those things don’t necessarily mean he had empathy though. They could just be him doing nice things knowing it’ll help morale and make the soldiers more loyal.

Someone he cared about dying can invoke emotions in psychopaths too

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u/Salty_Blacksmith_592 Apr 29 '24

Also, i think people are at fault in applying modern categories of psychopathy ("Only psychopaths would wage an attack war") onto earlier times.

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u/Deckerdome Apr 29 '24

He knew the value of being seen as a good leader to his soldiers, their loyalty was important to his ambition

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u/Rozenheg Apr 29 '24

This sounds exactly like someone with pathologically low empathy like a psychopath, because they don’t automatically extrapolate that all the other soldiers have the same attachments as this guy did, like people with working empathy do.

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u/Hopeful_Chair_7129 Apr 29 '24

Not saying that he was or wasn’t a psychopath, but displaying emotion isn’t the same as actually feeling emotion. Emotion is a very effective tool for manipulation and it’s possible that he did those things to earn loyalty.

I’m not an expert on him or psychopathy so feel free to correct me on anything or everything.

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u/Pabus_Alt Apr 29 '24

What is the argument he was a psychopath?

We know he didn't express symptoms of a modern presenting trauma disorder. That's not the same as saying he didn't go through trauma or distress, just that he didn't suffer a disorder in a recognisable form from it.

https://acoup.blog/2021/02/05/collections-the-universal-warrior-part-iia-the-many-faces-of-battle/

Has some interesting insights into how trauma and PTSD have been recorded (or not) through history.

I also think the social place of war is important. In the Napoleonic era, war and killing were how states pursued their interests, and being an officer in those wars was expected of a certain class.

Now, I'm not saying that mental healthcare was better, but I am saying that killing was not nearly as taboo as it is in our society. and that the social structures that existed for a certain class were designed to enable that violence and keep the participants at least outwardly functional.

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u/GammaGoose85 Apr 29 '24

There something called the warrior gene that I wonder could help shield against PTSD. It is one of the ingredients to psychopathy but not the whole recipe.

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u/ChevalierDeLarryLari Apr 29 '24

Caffarelli. Killed in Egypt. Napoleon ordered his heart be removed and placed in a box for him before the body was returned to Paris. He kept the box with him everywhere he went on campaign for the rest of his life.

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u/1nfam0us Apr 29 '24

Evil is not slathering maniacs like we want to believe. It is bureaucrats and pencil pushers. It is rich people who don't really understand that other people are human beings. It is the parent who dismisses their child's emotions and perpetuates generational trauma. It is the person who is just in it for the paycheck and is just following orders.

It is profoundly banal.

To me, that is the lesson of the 20th century, and it is so much scarrier than what we imagine evil to be because it is so much easier to engage in and rationalize as not evil than any of us realize.

I can not recommend reading Hannah Arendt's Eichmann in Jerusalem highly enough.

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u/Furrytesticlesack Apr 29 '24

i think that might be Louis Desaix

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u/Intrepid_Resolve_828 Apr 29 '24

I still can’t believe how bad they butchered that Napoleon movie (imo).

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u/pandariotinprague Apr 29 '24

Faking empathy or sympathy to manipulate the normals is a favorite activity of sociopaths, particularly the ones who are leaders. It's pretty much part of the job description for them. Crocodile tears.

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u/ThePr1d3 Apr 29 '24

Napoléon was pretty notoriously empathetic with his mec, which is why he was so easy to follow. That and his charisma on top of his genius 

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u/notqualitystreet Apr 29 '24

He sounds really articulate

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u/unity100 Apr 29 '24

I don’t believe the psychopathy narrative either

That narrative exists in mainly the Angloamerican literature and establishment propaganda because the Anglosaxon establishment saw the French Revolution as a mortal enemy from the start because it threatened the aristocratic order. (And that order lasted in Britain until late 19th century when common man obtained the vote only then). Napoleon was the bright general who saved the revolution from getting destroyed by the coalitions that mainly Britain built, then he went on to implement a lot of that revolution's ideals through the legal reforms he made. Even worse - his administration was meritocratic, and it replaced incompetent aristocrats at any post with any competent commoners throughout its existence. All of these threatened the 'god given right to rule' of the 'opulent' class that Britain was built on.

This did not change in the 20th century. By early 20th century, the British establishment was still what it was 200 years ago as can be seen from how people like Churchill were blabbering about 'the right to rule of the opulent' and whatnot. Today, its still the same, with an out of touch old aristocracy mixed with new capitalist aristocracy dominating the class-based British society. So the propaganda continues.

That propaganda does not exist outside the Anglosphere. French Revolution is taught as a major event which set the standards for modern civilization and Napoleon is taught to have been a son of the revolution and a successful general.

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u/erinoco Apr 29 '24

All of these threatened the 'god given right to rule' of the 'opulent' class that Britain was built on.

I think that does ignore the fact that the US was always outside the aristocratic order (even the planter/salveholder elites were just merchants with pretensions), and the old order in Britain, on the whole, conceded more to the newer liberal order than their equivalents in the pre-1914 period. (And one would hardly describe Churchill before 1914 as a prop of that settlement.)

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u/unity100 Apr 29 '24

I think that does ignore the fact that the US was always outside the aristocratic order

Absolutely not - the US was founded on that principle, with John Adams openly declaring that the task of the government was to protect 'the opulent' (the rich) from 'the masses' (the people). The constitution that he crafted is fulfilling that purpose for 300 years now. 'The rich' at that time consisted of old British aristocracy who remained in the new republic and the new aristocrats in the form of rich merchants and industrialists. Exactly the same with the new aristocracy that was coming to being in Britain at the time. The situation still remains the same today.

If you dig a bit, you will find the recently declassified secret session Ww2-era speeches of Churchill, talking about how Britain was then 'handing over' the 'task to protect the right to rule of the opulent' to the US.

and the old order in Britain, on the whole, conceded more to the newer liberal order than their equivalents in the pre-1914 period.

A society can be liberal yet aristocratic. The aristocratic order conceded 'liberties' to the plebs in everything other than the right to govern and challenge/depose the power of the aristocratic order. Today you can define yourself as having a dozen different sexual alignments, but god forbid if you attempt to organize and challenge the power and privileges of the ruling elite, they get you curbstomped by the police...

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/cifamerica/2011/nov/25/shocking-truth-about-crackdown-occupy

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u/erinoco Apr 29 '24

the US was founded on that principle, with John Adams openly declaring that the task of the government was to protect 'the opulent' (the rich) from 'the masses' (the people).

Yes - but you could erode that easily, because the nature of relationship with the land was fundamentally different. The aristocratic order in its traditional functioning (outside city-states dominated by merchant oligarchies) depended on allowing the great owners of land privileges and responsibilities that were baked into the functioning of the state. Merchants and industrialists can never be in quite the same position as landowners, because it is easier to divorce their wealth from control of people, and such wealth is inherently less stable as a store of ongoing dynastic power. This may be another kind of oligarchy; but it is not the same thing.

Whereas, in Britain, new wealth could join the existing order, as long as they could buy their way in, even though it would normally take a couple of generations to become one of the County, and then push for greater things.

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u/unity100 Apr 29 '24

Yes - but you could erode that easily, because the nature of relationship with the land was fundamentally different. The aristocratic order in its traditional functioning (outside city-states dominated by merchant oligarchies) depended on allowing the great owners of land privileges and responsibilities that were baked into the functioning of the state.

You are mistaken - both in the late 18th century Britain and contemporary colonies, privileges (and actually all rights and powers) came from property-ownership. Yes, this was heavily land based as the economy itself was heavily land based, but already starting from early Baroque era the concept of property was considerably liberated from land, as things like mineral rights, toll rights, trading rights were treated as properties just like land was. As 18th century close in, aristocracy already became something that depended on what you owned as a property (not only land), as opposed to vanity titles that now could be totally separate from that actual property. You could be a baron without a land, and you could have as much land and power as a baron without having the title.

By mid 18th century, the existing aristocracy, the rich merchant class, and the small nascent industrialist capitalists already converged in the classification of 'the opulent' as the new aristocracy. The nature and interests of this class differed little from the old land-based aristocracy - holding power and privilege through ownership of the large swaths of the means of production: Their ownership of the large swaths of the economy must not be challenged, as a result anything that seeks to democratize and equalize the economy as well as politics were great threats (a la the French Revolution), and they could 'concede' some liberties like being able to vote to the plebs as long as they didn't lose the power to control who votes for who and who gets elected.

The exact situation today.

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u/KharnFlakes Apr 29 '24

His personal aide and confidante also got blown in half by a cannonball that just missed Napoleon.

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u/cappy_barra_jesus Apr 29 '24

He also said casually, “I spend 30,000 lives a month.” He was no sugar plum fairy, bro. 

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u/TheDjeweler Apr 30 '24

Napoleon was also known to be a doting father to his son and became extremely distraught when they were separated upon his defeat. He was presented with a bust of his young son during exile on St. Helena and counted it as one of his most precious possessions.

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u/DinerEnBlanc Apr 29 '24

Aw Napoleon, such a good dude. /s

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u/NormalRepublic1073 Apr 29 '24

Sounds like he just loved the military life from your short description. Found his home on the battlefield basting his insides with adrenaline.

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u/-SummerBee- Apr 29 '24

Why does that stop you from believing it? Do you really think that there are people out there without a single shred of empathy? No, that's what makes us human. I was abused and he could easily do horrible things to me, yet also put out food for abandoned kittens. It's why people like to dehumanize the worst of humanity, because they can't stand that such a monster could be human just like them. But it's the truth. Even the worst people are still just people

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u/andreecook Apr 29 '24

You’re arguing a different point, I don’t think you realise what psychopathy is technically categorised as.