In movies, sociopaths are often portrayed as cold-blooded killers, but the disorder is actually widely misunderstood. Patric Gagné is a therapist, wife, and mother of two living in the Los Angeles area, and she just wrote a captivating memoir about the way which In fact he feels like a sociopath. I interviewed Patric on the phone about misconceptions, his childhood and his desire to break the rules…
First of all, what would you like society to know about sociopathy?
Sociopathy doesn’t mean what many people think it does. Sociopaths can feel primal emotions, such as happiness, sadness, and anger. But sociopaths have a harder time feeling social emotions (emotions that depend on the feelings or actions of others, such as embarrassment, guilt, shame, and empathy). Sociopaths can learn social emotions, they just learn them differently. I call sociopathy an “emotional learning disorder,” since that’s what it feels like.
People often imagine sociopaths as Ted Bundy or Jeffrey Dahmer, not as ordinary people.
Not all sociopaths are serial killers who prey on you. These extreme examples represent only a small fraction. But they have been misused to define all people with this disorder. I find it crazy that this perception was allowed to happen. It’s the only personality disorder in which we are completely vilified, even though that’s not what the research says.
There is so much mental health awareness these days around autism, depression, anxiety, the list goes on. So I was shocked by the negative comments on your New York Times article. People were really upset that they were featuring an interview with a sociopath.
I represent a very inconvenient truth because many people want to think that all sociopaths look like monsters, since monsters are easy to spot. It’s disturbing to live next to a sociopath without having any idea, or with one and I have no idea. People don’t like that. Statistics indicate that the prevalence is just under 5% of the population.
Little kids can seem like sociopaths. Toby bit a child in the playground and Anton pushed his friend’s tricks. What is the difference between typical child behavior and sociopathic behavior?
Socio-emotions are learned emotions. Babies do not automatically feel remorse from the womb. When a child knocks over tricks, you say, “Hey, that might make someone sad.” » A neurotypical child will understand this and begin to feel shame or guilt. A neurodivergent child may still feel ambivalent. My mother said, “Well, you don’t want people to feel sad, do you?” And I thought, well, what does it matter? I wasn’t able to conceptualize these traditional socialization lessons until I was much older.
When you were a child, did you know you were different?
Yes. I learned very quickly that it’s not okay to say, I don’t feel bad about it. And I learned that it’s not okay to say: I’m not excited that so-and-so is coming to visit us. If someone asks you if you’re horny, you nod your head and say yes. I realized this in kindergarten.
If you suspect your child has an “emotional learning disorder,” how would you approach this problem?
Preventively sit down a child and tell him: “Personally, I feel excitement or shame in this or that situation, but there are many people who do not feel anything when X, Y and Z. And this It doesn’t matter if you don’t do it. I have these feelings. When socializing children, talk about their behaviors throughout the day, but not emotions. There is nothing inherently immoral about having limited access to emotion.
There was a scene in the book where your mother was crying to your father saying: what can we do with her? Looking back, what did your mother say about your upbringing?
When I was young, psychology wasn’t really a thing and my mother did her best. Her reaction to the book is what I was hoping for: understanding that there was a reason I behaved the way I did that had nothing to do with her. This is a personality disorder, not something a parent did right or wrong – the lack of a traditional emotional response is not staff.
You explain in the book that since you weren’t feeling strong emotions, you would instead feel apathy. Then the stress would build up and you would engage in risky behavior just to feel something, anything. Can you tell us about that?
Yes, when I was a kid, I would sneak into our neighbors’ houses when they weren’t home and hang out, or I would leave my house at night and follow people around the neighborhood. In college, I would steal cars at night, drive them for hours, then return them without anyone knowing.
What if we hurt people?
I wrote down the rule that I couldn’t hurt anyone. Then I thought, so what can I do? Sneaking into a neighbor’s house is like, look, there’s no one in this house, who cares if I’m here? But because I knew I wasn’t supposed to do it, it felt good. It gave me a release. It can’t explain it more than that. If you’re a kid and you throw a bottle, it feels good – it’s the same. I didn’t really want to do this kind of thing, but I felt compelled to do it.
A constraint ? This is similar to OCD or addiction.
I read a magazine article about OCD and it was similar: that compulsion to do things you don’t want to do but that you know will make you feel less stressed. I remember thinking, oh, so instead of doing repetitive behaviors, counting or washing my hands, I feel compelled to do destructive things. This understanding helped me recognize that maybe if I follow the advice they give for OCD, maybe my stuck stress will go away too.
What was the OCD advice?
They recommended writing down your behaviors and explaining why they made you feel better. It’s about redirecting it so it doesn’t control your life. I remember when I was a kid imagining people in prison and thinking, wouldn’t that be cool? I thought about being locked up with the lights off and that even if they wanted to do something, even if their compulsive drive was at an all-time high, they couldn’t do something destructive because they were inside the walls. . Wouldn’t it be nice to not be lying in my own bed, helpless against this urge?
What do you want as an adult?
My traditional lifestyle has done me a great service because I respond to the structure and the idea that I have a family. I could go out and steal a car tomorrow and I could get arrested, or I could choose to keep a cognitive journal. Many people on the sociopathic spectrum have the ability to lead beautiful and successful lives.
What are your guidelines for living a moral life, since you can’t really trust your instincts? Do you rely on social norms and laws?
As a sociopath, you can still have a moral compass. I don’t feel shame or guilt, but my working brain can still tell me what’s right and wrong. A sociopath makes decisions based on logic. I enjoy the benefits of living in a harmonious community. I don’t need to worry about making the right choice. This is something people get wrong about sociopathy: “I have to care about you to do the right thing for you” is just as inaccurate as “you have to believe in God to make the right choices.” in life “. You make the right choices in life because they benefit you and the people you love.
You wrote that your husband sometimes gets upset because you can’t love him in that all-encompassing way. You love him, of course, but you feel the emotions differently.
My husband is Italian, he is as hot-blooded and passionate as possible. You don’t have to be a sociopath not to have these qualifications! That said, love is a learned emotion. Just because feelings like love and remorse don’t come naturally to sociopaths doesn’t mean they don’t come, period.
What does he think of your memoir?
I would write chapters and my husband would read them first, and there were over a dozen times where he would come in and say, you can’t write this, you have to burn that. He was appalled that I would even consider telling these stories, but playing such a complex role in the writing process also allowed him to understand what I was saying. I’ve been with him since I was a child, and when he read it in black and white, he finally understood me.
What do you hope people take away from the book?
Most of all, I wrote it in the hopes of making sociopaths feel less alone. But I also wrote it so that neurotypical people could read it and say, ahhh!
Thank you very much, Patrick. Your book is a gift.
P.S. What is it like to be autistic?And being diagnosed with ADHD as an adult.
(Top photo by Stephen Holvik.)