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Dangerous Relationships. Understanding Sociopathy · Inside The Consulting Room - Understanding the Child Behind the Behaviour

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_00: Hello and welcome back.
• 0:02
  SPEAKER_00: This is Kim Lee, child and adolescent psychotherapist.
• 0:06
  SPEAKER_00: I feel a bit like Fraser Crane when I do this.
• 0:10
  SPEAKER_00: I'm listening.
• 0:11
  SPEAKER_00: Anyway, I think by now you know who I am.
• 0:14
  SPEAKER_00: This is episode four, part one, in the series Dangerous Relationships.
• 0:20
  SPEAKER_00: And in this episode, I want to look at sociopathy, understanding the mind behind the relationship where one person demonstrates sociopathic tendencies, behaviors, or indeed has the condition.
• 0:40
  SPEAKER_00: Now, over the past three episodes, we've explored narcissistic personality organization and the way in which another person's internal world can gradually begin to reorganize the emotional and psychological lives of those around them.
• 0:58
  SPEAKER_00: And we spoke about emotional contamination and decontamination in the companion series.
• 1:04
  SPEAKER_00: And emotional contamination is when we are carrying and essentially living through the emotional worlds of others, and we we carry them in all kinds of ways.
• 1:17
  SPEAKER_00: Decontamination is recognizing that process and essentially stepping away from it.
• 1:23
  SPEAKER_00: We explore the difference between intellectual insight and emotional insight.
• 1:28
  SPEAKER_00: The two are quite different because people with intellectual insight say very accurately all the right things and they say them convincingly.
• 1:39
  SPEAKER_00: However, what we also see is that if there's an absence of emotional insight and awareness, the pattern of behavior doesn't change.
• 1:50
  SPEAKER_00: It's almost like, well, I understand what I'm doing and I understand why this is happening, and I'm sorry you feel the way you do, but actually nothing changes as a consequence.
• 2:03
  SPEAKER_00: We also considered how dangerous relationships often begin.
• 2:07
  SPEAKER_00: And it's not by actively taking away freedom, it's more a kind of quiet eroding of our confidence in our own reality.
• 2:17
  SPEAKER_00: So today we turn our attention to another pattern of personality organization.
• 2:24
  SPEAKER_00: And I think it's one that is so often misunderstood.
• 2:29
  SPEAKER_00: And this is sociopathy.
• 2:31
  SPEAKER_00: Now, like the word narcissist, it's entered everyday language.
• 2:36
  SPEAKER_00: People describe difficult others as sociopaths, whether they're former partners, employers, politicians, almost anyone whose behavior appears cold, manipulative, or uncaring.
• 2:51
  SPEAKER_00: But the difficulty is that, from a clinical perspective, the picture is considerably more complex.
• 2:58
  SPEAKER_00: So before we go any further, I want to make exactly the same point that I've made throughout this series.
• 3:05
  SPEAKER_00: This podcast is not intended to help you diagnose another person.
• 3:12
  SPEAKER_00: It's intended to help you recognize patterns, understand processes, and where necessary, recognize when professional assessment may be appropriate.
• 3:24
  SPEAKER_00: But understand this.
• 3:26
  SPEAKER_00: Diagnostic and diagnostic behavior and diagnoses belong to clinicians.
• 3:34
  SPEAKER_00: It requires assessment, detailed history taking, and consideration of many different explanations for behavior.
• 3:43
  SPEAKER_00: So it can't responsibly from be made by listening to this podcast or from a conversation on social media.
• 3:51
  SPEAKER_00: And there is another important point to clarify.
• 3:55
  SPEAKER_00: Strictly speaking, sociopath is not a formal diagnostic term within current classification.
• 4:06
  SPEAKER_00: Clinicians diagnose what's called APD, antisocial personality disorder.
• 4:12
  SPEAKER_00: And there are researchers who distinguish this from psychopathy, where we're talking about psychopaths, and there's a particular constellation of interpersonal and emotional characteristics in that, and indeed the condition of antisocial personality disorder.
• 4:31
  SPEAKER_00: Now there's a considerable overlap in these concepts, and the language can become uh confusing.
• 4:38
  SPEAKER_00: So I think for the purpose of today, I'm going to use the word sociopathy the way it's commonly understood, as describing a pattern of relating characterized by a consistent and persistent disregard for the rights, feelings, and well-being of others.
• 4:57
  SPEAKER_00: Our purpose is not to become distracted by terminology, it's to understand the psychology.
• 5:04
  SPEAKER_00: So one of the questions I'm commonly asked is this how is sociopathy different from narcissism?
• 5:11
  SPEAKER_00: And it's a really good question because on the surface, those two things can appear remarkably similar.
• 5:18
  SPEAKER_00: And both may involve, and often do involve, manipulation, deceit, and exploitation, and both may present initially as charming.
• 5:31
  SPEAKER_00: But both may also leave those around them feeling anxious, confused, and psychologically depleted.
• 5:39
  SPEAKER_00: But beneath the surface, there's an important difference.
• 5:42
  SPEAKER_00: Throughout the series on narcissism, we repeatedly return to one central idea, and that is that the narcissistic individual is often trying to protect a vulnerable sense of self.
• 5:56
  SPEAKER_00: And much of their behavior is organized around maintaining self-esteem, defending against shame, and preserving an image of themselves that feels psychologically necessary.
• 6:07
  SPEAKER_00: So, in other words, relationships become organized about around protecting identity.
• 6:15
  SPEAKER_00: The sociopathic pattern is often organized rather differently.
• 6:20
  SPEAKER_00: So the central question is less likely to be, how do I protect my self-esteem?
• 6:25
  SPEAKER_00: And more likely to be, how do I obtain what I want?
• 6:29
  SPEAKER_00: Now that may sound like a subtle distinction, but in practice it changes everything.
• 6:35
  SPEAKER_00: Relationships for them are less likely to become sources of emotional security.
• 6:41
  SPEAKER_00: Instead, they risk becoming vehicles through which needs, ambitions, possession, or desires are met.
• 6:51
  SPEAKER_00: So people are no longer experienced primarily as emotional partners.
• 6:56
  SPEAKER_00: They become opportunities, resources, obstacles, or advantages.
• 7:02
  SPEAKER_00: Now, this doesn't mean that every individual who displays these traits is incapable of affection, because human beings are rarely that simple.
• 7:11
  SPEAKER_00: But it does mean that things like empathy, reciprocity, and emotional responsibility may play a much smaller role in the organizing.
• 7:22
  SPEAKER_00: And I mean by organizing, I'm talking about how we relate the interpersonal organizing ourselves within a relationship.
• 7:31
  SPEAKER_00: Now, whenever we discuss personality, it's important to ask another question.
• 7:36
  SPEAKER_00: And that is how does a person become this way?
• 7:39
  SPEAKER_00: And it's a question that deserves respect because the honest answer is there's no single explanation, and there's no single pathway to sociopathy.
• 7:52
  SPEAKER_00: Some research suggests that temperament, genetics, neurobiology, early attachment experiences, childhood, adversity, neglect, inconsistent caregiving, and exposure to violence may all contribute to risk.
• 8:09
  SPEAKER_00: Some children display unusually fearless temperaments from an early age.
• 8:14
  SPEAKER_00: Others experience profound disruption in their earliest relationships.
• 8:20
  SPEAKER_00: And some grow up in environments where exploitation, intimidation, abuse, and violence becomes normalized.
• 8:29
  SPEAKER_00: But there's something I want to emphasize, and that is risk factors are not destiny, which I think underpins my practice almost in terms of as much as you have experienced all of the things that we know about, those things don't define who you are.
• 8:52
  SPEAKER_00: It's not your destiny.
• 8:58
  SPEAKER_00: And they grow into compassionate, emotionally responsible adults.
• 9:02
  SPEAKER_00: But that doesn't happen automatically.
• 9:04
  SPEAKER_00: You know, such children are going to need to have corrective relational experiences, and certainly psychotherapy does that.
• 9:13
  SPEAKER_00: Relational child and adolescent psychotherapy, which is my particular style of working, is intended to do just that.
• 9:22
  SPEAKER_00: Equally, not everyone who develops antisocial patterns has experienced obvious abuse.
• 9:30
  SPEAKER_00: Human development is incredibly complex.
• 9:33
  SPEAKER_00: And that complexity, though, deserves respect.
• 9:36
  SPEAKER_00: As a child psychotherapist, I've long believed that asking what has happened to this person is a lot more useful than asking what's wrong with them.
• 9:49
  SPEAKER_00: I don't ask the latter.
• 9:51
  SPEAKER_00: But understanding origins must never become an excuse for causing harm.
• 9:57
  SPEAKER_00: Compassion and accountability are not opposites, they belong together.
• 10:02
  SPEAKER_00: Anyway, what are the characteristics that clinicians begin looking for?
• 10:07
  SPEAKER_00: We're not looking for isolated incidents or occasional mistakes or moments of selfishness.
• 10:13
  SPEAKER_00: We're looking for patterns.
• 10:15
  SPEAKER_00: And this is so powerful because very often in all relationships, manipulative, coercive, abusive, avoidant, we're not looking at isolated incidents.
• 10:27
  SPEAKER_00: We're looking at the repetition of incidents which alerts us to a pattern of behavior.
• 10:36
  SPEAKER_00: We might see persistent deceitfulness, repeated violation of the rights of others, impulsivity, irresponsibility, disregard for rules, exploitation, and a willingness to manipulate others without evident remorse.
• 10:54
  SPEAKER_00: And also a tendency to blame others for the consequences of one's own behavior.
• 10:59
  SPEAKER_00: Such people will