My weird: Psychopathy

“Psychopath” is a loaded term. Personality disorders are highly stigmatised - just look at the name. So I’m going to break down what I mean when I say I’m psychopathic before going into how it affects my writing.

Firstly, I am self-diagnosed. Once you have an official autism diagnosis there’s a tendency for all other quirks to get filed under that, and with the diagnosis criteria for personality disorders being entirely based on negative behaviours rather than innate traits it’s very difficult to get a formal diagnosis unless you’re severely not coping. It’s rather like when the only people who got diagnosed with autism were non-verbal individuals.

Related, I have been asked by several people “how do you know you’re not just autistic in a way that happens to match psychopathy?”. I don’t. Duh. You can’t separate the different aspects of your lived existence like that. Personally I don’t see how it matters; labels are a communication tool, not a magic spell which shapes reality. If someone’s obsessive love of metal music comes from their autism it doesn’t make them less of a metalhead.

What I do know is that when talking to autistic people, there are aspects of my life that they just get and vice-versa. And there are other aspects which confuse them. Then when I talk to psychopathic people those confusing aspects are stuff they get, and have their own, while the autistic-understood stuff is confusing. So “autistic psychopath” is the label which succinctly conveys my experience - or at least it would be, if more people knew what personality disorders are actually like.

So, for me:

1) I lack empathy. Empathy is a neurological tendency where you observe someone you have an emotional connection with experiencing something and your brain produces a vicarious echo of what you believe that person’s experience is like. For some people the emotional connection can be tenuous, for others it needs to be strong before empathy happens. For some people the vicarious experience is weak, for others it is vivid.

For some of us this never happens at all.

If you want a deep-dive into what empathy is and isn’t (it gets thrown around like a catch-all term a lot, which is frustrating and dangerous for those of us who are low/no empathy) I found “Against Empathy” by Paul Bloom to be an interesting and helpful read. He does go into pros of empathy as well as the cons, and takes the time to explain in detail and give real-world examples and studies.

(He also takes every opportunity to declare that just because you can be moral without empathy doesn’t change the fact people like me are inherently evil, which I choose to find amusing.)

As a brief summary:

Empathy = “I feel your suffering”

Sympathy = “I acknowledge your suffering”

Compassion = “I understand that you are suffering and I want to help”

Because sympathy and compassion are behaviours, you can choose to exhibit them. You cannot choose whether or not to experience empathy, any more than you can choose whether a given sound hurts your ears.

As an example of empathy-driven storytelling, consider this trope:

Hero seeks to thwart Villain and save world.

Villain puts an endangered innocent in front of Hero to distract them.

Hero recognises that Villain is trying to distract them and deliberately chooses to fall for it, putting the entire world at risk for the sake of one person. Because the person in front of them is ‘real’ to their brain, whereas all the billions of people who don’t happen to be right there are not.

While this is allegedly understandable and sympathetic to empaths, to me it’s insanity. 8 billion is > 1. Sure, it’s better if you can save 8 billion + 1, but if you don’t know whether you have time why would you make that gamble??

How does lack of empathy affect my writing?

In many cases it drives my writing. I write to understand. I construct minds, run simulations, model the input -> emotion -> thought -> behaviour chain over and over in a million different iterations. The fact that I can’t subconsciously recreate other peoples’ experiences is what makes consciously doing it fascinating. “Cognitive modelling”, it’s called. (It’s also called “cognitive empathy” but I think that’s just asking for confusion. They’re two very different things.)

I relentlessly dissect the behaviour of everyone I interact with, examine the pieces, then try to put it together like LEGOs. Endlessly experimenting with what works and what doesn’t. Chasing the ephemeral, complex “whys” of humanity. It’s fun. And it helps me interact with people better.

2) I perceive social interactions as always having goals. Even if that goal is “to have fun”. Every interaction I have with someone is an AB testing session. What are they trying to get from this interaction? If I provide A input does it result in B output? Eg “I think this person wants to be entertained. If I tell them this story, does it entertain them?”

This is known as “being manipulative”. Some people act like “manipulative” only applies when you’re negatively affecting other people to positively affect yourself, but giving someone a present to try and make them happy is also manipulating them. You are providing an input to try and get them to produce the output you want (them being happy).

As a side effect, if we’re not going through the input-output cycle it’s not an interaction to me. A common autistic habit is “parallel play”, where two (or more) people do completely separate activities in close physical proximity. Eg you sit there reading something on your laptop while I sit next to you playing something on my phone. Apparently this is emotionally rewarding/fulfilling to some people. From my perspective this is inferior to doing the activity alone, because I have to expend effort and attention being mindful and respectful of your existence.

How does this affect my writing? I don’t know. It probably does, but I’m not aware of it. I’ll update this section if I think of anything.

3) My emotional reactions are shallow, erratic, and brief. In many instances I don’t experience emotional reactions at all - though figuring that out is made complicated by the fact I have alexithymia (lack of an internal sense for my emotions). I have to diagnose most of the emotions I do experience based on physical symptoms.

For example, I was standing in a shopping queue with a friend. The place was crowded and noisy, which I find stressful (autistic sensory overwhelm). I noticed I was feeling dizzy. I checked my watch, which tracks my pulse, and found I was at 136bpm. I take internal stock…

‘Ah. I’m having a panic attack.’

So I mention to my friend that I’m going to need a sit down after this (and why) and start taking slow, deep breaths to keep things under control.

Then I realise they’re staring at me.

“…What?”

“Um. Are you sure you’re having a panic attack?”

“Yeah.” I show them my watch and rattle off the other symptoms I’ve noticed now I’m paying attention: rapid shallow breathing, dizziness, tight feeling in my chest, dry mouth, sweaty palms.

“But… you sound so calm.”

It’s only then I remember how for most people, emotions aren’t a physical experience that happen to them, like sweating and shivering. They’re a big part of how they think. For me, feeling sad is like feeling cold. My body flagging something for me to be aware of, and often deal with/act on. While my emotions are real to me, and affect how I think, they are separate from the act of thinking.

How does this affect my writing? Emotionally driven characters make no sense to me. If the motivation for a story is rooted in an emotion, particularly an emotion I don’t experience like grief or guilt, I won’t understand and will likely find the narrative unengaging. Also, to my mind characters behaving counter to their stated goals “because emotion” means they completely lack self-control. Or else they’re lying about their goals. Or both. Either way, while I might still find them interesting, they are immediately unsympathetic. (I suppose the ”hero agrees to be distracted” example above could also go in this section.)

4) I have a weird fear/horror response. It tends much more towards an adrenaline buzz and fascination rather than any kind of aversion. Positive, fun stress rather than negative. This is most obvious when I’m gaming; other people are freaked by tense scary set pieces while I’m coasting on keyed up reactions with a goofy grin.

Related, I am terrible at judging when something is scary/disturbing/horrifying for other people. I’ll share what was meant to be a whimsical kid’s story and be told it’s uncanny horror. Or throw in a funny monster and be told it’s terrifying. Avoiding grossing people out is easy enough, my revulsion response seems fairly normal, but not disturbing them is a struggle. Sensitivity readers for the win!

How does this affect my writing? I likely skew much darker than average. I’ve been told it’s particularly noticeable in my sense of humour. But conversely, I don’t get the “illicit thrills” that empaths describe when reading depictions of stuff like torture, rape, or murder. Honestly I often find the way these topics are handled tacky and boring. I lose interest and start skimming ahead like “Yes, yes, you’re soooo edgy. Are you going to have anything actually happen though?”

If you wouldn’t dedicate ten pages to a character getting their toenails cut, why would you dedicate ten pages to their toenails being pulled out, y’know? Set the scene, show the important points, which in this case you’d expect to be character psychological development, then slap down some time passing and cut to next scene.

In my opinion it’s after the traumatic event which is interesting, because you get to explore character psychology in detail, have relationships ebb and grow to adjust to these new issues/struggles, and string a proper narrative together.