first rule of psychological testing is to get tested from someone the same background as you, if i had to guess you're a russian that got analyzed by an english person or immigrant completely out of sync with anyone in your neighborhood.
The black community has a 99% shot of being misdiagnosed by a white person when it comes to mental problems because of the cultural miscommunications, obviously its not as likely now because we stopped brainwashing everyone into believing everyone of all races and cultures act exactly the same but plenty of black psychopaths half a century ago got the label slapped on them because they said they'd beat the shit out of someone for touching their hair.
No, I got my diagnosis in Russia, I’m writing in English here because that’s the language most of the farms uses and I don’t want to limit myself to just the handful of other Russian users.
I don’t want to get into the details because it doesn’t matter, but I consider the diagnosis accurate. It was a case of ”we want you to do this before we’ll let you have access to your trust fund” from my parents. ASPD with a history of CD as a teenager, and 28 on the PCL-R, which is fairly high, particularly for a woman, but is not actually psychopathy. Which is very good because I would probably have been disowned on the spot if I’d come home with
that on my papers.
The UK puts the psychopathy limit at 25 so if I’d been evaluated there I probably would have gotten that diagnosis. But so would like 25% of all men, so that’s pretty silly.
Theory of "Cold Empathy". Its unlikely Cluster-B people have no empathy but can appear that way. BPDs can suspend empathy during their mini psychotic episodes but the popularized claims that no one in the Cluster-B club has empathy is excessive. Most are highly effective manipulators and understand it mechanically and how to use it to their advantage and against others. That requires having it to a degree. Whether they "feel" it or not, likely don't but they do have it. Psychopaths are the ones genuinely without it and with different brains but they can still wield it against others quite effectively by their nature.
Yes, exactly. ”No empathy” only applies to ASPD in general, is common in NPD, and is situational in BPD (like you say, they can ”shut it off” when they feel threatened). The distinction made is between affective empathy (actually feeling someone else’s emotions as if they were your own) and cognitive empathy (consciously understanding how people are likely to react to something). Most higher-functioning people, even those with ASPD or outright psychopathy, will be fairly good at cognitive empathy, you need to be in order to mask competently, and to manipulate effectively.
But I do think a lot of antisocial people still have some affective empathy, which they simply are able to ignore. It’s the nature-nurture thing. A psychopath born with a neurological impairment on the amygdala cannot feel affective empathy, it’s just how their brain developed, while a ”sociopath” (if we use the term as a shorthand for ASPD created by a traumatic childhood) probably just learned to shut it off to protect themselves. The former are the way they are and the best you can hope for is that they conclude that a prosocial attitude will lead to a more comfortable life, while the latter might actually be treatable by an extremely good therapist (not that many therapists are willing to go anywhere near you after you tell them ”I’ve got ASPD”). In general ASPD isn’t considered treatable at all, what therapists will do is tell your family how to control you, and otherwise urge them to distance themselves and try to get you incarcerated.
