This random thought just popped into my mind. Can a sociopath think he's an empath or that he has emotions? I mean, for example, that he doesn't know for sure that he's a sociopath but while being brought up he was told about various emotions that people have and got deluded in the process? That would be confusing for him/her I bet. Thinking that he has emotions while being confused by the lack of them inside. Just a random thought. Feel free to post your opinions. :)
This random thought just popped into my mind. Can an idiot think that a sociopath has no emotions whatsoever? I mean, for example, that he doesn't know for sure what a sociopath is, but while being brought up he was told about various symptoms that people have and got deluded in the process? That would be confusing for him, I bet. Thinking that he has understanding while being confused by the lack of it inside. Just a random thought. Please keep your opinions to yourself. : P
Hervey Cleckley's book Mask of Sanity discussed (I think 12?) patients with psychopathic personality disorder that were under his psychiatric care. Many of them claimed to have normal emotions, and did seem to sincerely believe that they did. Many of them also seemed to take offence to being suggested of otherwise. One of Hervey's criterion of a psychopathic personality was a specific loss of insight as to how they are different.
There was one patient who was a particularly interesting example of this characteristic. He was decently versed in psychology and confessed that he was probably a psychopath, and that he was still a child, emotionally. He expressed a want to improve his life, and said that he knew it would be difficult given his tendency to fail. But what appeared to be emotional insight and a desire to change were just verbalizations. The insight he apparently had made no difference, and he fell back into the same patterns. It was simply beyond his capacity to be affected.
I still need to read that, it's just been sitting there waiting for a time that I can sit down and give it the proper focus.
I used to think I had emotions in the traditional sense, but I realized as I tried to describe it to a shrink that something was off. Apparently seeing every display of emotion as a byproduct of fear is... far from accurate, and drawing out charts to show how it was the case just made her eyes betray how crazy the theories appeared. I assumed I was empathetic from being able to read people's faces and body language, but saw this notion of "feeling" other people's emotions as being as likely to be true as witchcraft and voodoo. Down the line it appeared that my sense of "empathy" was nothing more than the byproduct of microexpressional understanding and my history of theater paired with pre-expectation of people's behaviors through predictability of odds, and that the emotions normally functioning people display are not as purposeful as emoticons, but natural displays of feeling they can't always hold back. The epiphany suddenly made a lot of other former things make sense that before seemed like just beliefs people carried to try to make the world seem more interesting than it actually was.
Looking into how other people saw emotion was a bit sobering, and had shown me that everything I thought I'd felt up to the point of finally finding Zinc was just fear and momentary stimulation.
It's the most entertaining book I've ever read. Start at the case studies and you will love it.
What you said about anxiety and the expression of emotions is interesting to me; I've had the same thought. Emotion is like an uncontrolled feeling response to a situation. It's compulsion to feel that thing beyond control. But I guess it's technically not anxiety, it's whatever the emotion is? I don't know if I hit the nail on the head on that, but I think you've perceived the same thing I have...that emotions are provoked because they can't help but to be. It's an interesting perspective to those who are extremely detached.