I've read it a couple of times and I highly recommend it. It makes for some spectacular reading. Cleckley is very different from Hare, who of course was extremely biased and almost paranoid due to the nature of his work. You really see the difference between sociopathy and psychopathy when comparing Hare and Cleckley.
It's not just that though. I saw anger as an aggressive fear response, depression as an expression of fear related to the self (since fear can show tears as well), even happiness being from controlled scenarios of fear to get the adrenaline pumping. To me, it was all fear, but the context judged what emotion it was. As such, all of my former advice related to any emotion stemmed from how to face fears as opposed to manage other feelings, and I saw all emotions as moving together as one scale: How emotional you let yourself become being the byproduct of how much fear you allow into your own life. It further solidified in my mind when I saw bipolar types and other disorders that made all emotions extremely vibrant.
When I really bothered to look at what others were feeling without the preconceived notion that all emotions rooted from fear, I saw that instead it was that every response I had was that way, and that my assumptions were pure projection. A person could be happy, sad, angry, without fear having anything to do with it, and that it was simply me that could not express without it.
It made why raw expression beyond fear seemed so alien to me make far more sense, where before I just assumed variables were missing from my findings.
Isn't it funny how that works? People model how others think and feel based upon their own mental models. And then some people realize the modeling process. Then you wonder about if what the emotion you feel is the same as what another person feels, and if the two of you are on the same mental plane. Sometimes you can see what a person feels and why they feel it, and it seems like their mind-states are so simple, but thinking that way could be from a lack of emotion too. So maybe you miss parts of it. I don't think it's off the mark to think a person's emotional expressions are anxious outbursts. Really they are, they are unmitigated releases of feelings. The anxiety for expression.
"I don't think it's off the mark to think a person's emotional expressions are anxious outbursts."
If that were the case, a person with a lack of anxiety would also express other things less. It'd make the numbness of extreme depression or the rush of fearless mania make no sense.
What I was getting at is that people are generally at the whims of their emotions. "Anxious outburst" is probably not a good way to put it. What I mean is that people are generally subject to whatever they feel. There is no meta-thinking about why they feel how they feel, they are simply acting out the paradigm of reality that they have within their minds. I don't know if I can clearly articulate what I mean by this right now. To me, emotional expression is like the result of you trying to manipulate your environment when you are invested in some piece of it.
"What I was getting at is that people are generally at the whims of their emotions. What I mean is that people are generally subject to whatever they feel. There is no meta-thinking about why they feel how they feel..."
I've seen a lot of that, but I can't imagine how people live like that at all. Emotions aren't consistent or reliable enough to use as a proper guide.
"...they are simply acting out the paradigm of reality that they have within their minds."
This part applies to everyone, emotions or not, but emotions affecting what their reality is is very "in the moment".
Such a way of living is spooky to me. It seems like there'd be a lot more guesswork involved in the game of self-understanding. I already know better than to trust impression, but such people would have that much less to trust about themselves.
by TheCrowOnTheFenceThis 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
Sociopaths have emotions? Do we know whether psychopaths have them or not? Or sociopaths? Or are these claims made by people based on the amount of affect shown? How do we know for sure?
On the flipside, being strongly guided by your emotions can produce a clarity about what to do. They can also confuse people too. Honestly I wouldn't mind feeling more strongly about things, I would probably get more done. "Intellectual motivation" isn't all that great (at least for me).
I dunno... Being too sad to do something, too happy to face bad news, it seems like even though it comes with motivation it also comes with distractions if not misguided senses of direction.
I could be judging too much from watching over-emotional types, but it looks almost painful at points.