I am writing this not to vent , but to inform those who are interested into how people ( apparently normal and intelligent people) can lose control over their actions. Maybe some info about my hystory would help : my father’s side of the family are all emotionally instable, with marked hypomanic ( some manic) traits. My father is very irritable/impulsive, emotionally and sometimes physically abusive. He does that because of his irritable mood and narcissism. My mother is very stable and has no symptoms of personality disorder, ocassionally anxious. I was a healthy baby with temper tantrums in chilhood. My basic personality/mood was hypomanic ( over-talkative, very energic, even as a baby had troubles going to sleep before 00-01 AM, irritable, adventurous- reckless sometimes, and very self motivated- I always got what I wanted). Since then ( I am 29) over my basic hipomanic disposition I had some episodes of severe depression. Usually I had mixed mood ( irritable and depressive) but over the years the depression became more severe- ahedonia, inability to move, cold etc). My doctor does not want to give me a diagnostic of bipolar but I am treated as one. What I have noticed is that, sodium valproate( 500-1000 mg/daily) took my hipomania ( and with it my personality) away. I was calm, didn’t talk, normal energy, slept early and I was even tempered and soft. Not a single angry outburst in 1 year ! And guess what, my obsessive mode went away also. But every good thing has a set back : I was bland, uninteresting, un motivated etc. I had a lousy job, no decent man was interested in me ( because I souded dumb)and I could’n recognize myself anymore. But I wasn’y controling angry and obsessive. In the and I made a compromise. I take my antidepressants and a very small dose of valproate and my old self is back ) with anger, compulsions, drive ambitions and the rest.

This post is too long and I am somehow ashamed for overexposing myself like that, but as a mental health professonal myself ( indeed I know how it is to be on the other side and I guess other could gain something from this.

P.S sorry for my english

Traits: craving of adulation from others, despising others, living according to my own moral code, hurting some people without remorse, Machiavellianism, sadism, being more afraid of getting caught than guilt, paranoid traits, hunger for risk and sexual conquest, need for revenge, attention seeking behavior, hypersensitivity to criticism, harsh criticizing of others, suicidal thinking, etc.

I’m surprised nobody figured that out, based on the revenge-related stuff. It really hit me that I’m mean and nasty and feel good about it. Rule out sociopath and narcissist fits. Malignant narcissist fits even better. That’s why I’m able to talk about how “evil” I am and feel OK about it; I really think I’m better than the rest of you.

I’m ashamed to realize this. I intend to change.

Also swivelchair, I disagree with you on this one: http://neurologicalcorrelates.com/wordpress/2008/11/12/narcissistic-leaders-remove-them-dont-coach-them/ — I have “coaches”. I listen to what they say because I know when my emotions are too stirred up, I’m better to listen to them. I’m very loyal to them too; they aren’t there so I can throw them under the bus when it suits me.

I don’t intend to harm myself or others. My point was just to make clear – I’m still a nasty person, despite being more self-aware.

I think you are wrong about things. The entire Western world is being overrun right now. Meanwhile, Africa is safe for Africans and China is safe for Chinese; there may be some other peoples that are safe, but those are the obvious ones.

That said, I’m not in fight or flight mode; I’m relaxed right now. I’m resigned to the fact that the universe doesn’t always go the way I want it to.

Now – back to the topic of people who do bad things:

I’ve learned about sociopathy, and I’m definitely not one, despite being capable of doing very bad things without remorse. I think I’m a “morally-deficient” extremist. I’m the sort to lose my temper, take offense, and engage in massive retaliation. And I’m quite aware of it.

I don’t think this is particularly unusual. If you study vendetta, it is how things have been done for a long time: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feud

I think it would be neat if people would study this stuff, because then people would stop lumping in people like me (who are reasonably normal) with the sociopaths.

He has to understand that the site will not be used as a stage, and we an audience, to his “nasty acts” if they include harm to himself or others.

His last comment suggests that you might be feeding his paranoia.

He needs to get out of his head and out in the world more where he can see that both he and his race are safe. His vast resources should be proof that he is doing better than most people in the world and that he should use some of it to get help.

Does he really want to spend the rest of his life stuck in this fight or flight mode? Doesn’t he remember a time when everything was relatively peaceful and how can he not want to get back there? Unless he is delusional, in which case all we can do is point out his irrationality, which is what I thought you were doing.

Are you sure I made another comment? If it wasn’t a duplicate (that I made inadvertently) of the one ending “upcoming nasty acts”, maybe it was a forgery.

To oversimplify, and kindly excuse the cursory nature of this, your answers (if we understand the research reports correctly) point to OK frontal lobe (smell, no dementia, etc.). The joy, if felt only upon someone’s impending demise, doesn’t count. But your comments indicate the ability to feel happiness/lack of apathy, and so that also indicates OK frontal lobes. Cholesterol is related to APOE allelic variants, and those are related to dementias/early Alzheimers. You indicate no known issues, but you may want to check your Alzheimer’s results when you get the 23 and me spit test results back. (APO E4 allelic variants are correlated with early Alzheimers, not in all people, but sometimes).

The fact that you feel envy/jealousy would seem to indicate no autistic spectrum, as some reports say that those with autistic spectrum don’t have the social awareness/interest to determine competition between people, never mind envy/jealousy. Interestingly, you regularly feel disgusted, and recent reports point to disgust sensitivity correlated with increased connectivity with(in) the insula. Given that psychopaths are thought to have some white matter functional connectivity issues, it’s interesting to us that the psychopaths we know (yes, our view, nothing official) seem to be disgusted frequently. (It’s also interesting given that they have no gag reflex to their own disgusting behavior, and seem to have no mirror neuron reaction when others are disgusted with them. Perhaps there’s local hyper-connectivity as a compensatory mechanism for global wobbly white matter disconnects.

You indicate despising (hatred/digust?) people who don’t admit that they feel superior in their own ethnic origin. We view this presumption of other people’s intent as a hostile attributional bias, something not uncommon in those with mental health disorders, such as bipolar (no we’re not a doctor, this is our interpretation of the research, so don’t quote us on this one). We haven’t been able to figure out the biology of a hostile attributional bias but it seems to us to be a matter of perception. (See our post about the Uncanny Valley). Or maybe it’s just a cognitive thing, an ex post facto excuse for having aggressive hostility to begin with (viz.; an excuse of “we know what they were really thinking, so we beat them up first” type of in-group territoriality). The blaming-others always puzzles us: failure to self-correct mistakes results in repeating useless behavior. So perhaps there’s a neural plasticity/impaired ability to learn new things aspect. (This could be on a cellular level, such as cytoskeletal formation, tauopathy, or any number of things). The purely cognitive “blame others to get out of trouble” learned in toddlerhood is not strategic if you really don’t understand your own mistakes.

This brings us full circle again to in-group parochial altruism. To us, ethnicity is a social construct — genetically, ethnicity is usually counter-factual. We suppose that anyone can chose whatever arbitrary phenotype they want for their in-group. Skin color? Religion? Wharton MBA? We think a better indicator of “race” qua genetic heritage is lactose tolerance, or mitochondrial DNA. But whatever. That’s why we view this “in-group” parochial altruism as territoriality related to vasopressin receptor variants, in some regards, as we mentioned earlier.(Interesting paper: shame and honor drive social cooperation).

But you point out your need for power over someone — presumably anyone, regardless of in-group status — and so there’s always that. Psychopaths do have locally enlarged amygdalas (the rage thing, see a brain map here). The power trip thing would seem to be a dopamine thing, and psychopaths are thought to have abnormally large and dopamine-receptor filled striatums. You mention paranoia and depression, if we recall correctly, so one genetic correlate is the MAOA-l form (serotonin, particularly with early childhood abuse, at least as reported in some studies, persumably resulting in the popularity of SSRI’s).

All of this is merely at the parlor game level, of course. And, even the biology you’re born with isn’t destiny. (Our view is that epigenetics gives everyone a second chance).