TRANSCRIPT
I would like to share the case study of someone who I know who grew up, in his own words, to become a sociopath. I spoke about this with him, this whole subject, and he gave me permission to make a video on it, though he asked that I change a few identifying details, which I will do.
He’s now in his mid-20s. He’s been in prison twice already for violent stuff, violent stuff against others. So he has a criminal record, and he doesn’t like himself. I see that he actually hates himself, and he’s told me that. But the reason that I come to share this is to share how he came to be, because I’ve had many conversations with him about this. What shocked him in our conversations was that I knew much more about his history than he did, because I saw it from the perspective of an adult who had some insight, much more insight into his parents.
I was friends with his parents when he was a baby and before he was born. His father is now dead; his mother is alive, and I’m not in touch with her anymore, and he barely is either. Occasionally, sometimes he feels guilty, he says, and reaches out to her. He feels like he was a bad son and feels like, well, basically that he failed her. He did her wrong. I think he has it completely backward; in fact, I know it. So I’d like to share about what I saw.
I spent time with his family. I lived with them, actually, a few different times for a while, and this is what I observed. He is the youngest of three siblings. He has two older sisters. His parents were both upper middle class people, had good money, both hard-working, college educated. Well, let’s just say significant postgraduate degrees, fancy jobs, extremely busy, very, very busy parents, totally into their careers. But they wanted to have a family, also very normal in that way in our modern upper middle class world in America. Parents want it all. His mom wanted it all; his dad wanted it all. They wanted to have great careers, great jobs, and that family.
Well, what I observed is the result of his parents wanting it all was actually they neglected their kids. All three of their kids experienced what I saw was profound neglect. Yes, the parents spent time with their children. Yes, the parents spent quality time with their children when the children were young, but it was very limited, and it was very stressed. What I saw was very rarely, actually, um, rarely. I mean, there’s 168 hours in a week, seven days times 24 hours. I think the family of five spent time together as a family doing things together probably about an hour or two a week.
The rest of the time, it was like dad would do stuff with the kids for a little while, or one or two of the kids, or, and then there were handoffs, a lot of handoffs. It was a childhood—the kids had a childhood of handoffs. Babysitters—they spent a lot more time with babysitters and nannies than they did with their parents. And it was a stream of nannies, au pairs, people coming in for a year, leaving. There were babysitters who would come and go. But the children, what I saw, they really wanted to be with their parents, both their parents, as a family. But the parents were too busy. They had complicated lives. The parents’ schedules didn’t overlap.
Yeah, there was some time on Sunday where they would go for a hike and do things together, or maybe on Saturday, or perhaps on a Wednesday evening. But mostly, no. It was a frenetic life of the parents trying to keep at the forefront of their careers, and this came at the expense of the children. But does this make a sociopath? That might be considered quite an extreme leap.
And as I was thinking about this video and thinking that I saw this unfold, I was thinking that this little boy didn’t really experience much overt abuse. And then I remembered, wait a second, there was a whole period of time when his next oldest sister—she was, I think, two and a half years older, maybe three years older—she was angry at him. She was jealous of him because when he was born, she felt rejected by their mother. Mother was nursing him; mother was spending time with him; mother was always stressed out. And this little girl, I saw it, and she was an adorable little girl, and I saw when she was a baby, a perfect little baby, and she’s got her own issues now.
What happened is she was very jealous of this little boy, and she would pinch him. She would pinch him, and she would flick him. I saw this happen so many times. And she had been the beloved little girl, and they called her all these wonderful names, and she was, and she was adorable, and they spent all this money on having nice clothes for her. But what happened is when that little boy was born, she became the lesser one, and she resented him for it, and she attacked him for it.
And what happened for the first time—I’d ever seen it happen because I’d been there when she was a baby and before she was a baby—for the first time in her life, they started speaking harshly to her. Before that, it was always, “Oh, she’s so sweet, we love you.” Oh, Dylan holding her suddenly was like, “Stop that! Don’t do that!” And both mom and dad got this harsh, harsh tone in her voice, and they would yell at her for pinching and attacking. “Don’t attack the baby! Don’t attack him! Leave him alone! Don’t pinch him!” And it was like she felt bad because, in a way, I could see that she loved the baby, the little baby brother, her little boy. But she hated him also, and she felt tormented by it. She couldn’t stop herself from wanting to attack him.
And so when they were looking, she would do it. She’d pinch him again and again and again. And even I sometimes, “Please don’t do this!” I tried to be nice about it because I could see it wasn’t doing any good to yell at her. It just made her feel worse about herself. She was like compelled to attack him, and I don’t know how much it happened, but I know it happened at least five or six times when I was there, and I really wasn’t there that much.
This little boy, the little boy who I know now is a 25-year-old troubled man, he was an adorable, happy little boy. But when she attacked him, he would scream and cry, and the parents would try to stop her from doing this. And I tried to talk to both the parents because they would say, “Why is she doing this?” I’d say, “She’s neglected; she’s jealous. You’ve got to spend more time with her. She feels so rejected; she feels like she’s in second place now. It’s horrible.” And the older sister, the oldest one, well, she just kind of shut down and let it all pass, and I—she’s not a happy person either.
Well, the parents wouldn’t listen to me. They loved their career too much. And both of these parents, both of them grew up, yes, in fancy childhoods, but neglected childhoods where they didn’t get enough of their needs met. And they were trying to make up for this by being important and fancy in their careers. And through this, by putting the real priority in their life on their careers, they were able to pass on their own history of childhood neglect to their children. And I think it felt comfortable to them to do this.
And I don’t want to go so far as to say that they even got a certain pleasure out of it, almost like they were passing on their anger for their own parents onto their children by neglecting them. But it worked for a while. When their children were very young, they could get away with it because they had full control over their kids, and they’re passing their children on to this babysitter and that babysitter and this activity and that activity and this singing lessons and music lessons and this, and it was always things going on for the children and gymnastics. And the children always had tons of activities. And on the surface, the parents got tons and tons of compliments: “Beautiful family! Your husband has—you have a beautiful wife! Oh, she has a great career! You have a great career! You’re good looking!” And blah blah.
Blah, and everybody’s in great shape, and your children are beautiful, and your family portraits are great. At the random odd times when the dad would spend time alone with his kids at the park near their home in New York, they’d get so many compliments. Oh, he would constantly get compliments. “You’re a great dad! You spend so much time with your kids!” And it’s like, it really wasn’t true. The fundamental backdrop of this little boy’s life was neglect. Even though it was fancy neglect—fancy food, organic food, the best schools, the best teachers, expensive nannies, intelligent au pairs who spoke different languages with the kids, etc.—but also rejection. When the nannies, when the au pairs left and went back to wherever they came from, when a babysitter would leave because she was going to graduate school, it’s like these little kids had an endless stream of new people in their lives. This little boy felt so much rejection, but fundamentally a rejection of his parents.
Well, I saw it happening when he was about four and five years old. He started to become empowered, and he was strong, and he was a very, very good gymnast. He was very good at gymnastics, even though they eventually pulled him out of gymnastics because the gymnastic schedule didn’t work for the parents anymore. But he started becoming angry, and he started becoming violent. He started attacking his next oldest sister, and he started attacking kids at school, being angry and shaking them. It was like I saw him when I would visit them, that look on his face of anger and rage, and like he’d lost himself. It was the exact same look he had on his face as a little boy when he was sobbing and full of rage when his sister pinched him, or sobbing and full of so much sadness when his parents would drop him off at the babysitter and just leave and go somewhere else and not be there for him. Problems, problems, problems, more problems.
And then they started sending him to therapy. I talked about it with the dad. I’m like, “Spend more time with him! He doesn’t need to be sent to yet another professional who’s not his father. Be with him! Have your wife quit her job, you quit your job, live on less money, forget your careers now. You got to be there for your kids!” It was like ramming my head into a wall. Absolutely not! They would not listen. They could not listen. He was compelled to do his thing his way, his wife was compelled to do her thing her way. It was like they were set on a track, and this kid felt hopeless, absolutely hopeless that they would ever change. He yelled and screamed at them. He attacked them to try to make them change and love him and spend more time with him. Just like my intellectual arguments failed, his emotional arguments, his rage, it failed to wake them up and get them to become better parents. And just more neglect went on, and it went on and on, problems in school, and labels, and diagnoses.
And well, not a surprise, by the time he was a teenager, 13 years old, actually, he ended up on psychiatric drugs. “Well, we think she has childhood bipolar disease,” said his father. And I’m like, “No, I’m a therapist, that’s crap! That’s not what’s going on. He’s acting out rage and this and that, and he’s neglected. He’s not having bipolar disease. That’s not a problem in his brain.” So actually, all that trauma he went through, the trauma fundamentally of neglect—because neglect is a trauma, it’s a primary trauma—neglect for a child being a devastating emotional feeling that does affect the brain. It definitely affects the brain. It’s a kind of brain damage in a way, but it’s a fixable brain damage. It’s a brain damage that can be cured through nurturance, through grieving, especially when a child is young, 13 years old.
But no, they neglected him more. They put him on medication. They listened to the professionals. They listened to the therapist who said, “Well, we feel he’s got this bipolar disorder, and he’s got intermittent explosive disorder, and all these disorder disorders, and he needs to be put on a mood stabilizer, and he has a sometimes depressed mood, so some antidepressant would help.” So medications came into the picture, and psychiatrists and professionals and cognitive behavioral therapy—none of it helped. None of it was even remotely dealing with the childhood wound that had so profoundly affected him and still was affecting him. And so medications, medications, side effects of medications, him not taking the medications, hiding the medications, saying he would take them, saying he liked them to lie to his parents, and then throwing them away. Him going into psychiatric drug withdrawal, getting put on more drugs, a hospitalization, getting out of the hospital. And I’m talking a psychiatric hospitalization because of his violence and bad behavior and threats and this and that, and maybe saying he wanted to kill himself, blah blah blah, because he felt so hopeless.
And nobody could understand why. “Oh, it’s so confusing! He was born with a screw loose. We just got bad luck,” said his mother and father to me. Said the therapist, “Oh, you’re great parents! We rarely have parents who are so dedicated to the process of psychotherapy and psychiatry to helping this child get the help that he needs.” And I’m like, “No, no, no! All these people who were charging one, two, three hundred dollars for 45 minutes, psychiatrists charging 475 dollars for a 30-minute consultation, 285 dollars for a 15-minute evaluation or a 10-minute evaluation, sometimes over the telephone—big money for them, complimenting the parents, never remotely any professional saying, ‘No, it’s your problem. You created this problem!'” Meanwhile, dad’s career is fantastic, mother’s career is fantastic. Dad ended up becoming very stressed out and dying of a heart attack. I will say that. Sad. Did it help the child? The father died? No, because I think he felt that he had failed. His dad ended up going to jail for fighting—more problems, psychiatric drugs, and this and that—ends up diagnosed with antisocial personality disorder. They dropped the bipolar. They just said this was the real problem that we never caught. He was a sociopath, born this way. And the father said to me secretly, “Yeah, they say he’s a sociopath, but I really think he’s a psychopath. What’s the difference? What does it matter?” It’s like so sad.
The older daughters grew up. Yeah, they both have depression problems. One of them’s on antidepressants, et cetera, et cetera. The other one has a series of failed relationships and some drug problems. And they all now say the real problem in our family, the real problem, the unfairness that we grew up with was having a sociopathic younger brother. He turned our family life into hell. And it’s like, wait a second! This little boy had four people older than him. Not saying his sisters were responsible for his problems, though I definitely saw this sister physically abusing him, torturing him physically when he was a baby and couldn’t fight back at all. But it was the parents, and everybody let the parents off the hook. And I heard so many people say this when the father died. “Poor man, poor man! I mean, if he hadn’t had this son, he probably would have lived so much longer. He gave his heart and soul to trying to help his son.” And it’s like, no, this is so representative of our world now. Is the story representative of every person who gets diagnosed with antisocial personality disorder, every sociopath, every psychopath? I think in some ways, yes, it is. Though from what I have seen, observed, certainly no lack of stories that I’ve listened to, the people who end up getting diagnosed as psychopaths and called sociopaths usually have a lot worse, a lot more horrible stuff.
But part of why I want to share this story is it happened in a supposedly normal, loving family. And I think part of why I share this story is because it also goes to show something that’s so common in our world, that even a family that’s so normal and loving can slip under society’s radar. People don’t see the horror that happens to children in these supposedly normal families. That neglect doesn’t get noticed by almost anyone. Parents don’t even realize it. They never—these are smart, educated people who have a lot of self-awareness and a lot of good qualities in a lot of ways. There was a reason I actually liked these parents. But watching whole…
Sides of their personality that just didn’t see what they were doing couldn’t see how abusive they were and how nobody noticed it. This is so common in our world. The fundamental thing, the takeaway for me, is that people really don’t see. Most people really don’t see what children really need. And when children fail to get these needs met, people don’t realize how painful it is for the children. They don’t care. I think it’s like they think that children can put up with anything.
I think it’s such a popular idea in psychology and in our world: “Oh, children are resilient. They can bounce back from almost anything.” And in some ways, it’s kind of true, but in some ways, it’s really not true. When children get burned and traumatized and mistreated, it goes deep into their soul.
What this little boy did by acting out his rage against so many people as he became a young man, into a 25-year-old man now, I talked about this with him. What he does is he displaces, and it’s like he gets triggered by any tiny sense of injustice against him. His mind is so twisted that he really doesn’t see how he can cause people to become angry at him. And when they don’t treat him right in the way that he feels is right, he feels an injustice has been done. He’s got a chip on his shoulder, and he goes off on them in horrible ways, emotionally and physically.
He can’t have a regular girlfriend. He treats them horribly. And really, fundamentally, the injustice that was committed against him, that actually literally chipped his shoulder, was what he actually went through in his childhood. He was treated with terrible injustice, and now all he has done with his whole life for decades is displace that sense of injustice all on the world around him, vomit it all over the place. He sees injustice everywhere, even though it’s nothing compared to what he went through.
I think this is true with so many people who get labeled as sociopaths and psychopaths. They’re very keenly aware of injustice. They have a very distorted sense of what justice actually is, but they did experience profound injustice in their life. And until they make sense of it, until they sort it out, until they fix it and cure it—and I talked about that in a whole different video on sociopaths can heal, and I will link to that in the description box below—but until people heal and grieve their primary wounds, these people who get labeled as sociopaths, or anyone, myself included, until we heal our primary wounds, grieve our primary wounds, grieve our primary injustices, we’re going to go on through life displacing things onto others who don’t deserve it, treating other people in unfair ways, and treating ourselves in unfair ways, and just creating more problems in the world and not living up to our own potential.
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