I'm wondering if my twin is a psychopath. She is incredibly lacking in empathy and intensely controlling. I'm the opposite, intensely empathetic and submissive. When I told her our grandfather molested me when we were small she told me it wasn't her problem. I felt like it was a family issue, relevant to her relationships too. When I pressed that it was in fact important information to her, she drew the issue back to herself and speculated that she'd been molested. She felt that was a more important issue. She was our mother's favorite. I'm wondering how much of her antipathy had to do with survival in a cruel environment. How painful would it be for a child to see someone they loved constantly being hurt or tormented, sometimes in a life or death way? What better way to protect the self that to completely eliminate any feeling for others. If you don't feel for them, it won't hurt you. That brings up the need to control others as well. Being dominant and in control of everyone is another way to protect yourself from events. I'm wondering if professionals have ever studied that angle. Like amnesia is one of our minds ways of protecting us from emotional or mental pain, perhaps psychopathy is another way to protect oneself from the pain of people who are important to us. It would develop over time naturally if a person was in a violent family and was repeatedly exposed to the suffering of others that they had to, as a survivial characteristic, ignore. My sister was forced to see my abuse as normal and deserved. I remember things my mother would say and see how my sister was conditioned to let me suffer and feel nothing for it. I was often blamed for making someone feel angry or causing them to do something bad. My twin was taught that it was to do with me, that she was somehow better and that's why she wasn't hurt. Is it possible psychopathy is a result of one parent forcing a child to accept cruelty to another member of the family? Then the mind would protect itself by turning the emotions off and embracing the violence through that conditioning. Just speculating at this point. If it were true, knowing about that conditioning would enable a person to reverse it with work over time. Like amnesia can be healed perhaps psychopathy can as well. I know many people will dismiss this on site but haven't things we've understood in the past been proven wrong before?
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