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here today · Jan 27, 2020 at 03:57 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by theoretical

. . .
Nevertheless, I have, on rare occasion, given to care about particular people who've traipsed into my life
Those people are, almost always, psychopaths themselves or at least abnormally high in psychopathic traits
. . . Like, I still think about them from time to time and hope they're doing well, even though it doesn't benefit me
That's like, empathy ****, right?
I think one of the major barriers I have to empathizing with normal folk is that I just don't ****ing understand them
I do on a conceptual level, sure, and I can predict their behavior simply through observation. But I don't really get them
And a part of that is due to the fact that I experience emotions quite a bit differently than normal
But psychopaths I get, and we perceive and experience emotions the same way
. . ..

There a concept in the development of a sense of self, in the theory of Heinz Kohut, that "normal" people at an early age need others to mirror our wonderfulness (grandiosity), others to be strong and powerful when we realize how weak and vulnerable we are (idealization), and the last one, not paid attention to by many other psychologists is "twinship", doing things with other people and thus learning-by-doing how to be a part of the society, as part of one's identity. What you are describing sounds like that to me.

If so, it would be interesting if psychopaths need/want similar others in order to have/develop a sense of self -- even if you don't "care" in the neurotypical way?