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Originally Posted by here today
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?
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Reminds me of Hegel somewhat.
Maybe you're correct that it has more to do with recognition and development of one's identity than with empathy, because it does seem more complex than simply caring. I feel more engaged when I'm around other psychopaths. With normals, it feels more like I'm just reading from a script, unless there's some other goal involved.
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Originally Posted by Atypical_Disaster
Now that’s interesting. I’ve seen the opposite in “normal” people I’ve been around for long. They don’t “care” as much as they say they do. It’s entirely possible that I’m simply not noticing it, however. It’s pretty hard to notice something that I seem to lack within myself in ways that constitute “giving a damn”.
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I've struggled with this as well. While it's certainly possible that a lot of people act as if they care for the sake of appearances, I don't think it's as common as either you or I normally assume. And I think that's simply from a lack of understanding.
When I'm in text chat, I tend to read everything as emotionally flat, even when people are discussing weighty topics such as sexual assault or murder or whatever. Once, such a conversation moved to voice chat, and I was somewhat surprised to hear how much emotion was in people's voices as they were discussing it.
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I don’t understand empathy either. I asked someone to explain it to me in depth quite some time ago as she’s well aware of ... me, as it were. It was one of the funniest conversations her and I ever had, my total lack of comprehension was a sight to behold.
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Same. It still sounds like hokey fairy magic to me. Feel what other people are feeling? Sounds like some psychic mumbo jumbo ********.