--- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, Peter <drpetersutp...@...> wrote: > > --- On Wed, 12/17/08, curtisdeltablues <curtisdeltabl...@...> wrote: > > > > If you are clinically a sociopath you don't have a > > chance! I'll let > > Dr. Pete field this if he cares to. My > > "expertise" in this area > > extends to reading one book: "The Psychopath Next > > Door." That auther > > didn't believe it was curable or that they ever change. > > It may be a > > brain defect. It is distinct from your garden variety > > asshole in > > capacity for change. > > Curtis is spot on here. Sociopaths (or as per the current > DSM, Antisocial Personality Disorder) absolutely do not > change. If the appear to change it was either the wrong > diagnosis or they are running another con. Unrepentant > and in some cases pure evil.
This is an interesting subject to have come up for me tonight, because I am about to settle down to watch my favorite movie of the year again, In Bruges. It's about three bad guys. They're hit men. They kill people for a living. I really don't know enough about psychiatry and the DSM to know what they think about this choice of profession, but it just might classify them as sociopaths. And yet. And yet over the course of the film you find that they are very human indeed. They have sensitivities, and they have their own internal code of ethics that they feel a need to live up to. And yet they're hit men. A lot of viewers of the film couldn't ever get past that. To them, if a human being has become a hit man, he is no longer a human being. And he is no longer redeemable. Nothing he could ever do to change would work. He *can't* change. He's "hard wired" evil. But, as the film puts right up in your face, these three hit men are as human as you and me, and possibly as able to change as you and me. I like the film a lot, because to me it's a very Buddhist film. It's all about non-judgment and com- passion. Most people feel really *close* to Ray and Ken and even Harry by the time this film ends. We *feel* for all of them and hope that there is some way that things can turn out right for them. And they do, in the film. They probably will for us, too. I don't know about you, but I just can't invest in a description of sociopaths that says that they do not have the capacity to change. That seems counter- intuitive to life IMO. Everything changes. > Also, Ted Bundy can't change because he was put to death > some time ago. You don't think that death put him through a few changes? :-)
