Antisocial Personality Disorder (for sirio11)

[fish2plus2]

TME,

You have a point, I heard Ted Bundy was charming as hell.

[ChicagoTroy]

I would peg Internet poker players as leaning towards avoidant personality.

[theBruiser500]

[ QUOTE ]
"Antisocial Personality Disorder" sounds like some BS term some shrink came up with, I mean it basicaly sounds like Introverted + Selfish, and calling it a disorder seems to imply that its not their fault that they are selfish, which is probably an important precept for a therapist who is charging his patient an hourly fee.

[/ QUOTE ]

As much as I absolutely despise fishplus I agree completely with this. Also good post by WhoAmI. One thing I am slowly realizing is that no one is going to say "yeah I am antisocial I dont care about other people", these people will speak normal words like everyone else, their actions will show their true colors so there is a little bit of a job to seperate words from actions and see what a person really is.

Most people I've met in poker are nice, but those are the higher stakes players. When I was at 10/25 at foxwoods practically everyone at the table seemed to have some sort of disorder. It seems like it would be hard for an antisocial person to be that good at poker. Empathy and understanding a person is important. Also to play high stakes I think you kind of have to have your [censored] together. Have friends and be happy so your mind works good for poker.

[7ontheline]

"Personality disorder" may sound like a PC term but it's a serious medical diagnosis. There are definite criteria that a person must fit to actually have this. I suppose it is a more palatable term than, say, "sociopath," but it's also more descriptive medically. The problem of course is that psychiatric disorders are not as easy to categorize as other diseases. You either have HIV or you don't (idiots like Tommy Morrison notwithstanding) whereas psych diagnoses are a little more fluid. So while it may sound that way, I don't think it's exactly designed simply to make people feel better about their diagnosis. Actually, people who have PDs are generally unable to see their own behavior as wrong/odd anyway, so it's definitely not for their benefit/self-esteem.

ChicagoTroy is right - if you're talking about painful introversion and an inability to make friends/meet people then you're looking at Avoidant PD. Maybe Schizoid for the really weird ones. Antisocial PD, as WhoIAm described, is not introverted people. Antisocials are con men, criminals, and huge jerks. They don't give a crap about anybody but themselves - obviously plenty of people are selfish/self-centered but these people are amazingly so - the type of people who would step over someone dying in front of them without a thought if they thought nobody would see them. They certainly might act differently in front of people to keep up a better image, but it's fake. Ultimately it's for their own self-interest.

[Brocktoon]

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Im confused. Its anti-social personality disorder, how can someone who is an extrovert suffer from an "anti-social" disorder?


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Because people misuse the term, psychologically speaking, all the time. They say anti-social but just mean introverted. The clinical definition of anti-social has nothing to do with being introverted, as a quick read of the OP can confirm.

Anti-social people actively do things to hurt others and themselves, they don't keep to themselves the way an introvert does and they aren't shy. Ironically, almost all shy introverts are not anti-social and vice versa.

[imthaifool]

The book Snakes in Suits is about people with this disorder in the business world. What do you call it if you have the exact opposite of this disorder? I think I have that, whatever it is called.

[sirio11]

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The disorder can actually be an advantage in the business world, and some estimate the rate at the upper-echelons is much higher than the general population.

[/ QUOTE ]

And I think this is equally true with poker, but of course it's just intuition.

[Tom Ames]

[ QUOTE ]
"Personality disorder" may sound like a PC term but it's a serious medical diagnosis. There are definite criteria that a person must fit to actually have this. I suppose it is a more palatable term than, say, "sociopath," but it's also more descriptive medically. The problem of course is that psychiatric disorders are not as easy to categorize as other diseases. You either have HIV or you don't (idiots like Tommy Morrison notwithstanding) whereas psych diagnoses are a little more fluid. So while it may sound that way, I don't think it's exactly designed simply to make people feel better about their diagnosis. Actually, people who have PDs are generally unable to see their own behavior as wrong/odd anyway, so it's definitely not for their benefit/self-esteem.

ChicagoTroy is right - if you're talking about painful introversion and an inability to make friends/meet people then you're looking at Avoidant PD. Maybe Schizoid for the really weird ones. Antisocial PD, as WhoIAm described, is not introverted people. Antisocials are con men, criminals, and huge jerks. They don't give a crap about anybody but themselves - obviously plenty of people are selfish/self-centered but these people are amazingly so - the type of people who would step over someone dying in front of them without a thought if they thought nobody would see them. They certainly might act differently in front of people to keep up a better image, but it's fake. Ultimately it's for their own self-interest.

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Nice post. I've seen the term "functional psychopath" used to describe ruthless but successful businessmen or politicians (for example) who display some of the diagnostic criteria for ASPD. Often, mental health professionals will not diagnose ASPD in an individual who displays less severe symptoms, but will instead make the diagnositic impression of "antisocial traits".

[DJ Sensei]

not learning from experience - no
no sense of responsibility - yea, kinda
inability to form meaningful relationships - no, although sometimes i have trouble with girls because i generally dont understand the way their mind works
inability to control impulses - only in a self-related way, not with regards to others
lack of moral sense - no
chronically antisocial behavior - not really, but sometimes non-social perhaps (choosing sometimes to stay in and play poker rather than go to a bar with my roommates)
no change in behavior after punishment - no, although nobody punishes me for anything anymore
emotional immaturity - dont think so
lack of guilt - maybe a little
self-centeredness - to an extent

I would say that i've become more self-centered since I began to play poker seriously, but i'm not sure if there is a cause and effect relationship or if they are both symptoms of something else.

I also was averse to this being called a serious disorder, but i think that that nomenclature is primarily referring to extreme cases. While all people are somewhere along the spectrum in the combination of these issues, the real "sociopaths" are in the 1% percentile while i'm in the 20%, or something like that.

I wish I knew more about psychology, but I feel like much of it is common sense for the logical person who is aware of mental or social issues, and the primary purpose of an education in psychology (or sociology, or related fields) is to give the psychologist a language with which to speak, and thus discuss the issues more effectively and then delve deeper into the possibilities of the psyche with other logical and creative people. (Though that may be a bias coming from someone who engaged in an engineering and mathematics education at a top 10 school where "sociology" was the easy major as opposed to "sports management" or something like you see most college athletes majoring in)

[keikiwai]

fish,

i think extro and intro vert is not a good way of looking at this..... the basic characteristic of these people are that they are not verted at all. They do not consider others... so they're not extroverts.... that doesn't mean they can't talk a lot, or get into fights or whatever, but they do not derive their energy, pleasure, etc. from the company of people.

They are also not introverts in the sense that they are often not really in touch with what the hell's going on inside them. Sure they'll feel rage sometimes, but I would also suspect that a dissociative state is common... in that they are sort of blank, cut off from what's going on outside and also from their internal feeling and its cause.

I don't know this for sure or anything..... but I def. think that this is not a good place to look at extro vs. intro