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Though two traits have been removed from the DSM, they were shunned only due to political correctness like most things today that are “stereotypically negative”. Saying “Your child is a psychopath.” is not politically correct. It hurts people’s feelings and says that the child has a predisposition towards negative/harmful behavior, which makes the child “less than” other children.

While a real phenomenon, this diagnosis is contrary to idealism that “everyone is inherently good, all people are essentially the same, all people are equally as capable, no person is inherently worse than any other person, and any deviation in an individual from this ideal human with regards to character or quality is the result of external forces rather than internal psychological deviation, unless this person is a victim of this disorder and requires sympathy, so long as there are no other victims produced by this disorder.”

Psychopaths feel little if any empathy or remorse. They are bold and disinhibited, driven by favorable views of themselves above others. They act solely in their own interest at all times. Everything is a means to an end in pursuit of their own self-interest.

Examples:

Plants: A pea plant grew in a man’s lung, indifferent to the fact that the plant was forcing the man to be short of breath. Gympie plants will put small needles in your hand that inflict pain for months; they don’t care about your pain.

Single-celled life: Malaria kills children. It doesn’t care about murdering children.

Most animals: Even cats are often seen as psychopaths, acting solely in their own self interest. If the animal is largely unconscious it is guaranteed to be a psychopath. Think of an oyster, it’s not going to help you or anyone else, even any other oyster. The most an oyster will do to help another oyster is blindly ejaculate into the ocean.

Every non-conscious entity/concept in existence: None of these things feel empathy or otherwise inhibit their function due to empathy or remorse. Math isn’t going to feel empathy for you when you get a question wrong, then try to help you get the next one right.

After missing the target, physics isn’t going to nudge your arrow out of empathy, just so you can avoid feeling bad about missing the bullseye so many times. Physics doesn’t care how it might make you feel.

The etymology of this word is “soul suffering” in Greek, which is a sensible definition, as the soul is an entirely human concept and one that is very much so defined by human traits such as empathy, sensation, pain, feelings, emotions, compassion, and other things that are not present in the vast majority of existence.

Psychopath doesn’t mean evil per say, it just means a lacking in human characteristics like empathy or remorse that often inhibit deleterious antisocial behaviors in humans.

Sadist:

A sadist takes pleasure in the pain felt by other people or animals, and often seeks to induce this pain.

The irony of sadist vs psychopath is that for one to truly be a sadist, one cannot be a pure psychopath. A pure psychopath has zero capacity for empathy, they cannot feel the pain they inflict upon others, so if a pure psychopath were to inflict pain, his reaction would be indifference, he wouldn’t feel any empathy, so he would just feel nothing.

He could feel pseudo emotion, in the sense that a computer can recognize happy faces, you can program a computer to react to kind words with a smiling face, and mean words with a sad face, but even though it understands the concepts and reacts accordingly, the computer doesn’t actually feel these things. It just acts the way it has been programmed to do, and in humans, psychological conditioning functions in the same respect that programs do for computers. He has learned to emulate emotions by watching other people, he knows the queues to smile or look sad, but he doesn’t feel the same emotional trigger that causes people to do these things.

You need to personally, internally, feel the pain you inflict upon others in order to feel pleasure from inflicting this pain. Having an emotional reaction to the status of other humans requires empathy. If the emotions or sensations of others cause any sort of emotional reaction in you that you can feel, this is an indicator of empathy. Compared to psychopathy where the sight, acknowledgement, and contextual understanding of another human’s expressed feelings are present, but the person doesn’t feel the same internal stimulation that empathy produces in the form of emotion

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From Wikipedia, subtypes that have been argued in favor of.

“Subtype — Description -Personality traits

Spineless sadism — Including avoidant features — Basically insecure, bogus, and cowardly; venomous dominance and cruelty is counterphobic; weakness counteracted by group support; public swaggering; selects powerless scapegoats.

Tyrannical sadism — Including negativistic features -Relishes menacing and brutalizing others, forcing them to cower and submit; verbally cutting and scathing, accusatory and destructive; intentionally surly, abusive, inhumane, unmerciful.

*Enforcing sadism — Including compulsive features — Hostility sublimated in the “public interest,” cops, “bossy” supervisors, deans, judges; possesses the “right” to be pitiless, merciless, coarse, and barbarous; task is to control and punish, to search out rule breakers.

Explosive sadism — Including borderline features unpredictably precipitous outbursts and fury; uncontrollable rage and fearsome attacks; feelings of humiliation are pent-up and discharged; subsequently contrite.”

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* — Somehow “law enforcement” is seen as sadism, which really isn’t a legitimate form of taking pleasure from inflicting pain. These people take pleasure from enforcing the law, ensuring order. The pleasure comes from the compulsive nature, not from the inflicting of pain; the pain here is just a means to an end to enjoy the pleasure of having their compulsive nature satiated. This isn’t explicitly sadism, closer to psychopathic compulsive behavior.

Ironically, this is the psychopathic compulsive behavior that functions as the backbone of society. The West was built upon doing explicitly this, subjecting people to severe punishment of the law in order to ensure the best interest of society.

When this is a behavior that is essentially the cornerstone of civilization, one really cannot call this an antisocial behavior, because an antisocial behavior is one that acts contrary to the best interest of society.

Think of historical justice, stoning people to death, beheadings, public executions, being drawn and quartered, or burned at the stake. Without these implications from breaking the law, then there would be anarchy. These actions provided a substantial degree of social conditioning that caused the general public to act in a social manner, abiding by the law and functioning in the best interest of society, rather than in an anti-social manner, where they act in their own self-interest even if this means breaking the law.

To put the best interest of an individual above the best interest of society, even simple individualism, is more of an antisocial trait than this form of alleged sadism. Society exists because people either voluntarily or have been forced to place the best interest of society above their own self-interest.

Individualism logically defends theft, as it is in your own self-interest to attain things for free rather than pay or work for them. It takes social conditioning, knowing that while theft may be more so in your own self-interest, it is contrary to the best interest of society, and this conditioning must cause you to avoid this behavior.

Only when this form of punitive justice exists can social behavior be accommodated. Only when this punishment defines society does social behavior become more so rewarding and beneficial than antisocial behavior. A society where anti-social behavior is more rewarding than social behavior is not a society or a civilization because it acts against the best interest of the society as a whole and instead defends the individual above the best-interest of society. This lack of punitive action inevitably destroys the society in the name of the individual, because so long as the individual gains while society loses, the individual soon gains all, society has nothing, and when society has nothing it ceases to exist.

Even then, when punishment for antisocial behavior is not sufficient enough to inhibit the behavior, it is readily argued that this lenience is an example of antisocial behavior more than any form of public execution. Because this lenience accommodates antisocial behavior, even though it may be compassionate, it is antisocial compassion in that it rewards antisocial behavior in a manner that reduces the benefit of social behavior, and this reduces the degree of conditioning towards social behavior that would otherwise define people’s lives in a stricter society. Any shift that takes reward from social behavior and gives this to antisocial behavior is itself an example of antisocial behavior.

Since society cannot exist without this trait, of seeking justice in the best interest of society, one truly cannot argue this is an example of antisocial behavior, even though it may lack any sort of empathy or remorse for extoling justice, this is done in a manner that is beneficial to society as a whole.

That being said, if somebody is using this power of authority as a means that inflicts pain but is not actually in the public interest, this qualifies as sadism, but would be one of the other types.

E.g. the boss fires Steve so he can hire Joe. Steve will die in a month without the health insurance. Steve will not find another job, meaning he will die on account of him being fired.

Given that Joe is actually a better employee and more qualified for the job, given that the boss must choose between Joe or Steve, and given that the decision is made solely out of qualification for the job, then this isn’t sadism, despite the result.

While the boss is indifferent to the suffering and death of Steve and his family, his actions were not motivated in any way by the suffering and death of Steve. Steve’s death is entirely irrelevant to the decision being made, it’s disregarded entirely rather than considered as a valid factor of the decision making process.

If Joe is not actually a better employee, and the boss is just looking for an excuse to fire Steve so that he will die, then this is sadism. His intent or motivation is to cause pain and suffering to Steve, and seeks to inflict this pain.

If Joe is a better employee, and the decision to hire Joe is made without the death of Steve having any influence upon the decision, so long as this is true, even if the Boss takes pleasure from the pain and death of Steve, this doesn’t qualify as sadism. This is a sense of justice in the mind of the boss, Steve’s poor performance at the office was worthy of death in the boss’ eyes.

The more commonplace example of this feeling would be the sense of “justice” people feel when somebody who has wronged them is convicted of a crime. That person will go to prison and suffer due to their crimes, but despite this pain being inflicted, people still interpret this feeling as “justice”, justified suffering or death, rather than sadism which is taking pleasure in unjustified suffering.

The crime here in Steve’s case is poor performance at the office, and even though the degree of justice is extreme, the pleasure taken from the pain and suffering of Steve is the same feeling of “justice” rather than sadism. Since the firing Steve was in the best interest of the company, the suffering and death of Steve was justified in the eyes of the boss, so this feeling would still be a sense of “justice served” or “the world/company is now a better place” rather than “I enjoy inflicting pain upon others for the pleasure of doing so”.

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Other types of Sadism (per Wikipedia)

Spineless sadism — This is what the weak use to feel strong. They may have been subjected to abuse by people with power over them, so they find powerless or defenseless target so they can put themselves in this position of power.

This person is indignant; they seek some form of reparations for their powerlessness, so they put themselves in the position of power over those that are more so powerless than themselves, often animals or small children. This can also be seen in people who make false allegations against people.

Tyrannical Sadism — This just tends to be an overextension of social dominance. The person feels pleasure from being dominant, and overreacts to even subtle threats to their dominance.

Similar to a sense of justice, but simpler in that the only metric is whether or not the individual in question remains dominant. Even if this is not in the best interest of society, it doesn’t matter, so long as this action ensures the person remains dominant, then they feel pleasure.

Examples would be an abusive husband. His dominance and control is threatened, challenged, questioned, or disregarded in some way, even subtly, so he beats his wife and children to assert dominance. He (possibly) knows this hurts the children, which are laborers, and this damage reduces their value to society, but this is irrelevant to him. The best interest of society is irrelevant when it poses a threat to this individual’s dominance. The pleasure felt is an affirmation or reassurance of the individual’s dominance, the pleasure of power and control.

Explosive Sadism- This is vengeant sadism. The most extreme of these instances would be school shooters who were bullied. They suffered over a long period of time due to bullying and harassment. They seek vengeance, to even up the suffering, and this means resorting to methods to induce a comparably high degree of suffering in a much shorter timeframe. The pain and death of the victims of the shooter feels is justified in his mind, because these people caused him to feel a comparable amount of pain, albeit over an extended period of time.

Shooting healthy laborers is not in the best interest of society, but it is justified in the mind of the shooter, in the sense of an eye for an eye. This is justice felt solely on a personal level, between the two people, Bobby and Ricky. This act is “justice” in this very small system, it is perceived to be the equal redistribution of abuse between the two people, but when seen in the much broader scope including everyone in society, this action is unjustified as it kills valid laborers.

While mass shooters may often be perceived as this vengeant sadist, most of them are often not seeking personal vengeance against any particular individual. I would argue these shooters, at least in America, are often closer to spineless sadism, seeking no real form of vengeance against any particular individuals. It is more that the shooter is troubled by their own powerlessness and meaninglessness in society and in existence, so they pursue this action in order to somehow feel powerful, legitimized, important, or somehow significant within reality.

I wrote this because seeing the term psychopath being used rather than sadist irks me on a semantic level, and beyond that it is important to understand the difference. Unless you think an oyster is going to be a serial killer, a psychopath isn’t inherently threatening by default, they just have fewer restraints such as empathy that would inhibit them from acting in a deleterious manner towards somebody if for whatever reason they believed this was in their own self-interest.

A sadist however does seek to induce pain and feels pleasure in doing this, but due to their capacity to render the emotions of other humans into an internal emotional reaction, are likely not psychopaths, just because they need to render the suffering of another person internally in order to experience this as pleasure.