so yeah, sociopath would be preferable in the legal sense

Taking from wikipedia as source, so grain of salt:

In practice, mental health professionals rarely treat psychopathic personality disorders as they are considered untreatable and no interventions have proved to be effective.[11] In England and Wales the diagnosis of dissocial personality disorder is grounds for detention in secure psychiatric hospitals under the Mental Health Act if they have committed serious crimes, but since such individuals are disruptive for other patients and not responsive to treatment this alternative to prison is not often used.[12] - Hare Psychopathy Checklist

That would explain why Sherlock would be sensitive about the labeling. A diagnosis of psychopathy would put him at the mercy of the justice system if he was ever arrested for a major crime. However, a diagnosis of psychopathy or anti-social personality disorder would (probably) show up if he applied for a job higher than minimum wage, so that would explain at least part of why he doesn't get a normal job; he might not be able to even if he wanted to, unless he wants to work for Mycroft.

(This is assuming he didn't self-diagnose initially, but I don't think he would bother even caring about it unless he was diagnosed and then he wanted to explore the concept and confirm it himself, since you know, psychiatrists couldn't be as smart as he is.)

The only thing that bothers me about it is; he's not just a genius, he studies people constantly. I've taken enough formal personalty diagnostics that I'm familiar with the pattern and it's not hard to skew them if they're working purely from self-reporting and not from observable criteria (assuming again that someone in his life recognized anti-social traits and threw him at a psychiatrist, but parents are really shitty at doing that as a rule, so it would have to fall under juvenile delinquency, and he was too young not to know why they were asking him all these random questions). If he was old enough to know what the results would be if he was given a particular diagnosis and skewed the results, he could actually be just about anything. And that assumes he either a.) wants to self-report accurately or b.) can self-report accurately, and observably, he is shitty at self-reporting altogether.

Suicide is much higher for sociopaths than psychopaths. Hmm.

Why am I even reading this? I need a nap. Or cookies!

Comments

[kickair8p]

A resource link that got posted to one of the comms, you may find it helpful:

http://www.sociopathworld.com/p/frequently-asked-questions.html

~

[seperis]

Oh, you're lovely. . Thank you!

[out_there]

Aha! I was wishing for more details on the sociopath thing.

Hmmm. I'm still on the fence about the whole thing. Mostly because ep1 takes a certain level of pain to point out that:

a) Sherlock is not always right. When guessing about Harry, and the whole sister reveal, he says that he didn't expect to get everything right/there's always something wrong.

b) Sherlock likes to give the impression of always being right. Of being a genius. Of being smarter than everyone else around. And...

c) He clearly enjoys rattling Donovan and Anderson. (Rightly so; they're both annoying twits.) He enjoys the impression he makes.

Part of me suspects that Sherlock is a bit of a drama queen, he likes giving specific impressions and the "high functioning sociopath" label is a label he prefers to psychopath or freak. I suspect it's not true at all.

[seperis]

If I were guessing? He was diagnosed as a child, because he does have a lot of the traits of psychopathy/anti-social personality disorder. His IQ is what's actually the problem; there's no way when they did diagnostics that he didn't figure out what they were going for and performed accordingly.

His reactions to Donovan and Anderson are fascinating; they are hostile in completely different ways. I suspect Donovan used to be--for lack of a better word--a colleague like Lestrade, and for some reason they fell out. It's much more personal with her, but doesn't have any of the contempt he shows to Anderson (especially noticed in the apartment).

[out_there]

If I were guessing? He was diagnosed as a child, because he does have a lot of the traits of psychopathy/anti-social personality disorder. His IQ is what's actually the problem; there's no way when they did diagnostics that he didn't figure out what they were going for and performed accordingly.

I'll agree absolutely that any child as brilliant as Sherlock would be able to mimic the results expected -- or do it just for kicks, really -- but I have a hard time believing Sherlock would be diagnosed as a child. I have a hard time believing that a family that produced both Sherlock and Mycroft would have children traditionally diagnosed. I can't put my finger on it, but... hmmm. It's the similarities between Sherlock and Mycroft, the way that they casually mention detailed observations in an "oh, of course" matter-of-fact way. While they have high intelligence and low emotional communication (Mycroft's "concern" for Sherlock seems genuine and yet doesn't read emotionally to John. At all.) and seem odd to the rest of the world, between the two of them, there's something so taken for granted there that I can't help but assume within their family, it's utterly normal.

It's much more personal with her, but doesn't have any of the contempt he shows to Anderson (especially noticed in the apartment).

Hmmm. I assumed it was a direct reaction to the amount of attack. Anderson personally attacks Sherlock, "refuses to work with him" and does so in such an obviously *stupid* way that Sherlock seems offended that Anderson is even talking. (Or looking at him. Hee.)

Donovan clearly thinks Sherlock's a "freak" (she uses the term so easily) and suspects him capable -- someday -- of murder which I think makes her dislike quite logical to Sherlock. Wrong assumptions, certainly, but there is a logical train to follow behind her dislike.

Anderson, on the other hand, is simply a berk. Acting on pure emotional dislike rather than anything approaching practical.

[malkingrey]

Part of me suspects that Sherlock is a bit of a drama queen, he likes giving specific impressions and the "high functioning sociopath" label is a label he prefers to psychopath or freak. I suspect it's not true at all.

I'm pretty much in agreement with you on that. To the extent that a layperson can diagnose a fictional character, Sherlock strikes me as more like a hyperintelligent Asperger's type. (Not that he doesn't have Issues he isn't talking about, though. One rather wonders, for example, why one of the things he always notices and remarks upon is sexual infidelity, and why ome of the things he clearly disapproves of (witness Mrs. Hudson's late husband and the young thug in Minsk) is marital/relationship violence.)

[seperis]

Anderson and Donovan's relationship, yeah. I was thinking about that

[out_there]

One rather wonders, for example, why one of the things he always notices and remarks upon is sexual infidelity, and why ome of the things he clearly disapproves of (witness Mrs. Hudson's late husband and the young thug in Minsk) is marital/relationship violence.)

Hmmm. That hadn't occured to me. I wonder if it is a moral judgment on the act of infidelity, or if Sherlock could rationalise his responses to more logical causes (either being typically boring or causing too much unnecessary harm without a motivating payoff -- revenge, monetary prizes and ego-boosting Sherlock certainly understands; infidelity merely for the sake of sex... maybe not so much). Hmmm.

I really don't know, but interesting.

[(Anonymous)]

It is all your fault I started watching this, just wanted you to know.

~ladyumbra.

[seperis]

*grins* but is it not glorious?

[jamjar]

He would have been at school from 5, and almost certainly a private or public (fee paying, rather than state-funded) school --personally, I think they probably went to a prep (preparatory) school, and those do have a higher teacher/pupil ratio. It's not impossible that he would have boarded. A lot of prep schools also are boarding schools, and they do have range of boarding options (eg. working week, all term, temporary, part time, etc.)

I don't think it's impossible, or even unlikely, that by the age of 7, a non-parent with a significant pastoral role would have noticed that he doesn't play well with the other kids.

[trobadora]

You find the best stuff. :D

[seperis.livejournal.com]

I admit, that bit on grounds for detention? Man, with that in mind I'd have a card with MY DIAGNOSIS WAS SOCIOPATH written on it to carry around with me in case of arrest.

[aubergineautumn.livejournal.com]

Was Sherlock a sociopath, or worried about being labeled one, or is this fandom canon? He doesn't seem that way in the movie, I have never read the books, that's why I'm asking.

[seperis.livejournal.com]

In the BBC show, first episode, Anderson calls him a psychopath and Holmes corrects him and says he's a high functioning sociopath.

[deadlychameleon.livejournal.com]

Of course, no one actually uses the term sociopath anymore. They're all lumped under anti-social personality disorder.

And yes. If you ever meet one, you will notice that they are "creepy" (mentioned in a House episode as an actual diagnostic criterion).

[seperis.livejournal.com]

It's not used as a formal psychological diagnosis, but it's still used informally as a label for anti-social personality disorder. Which makes me wonder who diagnosed him now.

[deadlychameleon.livejournal.com]

P.S. - I don't actually think Sherlock in his many incarnations would fit the category of anti-social personality disorder, more like mild Autism Spectrum disorder + too much cocaine.

[seperis.livejournal.com]

I was thinking high functioning autism or asperger's, but that doesn't quite fit the charm or surprisingly outgoing personality or the need for constant stimulation.

This is for the BBC show, btw.

[druidspell.livejournal.com]

Fun anecdote: if you are, like myself and my aunt, someone who is skilled at multiple choice tests because of excellent pattern-recognition skills, it is possible to skew your diagnosis far to one side or another as far as mood/personality disorders are concerned. My aunt was seeing a psychiatrist who gave her quite a few of the intake quizzes over the course of her treatment, and at the end of one of them mentioned that my aunt must be good at standardized tests, because she'd followed the pattern of escalation in the quiz into schizophrenia, when she didn't exhibit any of the traits of the disorder; just continuing to answer according to the escalation of the questions themselves. (This is the same method that, years later, took me from my actual diagnosis of major depressive disorder to me being sent to several experts in Borderline Personality Disorder.)

[melonbutterfly.livejournal.com]

Sorry for bugging in, but does that mean that at multiple choice tests, you know which choices are related to previous ones and also know (if you know the topic, of course) where to they are aiming?

[seperis.livejournal.com]

If I remmeber correctly, ,the diagnostics I was given weren't exactly subtle, either. They weren't on the order of "Do you kill kittens for fun?" but most of them had an obvious right/wrong* answer.

*right answers == the ones where they agree it's just depression.
*wrong answers == the ones where they bring in extra people and talk about scheduling multiple appointments and unsubtly check your arms for new cutting.

I'm not a genius either, but when they're checking emotional stability, reading through the questions, it wasn't hard to figure out what they were actually asking about.

And yeah, I'm really good at standardized testing. If it's multiple choice, I can do it, with the exception of all answers in negatives. I had a teacher who did all the questions with "which of these is false" and all the answers having a double negative (or an implied double negative). I couldn't even parse the questions; looking back, I remember that being one of the most horrible classes ever. I had to rewrite every question and answer just to comprehend it. I still have no clue why that short circuited me.

[blacksquirrel.livejournal.com]

So I have this useless Psych BA gathering dust in the back of my mind - I focused on anti-social personality disorder and, for reasons that don't need exploring at this juncture, once did rather a lot of research about a plan by the British home office to preemptively incarcerate anyone diagnosed with anti-social personality disorder.

So, it seems like they did end up sort of following through on that.

Were you just reading through wikipedia, or were you looking elsewhere as well? I'd love to brush up a bit.

In my recollection, the main difference between psychopaths and sociopaths is that, while neither feel empathy, sociopaths understand that other people do and they can manipulate it - while psychopaths cannot even comprehend the emotions of those around them. (There's a kind of an interesting developmental phase when children realize that they do indeed make a better door than they do a window, because before that point they are unable to take another person's POV - psychopaths will never make that step).

Thinking about anti-social, my main interest when I was studying it was that the preventative incarceration scheme, as it stood at the time (a decade ago) was pretty much based on the assumption that the best predictor of future crime is past crime - people who have committed crimes in the past are more likely to commit crimes in the future than people who haven't - and part of the diagnostic criteria for anti-social was past criminality - particularly juvenile delinquency associated with sadism and lack of empathy. In terms of philosophy of law/philosophy of personality, my interest was in the part where correlation was being taken as sufficient evidence to institutionalize this entire population - and that because criminal history was part of the diagnostic criteria, this was really punishing a single crime for the crimes we assume you'll commit later (thus the assumption that "personality" is stable and does not change over time - despite a lot of evidence of "burn out" among violent psycho/sociopaths - it's a very deterministic model of personality). It also narrowly penalizes people who manage to come to the attention of the criminal justice system while underaged and overlooks those who, for a variety of reasons including social privilege and the particular manifestation of anti-social - are simply not prosecuted as juveniles. Regarding other types of anti-social, I was particularly interested in something called anti-social by proxy or Norton Sims Syndrome in which the anti-social person uses submissive proxies to carry out their anti-social acts - very difficult to diagnose or prosecute since the submissive is the one actually carrying out the anti-social behaviors. I was so very thrilled when Wire in the Blood included an anti-social by proxy storyline - PsychologySqueeee!

One last "OMG I get to drag out my old psych talk again" note - the "better" tests are those where the questions have been chosen and correlated statistically instead of logically. So if they're looking for anti-social, they wouldn't ask "did you pull the wings off butterflies as a child" - instead they would ask "do you prefer baths or showers" "do you like daffodils or violets" "are you happier on Tuesdays or Wednesdays" and attempt to match a pattern of answers with those already given by a control population of people already diagnosed. I think this is how the MMPI works. Thus is shouldn't matter how smart you are or how good at grasping patterns for a test like that.

[seperis.livejournal.com]

One last "OMG I get to drag out my old psych talk again" note - the "better" tests are those where the questions have been chosen and correlated statistically instead of logically. So if they're looking for anti-social, they wouldn't ask "did you pull the wings off butterflies as a child" - instead they would ask "do you prefer baths or showers" "do you like daffodils or violets" "are you happier on Tuesdays or Wednesdays" and attempt to match a pattern of answers with those already given by a control population of people already diagnosed. I think this is how the MMPI works. Thus is shouldn't matter how smart you are or how good at grasping patterns for a test like that.

Correlation of preferences?

So when looking for a duck, instead of asking the unknown bird to describe itself, they ask what the unknown bird likes and matches it to all other birdlife to get the highest correlation? How accurate is that? *curious* And is that literally the type of questions used?

And I didn't get a chance to wiki it--part of the reason I posted it is to remind myself to see if I can track down confirmation on that.

[kuhekabir.livejournal.com]

that is good stuff!