Both geniuses and madmen pay attention to what others ignore
As a public figure, it wasn&#x27;t worth burning my reputation to type this out, but I think that speaks to the state of discourse around mental health today.<p>The article is uses the word &quot;psychopathology&quot; which is a general term for the study of mental disorders. However I want to talk specifically about Psychopathy as a disorder, because I recently came to understand that I am a psychopath. My guess is that there are probably a bunch of psychopaths reading this too that don&#x27;t even realize what they are.<p>I also scored in the &quot;Genius&quot; level on IQ tests in middle school (whatever the hell those are worth), and have made a non-trivial creative dent in the world.<p>The challenge is that, for the average person, if you hear &quot;psychopath&quot; or &quot;sociopath&quot; all you think is murderers and rapists. While most institutionalized (ie. caught) murderers and rapists do fit that profile, 90% of sociopaths are out there in the world and struggling to fit in. In fact almost half of CEOs would fit the diagnosis: Lack of empathy, remorse or guilt. Because that&#x27;s all it is, it&#x27;s not based on behavior (even though that is usually part of a formal diagnosis).<p>I have gone through my whole life with what in retrospect feels like a handicap that I have to make up for in every way. Not being able to feel empathy, remorse, guilt etc... means that every movie that the whole crowd is in tears at, every funeral of a family member, you are basically saying to yourself &quot;What is with all these emotional people?&quot; When relationships deteriorate because the best way you know how to deal with people is to act like you care, to manipulate them to thinking you care and then when the &quot;mask of sanity&quot; slips temporarily it blows your whole life apart.<p>Therein lies the rub, cause there is no sympathy there, and you know if you reveal who you are you won&#x27;t get any breaks, because you are seen as a predator. So you spend your whole life studying people to see how they respond in certain situations so that, like a robot, you can try and emulate them - and because you&#x27;re so smart you can actually pull it off. Genius level sociopaths&#x2F;psychopaths look like the best of us because it takes that level of intellect to play a character 24 hours a day without taking a break.<p>And you don&#x27;t reveal yourself - because what would the benefit be? You don&#x27;t get a chance to be yourself because who you are is broken and ugly. So you continue to play the game and get into higher and higher stakes. You start to run a company, maybe even a big one with thousands of employees, you get married, have children etc...and your ability to manipulate and control just get wider and wider. And you see that your contemporaries are also psychopaths, so you think, well I guess that&#x27;s what it takes to make a big impact. So your goals and ambitions, those &quot;delusions&quot; get bigger as you accomplish the &quot;delusions&quot; you previously had and see that you can accomplish a lot that others can&#x27;t.<p>This is something that needs to be discussed because from where I stand, it&#x27;s pretty clear that psychopaths like me &quot;rule the world.&quot; It&#x27;s not from a place of malice or hate though, but adaptation and if we can have that conversation and we can start to recognize and cope with psychopathy then I think everyone would be better off. It&#x27;s tiring as hell to live this life.