Patric Gagne (on sociopathy)

Welcome, welcome, welcome to Armchair Expert, Experts. on Expert. I'm Dan Shepard and I'm joined by a miniature mouse. This is the weirdest intro we've ever done. In six and a half years, we've never sat side by side in an intro.

That's true.

Yeah, you're across from me.

I mean, we've done some side by sides. I don't trust this angle. You don't trust? That's a ding, ding, ding.

You cannot help but side-eye me during this.

Yeah, you think I'm like angry?

Well, side-eyes are tricky.

Do you think side-eyes mean mean girl? Do you think it means I'm gonna bite you?

Plotting.

Plotting.

Yeah, I think plotting. Okay, this is among the most interesting interviews we've ever done.

Rare.

I didn't ever think in my life I would meet someone that was open about being diagnosed as a sociopath. and then add on to that, they also have a PhD in research psychology. And so our guest today, Patrick Gagne, is a psychologist and a diagnosed sociopath, and she has a book out that is so interesting, called Sociopath, A Memoir. She's written in the New York Times and she's incredibly interesting.

What a privilege to get to talk to someone in that position.

Yes, just truly, truly fascinating. I think you will love it as well. So please enjoy, Patrick Gagne.

He's an objects man.

He's an objects man.

Very well, nice to meet you. I'm Dax, nice to meet you.

Hi, I'm Monica.

Hi, nice to meet you. Nice to meet you.

I have stuff for you guys. Oh. Oh, stuff.

We love stuff.

Oh, my gosh, good bags.

What the heck is this?

I'm from the south. I don't show up anywhere unprepared.

Oh, I love it.

Without something in my hand.

Oh, my God, best of classic car. This is a very nice present. What? What did you say, history of wine? Fashion.

It's a little bit of both. Okay. I've listened to a couple. I'm not a podcast person. Yeah.

Where do you live currently?

I live in Florida. You still do? Well, I lived here forever. And we were fortunate in that my husband, he, works in tech, so he was able to work remotely. And we were in this house in Westwood that I loved, but we were expanding our family.

This is a fantasy of mine, based, and I'll tell you entirely why. Well, two experiences. One was I went with my friend Trevor in fifth grade to go see his grandparents in Arizona from Detroit. And they had a golf cart and we were allowed to drive the golf cart around. There was shuffleboard.

I bet you have.

Well, that's how I'm going to contradict myself. Then, of course, learning about it from your book, and I am curious where this number comes from, but in the book it says 5% of Americans are sociopathic. So at the same time, I'm acknowledging, certainly within 800 people, if those are the numbers, I've interviewed 40 of them. And maybe it over indexes, even in the fields I've talked to people. I have no idea.

It's the go-to number for research. I think the last place I saw it actually referenced was the Cleveland Clinic. And here's what you need to understand about that number. Psychopathy and sociopathy tend to be conflated. The psychology field has a habit of changing the name of a disorder once it becomes too stigmatizing, which is understandable.

It's like whack-a-mole.

Right, but that really becomes tricky when you're dealing with research and especially with sociopathy, because they have more recently, again, because of stigma, decided to reclassify sociopathy as secondary psychopathy.

Oh God, that sounds way worse.

It didn't have a phase of antisocial.

Here's the thing with antisocial personality disorder. A lot of the claims are sociopathy was replaced by antisocial personality disorder. What they're not telling you is you cannot diagnose sociopathy using the criteria for antisocial personality disorder. The criteria for antisocial personality disorder is separate from the criteria for sociopathy, just like you cannot diagnose someone who's antisocial using criteria set forth with sociopathy. So, although they are very similar, they're not the same.

Violence in the classroom.

But not reported, and you need evidence of in order to have that diagnosis. Gotcha. And that's kind of what sparked my interest when I started asking, who says that all sociopaths act this way? They don't.

Reading about it made me see so many parallels about so many different things and really asked myself, what are we really focusing on when we label these things? Because, as I read your story, weirdly, the outcome of your behavior and my behavior as an addict, some of it's identical. We're not even measuring you and I by the outcome of our behavior, but we're really trying to figure out why we behave that way, which is fascinating. And even some of the outcome of your behavior would also mirror some of the things in other neurodivergent things like autism, like maybe this lack of being able to see emotions on other people and this empathy. So it's this big stew of overlapping outcomes, but hopefully we're trying to track down the causality of all these things.

And that's why conversations like this are so important. because I'm so glad you said that, because I would like to say that, but the perception of sociopathy as it stands today, I would never wanna say the struggle with sociopathy is similar to the struggle with addiction, because members of that community are gonna push back, rightly so, because they don't understand the nuance of the disorder. And that's so key. here is so many of the destructive behaviors I committed, the motivation for it was not malice. It was not intent to harm.

Right, discomfort alleviated by a behavior.

At the time, I couldn't explain why. Certainly, when I was a child, all I knew was I felt this compulsion, do it, do it, do it, do it. And then I would do it and it would go away. and I didn't question it. I just knew this bad behavior makes the pressure go away and the way to continue to give myself these prescriptions, I'm just gonna have to slide under the radar because I don't wanna be othered.

Yeah, it's a red flag.

Obviously, it's a lot happening.

Yeah, he probably had trauma, though.

I just think everyone's trauma- 100%, yeah. And I just remember thinking, okay, so I won't be doing that, because every adult descended on the classroom, rightfully so. And I just remember, yeah, I can't do that.

Right, we're gonna have to come in a little softer than that approach. And I'll also say selfishly, there is a laziness in me that is bummed as we get more compassionate for everyone as we should. That is the goal. We're kind of running out of. like, sociopath, we all agreed, like, yeah, we can definitely just say like, oh, that person's a sociopath.

But we also know, because here's the thing, that reputation as evil is earned. There is a small percentage of the sociopathic personality who does commit these atrocious crimes. You know, like the Ted Bundy example, although I personally don't happen to think Ted Bundy was sociopathic, but it's that generalized, yes. But make no mistake, sociopathy is a perilous mental disorder. The traits associated aren't great.

Invite them all into your home.

No, it's not that.

Put a sign in your front yard, sociopaths, welcome.

A hundred percent. Free food. Just like any disorder, sociopathy appears to exist on a spectrum. It speaks to the individual's ability to get the help that they need. The destructive behavior that I began doing as early as I can remember, that was an unconscious coping mechanism that ultimately developed into a lifestyle that I was subsequently able to address, because I'm a white woman of privilege.

Well, that's what I like about your book. Your book isn't a call for America to open up their arms and offer free drinks to sociopaths. It's actually to help sociopaths. Yeah. Like, I hope you're reading this book and you're identifying with it.

I have been told that there is, and I've read some research studies on, but it hasn't been reviewed enough for me to say, yes, this is the thing that you should do, and this is where you should go, and this is how you can see the difference between someone who has psychopathy, sociopathy, versus neurotypical, but they do exist. I've read the studies on how they are attempting to advance different testings that involve brain scans and an actual look into how the different parts of the brain are affected by sociopathy and psychopathy. Psychopathy is believed to be the result of brain abnormalities that make it impossible for someone to move through complex emotional development. While these people are born with the so-called inherent emotions, joy, sadness, surprise, disgust, they're not able to progress through the social emotions. Those are empathy, love, things that you teach children as they develop.

These are psychopaths.

Psychopaths. Yes. And there is not a general consensus on what those abnormalities are. Some believe it's an issue within the amygdala that processes emotional reaction to memory, and others believe the psychopath has the inability to process oxytocin.

Oh. The love chemical.

Correct, and trust-building. But there isn't that consensus, and that is something that I'm really hoping they'll receive more attention and finances to, yeah, for research. Sociopaths, however, don't appear to suffer from those biological impediments. So while they can learn the social emotions, they just learn them differently. In the book, I describe it as an emotional learning disability, because that's what it felt like.

The thought of them being upset.

Upset at her or her letting someone down, and I just remember being like, "'I don't care. "'I don't want to go out and harm these teachers, "'but I don't care.'" Right. But also the understanding, very quickly, that that response is not met favorably.

Right, you're smart enough to pick up social cues. This is a side note, and it's not psychopathy or sociopathy, but they did a retrospect on the original Rain Man, who the movie was based on.

Savant syndrome, right?

Yes, and this guy who lives in Utah, and they had an interview from him like 25 years earlier, and then they went and revisited him, and he kind of hangs in the Salt Lake City library. He's read every single book in there, and Leslie Stahl sits with him, and on this go-around with him, he's like, "'Hi, Leslie.'" And he seems to have developed all these kind of things that he didn't have 20 years prior, and she says to the dad, "'It seems like he's really kind of grown.'" And he said, "'Don't confuse that. "'He's just very smart, "'and he's learned that if he smiles, you smile better. "'He has picked up over time through practice "'a set of skills, "'but his brain hasn't changed. "'He is not processing your facial expressions the way.'" You know, that was an example of someone just picking up the skill set.

And it's a great example, because so many people like to talk about the sociopath mask, right? You know, like, you can't trust the sociopath mask. They always have masks on. And to a large extent, that's very true, but my sociopathic mask isn't much different than the mask that most people-.

Yeah, don't we all do that?

Everything's a fucking spectrum.

And everyone has that front-facing personality that they put on just to exist in the world.

Make life easy.

The lubricant. The difference is the sociopathic mask is always seen as something nefarious, when in reality, it's just a necessity. I understand that if I come in here and I have a flat affect and I start asking blunt, invasive questions, you're not gonna love it. Or maybe you would, but it's- I'm gonna, and we're gonna do that.

You had a nice turn in this New York Times interview. I was like, now we're fucking getting somewhere. You said that, and she said, I would like to see the interviewer. I don't know if it was a man or a woman. A man.

He said that?

Yeah, like, let it rip. Take off the mask, basically.

Well, he asked me if I thought that being an interviewer was- Manipulative. I said, I don't know, is it? He wanted me to ask him questions about it. And it was a very fun turn of events. It was.

You said, because otherwise I'm quiet, I ask invasive questions. There we go. I stare, my effect is low. And then he invited you, and you basically just said, why do you interview people? Or do you feel like you are manipulative for your job?

He didn't like that. It was really fun, and it went somewhere really fun.

So anyways, I was like, oh, I'm so up for that at some point. But I guess let's start at the beginning. You, at least in the book, say at seven years old, you have basically two emotions. You have anger and happiness.

The inherent emotions, which I learned later, there are more. And I'm remiss, because I should be able to just list them out by now, but I can't, I always forget. But it's happiness, sadness, disgust, surprise. And there's three or four more that are inherent emotions from the jump. Everyone has these emotions, including psychopaths.

The ones you can remember feeling the most would be anger and happiness. And then the rest of the time, you're feeling just very, very flat.

Correct.

Are you disassociated at all?

I don't feel disassociated, because I'm very present. I just feel, back. then, I would have described it as nothingness. Now, I would describe it as tranquil.

Content? Kind of. What you're aspiring to do with meditation.

The stress for me came from other people's expectations of me to emote the way they were emoting. And the stress wasn't, oh, I need to make these people happy. It was, if I don't do what they are expecting of me, I'm going to be outed. And then life as I know it will cease to exist. I won't be able to get and do and have the things that I want, because someone's always gonna be keeping an eye on me.

Yeah, your otherness would exclude you from any kind of life.

I assume it's a spectrum of intensity, right? I guess some people would have a very flat reaction to a murder, potentially, in front of them. Is it a spectrum like that?

I think the spectrum is more in how difficult it is to learn the social emotion. So socialization is what every parent does for their kid. Typical socialization techniques didn't work for me. It just didn't make any sense. It didn't land.

Inherent boundaries or something.

There are so many overlapping themes to your point that, yeah, it does sound like boundaries. But to me, it was, I couldn't understand propriety, like we should do this, and the shame. I didn't have any shame about anything. Or guilt. Right, so I think the spectrum taps into how difficult it is for someone to eventually learn those social emotions.

And you need a system. And that's gonna be one of my last questions, is the coin that is sociopathy, as is addiction. Like, I'm delighted to have it. Every part I like about myself is also related to that. We'll wrap up with that one.

Yeah, I'm curious about that one.

Yeah, I wanna hear about that.

The pressure had been building. And discomfort is a good word for it. I think pressure is what I sort of latched onto as a kid.

A need to regulate. We can agree on that, right?

Yes, yes. But neurotypical regulation techniques did not apply. I couldn't make myself feel better the way that other people made themselves feel better. I just remember being a kid, sitting behind a little girl in school, and I looked up and she had barrettes in her hair, and I felt this, take that, barrette, and you're gonna feel better. It didn't make any sense, and yet I knew it was accurate.

I should've started there. It didn't start with the stabbing. But yes, that's the first time you feel the relief.

And little transgressions like that usually did the trick. But on this day, when I assaulted this child, I had been doing a lot of little transgressions and they weren't working, and I could feel it. As a kid, you're like, what's gonna happen? What's gonna happen? What's gonna happen?

This is untenable. We're gonna run out of heads to stab and I'll be kicked out of here quickly.

So you didn't know that, though. So that's interesting. You knew this isn't good, that I like it.

I always knew right from wrong. Cognitive, it wasn't internal. That's the difference.

That's part of one of the erroneous stereotypes is, oh, sociopaths don't know the difference between right and wrong.

Oh, yes, they do.

Also, you hear sociopaths track, highly empathetic, actually. If you go by the Paul Bloom definition, that actually they're quite good at knowing what you are thinking and needing to hear from them.

Because they've spent a lifetime mirroring. A weird paradigm.

Yes. So, of course, as a parent, and you're a parent, I cannot help but think about what mom's going through. So you're in a good situation at the beginning of this. Dad is a successful music executive. You guys live in a nice place in San Francisco and there's tools at your disposal, I presume.

Okay. So the way I internalize that is, I really relied on my mother to be my moral compass. Because I understood, I didn't have one. I didn't always understand social cues. So I really relied on her to sort of help me navigate the more nuanced parts of social emotions that I didn't understand, like behavior aside.

Excludes you or rejects you.

No, because she would never have done that. But if she starts to give me the look, if she starts to perceive me as uh-oh, then I'm not gonna be able to rely on her as my moral compass anymore. It was selfishly motivated. It was, I need to do what I need to do to pacify her. Because if I don't, I'm not gonna be able to rely on her as a compass.

I would imagine she's watching you, two things. You go to a birthday party when you're a little kid and all the girls fall asleep. Not a birthday party, a sleepover, sorry.

I think it was a birthday party sleepover.

Okay, hybrid. And all the girls go to sleep. and then you're like, okay, well, I'm bored and I'd like to explore the house. and now you're exploring their house. And then you decide, fuck, I do wanna be at home.

Unfortunately for her, she wasn't taking my behavior as a sign that something was wrong with me. She was internalizing it, that there was something wrong with her. Of course. That she had somehow done something wrong, that she was to blame. So she felt all that shame and guilt.

You couldn't have predicted that.

I think a normal kid would have, and I'm using that term loosely. But no, it didn't even register that this would be a problem.

Now here's the fantasy. liberating part of your condition, which I found intriguing, is you go out, it's the first time you've been out in the middle of the night in San Francisco, and you're like, this is awesome. Why aren't people out all the time? It's like a totally different vibe. Garage doors are open.

It's like very liberating. So the opposite.

Yeah, it's like literally, when I'm reading, I am kind of making you relative to Monica, and I'm like, well, this is like, if there is a spectrum, these two are like on the complete opposite ends of this.

I'd be so scared.

I just remember that walk and subsequent walks like it, feeling like there was a spa visit. All the pressure evaporated. I think that was because when I was alone, I could just drop the mask. It was late at night. No one was gonna ask me what I was doing, and if they did, I would have spun a story and taken off.

Like you, hit pause on mankind.

Exactly right.

Yeah, I've kind of wanted to do that. That's a fantasy. You hit a mall, hit pause, and then go like snoop around people's purses and trying to figure out, like detective, what is going on? I wanna avoid inadvertently projecting or linking what you're saying into something that's really not transferable. But I guess my curiosity is you're intelligent.

Now or then?

Then. I'm trying to figure out if it's, you know the world's dangerous, but you just don't give a fuck, or that your immediate thing is so compelling that that just gets silenced.

There's something to be said with cognitive knowledge and emotional knowledge.

Big time, yeah.

And I think that's what was going on. Cognitively, did I understand that this was maybe not the safest choice, smartest choice? Sure. But if it doesn't hit you emotionally, and we've all been there,

especially fear. But the amygdala doesn't fire from that information.

We all know the things we shouldn't be doing. How about when you know the guy or girl is wrong for you, but it's the emotion that causes you to move forward in this relationship, even though your brain is, it's the same thing. Totally. When there's no emotional connection.

Or when you sit down to eat two cheese pizzas, like the brain knows you're gonna regret this, but you're like, yeah, also emotionally, I'm gonna eat this fucking thing.

I mean, fear is fully emotional. You're right. You can know, like, I should be scared, but that doesn't do anything. Like. that's nothing.

And those constructs are important. They help keep the collective you safe. Something does shift when you are moving through the world without fear, you tend to attract less danger. And of course, this is junk science, but yeah, my father used to say to me, kid, you can get anywhere in life with a confident stride and a walkie talkie. And I never forgot that.

Yeah, you don't smell like a victim. There's no fear to detect on you. I don't know why I'm just thinking of this, but did you see Men in Black? One of my favorite movies. Will Smith passes that test.

I think it was the first time it really was presented to me. I can't believe that I hadn't come across that word at some point, but I don't think that it was presented to me definitively. And this is something too, I think with my personality type, I've told this story to people dozens of times over the years. And every time I do, it's, wait, what? You went to a prison in the middle of the night?

And said, if I left my wallet on the table right here and walked out.

He was like, would you go through it? And inside I'm like, fuck yeah, I'd go through it. I'm like, no, right, you wouldn't, because you're not a sociopath.

And if you did.

Yes.

Would you feel bad? Yeah, I'd feel terrible.

I'd feel so bad. Who would do something like that? But I'm like, no, I wouldn't feel bad at all. And he's like, they wouldn't.

Got real concrete.

Yes.

Okay, now your story is. you got invited, but as I hear it, it's hard for me not to imagine that your mother didn't orchestrate this. I'm not kidding. That she had some fear that you might end up in jail and that you needed to be scared straight. Cause you think you're a good lie detector.

She would pass a lie detector. If you asked her that question, she would say, absolutely not. It never factored into my decision-making for one second. So if she did set that up, it was late. It was good.

But you can see from the outside, like knowing what she's going through, you end up on this very bizarre field trip that no one gets to take. And the explanation sure is plausible, but to me, it feels more like if I were the parent of a child that was really worried, was going to end up incarcerated, I might want to let them see what that looks like.

Do you know? that has never occurred to me, but I'll leave here and ask her. I remember her being as excited about it as I was. And I just remember seeing all these men and the guards saying that they couldn't look at us. They had to keep their heads down.

You know the word you want to say. Say the word you want to say.

I don't know the word. I promise. What did you think it was?

Something positive.

Exhilarating.

Exhilarating, yeah.

I couldn't think of that word, but that's what it was.

Right, because you still got to hide. Even though you're out in the open, I'm sure you have a lot of muscle memory of hiding.

It's less hiding and more, I still have to mask.

You have an awareness right now that you want to be truthful and not scare everyone out of your experience. You're still walking some tightrope. Right. I don't know that you'll ever shake that in life. You know enough to put it through the filter, which is like, wow, what I really want to say is like that prison made me horny.

Again, though, that's everyone.

I don't, you think everyone's adjusting slightly to whatever's in front of them. Maybe I'm a sociopath. I don't know.

Well, when you're reading it, I am doing that. I'm like, am I a sociopath? Because a lot of the stuff I can relate to, A, I have some criminality in my background, but I feel deeply, deeply sad when I hurt someone's feelings. I did keep coming back to that. I'm like, no, and I can think of times as weak.

I don't remember feeling that way at all as a kid. It's tricky for me to equate it to other mental disorders, because sociopathy, as it stands now, people don't want to be associated with this bad word.

It definitely needs a rebrand. Yeah, it really does.

And maybe not secondary psychopathy. Psychopathy, Jesus. That is not a good-.

No, when I heard that, I was like, guys, I'm not sure we- Improved it. Didn't nail it. Did not nail it. Not sure, we stuck the landing on this one. But I felt this compulsion.

Meaning stealing something or taking shit?

Stealing something. Okay, yeah. You got to just take it, because you can get ahead of it. It's kind of like taking the Xanax before the anxiety kicks in. Just do it.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Look at me.

I'm going to do this and I'm not going to feel the least bit bad about it. And I'm going to go home and I'm going to fall asleep next to you. And it's going to be like, oh wow.

Yeah. That almost seems like growth, though. It does. It's more emotional.

It was the unjustness of it. Here I am working really hard to understand myself and really hone in on my motivations, and I'm keeping track and I'm trying to stay ahead of my prescriptions. And this motherfucker's out here doing anything he wants to left, right and center. And it's like, oh, but his stuff doesn't count because he's not a sociopath. And it's like, it does count.

And also it doesn't, just like my wife can drink wine. There are things that aren't fair for me, that are fair for her, because I am this very specific person. So I do have to have a different playbook.

But drinking wine isn't illegal or against the law or morally inappropriate. There were some things that he was doing. That's a lie, what you just told. How come you can tell a lie, but I can't tell a lie?

But could I argue maybe, because if he tells one lie, it's not going to lead to this other, the outcome will be different from his life. If I fuck some stranger and my wife fucks a stranger, those are different outcomes. I'll then fuck a thousand strangers in the next three years. She won't. So we do have a different playbook.

That's true.

Stay tuned for more Armchair Expert, if you dare.

Wait, how does it get, is that later?

So we're at a prison and you get a sense, okay, I have that. I know I'm different, and there it is. That's the name of it. And then does that send you off to explore or not yet?

Not yet. I was still trying to figure out what I could do to keep myself in check. When I was younger, I started experimenting with smaller acts of controlled deviance.

Like as a preventative measure, as opposed to a it's too late measure?

I didn't have the awareness that that's what I was doing, because for so long, I felt very tethered to my mother as my moral compass. I'm gonna do the things that she tells me to do and no more. That's what's gonna keep me in line. But as I started to become harder to handle and she has such an emotional range, I realized this isn't gonna work. She's really starting to suffer based on what she perceives as her failures.

It's just too painful.

And also she wasn't helpful to me.

Yeah, by the way, I just thought about it in a way that I would think about it.

and not how you would think about it. Yes. No, it was selfish. This is not working for me. So I decided to go it alone, and one of the things that I remembered thinking was, I don't have this tether anymore.

You weren't vandalizing things.

No, I wasn't. And I was very mindful about that. I'm not in here destroying or causing pain to anyone or anything. So who's to say it's bad? Oh, well, it's bad because you shouldn't be skipping school.

What's weird is, it's almost the exact same relief people feel when they finally stop lying, which is like, oh, I don't have to hide anymore.

Yes, but again, the motivation, the sociopath, is always perceived as this nefarious liar. Like, I'm gonna tell you this so that you'll trust me, so that you won't notice. I was manipulating, but not to harm someone or to get something from someone. I was manipulating so that I could continue to engage in these acts of deviance without getting caught, so that I could take care of myself. So I would follow strangers around and I would watch them through their windows, and then I would just go home and get in bed.

How did sex and substances, what is a stereotypical association with those two things? Because the temperance of both are driven a lot by fear, which you don't have, and then the societal pressure to not be a slut, or whatever the thing is. Did you find that you were more experimental because you didn't have any of those regulators on you?

Yes and no. I remember having an early sexual experience that, by any neurotypical definition, would have been perceived as perfect. This is a person who cared about me. This was a person who cared about the experience for me. And I remember the physical element being great, but there was no emotional connection.

Well, if ever there was a kind of societal construct, it revolves that whole thing. Very much on one level, we're just an animal here to reproduce like all others. But what's built on top of that is so dense.

Gosh, and so problematic and complicated, especially for women.

So this guy that you had sex with in the quote, perfect scenario, you said he cared about you. Did you care about him?

I did, but.

And what does that even really mean, I guess?

When you say in the book, no butterflies, no feelings of romanticness, none of those things you see in a movie.

It was very cognitive. This is a good person, a kind person. He seems to love me a lot. I did not have those feelings of love, but I remember telling him I loved him back, because at the time I thought this is all I have. So maybe I love you, but my love doesn't match your love.

You have to get annoyed much easier with a romantic partner, because if you spend a lot of time with humans, they're annoying. And if you don't have that deep storybook romantic fantasy in your head about justifying it, I don't know how else you overlook just the general annoyingness of other people.

As a sociopath, I am just as interested in non-sociopaths as non-sociopaths seem to be with me. And that was something that I really discovered when I started to get my doctorate. That was selfishly motivated. I wanted to find out more about my personality type and others like me. I didn't give a shit about anything else.

Right, so the incentive structure is still there. It's just your fascination with them that keeps you tolerant, because you're interested enough to stick around and check it out. All right, you must be an incredible student that you get into UCLA out of high school.

No, I was a terrible student.

Did you go to community college? Did you go to SMC?

I went to a school in Florida and then I transferred over.

I was a transfer as well. Wow.

Yes. That's crazy.

Yeah. Okay, so you go to UCLA and it's there that we start. Understanding, exploring, you now have a therapist.

Okay, so I just want to touch on one quick thing. I was a terrible student because it didn't ever occur to me that I needed to have good grades for anything. And I remember being a junior in high school, or maybe even a senior, and having somebody say, you need good grades to get into school. And it was the first time it occurred to me. And it's not even like.

So you get into UCLA and is that where you get a therapist?

Towards the end of being at UCLA is, when my dad was pretty insistent, that I start seeing somebody.

And how soon before they, I feel like that would be a hard thing for a therapist to bring up.

I brought it up. I'd already been looking things up and it's so interesting now that I'm mentioning this. Quick segue, with the eclipse today, I was in a hotel, I've never stayed in this hotel before. And I went outside by the pool area to see the eclipse. And I was the only person out by the pool.

So as you learn about your condition, both through you major in it, you get a PhD in it. The only thing I compare it to is I have a friend who, very late in life, discovered they were on the spectrum and they just kind of rewound through their life. And I'm like, all right, I say I like shorts because they're comfortable, but I really can only wear shorts. Okay, that's part of that. Taking an inventory of their life through a new lens, and things are starting to make sense more.

100%. So when I heard about the term in my class, I remember feeling relief. If this is what I am, that means there's a name for what I am. There's gonna be research on it. There are at least enough people to justify a whole personality type.

Now, despite the fact you say in the book, and boy, do I relate to this, like I should have been arrested so many times, it's crazy. You never got caught, you stole cars, you broke into people's houses. You really didn't have any of those conventional consequences. But I'm curious, even though you weren't taking on the emotional weight of having disappointed people or hurt people, was there an amount of wreckage accumulating in your life that was an incentive to try to find a treatment for this? Like the notion that you were in search of some treatment plan, for this, to me implies there was some wreckage accumulating or something that would incentivize you having treatment.

Not wreckage, it was more logic for me. I remember feeling this isn't tenable. I will get caught eventually. And, contrary to popular belief, I recognize that being in a functioning society is a great thing. And it was something that I wanted to be a part of.

Got you. And what were the tools you cobbled together? And I know Dave plays a role in this. How did you put together a system for yourself?

The prescriptions helped a lot at first.

So there's medication?

No, my behavioral prescriptions. I wish there was medication. These prescriptive behaviors worked a lot at first, but like a regular prescription, I started weaning myself off of them.

Can you give some examples of what those were?

So I'm very aware that these are not normal behaviors. What I restricted myself to, stalking and breaking into homes. I said, no more car theft, because that's, yeah. Okay, yes.

So stalking was allowed and breaking in, B and E. For me. This is kind of like SLA, where you set your own definition of sobriety.

Correct. So I've decided that these things are perfectly fine. Again, cognitively, I knew they weren't. They were an improvement. Well, when I went to the library and I looked up stalking, I saw that stalking was largely based again on motivation.

Would you get busted with people going, what the fuck? Never. Didn't? I just see you at 7-Eleven?

When I was like 12, I got busted by somebody walking down the sidewalk and it was, hey, what are you doing? And I remember turning around and really leaning into my lack of fear. When I stepped forward, it registered on the guy's face. Oh, this is a child. Cause.

That's one of my big questions. What is the relationship between sociopathy and anxiety? Because on the outside, I would think you'd be completely free of anxiety.

Anxiety related to things like what people think, or am I going to get this wrong? Or am I going to be in trouble? What I was able to figure out was that my anxiety, and this tracks with a lot of the research. One of the first researchers to really dig into this hypothesized that sociopathic behavior was related to emotional conflict and inner frustration. And I really landed on that, because it was this feeling that I was supposed to be feeling a certain way.

This is like a closeted gay person.

I have thought about that multiple times. One of my closest friends is gay and he said the same thing. And I said, you can say it, but I promise you if I go out there and I start equating.

I'll do it for you. Thank you. I play it fast and loose with these compares.

Amazing. The sociopathic perception as it exists today is horrible. So nobody wants to be called that, but it's exactly how I felt. I have to act this way. Otherwise I will not be given access to these things that I really should be allowed to have access to.

Wow. So this is you kind of stepping into the truth. When does this happen? Does it start with Dave?

Probably.

And he didn't run out the door.

It really started with my father.

He's the one that sent you there.

Yes. Look, my father is colorful and he has a very high tolerance for pathology.

Well, he's in the music business.

Yeah. And it's sort of a prerequisite. So with my father, it was always, you can tell me anything and we're going to find a solution. With David, it was more, you can tell me anything, but I'm not going to help you get out of trouble. We're going to stop you from putting yourself in situations where you get into trouble.

Take what's mine. Yeah.

There was some of that creeping in.

Well, how could you not resent the you?

Right. And I guarantee you that this is what drives other sociopathic behavior. Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely, because again, I had everything. I had all of these resources and people and relationships.

You had that you were born in a one-bedroom trailer with six other kids. Yes. Now you're on a different path altogether. Correct. And so what's interesting is that moment where your father is accepting of this news, of course, my first thought would be, oh, I would feel acceptance.

Less rejection, because I didn't really ever care about rejection, but just prevented.

You can't participate. Correct.

Yeah. Yes. The velvet rope is off limits to you. My goal was to work in the prison system. You're never gonna get to do that.

That makes sense. So, dad, you're like, okay, he's a chink in the logic you've assembled. And then Dave is another step in maybe a different direction. And then the two of you cobbled together some kind of strategic stuff.

It was really me and my therapist seeing what worked and seeing what didn't. Because there is no treatment plan for sociopathy. In fact, one of the reasons why it's rarely diagnosed is because the sort of unspoken understanding in the prison system and the juvenile delinquent system is, as soon as a kid is diagnosed as antisocial or an adult is sociopathic or psychopathic, they're considered irredeemable. There's not gonna be any treatment plan because they've already written it off. So it was really just us trying to figure out, based on my experience of things and what worked for me and what didn't, what's the best way.

Right, right, right. Then your anxiety was gone. You had a practice.

I had a practice, I don't practice anymore.

Right, and I thought this was really interesting. There's a commonly held belief that a therapist should be extremely empathetic and emotionally invested. How did your approach differ, and what do you think is the strengths and the weaknesses of being a therapist who is on the sociopathy scale?

I remember sitting in clinical practicum with someone else who was talking about how they were seeing someone that they didn't like. I can't remember the exact example, but it's like, she talks about getting her nails done all the time and I can't stand people to get their nails done all the time. But I just thought, how the fuck do you factor into this? You're not there to co-sign what this person's doing. And I remember a lot of work spent on helping people withstand their patient's transference, which is what the patient projects onto their therapist.

So when patients would like, let it rip on you with some transference, you were unruffled?

Completely, but interested, observant. Hey, are you noticing that you just called me a bitch? But that's the same thing you used to call your mom. As opposed to, I can't believe this woman just called me a bitch. I didn't have those reactions.

Well, that's a sidebar. You found that as you've now moved through the world, being very upfront about being a sociopath, people start telling you really crazy, random stuff. Like a guy at a party said, I think about killing my wife all the time. I've even explored through a friend if they knew somebody.

Wow. What do you say to that?

I am like stifling a laugh. That's such a wild thing to get hit with.

I remember really leaning in and asking, oh wow, yeah, tell me about that. Wanting him to feel just very comfortable, easy breezy. Now, the reason you know that is because it was discussed in an interview and what did not get discussed was my reaction after the fact. And what I noticed is that a lot of people were very angry at me for not doing more to protect. Intervene.

Well, I could even gnarlier on that. There's a paradox there, which is the person that was judgmental of you is the exact person that no one would ever tell anything to. So they're not doing more either. They're just never getting the truth. Again, the parallel I saw was like, that's why I love AA, is you can go in there and every one of us is a scumbag.

He hates Dave.

Oh, that's so funny. We have a friend named David who also hates Dave.

So, at one time, my father's Dave, my brother's Dave, and my stepdad was Dave. So one was David, one was Dave, one was Barton, had to go by his last name. Obviously the last Dave, my stepdad, had to go by Barton. But that's how it was decided. I don't really know that any of them had a preference other than we had to distinguish them.

Well, we met when I was 14.

You didn't sit around wondering if he was thinking about you or talking about you.

No. And so when we broke up, it was more like a, that's weird. I really thought I was gonna marry that guy. At 14.. So strange.

The irony is that's all relationships.

And that's what I've heard. Yeah.

It's just that it's so clear here and there's no arguing like, okay, you have this personality disorder.

It's almost helpful.

Exactly.

You're never gonna get what you want. So she can't. You either accept that and we move forward. But I think when you have this neurotypical relationship, there is this fantasy belief that, no, you will end up manipulating them.

in a way that you get exactly what you want. Yeah, and we have limitations too. In the exact same way. that also cannot be transcended.

That's why I wrote this book, because there are so many relatable elements to this. And I think that if the sociopathic camp and the non-sociopathic camp could just drop it for a second and get together and sort of talk, you would see how much we could learn from one another. But with David, he did have an argument. But you're doing illegal shit. And it's my job to protect you.

I would have just said, the things you're doing are illegal and are going to end up getting you incarcerated.

I would not argue with that.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Let's leave morals out of it for you.

Right. Yeah, again, he's using an argument that works in his brain. Italian conflict.

Italian conflict, yeah.

Oh, this is great. Talk about the whole end of the spectrum. Emotional all the time. Mm-hmm.

And big emotions.

Out of the children, so you already touched on it. You have a child and you're not feeling those feelings you see on TV or read about in books. Does that scare you at all? You don't get scared.

I was pissed.

Because that was your last ditch effort.

It was my last one. Yeah. I was so angry at myself for allowing even the tiniest bit of light to shine through. Come home. You should have known.

I can't read this.

Yeah, if there's any responsibility that feels uniquely centered in empathy, it is that one. You're unhappy. What is it? Did David need to be a little more involved?

He was so involved and I'm really grateful because he was.

The interpreter. Yeah, he was.

And then, once I was able to see enough of those interpretations, then I caught on.

You could log them.

Yes.

Were you afraid at all, before you had your kids, that those compulsions would arise in the same way, or that you might want to hurt them or any of that?

I was so grateful that I did not have those feelings, but I do know that they exist. My bridge to empathy started with sociopathy. So the idea that there are other women who are afraid of potentially hurting their kids, I can extend that bridge because I know what it's like to have an impulse to do something that I know I don't really want to do.

Okay, my last question is, do you have gratitude for your sociopathy and do you have resentment?

I really have so much gratitude for my sociopathy and the opportunities I was given to not just experience it, but also observe it and come to understand it. Because one of the reasons why I wrote this book is because I'm trying to not discount the harmful extreme types, but to just include all of the other not so harmful extreme types, to let people understand. this personality type can be used destructively, but it can also be used constructively. I see my friends grapple with guilt, and I'm really glad that I don't. I see my friends grapple with shame.

That happens with neurotypical people. It makes me think immediately of Wednesday.

Oh, Jenna Ortega.

Jenna Ortega. She has this enormous meteoric rise and this obvious talent, and everyone around her is so excited and the pressure of internalizing that excitement is not possible.

It's interesting that you should bring up Jenna Ortega and Wednesday, because people ask a lot about sociopaths in pop culture and how they're portrayed in cinema and television. How do I feel about that? And I've always been frustrated by these one-dimensional characters. And I said, but one has recently risen to the surface and it's Wednesday.

That's so true.

You understand that Wednesday Adams checks every single box on the sociopathic checklist, but she's also capable of developing close relationships. She does it differently, but she does it. She loves her parents. She's sad when her pet is taken from her. It's not your typical pet, but she's sad nonetheless.

Hey, I love that show. It's one of my favorite shows. And to me, it seems so obvious why so many women would love that character, because it's completely liberated from people-pleasing societal pressures on women to make everyone feel comfortable all the time. And you can tell all neurotypical women are feeling the weight of that all the time. And they're looking at this person going like, could I really just maybe do exactly what I want and not have to fucking worry about how it's impacting everyone around me?

Children too, I can't tell you how much joy it brought me this Halloween to see all of these children, not just wearing her costumes, but taking on her personality. I remember looking at one of them and smiling, and she just- And committed. And I was thinking, I'm so happy that you have chosen this emotional outlier as your Halloween hero. And you are completely all in. It's also how I introduced this subject matter to my children.

They connected the dots.

They were like, mommy, this is like you. And I was like, yes.

I'm the blonde version of her.

Surely I'm not going quite as extreme as she is, but it's a really interesting cocktail of cold and warmth that she has. And it really is true.

You just reminded me, and I'm glad you just brought it up, because you said in the book, it's very common for a sociopath to have the feelings we would expect for them to have about humans for pets.

Yes.

What is the explanation of that?

I can't tell you. There's been some research where some of the most prolific serial killers have had very intense bonds with their animals. And certainly there's also research that indicates that early psychopathic behavior typically presents, in early mutilation of animals, torture of animals. And I'm not discounting that, but these are two truths that cannot be held. You can't say that this person is a psychopath, therefore they're completely incapable of any type of bond.

Also, there's probably some temptation to weave in any observation as being a part of the ism, which also could have nothing to do with it. So I have my own armchair theory about people who love animals a lot. Some people push back on this, but I have found it interesting that if people have had really complicated relationships with parents that are very pluralistic or hard to figure out their real motives, the joy of being able to give love to something, that's not gonna try to manipulate you back, we do want to send love, and that it's just too high risk for a lot of people who have been in situations where they're just exploited every time they do that, that of course this thing would appeal to you. It's a completely non-manipulative creature that you're able to share love with without any fear of it being leveraged against you. And I could apply that to someone dealing with sociopathy or psychopathy.

They're not gonna judge either. So you have all of these antisocial tendencies. You have flat affect. You don't ever have to wear a mask around your animals. I have noticed that for me, dogs are tricky because dogs-.

They're empathic.

Yes. And they really wanna show you how much they love you all the time. And I have struggled with that. And I try to be mindful.

You had a ferret.

I love that ferret. But see, she was so mischievous.

Do you love cats?

She was a little shit too. Oh God, she was such a thief. No, they are the ultimate thieves. Years after she died, I found treasure troves behind the couches and she would gnaw the heads off of our Barbie dolls and drag them down the hall to whatever trove that she had decided she was going to put it. We'd never see it again, but they love shiny objects.

Aaron had two ferrets and he'd have to pick up the couch like once a week to find everything in the house that was missing. Oh my God. So do you like cats too? I do. For all the reasons, I don't like cats, you like cats.

I'm sure. They don't care. They're indifferent to you. They're indifferent.

They will eat your body within 24 hours of death. We just learned this.

100%.

Yeah, meal's a meal. They're not sentimental. They're not like, this person wouldn't care. They're dead.

And I have the meanest cat alive.

Oh.

I shouldn't tell this story, but I'm going to.

Yeah, do it. Take the mask off, whatever.

I was bored and there was this plea for a foster for kittens, kittens. Can we get somebody to foster kittens? And I've never fostered, but I was like, all right, what am I doing?

That's even the scale. Yeah, sure.

This will buy me something. Yeah.

So I bring these kittens home and they don't have their mother. Their mother's gone. And one by one, they just start dying. And I'm taking them to the rescue place and I'm rushing them. Like, something's wrong, something's wrong.

Oh, good, well, I mean, look.

Because they said, we want you to bring him in for a checkup. And I was like, you're not getting your hands on this cat.

Yeah.

The last thing, what intrusive question would you want to ask?

What I would ask you? Yeah. Oh man.

We don't have to do this, but I'm curious.

I know we don't, no.

Well, I would want to know what was your worst behavioral- Oh, sure, sure, sure.

Well, I tried to rob 7-Eleven.

How'd that go?

It didn't go. well. I kept my helmet on and I had a prop gun. I told him to give me the money and he goes, fuck you. Clearly, this poor guy had been probably robbed several times.

While you were a student?

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Was this the 7-Eleven in Westwood?

No, this was a 7-Eleven at Wilshire in probably 7th-ish in Santa Monica. And I specifically went there because I never went to that one. I always went to the one at like 20th in Santa Monica Boulevard. So many, terrible, endless.

I'm just curious, because that would be my deep dive. Talk to me about everything. And it's tricky, because these invasive questions people don't want to answer or they want to take a beat before they answer. And I get that.

But actually like if we were at a dinner party, I actually would live for this. I'm virtually doing the same thing you do. You're like, great, great, great. You're like, let's get into the trauma. What happened in childhood?

It's interesting, especially when it comes to destructive behavior, because, to your point, you knew that what you were doing was wrong.

I covered my license plate.

But my understanding is nothing exists in that moment between the behavior and what's on the other side, which is the alcohol or the drugs, or whatever it is. you're after. But there is something that exists in that it's almost like the trapeze where you let go of one and you haven't quite made it to the next. That's the part I want to explore. Because there's so much in that moment when you were in that 7-Eleven and the guy screamed, fuck you.

Well, that was one that really reeked of my sense of justice. I was obsessed with this movie Thief by Michael Mann. My pattern was I would get hammered, my girlfriend would go to bed, I'd get even more hammered, I'd watch Thief. And then I'd become obsessed with the notion of like, I deserve to have money and I don't know how to get it and I'm gonna take it. I just have to be willing to do it.

So you don't get the money, you leave the 7-Eleven.

The headline's, the 7-Eleven. The real story is the fact that I didn't T-bone a car and die riding my motorcycle. Because now I'm like adrenaline through the roof. I'm running away from a 7-Eleven. I just tried to rob.