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Sociopath: How to identify one.

Jan 14, 2011
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Without naming names, or referencing recent cycling events, it may be useful to review the characteristics of a sociopath with a view to understanding these events. Its WiKi True.

The World Health Organization actually calls it "Dissocial personality disorder"

"It is characterized by at least 3 of the following:

Callous unconcern for the feelings of others.

Gross and persistent attitude of irresponsibility and disregard for social norms, rules, and obligations.

Incapacity to maintain enduring relationships, though having no difficulty in establishing them.

Very low tolerance to frustration and a low threshold for discharge of aggression, including violence.

Incapacity to experience guilt or to profit from experience, particularly punishment.

Markedly prone to blame others or to offer plausible rationalizations for the behavior that has brought the person into conflict with society."

Six out of six is a pretty solid diagnosis.
 
Oct 2, 2012
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rickshaw said:
Without naming names, or referencing recent cycling events, it may be useful to review the characteristics of a sociopath with a view to understanding these events. Its WiKi True.

The World Health Organization actually calls it "Dissocial personality disorder"

"It is characterized by at least 3 of the following:

Callous unconcern for the feelings of others.

Gross and persistent attitude of irresponsibility and disregard for social norms, rules, and obligations.

Incapacity to maintain enduring relationships, though having no difficulty in establishing them.

Very low tolerance to frustration and a low threshold for discharge of aggression, including violence.

Incapacity to experience guilt or to profit from experience, particularly punishment.

Markedly prone to blame others or to offer plausible rationalizations for the behavior that has brought the person into conflict with society."

Six out of six is a pretty solid diagnosis.

How many regulars in The Clinic are you referring to? There are several that fit.
 
rickshaw said:
Without naming names, or referencing recent cycling events, it may be useful to review the characteristics of a sociopath with a view to understanding these events. Its WiKi True.

The World Health Organization actually calls it "Dissocial personality disorder"

"It is characterized by at least 3 of the following:

Callous unconcern for the feelings of others.

Gross and persistent attitude of irresponsibility and disregard for social norms, rules, and obligations.
A cult leader, sort of?
 
cineteq said:
A cult leader, sort of?

Yep. Sort of. Someone who controls others, who maintains a power over others, and needs to prove him(her)self to maintain that status. Typical of this is the need to succeed at their endeavours, a "win-at-all-costs" attitude. It explains the actions of someone who might, for instance, turn up for a charity cycle event, and then ride off the front, beating all the other riders who might have paid for a ride with their hero. They have to be the best. Life is all about overcoming obstacles, some seemingly unsurmountable.
 
doolols said:
Yep. Sort of. Someone who controls others, who maintains a power over others, and needs to prove him(her)self to maintain that status. Typical of this is the need to succeed at their endeavours, a "win-at-all-costs" attitude. It explains the actions of someone who might, for instance, turn up for a charity cycle event, and then ride off the front, beating all the other riders who might have paid for a ride with their hero. They have to be the best. Life is all about overcoming obstacles, some seemingly unsurmountable.

:D

Would that include someone who shows up for a charity cycle event, where participants have paid $10k plus each, and then rides off the front and makes a quick exit?

You know, leaving the paying riders to do 99% of the ride all by themselves?

Dave.
 
Oct 17, 2012
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http://www.livestrong.com/article/77736-signs-sociopathic-behavior/

Grandiose Sense of Self
Someone who's a sociopath thinks extremely highly of herself and boasts about herself every chance she can get. She wants the spotlight on her, and she wants everyone to be amazed by her. A sociopath thinks she's beautiful, witty, charming and intelligent. She thinks that others are below her, and she's not afraid to tell people that.

Aggression and Violence
Someone who's sociopathic will become aggressive and violent when angry. He might abuse his spouse or his children on a regular basis. He will use aggression as a form of manipulation and intimidation. A sociopath does not feel guilty when he hurts someone. If anything, he might get joy out of hurting someone, even if that person is a family member.

Risk-taking Behavior
Sociopaths believe they're almost invincible. They think they can get away with almost anything, because they're intelligent and charming. Because of this thinking, it's common for sociopaths to display risky behaviors, such as drinking and driving, driving at high speeds, having unprotected sex or committing robbery. Many times people who are sociopathic get into trouble with the law. They slip up or don't care enough to try to cover up criminal offenses they've committed. They are also extremely impulsive, which can get them in trouble with the law. They don't think before they act.

Read more: http://www.livestrong.com/article/77736-signs-sociopathic-behavior/#ixzz2A106qzY4

Maybe he should have a look on his own Livestrong-website.
 
Oct 17, 2012
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onimod said:

That article deserves it's own thread. Have you posted it before? The comparison between (literally) "crossing the line" in amateur racing or sportives and (metaphorically) "crossing the line" in pro-racing is something that everyone who has ridden in any type of race (be it sportive or competitive) can relate to. I must admit that I too, have crossed the line (literally), because I didn't want to get dropped as the only one out in the crosswind. But unlike Armstrong I haven't ridden in the wrong lane for an entire career.
 
Sep 6, 2012
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Baroh1488 said:
That article deserves it's own thread. Have you posted it before? The comparison between (literally) "crossing the line" in amateur racing or sportives and (metaphorically) "crossing the line" in pro-racing is something that everyone who has ridden in any type of race (be it sportive or competitive) can relate to. I must admit that I too, have crossed the line (literally), because I didn't want to get dropped as the only one out in the crosswind. But unlike Armstrong I haven't ridden in the wrong lane for an entire career.

No credit to me - cocteau_ireland posted it in the JV thread.
 
onimod said:
That's not what I meant - JV left an Easter egg in '99 too.
Refer to the linked article.

Ah, I see. I did see the potential easter egg in that article, but didn't make the mental connection.
As for it being an Easter egg, I'd need to put that on JV's confession timeline.
I does seem to support him being a friggin' genious though. Although his own crossing the line towards even climbing records makes it for a whole different read.
 
Sep 6, 2012
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Cloxxki said:
Ah, I see. I did see the potential easter egg in that article, but didn't make the mental connection.
As for it being an Easter egg, I'd need to put that on JV's confession timeline.
I does seem to support him being a friggin' genious though. Although his own crossing the line towards even climbing records makes it for a whole different read.

I wouldn't go as far as genius, but having the perspective to write that at the time an know that the dummies at USPS wouldn't understand is comedy gold.

A side note:
I suspect he knew exactly why he couldn't trust Jaksche - it was a bit too much like looking in the mirror.
Probably should have gone to school JV.

EDIT: Oh, and no worries about not picking it up the first time.
 

Fidolix

BANNED
Jan 16, 2012
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Lance Armstrong has been stripped of his seven Tour de France titles and banned from cycling. Pat McQuaid, president of the International Cycling Union, the sport’s governing body, said Armstrong, “deserves to be forgotten.”
It may be that Mr. McQuaid’s words were exactly wrong and also a key to understanding the weakness in a man named Lance Armstrong.
Armstrong’s life story is, from a psychological perspective, less noteworthy for its triumphs than its tragedies, and his racing away from them seems to have failed, as it always does. In life, the truth always wins, no matter how cagey a person might think he is in outsmarting it.
Armstrong’s truth—and likely the driving force in his winning seven Tour de France titles while allegedly injecting himself with steroids and mainlining his own blood—is that his father abandoned him at age 2. To this day, Armstrong has refused to meet him. His mother then married another man with whom Armstrong did not get along, and with whom he has had no contact for years.
An abandoned and forgotten boy is—absent extraordinary healing—forever an abandoned and forgotten boy. Two years old is plenty old enough to be torn apart at the level of the soul by the abrupt severing, without explanation, of a father-son bond. It is plenty old enough to be shredded by the haunting suspicion that one is unworthy and unlovable. It is plenty old enough to set the stage for a decades-long race for enough fame and adulation to fill the emotional black hole inside you that keeps threatening to make you disappear into it.
Armstrong’s truth—and likely the driving force in his winning seven Tour de France titles while allegedly injecting himself with steroids and mainlining his own blood—is that his father abandoned him at age 2.
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And, so, Armstrong seems to have pedaled faster and faster. And if his teammates and adversaries wondered how a man could be so driven as to declare himself a winner when he was not, again and again and again, to have seemingly no compunction about celebrating hollow victories, and to maintain a synthetic fiction in the face of seemingly incontrovertible fact, they need only remember the hollowness inside that man, born of being a forgotten boy—that black hole and the threat of complete psychological disintegration it represented to him, if only unconsciously.
If the contentions of the officials who banned Armstrong are correct, the vacuum of real self-esteem that could reside within him predicts that he will continue—probably forever—to deny that he ever used performance enhancing substances and keep fleeing his core feelings, until he can’t come up with any other way to dodge them.
So, he is likely now to try to reinvent himself—perhaps by starting his own cycling league, perhaps by starring in a reality show. Anything, but anything to avoid the reality that he was unloved by the first man in his life.
I hope my readers will not mind terribly much if I burden them with some of the finer psychological poetry of this forgotten, weak , boy-man named Armstrong. Because it is not lost on this psychiatrist that Lance Armstrong, in a game of tragic of one-upmanship spent his life racing away from other men, when his father raced away from him.
It is not lost on this psychiatrist that he allegedly spent decades injecting himself with male hormones, as if to be male enough to be a worthy son, rather than forgotten one.
It is not lost on this psychiatrist that the very attempt to cheat the truth—to bury grief and rage, rather than facing them—could turn one’s very manhood into a cancer and make malignant the most graphic anatomic symbol of masculinity and fatherhood.
And it is not lost on this psychiatrist that Pat McQuaid, president (father, if you will) of the International Cycling Union, would stumble into repeating the biggest psychological trauma in Armstrong’s life, by calling him “forgettable.”
Everything in the world and every person in it and every act is explainable. And, very often, the explanations are very sad, indeed.
You see, to truly Livestrong after being injured catastrophically as a boy by abandonment requires looking at your pain, sitting with it, really feeling it, not trying to outdistance it—which is impossible and a race to oblivion. It requires realizing that you were always loveable, even if you were unloved, and that false fame and a Superman-lean frame will only separate you from that healing reality, which many people correctly call God.
And, so, it is with that knowledge that I wish Lance Armstrong Godspeed on his continuing journey toward the certain knowledge that he was always a worthy person, even if his father was too broken to love him. That is the only race worth winning in Lance Armstrong’s life, and it is the beauty of this miraculous existence of ours, that it can still be won.

Dr. Keith Ablow is a psychiatrist and member of the Fox News Medical A-Team.
 
Sep 7, 2009
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Big Doopie said:
...seriously?

I think Dr. Keith Ablow is being a little too simplistic in his assessment of LA. Lots of children are abandoned by one or both parents and they do not grow up into adults that behave like LA.
 
Jul 10, 2012
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I could be wrong but isn't Dr. Ablow one of Glenn Beck's buddies?

I do think it is hilarious that the livestrong website mentions sociopathy. What exactly does it have to do with cancer?