Should I become more psychopathic?

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spurs13

Member
I just saw American Psycho recently and I've been wondering if I could actually do with a few psychopathic traits? I totally despised his lack of empathy, manipulation and shallowness but realized that people around me behave like that all the time on a smaller level. If I could just behave the same way towards them and protect myself, then I wouldn't be perceived as 'too nice'. My problem isn't that I'm a doormat, I speak up if someone gets in my way and people usually dont...and I ignore people if they're rude/indifferent and they're not a problem. But I want to be proactive and have people be wary of taking me on in the first place. Being confident would be the obvious solution but its not something that happens overnight and it will take me a while to achieve that. In the meantime I think its important for me to curb that empathy for people who may not deserve it or even judge me negatively for it :idontknow:

TL;DR: Just saw American Psycho and I wonder if I should use that movie as a template to appear assertive and improve my SA.
 
Capsaicin

Capsaicin

Well-known member
No. Just make smarter choices. People who get trod on for being too nice have things like poor boundaries and poor character judgment. They let people in who really aren't safe to let in, take too many and too large of risks with unfamiliar people (and unsurprisingly get bad apples in the bunch), or give more than they can afford to (perhaps also to the wrong people). That puts them on the radar for people who actively look for people to leech from and fails to repel those they meet by chance.
 
NathanielWingatePeaslee

NathanielWingatePeaslee

Iä! Iä! Cthulhu fhtagn!
Staff member
role model?

American-Psycho.jpg


Yeah, no.

Capsaicin's got it.
 
vj288

vj288

not actually Fiona Apple
While having a role model and someone to look up is great, I can't say I think Patrick Bateman would be the best choice. After watching the movie, is that who you wish to be like? From what I remember from the movie, outside his misogynist and murderous ways, he was generally very manipulative and wore a fake mask round all the time to be successful. The negative heavily outweigh any positive qualities he had, if anything trying to be the opposite of him would be a good idea I think.

If you want to be more assertive that's ok I think, but in the likeness of Patrick Bateman I would not recommend, unless in his dressing style. He was quite the snappy dresser.
 
SilentBird

SilentBird

Well-known member
Did you see how insecure he was when he saw that his colleagues had business cards that were more flash than his :bigsmile:
 
hippiechild

hippiechild

Well-known member
It's not a question of whether you should be more psychopathic. You need to be more entitled and assertive, traits which happen to correlate with psychopathy. To say that you need to be more "psychopathic" in your situation is akin to a disilusioned pastor asking if he needs to be "more temporal lobe epileptic" or an obese person asking if they should be more gastroparesic.

Firstly, you can't.. it doesn't work that way. Secondly, it makes no sense. Thirdly, it takes a very myopic view of both your own problem and the condition used for comparison; you desire normal levels of a specific, healthy, normal trait which is loosely related to a condition.. not the condition itself.

This means that getting what you desire is actually significantly easier and less esoteric than you think. It requires nothing bizarre, only some rethinking and behavioral retraining.
 
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spurs13

Member
Sorry guys, I worded this thread a little too dramatically! What I meant was like some posters said, to improve character judgement - being kind to people who actually deserve it. It doesnt mean I'm going to become selfish or start killing all those I dont like lol
 
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spurs13

Member
vj288 said:
While having a role model and someone to look up is great, I can't say I think Patrick Bateman would be the best choice. After watching the movie, is that who you wish to be like? From what I remember from the movie, outside his misogynist and murderous ways, he was generally very manipulative and wore a fake mask round all the time to be successful. The negative heavily outweigh any positive qualities he had, if anything trying to be the opposite of him would be a good idea I think.

If you want to be more assertive that's ok I think, but in the likeness of Patrick Bateman I would not recommend, unless in his dressing style. He was quite the snappy dresser.
Click to expand...

The negatives definitely outweigh the positives but I'm not going for the whole package. Just that it would be useful to wear a fake mask around certain people who you're going to hate but for some reason need to get along with(work, flatmates etc). Why show them my nice side when I know they're not gonna like that (no matter how confident I get)? Isnt that what making 'contacts' is often about?

I'm already the opposite of him, hence it would be nice to have a balance and actually know how to charm/get along with certain people when you need to...fake mask or not!
 
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spurs13

Member
hippiechild said:
It's not a question of whether you should be more psychopathic. You need to be more entitled and assertive, traits which happen to correlate with psychopathy. To say that you need to be more "psychopathic" in your situation is akin to a disilusioned pastor asking if he needs to be "more temporal lobe epileptic" or an obese person asking if they should be more gastroparesic.

Firstly, you can't.. it doesn't work that way. Secondly, it makes no sense. Thirdly, it takes a very myopic view of both your own problem and the condition used for comparison; you desire normal levels of a specific, healthy, normal trait which is loosely related to a condition.. not the condition itself.

This means that getting what you desire is actually significantly easier and less esoteric than you think. It requires nothing bizarre, only some rethinking and behavioral retraining.
Click to expand...

Some fair points there. Although I dont think my levels of assertiveness are too bad. I can be assertive and not have anyone take advantage of me but that wont necessarily make them respect me/be wary of me. Now I wouldnt give a shit bout people like that obviously but sometimes in life u have to get along with them (work, flatmates, social group etc). Sorry that "is akin to" sentence has too many difficult words to understand :idontknow:

I'm not sure what I desire lol...but I dont think its just the one trait I desire thats related to this condition. As said in my previous posts, I only desire small amounts of these in a well directed manner.

I hope you're right there though and the whole point of this thread is to understand it better.
 
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vj288

vj288

not actually Fiona Apple
spurs13 said:
The negatives definitely outweigh the positives but I'm not going for the whole package. Just that it would be useful to wear a fake mask around certain people who you're going to hate but for some reason need to get along with(work, flatmates etc). Why show them my nice side when I know they're not gonna like that (no matter how confident I get)? Isnt that what making 'contacts' is often about?

I'm already the opposite of him, hence it would be nice to have a balance and actually know how to charm/get along with certain people when you need to...fake mask or not!
Click to expand...

Well, not considering the movie reference and just the content of this post I suppose that's ok. In an ideal world, I would like to think no one would have to be something they are not anytime (outside acting on stage and stuff like that) but that ideal may not be realistic. Just don't lose who you are, if you like that person, it may be hard to get him back.
 
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