M.E. Thomas: I am not as much.
Rob Kall: Alright I'll I'll skip that then. Okay, if you've read my stuff, and if you've read my comments, this whole idea of, of dealing with sociopaths has become something I'm very interested in. And reading that it costs America a half a trillion dollars a year, which is about enough, more than enough to pay for health insurance for everybody, if we wanted too. And, the more I learn about sociopaths being predators and reading your book, it makes me clear that, you know sociopaths, they are in some ways like vampires, in that they get their pleasure from other people's suffering in some ways. Would you give me some advice, how do you think, is there an appropriate way too, what kind of research would you like to see to be done? Is there a way to make the world a better place in terms of mitigating the damage and hurt that sociopath's do? What would you think would be the way to do that? What would be something that you'd like to see, as a sociopath, but that would also help the world? Maybe..
M.E. Thomas: Well I, I think that there are some quick things, really quick things that could happen that would help, and there are some more long term things. I think a really quick thing is, one of the problems, and we've mentioned this before in terms of careers, you know a sociopathic therapist. One of the problems with sociopaths, is that you, they're hard to identify. They're even hard for me to identify. So when people talk about sociopaths being dangerous, I don't disagree, I sort of, you know I understand they're, they're at least a risk. You know they're a risk, and you're not sure, what is the nature of the risk that you're taking. And so that makes it particularly risky.
Sociopaths don't come out though, they're not honest, for obvious reasons. The same reasons that I tried to maintain my anonymity to a certain extent with writing the book, is that there's this very strong stigma against them, right? I think some sociopaths, like me, we talked about this too, there are benefits to coming out, there are real advantages. And sociopaths, certain sociopaths, might choose to disclose their diagnosis if they knew that there were certain legal protections.
So if there were legal protections, where if you came out as a sociopath there would be some, almost legal advantage. You know you wouldn't, couldn't be fired, let's say on the basis of the diagnosis alone. If you did bad things of course you, you'll be fired. But you couldn't maybe even be discriminated, let's say, I mean I sometimes even think about this, what if I ever wanted to adopt a child? What if I were in, this is not, this is not true of me, but what if I had children and I ever ended up in a custody battle, is this going too, diagnosis, going to be used against me?
So to the extent that we keep making it very, difficult, if not impossible for sociopaths to come out, then I think that hurts society in the long run. Because you're never exposed to sociopaths, you never learn really how to interact with them. Once you've identified one, then maybe that sociopath has moved on, and you're, you're not much wiser than you were before. So we really don't know what's going on, we continue to not do research, that's overall bad for society I think, for sociopaths to remain kind of under the radar. And largely ignored. So I think"
Rob Kall: Alright, well you just did, we'll say, something that would benefit sociopaths and because it benefits sociopaths they can come out and, alright so I, I can hear how that can work. So, but it does, it kind of leaves me not satisfied frankly, cause that doesn't allow for any accountability to, for the sociopaths either. They can still be, "Hey I'm out I'm a sociopath deal with it," you know? *chuckles*
M.E. Thomas: Right. *chuckles* Well once, once they say deal with it I mean, we could, we could certainly, and I have never advocated for sociopathy being a mitigating factor, for instance in criminal sentencing. You know, I feel like, and this is maybe my libertarian self or Ayn Randian self, but I feel like people, yeah people have problems, but people do need to conform to society. It's okay to have standards and say, you know, the following things are not right, and if you do these things then you get these consequences. I think that that's fine.
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