Anti-Soc.-Private

the difference between asocial, anti society, and anti social. Yes, anti-social is about interpersonal relationships, not about disdain for the state, nor social recluse.

Psychopathy Assessment for Fic.Cha.: Light Yagami!

So, I decided to start a fun little series about estimating the psychopathy score of fictional characters or if they qualify for an ASPD diagnosis. Light Yagami was the first suspect coming to my mind. Although the image already spoils the ending, it is more exciting to figure out why he is not, given that many people consider him a prime example of Anime Psychopathy representation. So let's get started: Factor 1 [ 15 / 16 ]:

1. GLIB and SUPERFICIAL CHARM [ 2 ]Light Yagami is great at rhetorics, and able to charm his peers strategically. There is no emotional commitment to any of his friendly talks as evident from his interactions with Misa and Naomi. He furthermore makes up new talking points in order to direct a conversation, showing his quick tongue.

2. GRANDIOSE SELF-WORTH [ 2 ]A lot of Light Yagami's grandiosity is justified by his intellect and school performance. However, he gets delusional when he believes that his godhood could be lasting, despite Ryuk telling him that the Death Note does not make him special and that anyone could have found it.

4. PATHOLOGICAL LYING [ 2 ]There is chronical lying and deception involved. However, in contrast to pathological lying, Light Yagami's lies are instrumental, and hence arguably too strategic to qualify. On the other hand, since he picked up the Death Note, lying becomes an integral part of his personality, to a degree it could be perceived as pathological.

5. CONNING AND MANIPULATIVENESS [ 2 ]His deception shades over into actions and performance. He fakes grief at his father's death in order foster his goals and reveal the secrets he needs to know.

6. LACK OF REMORSE OR GUILT [ 1 ] In the manga, Light Yagami needs to justify his actions after he realized he is responsibile for the death of people. The justification, that some people deserve to die, might even have paved the way for going down his murder streak. However, after justifying his actions, Light Yagami is utterly free from remorse or guilt as demonstrated by looking into the eyes of one of his victims during the train-killing of one of the police investigators.

7. SHALLOW AFFECT [ 2 ]:Despite showing no signs of struggles with connecting to other people, Light Yagami lacks emotional bonds and attachment to the people around him.

8. CALLOUSNESS and LACK OF EMPATHY [ 2 ]:Light Yagami does not care much about the feelings of others and imposes his own moral standards on other people. An exception is his little sister, whom he helps empathically with her homeworks. However, this cannot override his remorseless killing. Furthermore, he treats people as pawns which indicates that his aid for his sister is mostly performative.

16. FAILURE TO ACCEPT RESPONSIBILITY FOR OWN ACTIONS [ 2 ]: Light Yagami shows no signs of regret for any of his actions. he justifies his own crimes by arguing that he has the intellectual ability to judge over the life of others.

Factor 2 [ 1 / 18]:

3. NEED FOR STIMULATION [ 0 ]: Although Light Yagami is clearly bored at school, he is never shown to be bored enough to engage in risky behavior. His boredom derives from being intellectually understimulated and underchallanged by the school system. He shows no signs of struggle with following through, lack of self-discipline, or frequently switching jobs.

9. PARASITIC LIFESTYLE [ 0 ]: He lives, perhaps rent-free, at his parents home when going to college, but he does not engage in any deliberate form of parasitic life-style. He helps his sister with homework and returns favors, engaging in a healthy family dynamic rather than living of his parent's rent. Furthermore, there is no indication that Light willingfully, despite being a master of manipulation, to exploit personal relationships for financial gain.

10. POOR BEHAVIORAL CONTROLS [ 1 ]: When his ego suffers a setback, Light Yagami bursts into immediate unthoughtful action. His impulsive killing of Lind L. Tailor. However, he remains calm and collected in most everyday life interactions.

12. EARLY BEHAVIOR PROBLEMS [ 0 ]: No signs of conduct disorder. The fact he has shown no signs of early behavior problems is even used in his defense by his father against L's accusations towards Light Yagami.

13. LACK OF REALISTIC, LONG-TERM GOALS [ 0 ]: He has clear plans for his academic career from the beginning and shows no struggles to follow through. He plans his actions carefully, and even though he makes impulsive decisions, which relates to item 14, he is shown to have realistic long-term goals and even thinks years ahead. His grandios plan to become a god-like being is backed up by action.

14. IMPULSIVITY [ 0 ]: His ability to think and plan before acting is intact. There is no evidence for a need for quick short-term rewards. He suffers from anger-outbursts covered in item.

15. IRRESPONSIBILITY [ 0 ]: Light Yagami shows strict planning abilitites combined with following his schedule tightly. There is no signs of slacking off, frequently coming too late to school or work, and does not slack off at work. He takes his career serious and commits to his financial, family, and social responsibilities. It is precisely the lack of taking such responsibilities, he aims to punish in the second season.

18. JUVENILE DELINQUENCY [ 0 ]: There is no evidence of Juvenile delinguency. His criminal career was triggered by the Death Note and motivated by moral endeavor to improve the world and punish unlawful behavior. The fact that he goes immediately after criminals also indicates that he cannot identify with those who break the law.

19. REVOCATION OF CONDITION RELEASE [ 0 ]: There is no evidence that Light Yagami has ever been on probation or that Light Yagami struggles to not to repeat a mistake, as evdent from his seemingly flawless biography.

Undefined [0 / 3]:

11. PROMISCUOUS SEXUAL BEHAVIOR [ 0 ]: No engagement in sexual activities. It is highly possible that sexual activities all happen off-screen, but we see that Light Yagami looks down on sexual activity, when using pornographic material as alibi. Also, he has no hesitation to engage in a non-sexual relationship with Misa. He appears to be detached from her both emotionally and sensually. There is no indication of sudden casual sexual encounters, even when he had a chance to engage with them.

17. MANY SHORT-TERM MARITAL RELATIONSHIPS [ 0 ]: We do know nothing about any marital engagements. The only relationship Light Yagami has is with Misa. The relationship is shallow and emotionally detached. This contributes to scores for item 5 and item 7 but warrants no score on this item.

20. CRIMINAL VERSATILITY [ 0 ]: This item counts violations of different legal categories. It is not about the intensity but the versatility. Light Yagami engages in homicide, disruption of public order, and arguably fraud. With only 3 violations of legal categories, it does not warrant any score.

Conclusion:

[ 16 / 40 ] - Narcisstic Personality Disorder.

What helped me most sofar is unironically the virtual diary I made! It helped me to connect different stages of my life and integrate me into a whole. Before, I haven't really perceived my life as a coherent person, but more as little snippets of events, leading from one moment to another.

I also severly downplayed problematic incidents. Everytime something bad happens to me, I thought it was just a little slip, I had a bad day, everyone gets into that situation at some point in life, nothing to worry about just don't do it again. But with the diary I was able to detect a reoccuring pattern. That it is not just occasional slips, but integrates into a whole personality profile.

Sure, it is not the case that it happens every day - else I would not be here writing this post - but there are certain circumstances which consistently will trigger unwanted reactions, moods, or behaviors. Most people have bad days, but most people do not react to them like that.

I began with stuff I perceived as traumatic, then proceeded with what I know to be legal transgressions. This is a good method to detect core events, because this is where my disorders shines through most obviously. I do know what is legally right and wrong. It is much more clear than just looking for events in my life, which might be odd or not.

Because for me, my behavior did not appear to be particularly unreasonable or strange. Little fights in Middle Schools? Is this not normal? I mean, I did not stabbed anyone, right? But then comparing it to my peers, I recall 2 fights in my entire school career I was not involved. Oops! And although I was not send to detention - the school had a very inconsequent way of dealing with things and I was already too good at slipping away at this point - I know that it was "technically a misdemeanor", so I began to include that too.

As a result, I was able to observe a pattern of resorting to violence as means of keeping people in check. In my opinion, I never proactively sought violence or a fight, so I was never thinking about it too much. My therapist back then - currently needing for one who can keep me for longer - explained it is instrumental aggresion. This was actually a key detail, I never realized. Before, I thought I was just reacting and punishing people as means of defense, but her explanation made sense - I do use it as a method to get things I want, even though there is not much I want.

And as said, a lot of these things are recurring patterns, even reaching into adulthood. So I could reflect upon that, considering alternative approaches, and also double checking if violence is even necessary. Not saying that I became some sort of Samoyed, but it helped me to consider better strategies before jumping to action. It showed me, I am in control, I always have been, and in a certain sense, helped me to accept responsibility. It is not "well I did it because person x did that" but "yeh person x did that and I reacted by doing this then".

It also helped me to discover potential socialization flaws and discerning the differences between my biography and those of most others. Even though this is not relevant for the diagnosis itself, people with such diagnosis often have a different biographical pathway than those without and working out the difference also helped me considering the distinct childhood and early teenagehood experience.

Later, I also began to add some fun stories, such as the boat-tour. Nothing particularly ASPD-related, but I wanted to go through some good memories too. Ironically, I began to see my flaws even where. Number 1 on a school trip? You know you have to wait where then, right? My planning skills have never been the best huh? Right now I was working on an episode for the third season after the summer break.

I realized that against my previous memories, I had friends. I reflected upon why I said something else in earlier episodes and figured out that I project my struggle to love others as a lack of love towards me. I am not sure if this is precisely ASPD, as I have no chances right now to ask, but it definately helped me with depressive symptomatics and also made me actually wonder, how said friend is today. We see? Different connections are made and integrating various emotional stages throughout life even helped me to build some sort of emotional connections and reflect upon my heedlessness.

I also picked up on so much more manipulation instances and headlessness, and even though I will never be able to willing to show all of them, I can see that it is part of my overall personal development. I genuinely thought by age 20 I got good, like "normal" type of good with some slips here and then. But now I see that they remained stable. But now I feel like I am aware of them and can tackle them.

But before my diary, what I think was most helpful were motivational approaches. One might be surprised to read it, but I have been fairly religious throughout my life. I could say I tried out all sorts of religions, even though I dropped most of them after a while again. I found the idea of heavenly reward, paradisical bliss, or simply superiority attractive. Just, rewards in the afterlife are not keeping me engaged for long.

Other motivations included better job opportunities, status, money, a mother who genuinely bonded with me, even though it eventually broke. I blame my mute cousin over this, because he sucked out the attention at some point. He had his own parents, why did he had to take mine? I just lost a mother before. But the afterlives are not fair, so why should life be fair?

I think also notable - even if unrelated to therapy itself - is my transition from elementary school to the next school. I have no idea how it is called in English and I am too lazy to check right now. Weekly feedback on my behavior, a feeling of superiority, a mother who taught me strategies to handle problems in a way I get out better. Rewards for good behavior. It helped me to set foot at school and getting good grades for a year. Afterwards, it declined again, got boring and I just could not force myself anymore. But we could use my previous grades and behavior as leverage for switching me to a higher school.

I liked the idea that I could get better payment with good grades. And beign able to decide which job I perform. Always hoped I could once become a Game Designer at Nintendo, even though I never prepared for it. For example, I never learned Japanese to work at Nintendo. I just expected things to magically turn out in my favor. But nonetheless, it kept me at school at least and away from drugs. I kinda admired the nerds who got good grades without much time or effort. So I learned how to navigate the education system with investing as less time as possible. Sure school got boring at some point either way, but then my school career became part of my everyday life and it was just normal. I tried to keep balancing my moods by socializing and playing sports (Also skipped loooooots of school days but psst).

From all therapeutic methods, what helped me the least was a form of autism therapy I once tried, because of the shared struggles in navigating emotions and appropriate behavior. This was the best way to learn first hand that ASPD and autism misbehavior do not intersect. Not saying they cannot co-occur, but they are not the same. I see why some people dissuade against teaching emotional insights for pwASPD. If anything it helped me to predict emotional reactions even better and using it to get out of trouble, trouble some might want me to be in, perhaps.

But I already was a great actor, so it really was just me complaining about my parents, and thats it. It teaches how you should behave, but I already know that. It does not motivate me to care, the thing I struggle much more. And my anger is not the result of some sort of overload. Autism behavioral therapy was probably the most useless thing I ever tried out. Too bad, that therapy places taking in pwASPD are rare, and even more rare are places which keep us permanently. Until then I am stuck with my beloved diary series.

This response would not be complete without also listening the downside of my diary therapy method: As stated before, it connects different aspects of my life to a coherent overall presonal profile. While it is designed to capture the relevant traits of my disorder, it also runs danger at constructing a personality picture overly emphasizing my worse traits and giving them more space than they actually deserve.

A lenghty yet read-worthy article on the development of psychopathy from the young age to later life.

There is increasing evidence that psychopathy is less of a moral failure, but similar to a neurological developmental disorder severely impending emotional and moral processing.

This article explores in lenght the stages of development from the first signs of psychopathic traits (CU traits), to adulthood, and discussing prognosis, therapy-methods, and improvement of symptoms in adulthood, as well as potential limits so far, but also future chances for better healing methods.

One of the most surprising findings might be, how effective a reward-driven therapeutic methods has made promising progress among psychopathic youth, indicating that incarceration, lost, and severe anti-social behaviors are not destiny.

It also explores the development of empathic behavior, religious refuge, and family building upon therapeutic interventions among psychopathic children.