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Anyone else working off 4 different lists in an effort to work as little as possible on Turkey Day? Elaborate preparedness is the goal. I've got 1-menu, 2- shopping list, 3- chores, and 4- a timeline of all that to keep me on track.
In a little jaunt off into randomness, I think my perfect aroma candle or wax scent combo would be white cedar and clove. Both are hard to find, and as far as I know, no one's ever put the two together. Someone create that for me forthwith.
THAT'S RIGHT
Celebrate with me!
I keep running into debates on whether Sherlock misdiagnosed himself because sociopathy and autism spectrum (John mentions aspergers in Hound) are kinda sorta supposed to be mutually exclusive. Basically, sociopaths are really good at social manipulation, aspies suck at it.
How To Tell If It's Autism Or Sociopathy
Mary can tell right away that Sherlock doesn't 'get' human nature, and Sherlock readily admits to it. However, that doesn't mean Sherlock can't study it and use it. He misjudges John, but he doesn't misjudge criminals. He devotes his human studies to criminals and psychopaths.
I grew up not caring about other people's feelings, and my psychologist has interrogated me a few times on narcissistic attitudes and exhibitionist behaviors I've had all my life (and he barely knows the half, even after nearly 8 years). I don't believe that both being on the autism spectrum and being a sociopath are mutually exclusive at all, and I'd go further and suggest that aspergers can enhance sociopathic tendencies. Sociopathy, for all intents and purposes, seems to be a personality adaptation to something, autism spectrum is basically just there to begin with.
The real question is How to Tell a Sociopath from a Psychopath, both of which fall under personality disorders. Autism is not a personality disorder, even though it's clearly a social deficit. A personality disorder is considered a mental illness (a mental illness develops over time), aspergers and autism spectrum are not (they are like a hard drive anomaly). I am aspie and I share some things in common with sociopathy, such as "A failure to feel remorse or guilt", but not every aspie is like that. Some aspies have very deep feelings. Mine were trained out of me, and I became hard. This is something that comes up with my psychologist quite a lot. I feel that if my path in life had been different, I could have kept going right into sociopathy, and that is what I struggle with now, that I didn't. A person doesn't just choose not to be a sociopath, but a person can recognize it in themselves and work around it. I see Sherlock doing that.
Sociopaths tend to be nervous and easily agitated. They are volatile and prone to emotional outbursts, including fits of rage. They are likely to be uneducated and live on the fringes of society, unable to hold down a steady job or stay in one place for very long. It is difficult but not impossible for sociopaths to form attachments with others. Many sociopaths are able to form an attachment to a particular individual or group, although they have no regard for society in general or its rules. In the eyes of others, sociopaths will appear to be very disturbed. Any crimes committed by a sociopath, including murder, will tend to be haphazard, disorganized and spontaneous rather than planned.
Psychopaths, on the other hand, are unable to form emotional attachments or feel real empathy with others, although they often have disarming or even charming personalities. Psychopaths are very manipulative and can easily gain people’s trust. They learn to mimic emotions, despite their inability to actually feel them, and will appear normal to unsuspecting people. Psychopaths are often well educated and hold steady jobs. Some are so good at manipulation and mimicry that they have families and other long-term relationships without those around them ever suspecting their true nature.
The only thing I see at first glance keeping me out of the psychopath diagnosis is that I fail in the charming personality department, I suck at manipulating people because I fail to notice them most of the time, and I can feel emotions, although for a long time I cut them off and have had to learn how to process through them in a sort of time lag. I rarely react immediately to something with how I really feel because I don't realize I'm feeling it until sometimes several days later. It took me years to learn empathy. I do have an agenda, though, and I am almost frighteningly patient, but since I run several tracks at once, I think very few people even suspect it.
I see a bit of debate over whether Sherlock is a true sociopath, and I say sure, why not. I'm on the spectrum, and I know that one diagnosis is not necessarily mutually exclusive of another. A person can show signs of several disorders. Autism used to be diagnosed as schizophrenia quite a bit in the past, and they are two very different things, although, again, not mutually exclusive if an autistic develops schizophrenia. That would be like glitchy hardware trying to use glitchy software. A teacher I had during one of my masters programs spent 30 years assessing children, and he told me if he hadn't met me in person and had only seen the practice assessments we were doing on each other, he'd have pegged me for schizophrenic, but I'm not at all. Even professionals can't tell at a glance sometimes what is really going on with a person.
I can debate the whole nature vs nurture thing till we're all blue. I have a sociology degree and I'm quite fond of pointing out flaws in standard constructs trying to pin down exactly what's wrong with everybody, because anyone can be tagged as mental if you change the angle you're seeing them from. Freud had an unusual obsession with sexuality, does anyone ever question that? I am asexual and I am considered the aberrant one in society. I'm surrounded by people obsessed with all kinds of sex, and I'm the one who's weird. I love seeing things through social psychological lenses. If a sane person grows up in a crazy family, the sane person is the one seen as crazy by the group, and might even feel crazy for not being able to fit in.
Sherlock chooses to stop heinous crimes because it's challenging. He's on the edge all the time, even elaborately planned Magnussen's murder (and called it 'Christmas'), and yet he's on the side of the angels, isn't he? And still someone pops up on the webs and says Oh, he's not a sociopath because typical behaviors are thisthisthis because a textbook says so.
I used to argue with other parents in meetings that kids with ADHD are beneficial to society, since 10% or more of a genetic population is considered a survival trait in anthropology and other studies, and they'd get all upset because they wanted disability money to make up for their exasperations over having children that aren't easy to raise. They didn't like me for sticking up for their kids being normal human beings in general, all things considered. My first grade teacher begged my parents to get me to a psychiatrist (they never did), so I must have obviously stood out, and yet here I am, pretty normal by most standards. And I'm really glad my parents never took me, because back then aspie kids were getting misdiagnosed like crazy. That was before the spectrum thing became fashionable. I read a story of one autie boy being institutionalized and medically tortured after a misdiagnosis and felt horrified. Here are my thoughts on that one. the stupid vs. the catatonic Let's see how big of a mistake that one was. New Study Confirms Electroshock (ECT) Causes Brain Damage
We all fit somewhere on that bell curve, but we have our own subsets of bell curves inside the big one, our own variations on 'normal' within our atypical parameters. It's silly, I think, to debate the finer details over someone's diagnosis as presented if we don't know the whole person. I've seen two different self proclaimed psychiatrists argue online that Sherlock isn't a sociopath. Well, people have told me to my face I'm not autism spectrum, either, based on very tiny bits of observation that don't click into nice little categories. A sociopath can love a friend. Also, I'd love to see further analysis on hints of how the boys were raised, because Mama Holmes isn't exactly the typical housewife herself. I'm a big believer in genetic blueprints.
And, I daresay, everyone fails to diagnose John. They blow him off with PTSD and that's about it. He's more messed up than Sherlock and doing his best to cover it up with rules. He comes across as 'ok' but we all know he's not because he snaps so fast and is just as ready to rumble as anyone, even though he knows better. He's less attached to family than Sherlock is, can't keep a girlfriend until he meets Mary, and is just as brilliant and bossy as Sherlock. Would Sherlock have asked him along if he didn't see those qualities in John? I really doubt it.
The one I wanna know more about is Mike Stamford... He's good, and Sherlock totally trusted him with this huge change in his life.
Ok, back to Turkey Day countdown. Tomorrow I start the food pre-prep. I need to run in for one last grocery trip today because we ran out of milk.
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Aaaaaand I faceplanted on the couch. I'll just run in early tomorrow and then get all over the other chores on my list.
No turkeys were harmed in the writing and coding of this post, although one is half-thawed by now.
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