The Antisocial Types
Antisocials are the simplest of vampires, but also the most dangerous. All they want out of life is a good time, a little action, and immediate gratification of their every desire. If they can use you to accomplish these goals, nobody is more exciting, charming, or seductive. If you stand in their way, you’re dog meat. Antisocials, like all vampires, are immature. On their best days, they function at the level of early teenagers. On their worst, they can give infants a run for their money (which, come to think of it, is true of teenagers also).
To be technically accurate, we’re talking about people who have tendencies in the direction of an antisocial personality disorder. Antisocial, in this case, means unsocialized, or heedless of normal social constraints. The name is unfortunate. Like its predecessor, sociopath, it harks back to the days when psychiatric diagnoses were moral judgments rather than personality descriptions. A hundred or so years ago, when this diagnosis was first formulated, it was considered to be the personality type of criminals. It still is. Of all the emotional vampires, Antisocials are the most likely to be involved in illegal behavior.
As we’ll see in the following chapters, illegal behavior is only a small part of the picture, especially in the Antisocial vampires you see on a daily basis. Personality disorders exist along a continuum. At one end are criminals. At the other are exciting, adventurous, grown-up teenagers who are still heavily into sex, drugs, and rock ‘n’ roll.
The other problem with the name is that the colloquial meaning of antisocial suggests people who don’t like parties. This is definitely not true of Antisocials. They like being around people, and they love parties for all the opportunities they present. Wherever there’s fun, you’ll find Antisocials.
In another sense, however, Antisocials are loners. They have a hard time making any sort of commitment because they don’t really trust anybody. Antisocials are convinced that the only human motivation is self-interest. They are predators to the core, and proud of it. They are perfectly comfortable with selfishness because they don’t think there’s any other form of motivation.
Antisocials are often damnably attractive and a hell of a lot of fun. Imagine taking a regular person, doubling the energy level, tripling the love of excitement, then switching off the circuitry for worry.
Everybody has felt like that once or twice. Remember prom night, when you were dressed to kill and the air tingled with the scent of carnations and contraband beer. What if every day were filled with those kinds of possibilities? What if there were no little voice inside your head spoiling your fun by reminding you of the terrible things that could happen if you let yourself get too wild? Compared with a life of prom nights, it would be pretty hard to get excited about your day job.
Many social interactions are like job interviews for various positions in your life—friend, lover, colleague, employee, or perhaps even nemesis. If you were placing an advertisement for people to hire into your life enterprise, what would it look like? I put together a composite of employment ads that I believe sums up many people’s fantasy of the ideal employee:
High-energy, enthusiastic self-starter wanted. We’re looking for an independent person who doesn’t need to be told what to do every minute of the day, someone with an entrepreneurial spirit who creates his or her own security by being quick, decisive, flexible, and able to think outside the box. Good social skills and political savvy a must. Apply only if you can turn setbacks into opportunities, and are willing to handle a little risk in return for big rewards. No whiners.
If in your mind you can see this applicant standing there with a big smile, a firm handshake, and a two-stroke handicap, what you’re looking at is an Antisocial vampire—a Ferrari in a world of Toyotas.
Toyotas are safe and practical, but not much fun. Ferraris are dangerously powerful, fabulously expensive, and in the shop more than they are on the road. Still, they’re what we dream about when we buy Toyotas.
After a few months on the job, the person hired from the previous ad might get a performance review that looks like this:
Unreliable and at times even dishonest. Does not accept being told what to do! Convinced that most rules are silly, confining, and made to be broken. Easily bored with day-to-day routine to the point that he or she often cuts corners and leaves important tasks undone. Takes advantage of others and often throws tantrums to get his or her way. Little ability to plan ahead or learn from mistakes. On the personal side, is going through a divorce, has financial difficulties, and is rumored to have problems with alcohol and drugs.
The most important thing to remember about Antisocials is that the ad and the evaluation represent two parts of the same personality. Vampires’ traits, both positive and negative, hang together in identifiable clusters. This book is full of descriptions, examples, and checklists that will teach you more than you ever wanted to know about which traits go with which personality type.
It may not make any difference. Impractical as Ferraris are, people want them. Those who own Ferraris love them enough to pretend that they’re sensible. Aficionados may talk themselves into believing that the Ferrari-Toyota dilemma doesn’t really exist, or that it is the result of an anomaly that can easily be corrected by a skillful enough mechanic. I know this is true because, during my 40 years of work as a therapist and business consultant, people have brought me countless human Ferraris to repair. They think I can somehow get rid of the bad parts and keep the good. I tell them it isn’t possible, but most of the time they don’t believe me.
In making your own existential choices between Ferraris and Toyotas, it doesn’t matter so much which one you pick, only that you know the difference. The people who are most damaged by emotional vampires are those who believe that they can have the speed and exhilaration of a Ferrari with the safety and reliability of a Toyota.
Now we come to our first vampire identification checklist. I’ll be the first to admit that the test is crude in that it relies more on opinions, impressions, and value judgments than on objective facts. The purpose of the checklists is not to make a medical diagnosis, but to help you recognize emotionally draining people before they suck you dry. Your first line of defense is always your own subjective impression that something is amiss. If you’re in doubt, check out your intuitions with other people. This is a good idea even if you are absolutely certain.
Remember the rule from Chapter 2: nobody is all or none. Nobody fits a category completely or not at all. Everybody is made up of a set of characteristics that make him or her unique, and some of those unique people are considerably more emotionally draining than others.
True or False Score one point for each true answer.
Scoring Five or more true answers qualify the person as an Antisocial emotional vampire, although not necessarily for a diagnosis of antisocial personality disorder. If the person scores higher than 10, hold on to your wallet, and your heart.
The specific behaviors covered in the checklist relate to several underlying personality characteristics that define an Antisocial emotional vampire.
At the core of the Antisocial’s personality is a lust for stimulation of all sorts. All the other characteristics seem to arise from that central drive for excitement. At any crossroads, Antisocials will usually choose the path that leads to the most excitement in the least time. They themselves may be completely unaware of this dynamic, yet it explains a good deal of their behavior.
On the positive side, Antisocials are not held back by doubt and worry. They embrace risks and challenges that terrify ordinary people. Most of history’s great deeds of exploration, financial daring, and physical courage have been performed by people who would meet the criteria set down here for Antisocial vampires. From the beginning of time, we have loved these people, thrilled to their exploits, and built monuments to honor their names. We just can’t live with them. Heroes are often as dangerous to their friends as they are to the enemy.
The same drive that leads to courage on battlefields, in sports arenas, and on trading floors leads to boredom with everyday life. The landscape of the Antisocials’ world is made up of scattered peaks of pulse-pounding exhilaration with wide deserts of mind-numbing boredom in between. Throughout those long hours when socialized people content themselves with delaying gratification in order to live up to their obligations, Antisocials are pacing like trapped beasts looking for any way to escape. The day-to-day rules that provide structure and meaning in our lives are merely the bars of their cages. Antisocials don’t see themselves as looking for trouble, only for the chance to be free. Freedom for them, however, means trouble for everybody else.
In their search for constant stimulation, Antisocials are drawn to all things addictive the way lemmings are to cliffs. Sex and drugs are always popular, as are gambling, credit cards, and risky investments with other people’s money. The drug of choice may vary, but the purpose is the same. Under the skin, all addictions are alike in that they provide the rapid change in neurochemistry that is the central goal that Antisocials are striving for.
Antisocials seldom reflect on why they do the things they do; they just do them. To them, planning or consideration of alternatives is unnecessary and boring. On battlefields and playing fields, they are more beautiful than any of us could hope to be because they are free of the worry and doubt that slow us down.
Only over time does it become apparent that most of the decisions that Antisocials make are simply a roll of the dice. From the inside, Antisocials don’t see themselves as making decisions at all. To them, life is a series of inevitable reactions to whatever is happening at the moment. Give them what they want, and they’re cheerful. Frustrate them, and they throw a tantrum. Put them in a boring situation, and they stir up a fuss. They truly believe that their actions are caused by what happens to them. This belief frees them from responsibility and guilt, but it also robs them of the perception of control over their own lives—a view that is one of the essentials for mental health. Worry and doubt may slow us down, but they also provide meaning and continuity to our lives.
Despite their faults, Antisocial vampires are lovable. You’d think that such predatory people would be hated and shunned, but that is far from being the case. Immaturity is the wellspring of attraction and the source of all charm. Vampires make their emotional living by using other people. To survive, they have to be very good at convincing you that they have exactly what you want. In fact, they do have what you want, but seldom for as long as you want it.
Our own immaturity can persuade us that a Ferrari is every bit as practical as a Toyota. Funny how it’s usually the most messed-up part of our personalities that makes the most important decisions.