Blog post on "Confessions of a Sociopath"

“Confessions of a Sociopath” by M. E. Thomas is sort of a memoir explaining her life. She explains how she is a sociopath, and clinically diagnosed. She shares with us what separates “normal” humans from sociopaths. She uses many examples in the few pages that I have read about how sociopaths are very similar to “ordinary” people and the probability that we too or someone close to us is a sociopath too.

One example of how M. E. Thomas shows us people we may see everyday could be a sociopath is using a some what  relatable situation. One example is she starts off the book by telling us a story of herself about to kill a baby opossum, it was in her pool and was already struggling to stay alive, she was planning to drown it but didn’t because it wasn’t worth her energy. She didn’t find moral issues to killing the opossum she just didn’t want to waste her energy. But she tells us how she was canceling a swim lesson so that she could kill the opossum. The parents of the child that was receiving the swim lessons doesn’t know that the woman that is teaching their child is a sociopath, who almost attempted to kill a baby opossum with no problem at all. This shows us how the most unexpected people can be a sociopath, and that they can seem just like the most normal people, but in reality they are the most idiosyncratic people there are. Another example of how anyone could be a sociopath is another story that she tells us from her life where she is in the Washington D.C metro station and she gets stopped out of her way. “HIM: That’s trespassing! Don’t  you know it is wrong to trespass! The escalator was closed, you broke the law!’ … I felt so sure of myself, so focused on this one thing I felt I had to do. An image sprang to to my mind of my hands wrapped around his neck, my thumbs digging deeply into his throat, his life slipping away from under my unrelenting grasp. How right would that feel.” Here is an example of how someone that is simply telling her the right thing to, and her reaction is that she wants to murder him because he corrected her. This makes you think that you may tell someone to stop what they are doing, but they could be a sociopath and in their mind may be planning a way to kill you because you proved them wrong. This is also showing us that someone very random that you could bump you on the street could be a sociopath and you wouldn’t have any idea. These are two examples of how someone you really trust or a complete stranger could be a sociopath and you wouldn’t know.

To conclude M. E. Thomas is showing us that sociopaths are everywhere. She isn’t telling us be careful, cautious, or paranoid everywhere we walk. In this particular chapter she really telling us that you have to accept that there are sociopaths and that you really shouldn’t be in constant fear, because it’s normal and your whole life you hadn’t been afraid, but only now, while reading this book, you decide to be afraid.