M.E. Thomas: Right. No, it's a good question. President, yeah. President who's a sociopath. I think there are advantages too being a sociopath in all those careers that you mentioned. The problem would be if you didn't know that they're a sociopath, right?
Having a psychologist who's a sociopath, I was actually nick named the little psychologist in my family growing up. Because there it was always very easy for me to identify people's motivations. So I would say things like, "The only reason you're doing this is because you're hurt that such and such, such and such happened a week ago, and now you're trying to do this in order to accomplish this". And people were pretty amazed that I was able to identify these things. Even in the adult world.
And so I think that, sociopaths can be very helpful. As a psychologist or a therapist, if what you're concerned about is identifying some of your own motivations. But a sociopath, if you didn't know that they were a sociopath, it would be very easy for them too manipulate you, and use you probably.
Would they do it? I think, you know, that it depends on the person and a lot of people, sociopaths are just, you know using and abusing people is not something that we necessarily need to do, or even want to do. It's just.
Rob Kall: They like to do it. You described in your book repeatedly that you like to, it's it's the way you have fun. And its one of your favorite, almost one of your favorite challenges is to kind of get inside people's head, manipulate them, make them feel that you are in control, and give yourself that feeling that you're in control. That's like, a major game that you've described you play, right?
M.E. Thomas: Yes. So the, but the thing about it is not too, the thing that's appealing to me is as you say, the the control. The power, being able to do this to another person. It's, it would be like if you, if you, I don't know, if you could hit a ball very far, right? And the, the result, if you only liked the, the hitting, the physicality of the hitting, right?
Here, here's maybe a better example. So my family, we, we scuba dive sometimes. And my parents really love the fish. And think that the fish are beautiful. But when I'm scuba diving, it's all about the control. Keeping my buoyancy perfectly optimal, being able to remain perfectly still, even if there's a current.
Things like that are interesting to me, not necessarily these, these other things. So using and abusing is not, I'm not necessarily looking to use and abuse people. That's not the thing that's enticing me about the power games. The power games is more an exercise of my personal control. The effects that it has on another person, they're, they're very ancillary, I don't, I don't even think about them necessarily. And as I've kind of grown older and tried to have more stable relationships, I, I at least try to mitigate any harm from these power games. And I try to make them consensual as well.
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