Does my brother have ASPD or is he normal?

[BurnedOut]

One of my cousins is an interesting person. He is universally hated by all the extant relatives of my great grandpa who founded the family. Not only dad his paternal relatives hate him too. And to show you his infamy, consider this - he has people of nearly 3 generations hating him from maternal and paternal side which will be roughly over 30 people roughly who know him personality excluding everybody who hate him for knowing his deeds. That's odd given how borderline pathological people are able to secure a relatively stable position vis-a-vis long-time acquaintances.

His mother was a brute when he was a kid. It is hard to say if she became a brute because of him because his sister has less of his pathological behavior with similar upbringing - perhaps even slightly underprivileged. She quite younger than him but has earned more reputation which is a topic I will soon come back to. He is quite creative and has been as a child. We both showed good mechanical aptitude and above average grasping skills but he went sideways regarding his education.

As early as 6-7, my brother could take people on a ride with his conversation skills and soon after that he was effortlessly lying without compunction. By 10-12 he was lying for the sake of seeming grandiose and by 14 he was sort of a pathological liar who would lie just about anything for no reason without realizing that the people whom he lied to could 9/10 times figure out his bullshit.

By 18 he was nearly arrested for drunk driving with a third-hand car without documents bought from a scrap dealer with some bad company. Story has it that he was the driver and ended up ramming into a politician's wife's car if I remember correctly. Because of his uncle's friendship with certain people, he got off. We both still joyously laugh at that and it is known as the GTA incident. Despite the fact that I still find it funny, it probably highlights that the whole experience was not discouraging but exhilirating. He used to be frequently be caught with porn, cigs and pretty much anything that was no permissible and it was a meme among my cousins that he's the worst possible criminal because all his crimes are out in the open. He was in the habit of regularly stealing money and did not care after being caught several hundred times.

He has a sort of a charisma and many people get beguiled by him on a regular basis because he comes off as a calm-headed fun-loving guy who does not experience anxiety much. I have not seen him feeling either anxious or guilty even in the face of his mother's possible death and he got her an expensive phone whilst borrowing money for his train ticket. Relationships were easy for him to get over and he has a new set of friends regularly and seems to somehow to oftentimes lead people at work under him or having a group of punks following him around but I don't know if there is any loyalty or not.

He loves drinking and possibly women and drugs. Everybody suspects him of blowing up money on fun and not having much to send home or sometimes even buy tickets but has no qualms with buying new phones every now and then and being lackadaisical about the payments.

He tells me that I am his only friend and we have a great time together most of the times and thinks that we are similar which I won't flatout deny. I probably have the callousness and uncaring nature minus outright recklessness and status-quo maintainence over time. We both like to be around people but don't care much in their absence. He is able to empathize with me and is very caring from time to time towards his family but sometimes just flips and goes the opposite way. I won't say that he is unemotional because he certainly is but similar to me as he is able to switch it off completely from to time. We both have random spurts of extreme emotions and cherish cuddling and human company but only with decades-old acquaintances or with people tete-a-tete and both of us do not care at all about what anybody things of us but he is constantly annoyed by the fact that I am hypervigilant about not being caught and sometimes accuses me of psychopathy (lol, given this post)

The truth is that I am more fascinated than angry at him given how my relationship with him is the only stable one he has got but none of his rely on each other but always have fun together. But lately he's been pissing me off because his actions towards family are causing direct consequences at my house.

What are your thoughts?

 

[ZenRaiden]

Nothing in the post suggests he is bad person.
I do think he could be labelled as ASDP.
The question is where does his behavior stem from.
Reckless behavior is quite common among people. I assume he is younger.
Stealing and having no remorse is indicator that there is something wrong.

Just playing armchair psychologist, Id say no to ASDP. However since ASDP is just bunch of symptoms he kind of fits them.

If he were psychopathic his behavior would stem from not caring.

I suspect he was generously abused physically, which can contribute to callousness of sorts.
You were abused as well.
So that kind of figures.

 

[EndogenousRebel]

Definitely not psychopath. They usually have a hard time empathizing and connection with people in early years of life.

Charming socially conscious psychopaths are rare.

You do describe a typical antisocial person though when you mention that he pretty much has no social capital in most circles. These people go from circle to circle and suck dry all the trust they have to give.

Chances are that if 30 people you know don't like him, he may well be antisocial.

Still can't tell if this is a worthy diagnosis ASPD. He might just be a little narcissistic, and that could explain everything.

 

[ZenRaiden]

Actually here is few more considerations, because I kind of think its worth noting them.
This said everything I know is pretty much internet study and general personal opinion to be taken as just that.
I know nothing of you and your friend.
But this was my first knee jerk consideration.

Your friend sounds callous. And a hypocrite.
I think for starters I think his behavior mirrors behavior of the people like his parents.
So your friend decided early on in life, that people are mean and callous.
So he had no empathy from his family and grew callous himself. Which is kind of common. I think you also display negativity and callousness of sorts, which made you connect with him. Neither him or you are callous though.
He acts like hypocrite, because he internalized this message. He learned that people are hypocrites and therefore that gives him free pass to be the same way.
Essentially a kind of golden rule. IF everyone is asshole, I might as well be too.
I think from your earlier posts you seem to kind of agree that people are hypocrites.
And so you kind of have a respect for him, because deep down you kind of think he is basically just doing openly what most people do covertly.

He loves drinking and possibly women and drugs. Everybody suspects him of blowing up money on fun and not having much to send home or sometimes even buy tickets but has no qualms with buying new phones every now and then and being lackadaisical about the payments.

Most of this is just low consciousness behavior. Your friend might become the next billionaire for all we know. None of this necessarily is end of the world type of stuff.
To be honest most people today on top of the food chain behave this way.
SO when some people internalize this and act on it, I doubt its really a big deal.
Its certainly not something you can do everyday and become successful.
But recognizing this is part of life.
You can be self destructive asshole, and be a good person at the same time.
You can also be goodietwoshoes and lead a perfectly horrible life.

Another thing worth considering is that "friends are overrated", how many people out there connect with "friends" come a moment of truth and they leave you.
A lot of people behave like friends, but aren't.
So in today's shallow culture I prefer people who don't act the part of friend.
Plus how much is he using people really? Is he leading them on and abusing them or is he just having fun. Big difference.

Another question is why people don't like him. What is the subject of his lying.
That is very important, because generally I had most of the time experience that people tend to lie about stuff. I never really got the impression that lying is some "taboo" behavior reserved only for antisocial creeps.
I prefer honest people myself, and I prefer to be honest with people.
Most times when I lie, its omission, to avoid problems that mean nothing or I lie because its not a good thing to say. Ergo if I am going to say the truth and I think its going to cause harm I reserve my self from saying it.

So there is lot of angles we could approach this guy with.
Generally bad behavior is simply bad behavior.
What underlines bad behavior can be a sum of many factors.

These people go from circle to circle and suck dry all the trust they have to give.

Question is if he himself does not have trust issues. Ergo its easy to betray trust of people, when you don't trust them to begin with.

 

[Cognisant]

Burned you sound like a woman that wants to fuck him, he's such a bad boy but he's so fascinating.

He's just a scumbag, the sort of no-hoper that's going to end up in prison or dead in a ditch someday. A man who doesn't have integrity is just a mad dog waiting to be put down because as long as he lives he's going to make it everyone's problem.

People like this are very notable when they're wealthy (usually due to having wealthy parents) so there's a perception that this kind of behaviour correlates with success. But if you think about it for just a moment, let's say the wealthy are 1% of the population and you live in a city of one million people. That's ten thousand people, and let's say 1% of those are notable for their bad behaviour, that's 100 people going around who are notable for being everyone's problem.

Name me five wealthy well known people from your closest city who are known for their bad reputations. I'm absolutely certain you cannot, because people like this are rare and the wealthy ones are as rare as hen's teeth.

Most wealthy people don't flaunt it, they don't need to show off, everyone that needs to know already knows and thus most wealthy people are far more concerned with blending in with society so they don't paint a target on their back. Unless they're a billionaire in which case hiding is futile so they have an entourage of bodyguards wherever they go.

 

[ZenRaiden]

Name me five wealthy well known people from your closest city who are known for their bad reputations. I'm absolutely certain you cannot, because people like this are rare and the wealthy ones are as rare as hen's teeth.

I remember watching TV documentary about this guy. He was all alone. Had posters of Diana at home and magazines of here. Never married, never had kids, never drank, never did anything. He looked just like everyone else. He dressed well. He looked like everyday Joe. He was running a multimillion business. No one knew he even existed.
Would you consider him successful?

 

[BurnedOut]

This gets interesting now because I have been mulling over memories.

So my brother is a rather sanguine person by nature and is not verbally toxic per se. What causes him to be toxic is his self-centeredness, lazyness and material unconcern for the people he knows but he is certainly not unloving. Perhaps he can love but cannot care. I don't think he's even properly machiavellian given how poorly he thinks of the consequences and regarding psychopathy? He is very unconcerned (note the word) but not hurtful or mean but rather gentle and generally wants to have fun and gets bored rather quickly. I get urges to cause social destruction but don't find myself being unconcerned about my loved ones but there have been more instances of me going out of the way to chase someone than him. He moves on and does not hold anger and I am able to similarly move on but people are usually worried about getting on my bad side unlike his friends towards him.

As children, we grew up together and enjoyed a lot of destructive activities including tripping the electricity in a hotel room. Similarly negative experiences do not seem to cause any inhibitory responses because I learn by understanding that certain actions don't yield results rather than being fearful about being disturbed. So laughing at gore and talking about all sorts of taboo is normal between us. We never fought and never had a fallout and he had even stolen some of my money which really hurt me but then this year he gifted me with green plants twice so I have a pretty poor memory of hating him.

 

[Cognisant]

Name me five wealthy well known people from your closest city who are known for their bad reputations. I'm absolutely certain you cannot, because people like this are rare and the wealthy ones are as rare as hen's teeth.

I remember watching TV documentary about this guy. He was all alone. Had posters of Diana at home and magazines of here. Never married, never had kids, never drank, never did anything. He looked just like everyone else. He dressed well. He looked like everyday Joe. He was running a multimillion business. No one knew he even existed.
Would you consider him successful?

Sounds like he can do whatever he wants but that's the lifestyle he chose, so who are you to say he's not successful, how much of your lifestyle is a matter of choice rather than necessity?

 

[ZenRaiden]

So my brother is a rather sanguine person by nature and is not verbally toxic per se. What causes him to be toxic is his self-centeredness, lazyness and material unconcern for the people he knows but he is certainly not unloving. Perhaps he can love but cannot care. I don't think he's even properly machiavellian given how poorly he thinks of the consequences and regarding psychopathy? He is very unconcerned (note the word) but not hurtful or mean but rather gentle and generally wants to have fun and gets bored rather quickly. I get urges to cause social destruction but don't find myself being unconcerned about my loved ones but there have been more instances of me going out of the way to chase someone than him. He moves on and does not hold anger and I am able to similarly move on but people are usually worried about getting on my bad side unlike his friends towards him.

You aren't your behavior.

As children, we grew up together and enjoyed a lot of destructive activities including tripping the electricity in a hotel room. Similarly negative experiences do not seem to cause any inhibitory responses because I learn by understanding that certain actions don't yield results rather than being fearful about being disturbed. So laughing at gore and talking about all sorts of taboo is normal between us. We never fought and never had a fallout and he had even stolen some of my money which really hurt me but then this year he gifted me with green plants twice so I have a pretty poor memory of hating him.

Generally I prefer building. But my brother was ISTP he liked destroying things. He liked pranking people. He liked slapstick humor and he liked screwing up.
I think its important part of life. I think a lot of society sees this as negative, but unless you are doing something super shady its important to be a badass sometimes.
I think people who never get to live this part of life, actually are doing disservice to themselves. Its important though to not go overboard.
Like there is a fine line between blowing shit up or getting into a fight or being asshole and being a complete deranged psycho.
So in my understanding being naughty is OK as long as it does not lead to permadamage. Plus YOLO.

 

[ZenRaiden]

Sounds like he can do whatever he wants but that's the lifestyle he chose, so who are you to say he's not successful, how much of your lifestyle is a matter of choice rather than necessity?

I think that is sad life. TO not experience love and connection that is sad.
That being said nothing in that negates success.
But I was actually asking a question. It was not rhetorical.
Maybe your opinion differs.

 

[Cognisant]

I think that is sad life. TO not experience love and connection that is sad.
That being said nothing in that negates success.

If that's your opinion then mine doesn't differ.

 

[ZenRaiden]

I think that is sad life. TO not experience love and connection that is sad.
That being said nothing in that negates success.

If that's your opinion then mine doesn't differ.

Ok