ya know, you remind me of someone I once met a long time ago. back when I was looking at doctoral programs, I was working in a clinic in downtown Manhattan. this was… not a great place. it was for, well, people who didn’t have any money and couldn’t afford proper psychiatric care, and this was their only option. but it would look good on my application to the programs I would be applying to because the hospital was well-known and had a good reputation for the public service work it did and the relatively high level of care it provided. I learned a lot. this one kid came in. he was… oh, 16? 17? he had been diagnosed with oppositional-defiant disorder with narcissistic features and had been in juvenile detention a couple of times, which was typical. the hospital had a detention wing where he was kept. after he went through intake, and was washed and cleaned up (he was covered in blood from a fight with the cops), they brought him down to the clinic (it was on a different floor) and I got to process him. it wasn’t a complicated task… fill out some forms with his basic info (which we had, but I needed to confirm). name, age, date, etc. He was cooperative. Polite, even. This was a surprise, as this behavior was, right from the start, didn’t fit with ODD. he did like to talk about himself, evincing other narcissistic behaviors and such. over the next couple of days, I met with him a few more times and began to believe he’d been misdiagnosed. over the next couple of weeks, we met every day for group therapy session and again for individual sessions as his initial court appearances were approaching. it became clear to me and the supervising psychiatrist the he had, in fact, been misdiagnosed, and didn’t have ODD. He had Narcissistic Personality Disorder with Borderline features and a collection of garden-variety neuroses, which is weird for a 16 year-old. anyway, this new diagnosis spelled trouble for his legal defense, and he became quite agitated when several psychologists and psychiatrists saw though his little charade. at first he tried to play dumb and pretend like he didn’t know what we were talking about. he tried to come violent, tried to fake the diagnostic criteria for ODD to a tee. Thing is, we’re trained to tell when people are faking. it didn’t work. We saw though his bullshit, and, with his court date getting closer, he realized he wouldn’t be able to plead not-guilty due to mental defect. he’d have to face the full brunt of the charges for the 3 people he murdered because they hurt his feelings by calling him out in some argument during a backyard barbecue. His mom, his dad, and his brother. Murdered. Over a disagreement. And he thought he could get away with it by playing dumb with a team of trained psychiatrists and psychologists. And when he realized it wouldn’t work, and he’d have to face the consequences, he… didn’t take it well. A violent outburst ensued, he tried to attack me and one of the staff psychiatrists, but the orderlies sedated him and restrained him. He was released from isolation the next day, but he just played dumb, pretending like he had no idea what happened, like he didn’t understand what anyone was talking about. I suppose he was faking some sort of metal confusion in an attempt to gain sympathy or to be diagnosed with some other condition. Whatever it was, he figured out quickly that we weren’t buying that either and went back to his room. When he didn’t show for his dinner, he was found in his room. He had somehow gotten hold of a sharp piece of scrap metal and jammed it into his neck, opening up his jugular, bleeding out. We tried to get him downstairs to the ED, but it was too late. Don’t pretend to be stupid. I can tell when a sociopath is lying and playing dumb and trying to escape the consequences of their actions by playing it cute. I wrote my doctoral thesis on it. but don’t expect me to pity you, either, because I know exactly how dangerous you are.