Reading sociopaths

beekie

I'm curious what your opinions might be about the tarot picking up on or reflecting a sociopath.

I was actually engaged to one years ago, and I went to get a post-breakup reading. Of course the lady knew nothing about my situation. She was reading that he was a great guy blah blah, and when I told her our history, she said she can't read sociopaths.

But it got me thinking, can the cards help identify this type of person or is it up to the reader to be able to intuit certain characteristic from the cards?

Or can a sociopath straight up not be read? I remember I tried reading about him and received no real warning type cards. I feel like he flew under the tarot "radar" haha!

What are your thoughts?
 

Barleywine

I have doubts about tarot being able to reliably pick up psychological traits of any kind, so I don't use it much for psychological profiling of other people. It seems to work better in this way for self-reading. I mostly use it for situational awareness and developmental insight in an action-and-event oriented sense. So I don't do "love" readings or "thinks/feels" kind of readings.
 

headincloud

Tarot is great at psychological profiling and a sociopath IMHO is reflected in 5Srx, there's no reason a sociopath's energy can't be read any more than someone with borderline personality or a histrionic character, sounds like a cop out to me.

Other supporting cards could be any of the kings/Queens rx, fool rx, magician rx who is schizophrenic given supporting surrounding cards but the fool leans towards bi-polar and the empress rx is also mental illness due to emotional imbalance.
 

Padma

Devil and Magician rx seem like a good indicator/baseline marker of narcissism, or other difficulties balancing the mind. Even 2 of Pents reversed could show someone struggling to cope, a could the Swords suit.
 

SunChariot

I'm curious what your opinions might be about the tarot picking up on or reflecting a sociopath.

I was actually engaged to one years ago, and I went to get a post-breakup reading. Of course the lady knew nothing about my situation. She was reading that he was a great guy blah blah, and when I told her our history, she said she can't read sociopaths.

But it got me thinking, can the cards help identify this type of person or is it up to the reader to be able to intuit certain characteristic from the cards?

Or can a sociopath straight up not be read? I remember I tried reading about him and received no real warning type cards. I feel like he flew under the tarot "radar" haha!

What are your thoughts?
There is nothing the cards can't tell us, imo. But it's a question of if the reader is likely to see it and understand it as intended. They mght see it for a moment but push it away thinking it is not likely it would mean thtat. But sometimes the answer is something unlikely. So I guess depends on the skill of the reader. But yes, I beleive that cards can tell us anything, including that.

Babs
 

Grizabella

I was surprised a few years ago when I read an article that said there are varying degrees of sociopathy/psychopathy and that we live with and deal with millions of them in our lifetime without even knowing it. The ones who are at the extremely dangerous end of that category are hard to miss in person, but I don't think we'd be able to pick that up in the cards unless we were educated the way a psychiatrist or psychologist is. While a lot of or readings are done with higher than normal levels of intuitive ability, I think we'd be more likely to just pick up on things like the sense that a certain person is mentally unstable.
 

TarotNewbie1

I’m very new to tarot cards but in my novice humble opinion, I agree with headincloud that tarot cards can sense the energy of a sociopath just like it can pick up a personality trait, mental illness, and/or personality disorder. Many tarot cards can indicate a sociopath.

As headincloud mentioned, Five of Swords reversed (this person hurts just because they can; it gives them pleasure, control, and power), Magician reversed (the charismatic sociopath; con man) and Kings/Queens reversed particularly the Queen of Cups reversed (lacks empathy; fake emotions; uses the victim card to get what they want) and the King of Swords and King of Pentacles (high functioning sociopaths; think sociopathic leaders, dictators, or your boss/co-worker who makes your life hell lol). And as Padma mentioned, certainly the Devil card as well (the deviant, demonic, obsessive, arrogant sociopath; traps his victims psychologically and emotionally; wants to spread evil).

In addition to the cards mentioned, I would also add the Moon reversed (psychotic; crazy; delusional; bi-polar; psychopath), Seven of Swords reversed (low level sociopath; the liar; greedy; sneaky; selfish; lack of remorse; immoral; enjoys getting away with crime type of sociopath), Three of Swords reversed (heartless; no emotions or capacity for empathy), 10 of Swords reversed (environmental sociopath; they were likely tortured, abused and/or neglected themselves), Tower reversed (the sociopath who enjoys creating chaos; can wreck havoc in the lives of others), Eight of Cups reversed (the sociopath that is a loner bc they can’t relate to other’s emotions; nonviolent sociopath), and Death reversed (Morbid Sociopath; the murderer).

If you don't use reversed cards, I would look at the other cards in the spread and use your intuition.
 

Debra

I just wonder, why would you need to? Sociopaths are predictably sociopathic. Same goes for people with other strong, clear symptoms of psychological disorder. Once you recognize that someone has such a mental disorder, it's not their behavior that matters so much--it's yours. :heart:
 

6655321

Here's what this sounds like to me.

There are a lot of people with a wide range of mental illnesses. Most of them function fine and don't even know it. In fact, I would almost go so far as to say that most people are functioning with some level of mental illness and that there is no “normal” except this feels like it's minimizing the struggles some folks have with mental illness. Everyone isn't “a little OCD” or “bi-polar” these are specific diagnosis that not everyone deals with BUT most of us function with some bit of trauma, go through bouts of depression, have some fantastical notions or otherwise deviate from the psychological “norm”. The usage of tarot cards predates modern psychological terminology and thinking so it's wrong to think that it's bound to them. The word sociopath means nothing to the tarot and if the tarot were to only read individuals that fit a specific psychological profile which is a sort of a commonly agreed upon range of psychologically healthy traits, most people would somehow deviate. In short, if the tarot cards only applied to psychologically “healthy” people who would it apply to? The cards “work” for everyone.


There's a few ways you can look at your reading / situation. Perhaps the reader was imposing their own impressions on the reading and covering up their tracks when you mentioned the reality of the situation. As for your reading I'd put it down to two factors; the first factor being that any reading provides only a limited amount of information so maybe you were getting valid enough readings but the information just wasn't what would have been most useful, and the second, being in the relationship made you biased and you subconsciously didn't pick up on the cues in the cards which would indicate that your situation was worse than you wanted it to be.
 

Le Fanu

What was the actual diagnosis or did you diagnose him yourself? Do doctors use the word sociopath - surely there are degrees and variations and prominent traits that vary from person to person? So often people are disgnosed based on buzzfeed articles - "how to recognise the signs of etc etc" - and we say "ooh, that's him!"

Of course the reader could just have missed the point, not got the reading right and then tried to cover herself. But there's no reason why all types of people can be read for.