Sherlock Holmes identifies himself as a High Functioning Sociopath.
Preston McAfee, a brilliant mathematician and economist, took the liberty of profiling a HFS for me:
-a HFS exhudes superficial charm.
-a HFS has a grandiose sense of self.
-a HFS lies pathologically.
-a HFS feigns emotion to meet the need of the present circumstance.
-a HFS has an incapacity for love.
-a HFS is impulsive and has a deep need for stimulation.
-a HFS is unreliable.
-a HFS readily changes their life story as is needed.
Challenge: prove why it is that you identify yourself closely with Sherlock Holmes.
Challenge accepted, my good friend.
This list is daunting. Imagine yourself identifying with it, for a moment.
(I imagine you can't)
Don't worry, it's completely normal if you fail to identify with this profile. Personally, I have never paused to consider myself completely normal. Never (I believe not even once) have I thought to project my own experience on the general public, assuming that my experience is "universal" in any way.
However, I have done my best to identify what is normal. In conversation, I have attempted to make my own thoughts appear similar to others, in an attempt to have ease of communication.
Don't think for a second that I've assumed my thoughts actually parallel to the "normal human experience".
Which is partially why, for some reason, this list hits uncomfortably close to home.
Uncomfortably.
Sherlock Holmes is a HFS. But here's the problem: according to Preston McAfee, he doesn't fit. How so? Don't trouble yourself; I've already pointed it out to you. Sherlock obviously has a capacity for love.
Back up. The proper place to start? "Josh, how would you define Sherlock?"
Now we're asking the right questions.
Sherlock is a HFS that is a bit more human than he anticipated. He matches the profile of a HFS in all ways but the important one: Sherlock can love.
This should be a shock to no one. WEREN'T YOU PAYING ATTENTION?! Sherlock obviously loves. His life is not a coolly calculated game. It is a confusing game of love. A game so complex that only rarely is he forced to reveal his entire hand. And that shocking, revealing card? Always an admission of love.
Sherlock loves. It's painfully obvious, isn't it? Sherlock loves. Mycroft belittles him for it. Moriarty realizes that the only way to beat Sherlock is to threaten the people he loves. Of all the possible things that Magnussen locks onto as a pressure point, it's the people that Sherlock loves that causes any real concern for the consulting detective.
Sherlock's weakness is people. Consistently. Predictably. But not just people; it's the people he loves.
So my definition of Sherlock? A HFS that has the capacity for love, and whose intellect is properly utilized via a Memory Palace.
Ah, the memory palace. Thus far, inaccessible to me. Originally attributed to a Roman Poet (of course), it is known as the Method of Loci. In other words, you store memories in specific mental locations so they are more readily accessible.
(Sounds an awful lot like the Interior Castle, don't you think?)
Not for lack of trying, the "mind palace" has thus far proved inaccessible. I have tried and tried (for literally more than a decade) and have been incapable of producing such a rich mental field of memory.
No bother. It will come.
But imagine, for a second, a HFS without a mind palace. Thoughts occur rapidly: constant reactions to constant stimuli. Without a mind palace to store them, imagine how a high functioning sociopath would react.
A situation begins. Thoughts immediately and continually occur in the mind. They swim around anxiously, but without a proper place to go (like, perhaps into a mind palace), they simply fester in density and chaos.
Suddenly, a question is asked. The situation calls for a response. Without a mind palace to quickly and concisely search for the most proper (read: most genuine) response, the swirling cloud spits back the things that most resemble the prompt.
This is, in the clearest manner, how I would describe my brain in a social situation. Swirling thoughts cloud the present consciousness, and rather than choosing a calculated response, most often a response is returned that simply resembles the tone, the identified hoped-for response, and/or the original purpose of the question asked.
It is not an exchange of character, but rather a reactionary response of likeness.
And it tends to work (superficial charm).
But Sherlock loves, and there's my hope. This whole meaningless system of knowledge has an axis: the love he experiences towards those closest to him. Thus, his HFSness is, first and foremost, human. Human in a basic and beautiful way. He doesn't lack love; instead, love is the very thing that he rotates around. Love is his weakness (read: his strength).
It is for me as well. Now, I lack a mind palace. The method of loci is lost on me. However, love is still the most obvious and identifiable catalyst I can identify for most of my actions. So much so that the whole concept of love terrifies me.
I am afraid to use love in normal conversation, because it seems much too big to simply parallel a prompt. In fact, the ONLY place that I will (reasonably) apply the word "love" is in my prayers. In those times when I know that the word simply cannot be too big, I'll use it to express genuine feeling. It is the card closely guarded, just as it is with Sherlock.
So, even though the Method of Loci has been fruitless in my own life, the Method of Foci has been largely successful.
And the Foci is, undeniably, love.
So yes, profile the high functioning sociopath. It will bear a striking, shocking, and downright unsettling resemblance to my inner life.
But, like Sherlock, I am set apart by love. And so are many great saints. Living saints. The kind that are currently moving this world a little closer to its telos. The kind of people that will bring about the Kingdom Proclaimed.
"Good old Watson! You are the one fixed point in a changing age. There's an east wind coming all the same, such a wind as never blew on England yet. It will be cold and bitter, Watson, and a good many of us may wither before its blast. But it's God's own wind none the less, and a cleaner, better, stronger land will lie in the sunshine when the storm has cleared."
-Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, His Last Bow (the last appearance [chornologically] of Sherlock Holmes), set in September 1914.
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