Max Littman, LCSW
November 11, 2026
Most of us would probably resist the suggestion that we have antisocial tendencies. We may think of ourselves as considerate, ethical, compassionate, and generally invested in the well-being of others. More plainly, many of us expend significant psychic energy on being a “good person”. We recognize the importance of relationships, understand social expectations, and make efforts not to hurt people. Even when we behave selfishly, we usually have some awareness of how our behavior might affect someone else.
From an Internal Family Systems (IFS) perspective, however, I wonder whether antisocial qualities are far more common than we realize, and whether the distinction between someone considered antisocial and someone considered prosocial is less about the presence of certain parts and more about which parts have influence over behavior.
I’m not necessarily referring to antisocial personality disorder, psychopathy, or a desire to cause harm. I’m interested in something less extreme, less definitive, and perhaps more difficult to recognize: parts that have little intrinsic interest in interpersonal connection, that regard other people primarily in terms of their usefulness, and that don’t necessarily consider another person’s experience relevant to their objectives.
For these parts, other people may be resources, transactional objects, means to an end, or occasionally obstacles to overcome. They need not dislike anyone or derive pleasure from another person’s suffering. Their orientation may be one of indifference rather than hostility. Another person’s needs, feelings, or interests simply don’t factor very heavily into their considerations, if they factor in at all.
This raises an interesting question about how our internal systems are organized, particularly the relationship between parts concerned with protecting our own interests and those invested in belonging, reciprocity, and social responsibility.
The Self-Interest of Protective Parts
Within IFS, we understand protective parts as organized around particular concerns, usually involving safety, attachment, dignity, control, or some other aspect of our well-being. Not all protectors are narrowly self-interested. Some are deeply invested in caring for others, preserving relationships, or maintaining moral commitments, even at considerable personal expense.
Other protectors, however, can become so focused on their responsibilities that the interests of other people become secondary or irrelevant.
Consider a part that wants to win an argument with a romantic partner. Perhaps it exaggerates, the partner’s wrongdoing, selectively remembers evidence, or uses something vulnerable the partner once disclosed to gain the upper hand. Another part might recognize that this is unfair or hurtful, but the part fighting to win may be much more concerned with avoiding humiliation, helplessness, or defeat.
Or consider a part that wants professional recognition. Under certain circumstances, it might take more credit than it deserves, quietly undermine a colleague, or withhold information that could help someone else succeed. The part may not experience itself as malicious. It may simply believe that opportunities are scarce and that someone else’s success threatens its own security.
Other examples may be less dramatic. A part might maintain a friendship primarily because the person offers access to certain opportunities, reach out to someone only when it needs something, or lose interest in a relationship once it no longer serves a useful purpose. The other person isn’t necessarily disliked or resented. They may simply be regarded as useful rather than as someone with whom a meaningful relationship is desired.
Self-interest alone is not antisocial. We need parts that advocate for us, establish boundaries, pursue opportunities, and protect us from exploitation. Nor does a lack of interest in emotional closeness necessarily imply disregard for others. Many relationships are appropriately transactional, and we can interact with people instrumentally while still respecting their autonomy, dignity, and well-being.
The more consequential distinction concerns what happens when another person’s legitimate interests conflict with our own. Does their experience carry any weight? Does the possibility of deceiving, exploiting, or otherwise harming them influence our decisions? Or does the part proceed as though the other person were simply another variable to manage?
The Parts That Mediate Our Social Lives
Alongside our more narrowly self-interested protectors, most of us have parts that are deeply invested in belonging. These parts learn the rules of relationships and communities, often beginning very early in life. They observe facial expressions, recognize shifts in tone, anticipate how others might interpret our behavior, and help us navigate the countless spoken and unspoken agreements that make social life possible.
They understand, to varying degrees, that we inhabit a shared reality. Other people have their own experiences, needs, perspectives, vulnerabilities, and interests. Our actions carry meanings beyond what we intended, and our relationships depend partly on our willingness to recognize those meanings.
Some of these parts are concerned with ethics and morality. Others are motivated more by social acceptance, reputation, fear of punishment, or the desire to avoid shame. Many operate through a combination of these concerns.
We might think of this as a form of social mediation, carried out by different parts of our internal systems.
These parts can interrupt an impulse before it becomes a hurtful remark. They can remind us that a colleague’s mistake doesn’t justify public humiliation, that our partner’s vulnerability shouldn’t become ammunition, or that getting what we want isn’t always worth what it costs someone else. They may also encourage us to consider whether we’re genuinely interested in another person or primarily invested in what that person can provide.
They help us participate in the co-construction of reality. Rather than insisting that our interpretation is the only legitimate one, they allow for negotiation, perspective-taking, accountability, and the possibility that another person’s experience is just as real as our own.
Of course, these parts aren’t necessarily Self-led. They may be highly burdened, preoccupied with appearing good, avoiding rejection, or maintaining an acceptable social identity. Their restraint can be driven by fear rather than compassion. Nevertheless, they can serve an important function in moderating the behavior of other protectors.
This raises another interesting possibility. How much of our consideration for other people comes from genuine concern for their well-being, and how much comes from parts that understand the social consequences of failing to consider them?
Someone might refrain from exploiting another person because they genuinely care about that person’s welfare. Someone else might refrain because they fear rejection, shame, punishment, or damage to their reputation. Both may behave identically, despite having very different internal motivations.
Meanwhile, other parts within either person’s system might be willing to act quite differently if those social consequences were eliminated.
What Distinguishes Antisocial Behavior?
Perhaps one useful way to think about certain antisocial tendencies is that some protective parts have considerable freedom to act outwardly, with relatively little mediation from parts invested in interpersonal connection, social responsibility, mutuality, or the consequences of their actions for others.
Someone who routinely approaches relationships transactionally, manipulates people to obtain what they want, or disregards another person’s needs may be operating through protective strategies that are not meaningfully constrained by these social considerations.
This person may understand social rules perfectly well. They might even be exceptionally skilled at reading people, anticipating reactions, and recognizing what others value. The difference may be that this understanding is used primarily to advance their own interests rather than to support reciprocity or mutual care.
In this sense, social intelligence and social responsibility are not the same thing.
There are also important differences between not recognizing another person’s experience, understanding it without feeling emotionally affected, caring but prioritizing one’s own needs, and deliberately using knowledge of another person’s vulnerabilities for personal gain. These experiences may look similar from the outside, but they can reflect very different internal processes.
Research on empathy, mentalization, and antisocial personality functioning suggests that difficulties in understanding others, emotionally resonating with them, and incorporating their experiences into one’s decisions do not necessarily occur together. Psychiatrist Anthony Bateman and psychoanalyst Peter Fonagy, for example, have explored how difficulties with mentalization can contribute to antisocial functioning, particularly under conditions of emotional or interpersonal stress.
From an IFS perspective, we might wonder whether some parts are actively disregarding another person’s experience, while others have difficulty appreciating that experience in the first place. We might also consider whether certain capacities become less accessible when protective parts are activated.
These possibilities are not interchangeable, nor should we assume that every instance of interpersonal indifference reflects a hidden fear or protective intention. Temperament, developmental experiences, learned behavior, and differences in emotional responsiveness may all contribute.
Antisocial personality disorder also involves a persistent pattern of disregarding or violating others’ rights. It cannot be reduced to ordinary self-interest, emotional detachment, or transactional relationships. The parts framework offers one possible way of understanding certain aspects of antisocial functioning, not an established explanation of the disorder.
Still, the possibility is worth considering: perhaps some of the internal orientations associated with pronounced antisocial behavior are not entirely foreign to the rest of us. What differs may be their intensity, frequency, organization, and the degree to which other aspects of the internal system can influence what happens next.
Our Socially Acceptable Antisocial Parts
We might also consider how frequently our own social mediation parts fail to intervene, particularly when we feel threatened or strongly motivated to obtain something.
Someone who generally considers themselves compassionate may become remarkably indifferent to another person’s experience during a contentious divorce. Someone committed to fairness may find ways to justify using a colleague for professional advancement. Someone who values honesty may become comfortable withholding the truth when their reputation is at stake.
The internal logic can be strikingly similar to more extreme forms of antisocial behavior: My interests take priority, and the other person’s experience isn’t especially relevant to what I need or what I need to do to get it.
We see this in families, workplaces, friendships, romantic relationships, and even therapeutic communities. Parts can become so focused on a particular objective that other people are reduced to the roles they play in achieving or obstructing it. Their individuality, emotional experience, and legitimate interests fade into the background.
Often, there is no conscious intention to hurt anyone. The part may not even be considering the possibility. Its attention is directed toward the task at hand, and another person’s welfare is simply outside the scope of its concern.
Social mediation can also become selective. We may extend considerable care and consideration to people we identify with while showing much less concern for those we perceive as outsiders, competitors, or people with whom we have no meaningful attachment.
Yet frequency and persistence are important distinctions. Occasionally approaching someone instrumentally is not equivalent to maintaining a relationship through repeated deception or exploitation. The cumulative consequences of these patterns can be substantial, regardless of whether the person engaging in them experiences malice or pleasure in causing harm.
The absence of malicious intent does not diminish the experience of someone who has been manipulated, deceived, or treated as disposable. Being regarded primarily as an object of utility can itself be profoundly injurious, particularly within relationships that are understood by one person to involve mutual care and commitment.
Understanding a part’s protective motivations does not excuse its behavior, nor does it obligate anyone affected by that behavior to tolerate it or participate in the person’s healing.
What Happens to the Parts That Hold Us Accountable?
What happens when a person’s early environment rewards self-sufficiency, opportunism, or treating relationships primarily as exchanges? What happens when vulnerability is repeatedly exploited, when cooperation offers little protection, or when the people responsible for teaching social responsibility model the opposite?
Protective parts may learn that interpersonal connection is unnecessary, unreliable, or even dangerous. They may come to regard other people primarily as sources of resources, validation, security, or interference. Parts concerned with belonging may become organized around compliance with a particular group’s norms, even when those norms encourage exploitation or emotional detachment.
Alternatively, parts invested in social responsibility may exist but become overwhelmed, dismissed, or disconnected from the protectors directing behavior.
Other possibilities deserve consideration. Some people may have difficulty recognizing or interpreting another person’s emotional experience. Others may understand that experience but feel little emotional resonance with it. Still others may be quite capable of empathy but become indifferent under particular circumstances.
These differences are relevant clinically. A person who struggles to recognize another’s experience may need something different from someone who understands it but sees no reason to take it into account.
We also cannot assume that every antisocial oriented internal system conceals an underlying attachment wound or fear of vulnerability. Such explanations may be accurate for some people, but they can become overly convenient if we interpret every behavior as evidence of the same protective process.
The IFS lens invites us to consider how a person’s internal system came to prioritize certain forms of protection, but it need not claim to account for every psychological difference that contributes to these patterns.
Self-Leadership Beyond Social Compliance
One limitation of relying exclusively on the social mediation that parts provide is that social rules aren’t always ethical. Communities can normalize cruelty, exploitation, discrimination, and exclusion. Parts devoted to belonging may participate in harmful behavior precisely because doing so preserves their place within a group.
Likewise, parts that resist social expectations aren’t necessarily antisocial. Refusing to comply with an unjust demand, confronting an abusive authority, or disappointing someone by maintaining a boundary may reflect considerable integrity.
Self-leadership involves the capacity to recognize our own interests alongside those of others, tolerate the discomfort of competing needs, and respond with discernment rather than reflexive self-protection.
We are called not simply to strengthen the parts that keep our more self-interested protectors in check. We also want to understand how those protectors perceive other people, what they believe interpersonal consideration would cost them, and whether they can come to appreciate relationships as more than transactional arrangements.
For some parts, the challenge may not be relinquishing a desire to hurt others, but developing an interest in other people as people. Their indifference may have served an important protective function, and genuine concern for others may be unfamiliar, unnecessary, or even threatening from their perspective. Or it just may be the way they are wired, independent from conditioning or burdening.
For clinicians, this also requires attention to our own parts. Our investment in understanding protective motivations can sometimes make us reluctant to recognize manipulation, exploitation, or persistent disregard for others. We may become impressed by a client’s insight into their internal system while overlooking the extent to which their behavior remains unchanged.
Understanding one’s parts and taking responsibility for one’s behavior are related but distinct achievements. Greater insight does not necessarily translate into greater empathy, accountability, or respect for others’ autonomy.
The goal is not to eliminate self-interest. Our own needs remain legitimate, and protecting ourselves will occasionally mean disappointing, frustrating, or even hurting someone else. Rather, we want greater freedom to distinguish necessary self-protection from behavior that needlessly sacrifices or disregards another person’s well-being.
Recognizing What We Share While Considering the Differences
I find the possibility of widespread antisocial parts interesting partly because it challenges the ease with which we divide people into fundamentally different categories: those who care about others and those who don’t; those who are good and those who are bad.
Our internal systems contain parts with competing priorities, different degrees of interest in interpersonal connection, and varying capacities to appreciate the consequences of their actions. Some parts may be deeply relational, while others have little use for relationships beyond what they can obtain from them. Both orientations can and do exist within the same person.
None of this means that everyone is equally capable of severe harm, that antisocial personality disorder is merely an extreme version of ordinary selfishness, or that understanding protective motivations excuses exploitation and manipulation. The differences in behavior, accountability, and consequences remain substantial.
Yet recognizing some continuity between ordinary self-interested protection and more pronounced antisocial traits may help us become less invested in seeing certain people as fundamentally unlike ourselves. And it may help us be more compassionate and Self-led.
Perhaps the question isn’t simply whether someone has antisocial parts. We might instead ask how much influence those parts have, how they perceive other people, what circumstances activate them, what other parts are available to mediate their behavior, and how much consideration for interpersonal connection remains accessible when their own interests take priority.
We might also ask how much of our prosocial behavior depends on parts concerned with belonging, approval, reputation, or avoiding consequences, and what remains of our concern for others when those motivations are no longer relevant.
Self-leadership may offer something beyond both self-interest and socially motivated restraint: the capacity to recognize other people as subjects whose well-being has significance independent of what they can provide us.
These questions seem relevant not only to understanding people whose relationships are persistently transactional or exploitative, but also to understanding the more ordinary ways our own protective parts can regard others as useful, inconvenient, or irrelevant without necessarily feeling anything negative toward them at all.
For feedback and comments, I can be reached at max@maxlittman.com.
I provide consultation and therapy for therapists.
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