[endo_bunker]

It would be interesting to know if this is a common experience among sociopaths. I had always thought that behaviors like theft resulted more simply from the lack of empathy (and desire for the stolen item), rather than resolving some kind of internal tension.

[james-bcn]

Yes. She says "I was sorry I had to steal to stop fantasizing about violence" - it seems there is something else going on here, not just being a sociopath.

[BLKNSLVR]

I would say not necessarily. Attempting to understand someone that totally lacks a personality trait means that their motivation pathways could be entirely different. Un-understandable by those who do have the trait.

In this case, do something minor (stealing) to scratch the itch that, if left unscratched for long enough, could result in doing something major (violence).

It feels like a reaction to societal rules that don't make sense in their experience of the world, and so maybe the itch exists because the rule(s) seem irrational and arbitrary to them.

Or maybe the lack of empathy leaves a hole to be filled with mischief.

[DrDroop]

Special books for special children did an interview with a self identified sociopath that shows the same level of self awareness and openness to discuss the problem[1].

I think it is always difficult to analyse why someones does something. In Psychology, behaviour is like a Feynman diagram, you can always rotate the picture and get a valid particle interaction. What is cause and what is effect is hard to tell, but yes some people steal out of a sense of justice if you can call it that.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bdPMUX8_8Ms