(An earlier draft of this comment appeared in my blog on Monday, 10 March 2008.)

Living beings of all kinds can be born with extreme limitations far outside what we might call the normal range. A person could be born blind, for example.

Alternatively, a person could be born with either neurological and/or genetic limitations that prevented such a person from developing anything close to what we might call a normal level of empathic awareness of others.

Such a lack could lead to profoundly harmful and tragic consequences, such as the person experiencing no hesitation about attempting to meet one's own needs while doing violence to others - exhibiting what some would describe as sociopathic behavior.

Even so, in my view, such a person's fundamental, authentic needs would remain the same as anyone else's. The person's equipment for fulfilling such needs would leave that person with profoundly limited power for meeting them, though. Such a person might well put into practice strategies that would be unlikely to optimally meet one's own or others' needs.

In relation to such a person, others might support their need for safety with the protective use of force.