In Brief
- Aided by EEGs and brain scans, scientists have discovered that psychopaths possess significant impairments that affect their ability to feel emotions, read other people’s cues and learn from their mistakes.
- These deficiencies may be apparent in children who are as young as five years old.
- When you tally trials, prison stays and inflicted damage, psychopaths cost us $250 billion to $400 billion a year.
- Psychopaths have traditionally been considered untreatable, but novel forms of therapy show promise.
The word “psychopath” conjures up movie images of brutal, inexplicable violence: Jack Nicholson chasing his family with an ax in The Shining or Anthony Hopkins as Hannibal Lecter, his face locked into an armored mask to keep him from biting people to death. But real life offers another set of images, that of killers making nice: Ted Bundy as law student and aide to the governor of Washington State, and John Wayne Gacy as the Junior Chamber of Commerce’s “Man of the Year.” Psychopaths are likable guys when they want to be.
Between the two of us, we have interviewed hundreds of prison inmates to assess their mental health. We are trained in spotting psychopaths, but even so, coming face to face with the real article can be electrifying, if also unsettling. One of the most striking peculiarities of psychopaths is that they lack empathy; they are able to shake off as mere tinsel the most universal social obligations. They lie and manipulate yet feel no compunction or regrets—in fact, they don’t feel particularly deeply about anything at all.
This article was originally published with the title Inside the Mind of a Psychopath.
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24 Comments
Add CommentMany of my acquaintances are liars, manipulators and don't have much empathy. A significant amount of people are beginning to show signs of this kind of behavior during this time of turmoil, insecurity, poverty and fear. Does that mean that the social environment can change or possibly bring out this other side of our hidden personality? Are we already similar to the people that we label psychopaths?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thiswoodswoman1. I don't think People like that are similar at all. Many regular people share these traits because they have earned consciously or unconsciously that these behaviors can be beneficial in life but it's only behavior and behavior can be changed and turned off and on, while psychopaths simply cant feel empathy on any level. they lie because they cant feel bad that they are lying or that they are deceiving people they only see that it is beneficial so I guess in that way, yes we are similar.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisPsychopats are just persons that do not distinguish good from evil, just as Daltonics don't differentiate red from green. They are nice and even pleasant persons, but you just can't trust them at all, they lack also loyalty. There are hundreds of thousands of psychopats, some of them having a normal life, but the problems are produced by perverse psychopats, that do enjoy harming. Until you suffer the first attack from one of this persons, you won't realize the involved danger. The Nicholson character in "The Shine" in my view wants to depict a case of devilish posession, a true psychopath is the character, also by Jack Nicholson, in "Somebody flew over the cuckoo's nest". Too sympathetic people deserve probably be regarded with suspicion.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI have yet to find a satisfying answer to the following question: What is the difference between a psychopath and a sociopath? I assumed that either these terms were interchangeable or that "sociopath" was the more modern term.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAlthough I'm not psychiatrist, I guess sociopath and psycopath are interchangeable terms, just the term sociopath adds another dimension to the subject, more appreciated by left prone people, but right and left are not interchangeable terms in the USA and in Europe or elswhere. The character in "The Shine" may have been also a loneliness induced schyzophrenic burst, although the rate of murders from schyzophrenic patients is not higher, or is even lower than that of sane persons, or persons suffering other mental disorders. Remember, movies are part of the show bussines, and common facts sell poorly.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe concept of "sociopath" seems coming straight from USSR.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThere is an interesting discussion on the difference between psychopaths, sociopaths, and narcissists here: http://www.sociopathworld.com/search?q=Without+getting+into+the+politics
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisFeisty, that would put Madoff in the psychopath category as he scammed his friends, n'est pas?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisHere's to having financial advisors and doctors submit to an EEG and make available to prospective clients.
Sociopath and psychopath are different levels of similar behaviors on a spectrum of behavior. Sociopaths tend to maintain more of a social 'front' and to think of themselves and what benefits them without any concept of help or harm to others. If getting what they want helps you, all to the good (according to the sociopath). If it harms you? Oh, well, too bad so sad! Sociopaths are unlikely to cause physical harm, preferring to manipulate and charm to get what they want. Psychopaths are sociopaths on steroids -- more likely to cause physical harm in order to remove an obstacle to what they want. Less able to control their emotions when blocked from what they want.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI interviewed a full-blown psychopath once. He told me that if you accidentally bumped into him while walking down the street, he had every right to beat you senseless -- because you violated his personal space. He truly believed it was his right. He was in jail for almost killing his best friend because he believed the friend was interested in his wife (although he had no proof). Again, he saw nothing wrong with what he did.
Pretty much all clinical dx's are on a spectrum -- from less than normal, normal, to more than normal. Everyone possesses some of the traits of a psychopath to some degree -- and to some degree, these traits can be healthy (self-preservation, self-interest, self-confidence) -- but too little or too much of anything (from twinkies to emotions) can be pathological.
The terms sociopath and psychopath although used interchangeably; psychopath is more Canadian and sociopath more USA.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisSociopath and psychopath are used interchangeably and they are the same cluster B psych dx. Psychopath is from Hare and used more in Canada, and sociopath more in the USA: http://www.lovefraud.com/01_whatsaSociopath/key_symptoms_sociopath.html
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe criteria for both is based on Robert Hare's PCL-R: http://www.hare.org/
...and the DSM-IV-TR - antisocial personality disorder
I have experienced a psychopath first hand. The result has been very difficult to cope with because it is nearly impossible to understand someone with no empathy who was initially so charming and appeared more genuine than most. There is so much work done on psychopaths and so little on how to recover from the disconnect that happens to someone who becomes ensnared. As Hare said, anyone can be fooled by a psychopath because we are not equipped to recognize them. The concept that someone does not have a conscience is just too alien.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThank you for the work you are doing. The damage these psychopaths do in the capacity as generals, world leaders, financial advisers, teachers, doctors, friends and lovers is incalculable.
From the author (kiehl). Sociopathy is a term coined in the behaviorist era of psychology (1960/70s). The term was used to indicate that the symptoms of psychopathy were based on social processes. In other words, sociopathy argues that you are a blank slate at birth and social process create the symptoms. Psychopathy, on the other hand, is agnostic to etiology, it could be social forces and/or biology/genetic process that lead to the symptoms of the disorder. Psychopahy is more prominent in Canada due largely to the research in Canada by Robert Hare (www.hare.org), but the US is catching up. Sociopathy is not a US term, it is just an outdated term.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIslam's documents of the Koran, Sira and Hadith are a case study in learned pslychopathic behavior.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisMuslims are instructed that kafirs (non-Muslims) can never be friends and Allah hates kafirs. 1,400 years later, after murdering 200,000,000 non-Muslims, Islam has not changed.
Islam can never change so long as Muslims believe that the teachings of the Koran, Sira, and Hadith are to be followed without deviation.
There is a way in which human beings can be programmed to be sociopaths/psychopaths. Islam's teaching in the Koran, Sira (Life of Mohammed) and Hadith (Traditions of Mohammed) have been brainwashing Muslims for nearly 1,400 years in treating non-Muslims as non-humans.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThere are very real reasons why people are "conditioned" to fly airplanes into buildings and murder thousands of human beings in the name of their "God". The same reasons apply for people who allow their children to become human "bombs" to kill other innocent people in the name of Islamic jihad.
Kafirs (non-Muslims) may be treated either as good neighbors or murdered, tortured, raped, abused, enslaved or stolen from. To understand the "duality" of ethics of Islam it is necessary to read the Koran, Sira and Hadith. It is written.
In Islamic countries, children are programmed from birth to hate Jews, Christians, and other kafirs (non-Muslims). The justification is in the words of Allah and Mohammed in the three tomes of the Islamic Political System and Faith.
So I have a question. I know of a man, who has, in my opinion, (i'm not a psychologist. Just an avid observer of behavior and nature of people) a borderline personality disorder. But as you've explained a sociopath, I'm starting to wonder what he really is. He's short tempered, went to prison for attempting to shoot a man for spitting in his face, spent most of his late adolescence either stealing cars, collecting money (by any means), loves to fight, and shooting as well as cooking dope. He was a extremely cold person before prsion to people he didn't care about, but to people that he loves he is the most loyal, forgiving, loving person ever and will do (and had done) anything and everything to keep them from wanting or hurting. I've been watching for a sign of deception or manipulation from him to surface towards a loved one. And other than a subtle white lie here and there, he is completely genuine to them.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisNow to the others...
I guess my question is if you think he falls under the definition of a sociopath or psychopath? Or could he have been conditioned through his rough childhood (sexual/emotional/verbal/physical abused as well as being diagnosed with explosive anger disorder and ADHD) to lack empathy for people who have or may potentially cause him any kind of hurt. I know that for a fact if he gets hurt, either physically or emotionally... He can be all smiles and laughs but then it's almost like he receeds back into a cold anger/hatred for whatever hurt him.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI was just wondering how a psychopath is able to form a strong enough personal relationship with someone in order to call that person a "best friend" or even to enter into a marriage.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI believe if you do more thorough research, you'll find that actually, White Christian men have killed more people on this planet--often in the name of Jesus--than any other group. For example, psychopathic agendas like the Crusades lured thousands of European white Christian men to fight to their deaths stealing back Jerusalem to please the Pope so they could get in heaven. Sounds a lot like what you accuse the Moslems of doing, don't you think?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisOnce you're suckered into the propaganda enough to see the "other" group as a sub-human enemy, then it's easy to kill them or cheer on those who do. As Voltaire warned so well, "Those who can make you believe absurdities (e.g. the "official" version of 9/11), can make you commit atrocities."
Anyone seriously interested in this critically important subject should read this book:
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisPolitical Ponerology: A Science on The Nature of Evil Adjusted for Political Purposes
by Andrew M. Lobaczewski, Ph.D.
Here's a comprehensive review by Laura Knight-Jadczyk, administrator of one of the most stringently-researched news and commentary sites you'll find anywhere. Educating the public about our number one predator--psychopaths--is the central mission of her multi-faceted organization.
http://www.cassiopaea.org/cass/political_ponerology_lobaczewski.htm
[Continued below]
[Continued from my reply to keihl]
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisDr. Hare’s research is invaluable, but along-side him stands Dr. Andrew M Lobaczewski,’s unique research as a psychologist forced to lived under the rule of psychopathic leaders who took over his homeland, Poland. He made the most of his situation by conducting decades of a “field study” which yielded hundreds of pages of observations. These lead to insights into the psychopathic “disease” process which developed when a healthy social body is infected by a few psychopathic leaders.
This review of Dr. Lobaczewski’s writings is one of the most comprehensive discussions of psychopathy in general—as well as unveiling an entirely new field of study: “ponerology”: “the Science on The Nature of Evil adjusted for Political Purposes”. Ponerology examines the macro-social effects psychopaths have over entire societies. Dr. Lobaczewski’s writings provide a comprehensive, cogent explanation of how psychopaths insinuate themselves into powerful positions in society to satisfy their one primitive emotion: the lust for power and domination.
Continued below are some excerpts from the full article found here: http://www.cassiopaea.org/cass/political_ponerology_lobaczewski.htm
Thus, the biological, psychological, moral, and economic destruction of this majority of normal people is a “biological” necessity to the pathocrats. Many means serve this end, starting with concentration camps and including warfare with an obstinate, well-armed foe who will devastate and debilitate the human power thrown at him, namely the very power jeopardizing pathocrats rule. Once safely dead, the soldiers will thereupon be decreed heroes to be revered, useful for raising a new generation faithful to the pathocracy.
Any war waged by a pathocratic nation has two fronts, the internal and the external. The internal front is more important for the leaders and the governing elite, and the internal threat is the deciding factor where unleashing war is concerned. In pondering whether to start a war against the pathocratic country, one must therefore give primary consideration to the fact that one can be used as an executioner of the common people whose increasing power represents incipient jeopardy for the pathocracy. After all, pathocrats give short shrift to blood and suffering of people they consider to be not quite conspecific. […]
he conclusion is that the capitalistic way of life associated in the United States with “democracy,” has optimized the survival of psychopaths with the consequence that it is an adaptive “life strategy” that is extremely successful in U.S. society, and thus has increased in the population in genetic terms as well as acting as an attractor to psychopathic individuals in other countries for quite some time. The fact is, America is probably flooded with psychopaths as Lobaczewski mentions. What is more, as a consequence of a society that is adaptive for psychopathy, many individuals who are NOT genetic psychopaths have similarly adapted, becoming “effective” psychopaths, or “characteropaths” in the ways Lobaczewski has described.
The psychopath is obsessed with control even if they give the impression of being helpless. Their pretense to emotional sensitivity is really part of their control function: The higher the level of belief in the psychopath that can be induced in their victim through their dramas, the more “control” the psychopath believes they have. And in fact, this is true.
They do have control when others believe their lies. Sadly, the degree of belief, the degree of “submission” to this control via false representation, generally produces so much pain when the truth is glimpsed that the victim would prefer to continue in the lie than face the fact that they have been duped. The psychopath counts on this.
See also:
The brief, well-done You-Tube videos on how psychopathic 6% infiltrate power structures of society, then infect another 30% with their warped view of life, leaving the other 2/3rds of us to suffer under their pathocratic rule.
http://www.pentagonstrike.co.uk/psychopaths.htm
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0v7PJmKKsfM&feature=player_embedded
I seem top recall reading somewhere a long time ago that the difference between the terms 'psychopath' and 'sociopath' is ultimately political. People who believe that the root cause is nurture/environment use 'sociopath; those who believe the root cause is nature/choice use 'psychopath.'
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisDon't know if that is accurate, but it seems reasonable.
I think right now the most famous psychopath is Dexter Morgan that Jeff Lindsay stole from me.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI just recently got my memory back this past June or so... maybe a tad bit earlier? But it came into me like niagra falls that Jeff Lindsay and I really did meet online and did argue for a bit and he bragged about taking my serial killer away from me. But getting away from that to the subject matter at hand. Would that make me a serial killer? No I exorcised those so called demons into the character so that I could bear the pain involved child abuse. It was not sexual abuse but my father would take me by my ankles and swing me around and smash me against the wall like a baseball bat. As he did this he would brag about his own abuse from my grandfather who would use a cat and nine tail on him.
So as I was flung around the room like a rag doll A song came to mind to keep me sane and it was the song that gave birth to Dexter. The songs name is sung by Clint Holmes - PLAYGROUND OF MY MIND.
I want the truth to be out there like this as I want people to know the truth. The real truth how Dexter came about.
I'd say the Jack Nicholson's character in "The Shining" is not a psychopat, but a full blown, acute burst, productive, delusional schyzophrenic, the only thing that both diseases haave in common is that they're depicted in the several editions of DSM and in other medical literature. It's good not to mix both, and regarding delusional psychotics, it must be remarked that probably, those more prone to killing are the ones having a religious subject in their delusional thoughts. Mental disorders are clearly the psychiatrists' turf, personality disorders as psychopats are a highly complex issue; many people having it don't make anything that can be considered harmful or dangerous for themselves or others, just they have problems in adjusting to the social demands, or others reject them.
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