Have you ever met a psychopath?
For the past month, I have been reading "The Wisdom of Psychopaths" by Kevin Dutton which delves into traits, behaviors, and motivations behind psychopaths. This book isn't just about serial killers but rather also the "successful" functional psychopaths such as stockbrokers, politicians, and business executives. You can read an excerpt from the book here if interested. A few interesting takeaways that I have had from the book so far are the innate cues that some people have on picking up on psychopathic cues. This is like speaking to someone and getting the heebie-jeebies from them for some reason. Apparently, women are more perceptive to this than men.
So, I'm curious if you have ever met a person that gave off that vibe, and what in particular gave you that vibe?
My wife and I are foster parents. We once took in an 11 year old boy who after three days we believed to be a psychopath. His predilection for harming people and animals, coupled with his amazing ability to come up with believable lies and tears on the spot made (along with a significant trauma history) us realize his care was beyond our abilities.
At one point he found a pocket knife in the car, looked my wife in the eyes and calmely said "what would happen if I stabbed you right now?".
Have you ever heard anything regarding them after they left your care? When you raised the issue with the caseworker, did they indicate any special care would be given to them?
So here's the deal. He had originally been placed in a foster home with his younger sister. They both went up for adoption and the family adopted his sister but not him, since he was constantly trying to harm her and they couldn't live together.
Then he went to what's called Residential care. It's almost like a psych ward for children who have behaviors/issues so severe that they are unable to safely live anywhere else.
His case worker didn't believe he was severe enough to need that and was trying to find a foster family to place him in with the hope of him being adopted. That's when he was placed with us.
After the three days my wife and I realized that we just couldn't provide for his needs. We didn't have any training for those types of behaviors and he had shown himself to be a threat to us.
Sadly he had to go back to residential care, and I have a strong feeling he is likely still there to this day. He has probably become "institutionalized" at this point and there is very little hope of him having a successful life after he ages out of the system. It's tragic and I'm sad we couldn't do more for him.
I’m curious what percent of psychopaths suffer from ptsd, especially cptsd. It seems like many of the traits could be valuable survival coping mechanisms developed in a highly dysfunctional environment.
Oh I absolutely believe that his was caused by PTSD. We weren't given the details but were told that he suffered extemem physical abuse from both mother and father.
Its the only way they know how to survive. On top of that it can cause RAD, which essentially renders them incapable of feeling love or attachment, both of which are needed for empathy.
I’m most curious about how you feel about your past actions now. You’ve learned some of the moral framework that most people implicitly understand, but is it properly emulated or just an act to live more easily in our world?
I ask because I have heard that people that are psychopaths have no sense of guilt.
I'd be interested to see your results from a Big-5 personality test. Here is a very good one if you are interested in taking it:
https://www.personal.psu.edu/~j5j/IPIP/ipipneo120.htm
Don't feel obligated to share your results, but the book I referenced in my OP does lay out the typical results of psychopaths so it would be interesting to compare.
I took the test.
Very interesting!
Here are the summarized and slimmed down results from the book. They had a different scale so you will have to do some mental math. But a score of 3 should be 50 on your results. Also, these are experts who are rating on how they believe psychopaths would answer.
My takeaway is that you are very likely not a psychopath. The author builds the following profile:
Back in 2018, several of us took the same personality test. Maybe time for us to do another round?
https://tildes.net/~misc/5nr/lets_take_a_personality_test
It is certainly nice to know I'm not a psychopath, that is not a nice accusation to receive. My whole life I was reprimanded for not displaying enough emotion. It's kinda funny, but I'm certain that's an accusation that is more common here (Brazil) than in Scandinavia. Our culture is extroverted to the point of histrionic.
My life story and Big Five results are extremely distinct from yours, but I was similarly labelled a psychopath many times growing up. At this point, I have a hard time conceiving of it as anything but an academically veiled euphemism for "we can disregard this person's humanity".
The model psychopath doesn't just not care about others' emotions, he (because the psychopath is decidedly a masculine stereotype) is incapable of relating to others from birth. He doesn't view people as anything but a means to an end, and if he can't even care about other people, why feel bad about giving up on relating to him? Hell, he's so calculatingly inhuman, the human race might be better off without him. He's clearly so smart, untarnished by those pesky emotions the rest of us are so burdened with, he must be held fully accountable for his actions, no pussyfooting around it. He must die, to protect the rest of us, good, people!
Just from our scant interactions on this site, clearly you're nothing like that. I'm really sorry that you've had to deal with such a heavy, toxic stigma for what sounds like the majority of your life.
I suppose for some people being overtly rational, measured and unemotional is equivalent to being immoral. I understand that others have a right to express their emotions, but some of us require a lot more conscious thought in order to function as human beings. And that is fine too. This actually goes way further than just calling me a "psychopath".
No, I'm not constrained. I'm not dying to express myself, I'm not sad because I'm not dancing or jumping around. I like being quiet, just let me be...
No, but sometimes when I think about it I'm kinda paranoid that I'll ever run into one. Are there any easy ways to tell if someone's a psychopath if you've just met them?
For anyone interested in this sort of thing who can also handle disturbing stories, Without Conscience: The Disturbing World of the Psychopaths Among Us by Robert D. Hare is great. Hare developed the psychopathy test. Another good read is The Psychopath Test from Jon Ronson -- which relates to the first, but you don't need either to understand the other.