PSYCHOPATHY: CHARACTERISTICS OF THE PSYCHOPATH AND HOW TO IDENTIFY IT - GEOGRAFÍA - 2024

The psychopathy is a mental disorder characterized by deficient control of emotions and impulses, impulsivity, failure to adapt to the moral or social norms and tendency to act and antisocial behavior.

From criminology, a psychopath is an individual who suffers from a personality disorder associated with a socially deviant lifestyle, tending to ignore social norms to satisfy their own stimulation deficit.

From this we can conclude that the individual has a personality disorder, which is not considered mental illness, since he is aware of what he is doing. In psychology, a mental disorder is defined as a disturbance relative to oneself, others and with respect to the environment that is chronic, evident from childhood and adolescence, and persistent during adulthood.

Psychopaths often commit impulsive and irresponsible acts that may or may not be outside the law, because they ignore social norms. By "ignore" we do not mean that you do not know them, but that you do not care. The reason why the individual does not follow the rules is usually because it satisfies her stimulation deficit.

Characteristics of the psychopath

These people are emotionally insensitive, manipulative, and possess great self-centeredness. What differentiates the psychopath from other disorders are his traits and the fact that he enjoys doing what he does.

People with antisocial disorders are usually not happy with the way they are; however, psychopaths see no reason to change. They are arrogant, superficial, deceptive and manipulative; In the affective world, their relationships are shallow and volatile, and they are unable to develop strong bonds with people.

They also lack empathy, anxiety, or feelings of guilt and, behaviorally, are irresponsible, impulsive, sensation-seeking, and predisposed to crime.

Superficial, grand and deceptive

The psychopath seeks to dazzle and seduce the person in front of him. He usually makes good impressions on others, for which he uses different strategies: simulating emotions he does not have, telling stories that leave him in a good place and finding easy excuses to justify his behavior.

When seduction does not work, psychopaths sometimes prefer to be hostile in order to intimidate someone they cannot make an ally. If the stories of the psychopath are not credible or are seen as inconsistent, he will try to change or interrupt the conversation, or he will try to reduce the credibility of his adversary by using insults.

Arrogance is a very defining trait of the psychopathic personality; they tend to have a lot of self-confidence. A person who believes herself superior to others will not hesitate to deceive and manipulate the people around her.

Absence of guilt, absence of empathy, and not accepting responsibility for what he does

These traits define the affective relationships of the psychopath. Psychopaths are not unaware that what they do is illegal, harmful, or immoral; they simply do not care. The absence of remorse is related to an inability to feel fundamental social emotions, those that allow us to relate to others.

This is why psychopaths are routinely described as "cold" because they seem to be disconnected from the emotions they should be able to feel. Without real emotions of empathy, love, happiness or sadness, it is not possible to bond with anyone sincerely, and therefore it is not possible to have feelings of guilt.

The way in which the psychopath establishes the relationship with others is by always seeking his personal benefit, and he can do so very easily because he does not have the brake of conscience nor can he feel the pain that it causes.

Therefore, it is useless to ask a psychopath to take responsibility for his behavior; always has an explanation, either based on luck or the victim's behavior, that caused what happened.

Impulsiveness and lack of common sense

Many psychopaths act without thinking about the consequences, under the momentary desire to achieve something and feel good, without other considerations.

They feel a need for permanent change that makes it difficult for them to acquire a solid training (they lose or change jobs, assume risky behaviors), and it adds to their emotional poverty to spoil authentic relationships with people.

The absence of common sense in psychopaths shines through in their irresponsible and misplaced behaviors and in the absence of realistic goals. When you look at the psychopath's life with a certain perspective, you can see that he is not going anywhere, although he can give fantastic explanations about what he is going to achieve.

It is as if the notion of the future has no real meaning for him, and for this reason he does not feel interested in reflecting on what may happen.

Antisocial and criminal behavior

The capacity for violence, to circumvent the laws and to commit crimes is the fourth habitual trait in the psychopath. Another facet of their little common sense is found in the speed with which many of them react with intense anger and soon after they forget about it as easily as they lost their composure.

Psychopaths may not be criminals, but among criminals, they are the most harmful, repeat offenders, and violent. When the subject has not grown up in a good environment where she has learned to channel her desires in a non-illegal way, she has a good chance of becoming a psychopath.

How to identify a psychopath?

Hitler is believed to have had a psychopathic personality

In addition to looking at the characteristics of the previous section, to identify a psychopath it is key to observe the absence of emotions.

The emotional world of psychopaths is very poor, as they do not usually have deep and persistent emotional reactions. Other deficits of the disorder derive from the absence of emotional experiences, because it prevents them from directing their behavior in an appropriate way.

The following are the emotions that psychopaths lack. If you observe someone with a clear absence of them, you may have identified one.

Fear or anxiety

The absence or deficit of fear in psychopaths is possibly what explains why they cannot modify their behavior in situations that people find unpleasant or painful; They are not intimidated by the threat of punishment, because they have less capacity to feel fear or to anticipate it in their mind.

Anger or rage

For Cleckley, one of the great scientists who study psychopathy, anger is absent in psychopaths, while others believe that the psychopath suffers from extreme and persistent anger that directs others.

Certain research indicates that the psychopath experiences the same anger as the non-psychopath, but has a greater ability to hide it on their face, that is, a reduced facial expression of anger.

Now, if it is true that psychopaths feel anger the same as other people, the effects of this are more devastating in their case, since they are not limited by the awareness of the damage they commit or the effects of their action on the victims.

Sadness and depression

Cleckley asserts that pain, despair and depression are absent in the psychopath, because they cannot feel sadness over loss of people or projects, nor is there a discrepancy between the real and the ideal self.

Something common among people is to feel disappointed or hopeless for not achieving what they want, but psychopaths, feeling exceptional and superior to other people, do not see anything that they can miss.

Love and happiness

We define "happiness" as an emotional state that derives from obtaining and having what we want and feeling good. Cleckley did not believe in this sentiment for the psychopath, but other authors do, although they describe it as something transitory.

The absence of empathy does not allow the psychopath to take pleasure in observing the happiness of others; this only makes him envious and greedy. His joy would be severely limited, in addition, by his habitual state of looking for signs in the environment that could pose a threat to him or an opportunity to take advantage.

Some authors suggest that the psychopath can only feel joy through the control and dominance of others. Since they cannot establish real relationships with other people, they cannot love either.

Empathy

Empathy can be cognitive or emotional. The first means that someone is capable of understanding, intellectually, what a person thinks or feels. Emotional empathy implies feeling as the other does, getting in tune with the person with whom you are communicating.

It is this empathy that acts as a brake on violence, and although this is not possible without cognitive empathy, it is possible to have only the first without ever reaching the second.

This is what happens to psychopaths; they can attribute mental states (in fact, if they could not, they would not be as easily manipulated and deceived), but they are not capable of putting themselves in someone else's shoes.

Types of psychopaths

The most accepted classification of the types of psychopaths is divided into two: integrated psychopaths and criminal psychopaths.

Integrated psychopaths

They are integrated people who do not get to relate fully with others, who have to learn to handle themselves without understanding feelings.

We can differentiate here between those who present psychopathy when recognized by society as geniuses or artistic authorities (group A), those murderous psychopaths who have not come to light (group B) and, finally, the heads of state and people who show a high power as politicians, policemen, high positions that can end up, in the worst case, as genocidal or war criminals (group C).

Some integrated psychopaths can go from being integrated to being recognized as criminals or criminals (especially in the case of those who belong to group B and C, within the integrated group).

Those belonging to group B, to be discovered, and those belonging to group C, because they hold positions of great power, may end up exercising abuse of authority. An example of the latter would be the heads of government who end up becoming genocidal or war criminals.

Criminal psychopaths or known offenders

Here we find the subcultural psychopaths subtype, who come from the crime subculture and are usually the most brutal, and the ex-integrated psychopaths, who have no prior antecedents.

It should be noted that the number of recognized criminal psychopaths is much lower than the existing one, since many go easily unnoticed in our eyes.

The development of a psychopath

Psychopathy has biological roots. It is believed that there are malfunctions in the amygdala, the organ in charge of emotions, and the prefrontal lobe, which is in charge of deliberating and executing action plans.

The abnormal functioning of the prefrontal lobe would explain the inability of psychopaths to make reasonable decisions. Antonio Damasio's studies with people who have suffered significant injuries in this place show that they seem to lose their "sanity", become irritable and seem to lose all sense of ethics, but there does not seem to be a deterioration in their intelligence or in their ability to theoretically analyze the different situations.

The biological basis of psychopathy is what differentiates it from sociopathy. Sociopaths are people capable of performing psychopathic acts without having a psychopathic personality from birth.

These people have acquired this personality through brutality and ignorance of their parents and the people around them ("partner" comes from "society"). There are aspects of their temperament that make it easier for them to have become that way, but in a different environment they probably would not have reached such a point.

References

1. Diagnostic Statistic Manual of mental disorders - V
2. Butcher, JN, & Rouse, SV (1996). Personality: Individual Differences and Clinical Assessment. Annu. Rev. Psychol., 47, 87-111.
3. Lynam, DR, & Gudonis, L. (2005). The Development of Psychopathy. Annu. Rev. Clin. Psychol., A, 381-407.