Extreme psychopaths

In another article I told you about the integrated psychopath. Today I’d like to talk about the most radical version of that profile: the extreme psychopath. Many of the criminals we see on the news would fall into this group. Unlike the integrated psychopath, the extreme psychopath’s antisocial personality traits go much further, leading them to commit criminal acts.

The series Mindhunter is based on a book (Mindhunter: Inside the FBI’s Elite Serial Crime Unit), which in turn tells the story of an FBI agent, John Douglas, a pioneer in developing a protocol to identify this kind of psychological profile in criminals. I haven’t seen the series, but I have read the book, which, incidentally, I’d only recommend if you have the stomach for the extreme detail with which the author describes the crimes committed by these individuals.

Over the years, this FBI agent interviewed, one by one, some of the most twisted minds, who were in prison at the time, in order to understand better how they worked: Why did they act the way they did? What were their goals? Did they choose to do harm, or couldn’t they control their impulses? Could they tell right from wrong? Is a psychopath born or made? Could they be reintegrated into society once they’d served their sentence? What factors do people with this profile have in common?… These were some of the questions being asked back then. It’s worth mentioning that this research began in the 1970s. Today, thanks to the work done in those years, the FBI has many more tools to catch this kind of criminal. Knowing how a psychopath thinks can be extremely useful (key, in fact) in investigations, as the many cases described in the book show.

I’d like to highlight some of the key conclusions to be drawn from the book. And by that, I mean from the research that was carried out. According to the author:

• The vast majority of extreme psychopaths are men.
• The criminal’s behaviour largely defines their personality. Every detail of the crime gives us clues about the individual’s personality: age, degree of introversion, insecurity, ego, level of social adjustment…
• Extreme psychopaths have a serious personality disorder, which isn’t the same as a mental illness such as psychosis: a psychotic person shouldn’t be confused with a psychopath. As a rule, psychopaths are in touch with reality the whole time. When they decide to commit a crime, they know exactly what they’re doing at every moment. It’s a choice.
• In sexual crimes, the motive usually isn’t sex itself: they aren’t committed for sexual gratification, but rather out of pent-up anger and rage towards the world in general and/or women in particular.
• Because of this, the author argues that castrating paedophiles and rapists isn’t the answer, since their main motivation isn’t sexual but rage. As he puts it in the book: castrate a psychopath and you’ll have an angrier psychopath.
• It’s easy for someone with this profile to fool mental health professionals. They are expert assessors: before you’ve assessed them, they’ve already assessed you. Mental health professionals need to bear this very much in mind in any therapy or assessment they carry out.
• The author says that, in his vast experience, these people cannot be reintegrated into society. In the book he describes cases where, for one reason or another, the criminal regained their freedom, and in every one of them they reoffended. Bear in mind that he’s talking about the most violent criminals he interviewed: with them, his pessimism is understandable and the risk of reoffending is high, but this can’t be generalised to everyone with psychopathic traits.
• In the cases he studied, they almost always had a very troubled childhood. We don’t know how much is down to genetics and how much to environment, but there does seem to be a clear link: that kind of childhood increases the likelihood of producing this kind of individual.

I think one of the main reflections you’re left with after finishing the book is what would have become of these people if they’d had a different childhood. If they hadn’t been taught punishment, in all its forms (abuse, mistreatment, humiliation, neglect…), as the only or main way of being raised… If they had felt loved, protected and cared for, could most of these crimes have been prevented? Even allowing for whatever responsibility genetics may bear, if any, could it have been tempered by a good childhood? Would these predators exist if they’d had secure attachment? As a rule, human beings learn from what they see, especially in childhood. What can we expect someone who only knows punishment to learn, other than to punish?

This isn’t about absolving them of guilt, because they were responsible for every one of their acts. It’s about reflecting on how society contributes to creating them.