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Original poster

Have any of you met a true 'psychopath'

269 replies

Hearnoevilspeaknoevil · 23/09/2020 21:30

Just wondering.
I watched Des last week and found it chilling. The utter ordinariness of Dennis Nielsen and the normalising his awful crimes.
I was thinking how terms like psycho are so overused and often used to describe overly angry or irrational behaviour.
I believe it's more about a very controlling person who operates outside any 'normal' behaviour boundaries.
I've only met one person who I would say is a psycho. Some with narcissistic traits, plenty of angry people but that cold dead reasoning and complete lack of empathy or even humanity, is much rarer.
Interested to see what others think. Or have experienced.

OP posts:
BillywilliamV · 23/09/2020 22:42

Other supermarkets are available!

AnnaSW1 · 23/09/2020 22:42

Lots. In my previous job

PyongyangKipperbang · 23/09/2020 22:42

I have worked in pubs for years and have had to deal with some unsavoury characters but only ever been really terrified once.

This guy had been barred and the new landlords "gave him a chance" (when will they fucking learn?!)

He started in a quiet threatening way against other guests, and I had to ask him to leave. He came nose to nose to me and started saying that he could hurt me in ways I could never imagine. All still quiet and controlled. He had those dead eyes others have mentioned.

I barred him and have never seen him again. I know that he regularly beat his girlfriend, she would leave and then go back. I have long had the dread that I will see him being sent down for her murder.

BillywilliamV · 23/09/2020 22:43

Did you work for Tesco Anna?

FourTeaFallOut · 23/09/2020 22:49

Yes. Not that I knew it. I thought he was a nice guy.

screamingchild · 23/09/2020 22:56

Yes I have. He was my a-level student and stabbed his girlfriend from behind and then cut up her body. It was planned and he's in prison. Shockingly he was a charming young man, wise for his age who was smart and pleasant to chat to. The murder took place around 5 years ago and I have only just been able to talk about it, because it was such a terrible shock.

Weesweetiewife · 23/09/2020 22:57

I was 13 in 1981 and had gone to a local beauty spot with friends one evening in early summer. A man appeared from a country road and asked us if we knew of a public convenience nearby. I knew he meant he needed to go to the loo and informed that no he would need to use the bushes. He then sat in the bushes nearby, crouched down. We became scared and left. My mum reported it to police but we heard nothing back. Years later I saw a picture of a young Robert Black, and my friend and I are convinced it was him.

newtb · 23/09/2020 23:02

I separated after 40 years. Just after our separation, STBXH told me that the day we met he 'knew' he had to destroy me.

UNtil our separation, I really had no idea, the pressure was getting to him, and he started to boast in a strange way, giving loads of hints about he'd managed to fuck up my life without me realising. Totally without empathy, turns things around to be about him - my failure to orgasm became not a source of sympathy for me, but an angry outburst from him that I had no idea what it was like for him not to be able to satisfy his wife.

DD is also completely lacking in empathy. In the past she's deliberately manipulated someone at school who didn't like her and didn't hide the fact to become her friend. Her next step, announced very calmly and in a detached manner as if totally rational was that she was going to destroy this girl.

AFter a 'stress cure' in a clinic, she announced very calmly to me that she was going to push me to commit suicide to prove to the psychiatrists that they were wrong to discharge me from the clinic.

At the time I left, DH had been banned from the premises due to agression - an agressive alcoholic - but it would seem to be a case of like father like daughter.Obviously the strain for him of living a lie for 40 years got to him. I changed £100k of life cover to benefit him instead of DD, and in the month before we separated he asked me 4 times if the cover was valid in case of suicide.

Don't know if he's narcissistic, sociopath, psychopath or, maybe just a 'fucking nutter'. I'm well out of it!

ThirteenRed · 23/09/2020 23:02

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Frownette · 23/09/2020 23:05

@screamingchild that's horrible. No wonder you feel shock.

Babysharksmom · 23/09/2020 23:09

I moved into a house share with a guy a few years back. Always got the strangest vibe off him. He used let himself into my room. One morning I woke up to him smoking a cig out my window while I was in bed. I honestly thought he was thinking he was going to chop me into pieces. I left after that. I still get chills when I think of him.

PurplePansy05 · 23/09/2020 23:11

ThirteenRed What do you mean by "before me"? Are you a judge?

gottastopeatingchocolate · 23/09/2020 23:12

I genuinely think my ex might be.

It's the zero empathy, I think.

I don't have to nerve to post examples of why I think so.

ThirteenRed · 23/09/2020 23:15

@PurplePansy05 Yep

Lipdissapointment · 23/09/2020 23:20

I briefly dated a diagnosed sociopath (clinical diagnosis of antisocial personality disorder among other things) diagnosed whilst serving a prison sentence under IPP for armed robbery where he hurt somebody with a knife.

I met him years later after he got out and only found out about alot of these things as he had to disclose my details to his probation officer in accordance with the terms of his licence.

Everything made sense by then.

Gaslighting, emotional abuse, psychological abuse, manipulation, triangulation, he was edging toward being sexually abusive too.

I was only seeing him 8 weeks but my god he brung a shit storm into my life in such a short period of time.

He's back in prison now in part for harassing me and won't have a release date as they can keep him indefinitely. If he ever does get out again he will have additional licence conditions that say he can't come anywhere near me or within a proximity of the area I live.

I also strongly suspect an ex from years ago is one but obviously I don't have the skill set to diagnose. It's thanks to this POS that I was clued up enough to get away from the POS above.

Somethingkindaoooo · 23/09/2020 23:25

I think my ex was sociopathic.
Very charming, intelligent, but zero empathy. He didn't understand that him lying caused me to not trust him. He felt hard done by. Loads more, but those are the headlines

Browneyesbigbum · 23/09/2020 23:26

Psychopaths aren't all bad and don't all end up killing.....driven, lack of empathy and all the other traits can end up in successful careers

Colycola · 23/09/2020 23:28

My dd is also totally lacking in empathy. She is literally dead behind the eyes. I once expressed upset about someone dying (in the local paper) and she just looked at me and said ‘why would you be upset you didn’t know him’. I said ‘can you see why it’s sad’ and she just replied ‘how can you possibly be sad over someone you don’t know’.

Nothing moves her at all. I don’t think she is a psychopath but sometimes she scares me.

PyongyangKipperbang · 23/09/2020 23:30

@Browneyesbigbum

Psychopaths aren't all bad and don't all end up killing.....driven, lack of empathy and all the other traits can end up in successful careers
Yes. But unfortunately that invariably means that they are someone's boss, which is why you see so many posters on here off work with stress.

I wouldnt say that a person I used to work with was a psychopath, didnt know them well enough, but it would never surprise me if I found out that they were. They moved up the ladder quite a long way but each department they managed had staff leaving like lemmings........

Took "early retirement" a few years back, which was basically because they had had so many complaints against them they were paid to fuck off.

exwhyzed · 23/09/2020 23:33

Yes but I worked in the field until recently.

Most were very pleasant and compliant on the surface to professionals . They were exceptionally scary when you read their files and many times I was baffled how the person in front of me had been capable of some of the stuff written down.

I've only ever been genuinely concerned about my own safety once and in hindsight that was a massive failing on my employers behalf. I was heavily pregnant and shouldn't have been put in that position as a decent risk assessment would have picked up the fact that this would be a 'thing' for this particular client.

Burnthurst187 · 23/09/2020 23:40

A few years ago there was a young lad (20/21) that worked at my company. He definitely wasn't quite right. He said a number of things that were very concerning. He would often say something that I thought would be a joke that was bordering crossing the line and then I'd realise he was actually being serious

He left about two years ago. I remember the last thing he said to me was that he'd like to kill a certain employees two pet dogs. I have said that in the future I won't be at all surprised if he's in the local paper for killing or attacking somebody.

JaniceBattersby · 23/09/2020 23:42

When I was a junior reporter I spent most of my time in the mags court. I got to know lots of the ‘regulars’ and would talk to them in the waiting room, have a laugh and a joke try to give them a little bit of advice to help them out of a life of crime.

There was one guy who I saw fairly regularly. He was a shoplifter but also had quite a well paying job and he told me he liked shoplifting because he enjoyed finding ways around the security systems. He was a lovely guy, very clever, very charming.

So imagine my surprise when two sisters locally were murdered and the police sent over a mugshot of him as their wanted guy. He’d actually murdered four people in the end.

I went to his trial and the psychiatrist said it was the easiest psychopathy diagnosis he’d ever made. Despite that, he managed to be incredibly charming and courteous in court. He’d even hold the door of the dock for the security woman and then wouldn’t sit down until she had. He had everyone fooled.

He was convicted and is still in prison now, probably charming his way to getting as many luxury items as he wants.

DuchessMinnie · 23/09/2020 23:42

Yes, 20 years ago I was late 20s and worked in a London office with a few other girls the same age as me, and a male security manager, late 40s, seemed quiet. Weird things started happening- we could transfer incoming calls to each other but then someone started ringing numbers which were men reading hardcore sex stories in creepy voices and transferring the calls to us. The stories were always about incest, horrible.

Then a letter arrived for the manager and we always opened his mail, it was our job. I quickly saw it was personal as it started Dear Dad so i put it back in the envelope and gave it to him. We were told never to open letters again. Then written porn was left on our desks. A few other weird things happened but we never ever suspected anything. Then the police arrested him and took his computer.

He was tried at the old bailey for attempted murder of several young women and the trial transcripts are on the Internet, we all read them and couldn't believe it was the same man.

exwhyzed · 23/09/2020 23:47

@Colycola

My dd is also totally lacking in empathy. She is literally dead behind the eyes. I once expressed upset about someone dying (in the local paper) and she just looked at me and said ‘why would you be upset you didn’t know him’. I said ‘can you see why it’s sad’ and she just replied ‘how can you possibly be sad over someone you don’t know’.

Nothing moves her at all. I don’t think she is a psychopath but sometimes she scares me.

Sounds exactly like something my autistic sister would say. She's otherwise lovely but doesn't experience mourning in the same way neurotypical people experience it. It would be incomprehensible to her to mourn or feel sadness about the death of someone entirely unknown to her. What would be the point?

She would verbalise great sadness at no longer being able to see a close relative who had passed because she would be sad about it, but she wouldn't really reminisce or yearn for them to not be dead or be emotional about memories or lost futures with a person, because how would that be of any use to her?

If it's autism then it's just logic rather than being 'scary'.

JustOneLastThing · 23/09/2020 23:48

Yes, quite a few in my previous job. Sometimes very scary and intimidating people who were superficially charming