Psychopath

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I've just learnt apparently one per cent of the population is a psychopath.
But generally not in the film way (e.g American Psycho) but in an actual mental health way (e.g high impulsivity/low boredom threshold/egocentric/superficially charming/liars).
There's the Hare Checklist which I've got really into.
But what it boils down is that they don't seem to feel emotions.
I can't comprehend this - I get angry and sad and anxious and all the emotions - and am fascinated. One per seems huge.
Does anyone think they know a psychopath? Genuinely? This isn't an AIBU BTW. I'm honestly just really interested.

I know someone with every one of those traits. People mistake this person for a decent, honest type - until, after a few short weeks, the real personality is revealed. Even this person's own children have noticed. A horrible, twisted and unpleasant person, with no concern for anyone else.

I believe a lot of high powered people show psychopathic traits

A narcissist desires attention and recognition to feed both their sense of self, and their self worth. A psychopath does not. As a general rule a narcissist will delude themselves, whereas a psychopath will not.

A psychopath without a sadistic comorbidity will be willing to inflict pain not because they enjoy it, but because it’s necessary for them to do so in order to achieve their aim. It’s dispassionate. They don’t take pleasure in it, and they don’t feel bad about it.

Someone with sadistic personality disorder however will cause pain for the enjoyment of it, and it is that causing of pain that is their aim. That’s significant, and imo sadistic personality disorder is one that tends to be overlooked and called NPD or PPD.

@JaneyGee Yes, maybe jealousy wasn't the right word but more of a case of they haven't got what they have and dislikes it so have to out do them with whatever that was, if they can.

Everything is black and white, no grey or in between. Someone can say something nice or positive, it was somehow taken as a slight and repeats the sentence to others in a nasty tone and gains sympathy or gets others to look at that person as bad. Even tone of voice or facial expressions taken as something and basically unless being out right highly praised, there's always a motive behind what people are saying, and twisted.

Yes compulsive lies, never known anyone to lie as much. Doesn't even have to be big things, it's everything in my case. You could be five minutes late that's then an hour, an hours journey they tell others it was four and gain sympathy for being exhausted from it, while you were driving it and it only took an hour.

Interestingly though lies are the worst betrayal if you did it, even white lies to save feelings or because say your child is too young to understand or shouldn't know. No they must know the truth, while lying themselves at every turn.

In my case right now I mistakenly stood up for myself and hit a trigger. Has invented a new persona, taken everything we own and withholding our children and is scapegoating me and playing victim. Has lied so much has dug a massive hole, even to own solicitors and everyone involved is really confused as nothing makes sense. I'm like this is what it's like it's all lies everything is contradictory, someone believe me!

I get about 50% on a casual Hare test analysis (I'm not impulsive, good at working towards long-term goals, have a high threshold for boredom etc, a few other things missing).

What's interesting in reading this thread is that the traits I recognize as psychopathic are typically those which I have used to the significant advantages of others. Especially in work. My staff admired my decisiveness and readiness to act, for example, and knew that I could be relied on not to make emotional decisions. They knew that they could unload on me, I'd disregard the emotional angles, and reach a fair business decision.

Whereas staff who could be very high empathy could really shit things up for everyone. Usually because their empathy caused them to pick an emotional side in situations. I don't present high emotions at work - and the 'high empathy' types were always choosing a favourite that was never me, or other less transparently emotional types. Hence they were TOTAL dicks to us, because they were focusing on who they perceived as emotionally needing it more.

Empathy can be a hugely overrated characteristic. It's a good driver but a poor enactor of change.

@thecatsthecats I think the psychologist Paul Bloom says that a weakness of empathy is that it's more readily felt towards those who are similar to us.

This thread is very helpful for me right now, as I am dealing with a cold selfish manipulator, so I feel less alone.

I wonder if "laugh it off" is entirely fair.

I think there is a difference between finding people's pain funny, and being extremely pragmatic about things like political trade-offs like you describe. These are the kinds of decisions that are almost impossible to make for most of us, because whatever you decide, it's like condemning certain people. But logically, if you don't have that kind of attachment, you can say - we must make a decision, even doing nothing is a decision, and if you can't, you are ineffective politically, or in a military situation, negotiations, etc.

I think quite a few people on this thread are confusing psychopaths with narcissists and sadists.

@ThingsWithEyes

Interesting! Yes, there's lots to unpack when it comes to empathy. In my work situation, it was often that people who were loudly emoting who'd get bias towards themselves - with more emotionally withdrawn types getting shafted. It fed into highly toxic workplace dynamics.

I think that I can perhaps be manipulative and charming in a business setting, but it's largely a) to disguise my dispassionate disinterest or b) to negotiate a deal. I don't have enough interest in other people to manipulate them for personal reasons! I'm happy to just say no, etc.

I did used to lie, but that was fairly clearly rooted in fear - tricky childhood background, so I told protective lies. I've grown out of it as I've lost the childhood fear, so I don't think it's deep rooted pathology.

I have an aunt who is exactly the same. Until I got to the bit about the book club I thought we have the same aunt. She has created similar scenarios to your Aunts book club incident though. It’s really disturbing.

Why did you end up marrying him out of interest? Did it not bother you at the time that he was dead behind the eyes and showed no emotion or empathy?

You have psychopaths with sadistic tendencies. The causing of pain isn’t for pleasure as such, like a true sadist, but a means to an end, a desired outcome. For example In my fathers case I don’t think he realised it was painful and damaging at the time, nor now even after it has been explained to him. Exercising control over the noise levels required a response. He was tired and out of patience so that was the quickest route.

I am aware that many psychopaths are not remotely violent or necessarily quick to anger.

My father has a medical diagnosis. Sadly it came far too late to make any impact or difference to us as children.

I am not sure if there are narcissistic psychopaths?

I also taught a child like this. I'll be waiting to see his name in the paper in 20 years time. His father laughed and said that to me. I hadn't commented obviously but it was interesting that his own father thought the same. mind you, his father was a large part of the reason this boy was the way he was

@Rudderneck @Remembermynamealways

As far as I was aware psychopaths generally have narcissistic traits and tendencies that overlap with other traits. Narcissist aren't commonly psychopaths but there are narcissist psychopaths, that also exhibit psychopathic traits and would go to further lengths and do worse things than a narcissist would.

This sounds more like autism to me: the rationality about media-induced artificial emotion, the compartmentalizing and rationality, the very strong sense of justice.

@Trianglesandcircles1 you could very well be onto something there. Both my DC have definitely got ASD traits and I suspect I may not be NT. I'm 47 and ASD simply wasn't on the table when I was a child. I was bright but extremely socially averse. I detested school. I have misophonia and suffer terrible migraines. Who knows?!

I know someone who is probably a sociopath. Very charming, liar, has done nefarious things (been in prison) - can’t really elaborate more but when pushed let’s say you get more than you bargained for & then the denial.

The way I see it, psychopaths don't care about rules - they will manipulate rules if it suits them but will otherwise ignore them, right up to the point where they calculate the consequences of getting caught would be too inconvenient.

People with autism do care very much about the rules, they live by rules, and have a strong sense of justice. Sometimes their sense of justice will cause them to ignore or over-ride a (in their eyes) stupid rule - they don't follow rules out of social pressure but because of their inner mental structures.

People with (some types of) autism feel empathy and emotion very deeply, but only if it is 'real' in their lives, such as people and animals they know, or know of, personally.
They don't react to 'fake' emotion such as news stories designed to tug at the heart strings, as they intellectualise it.
e.g. "the news is showing me a young child crying in a migrant boat, but I don't feel anything in particular for this child, because I don't know them, this is an image on a screen, and I do know that factually there are many thousands just like them (who are not on screen right now). Why would I feel more for this one than all the others? I may be concerned and sad about the international political situation and the plight of refugees all over the world, but I am not overly moved by this picture of this child."

Another comparison between autism and psychopathy: the playing of roles and wearing masks.

Psychopaths wear masks to manipulate and get what they want. They are expert at role playing, until the mask slips, and then they quickly put a mask on again.

People with (some types of) autism wear masks to try and fit in. They can become fairly expert at performing roles and gauging what kind of act is expected in any social setting, especially as they accumulate life experience.
Hence if the role is 'reading a poem at a funeral in a suitably clear and solemn manner', then it can be done. The emotion they feel personally is naturally separate from the role they perform for that particular time or task.

Posters have touched on the lying - I just wanted to add to the compulsive lying bit of my mothers narcissism. She will lie about absolutely everything. I mean literally everything. You can't trust a word she says. Even the weather for gods sake. Before we lived in the same village she'd try and make out there'd been torrential rain or tornadoes the night before or whatever and we'd be like ... 🤔really? No one else has mentioned it. And she'll get cross if you call her out. I've heard her have whole conversations on the phone about things i've not said at all! Mundane shite - no need to lie about it. Like what i said about the colour of a car or something. Don't understand it at all.

She used to lie about things my kids had supposedly said to her. Things they'd supposedly asked her. I'd ask them if they'd said to nanny x, y or z and they'd be totally confused. It was to get info. out of me. As teens it was still happening and it became a running joke. we laugh about it now.

Yes and no. A psychopath will wear a mask for the same reason someone with autism will: to fit in with society/their environments. That in itself is arguably manipulative, but there doesn’t necessarily have to be nefarious reasons beyond that.

A person with autism who 'masks' to fit in is not being manipulative. It is a question of motivation: the word manipulative implies conscious and malign intent.
A lot of the masking that autistic people do is barely consciously done, it becomes so automatic, and it is definitely not malign.

I would imagine you can have all kinds of combinations.

But some of the things people are describing sound just like they are deeply sadistic or have other personality disorders, I don't particularly see why they are assuming they are also psychopaths.

I think you are wrongly assuming psychopaths don't do things to fit in.

And conversely, you could say that wanting to fit in, and being dishonest in order to do so, is itself a kind of manipulation.

But I think many, particularly people with autism, tend to underestimate how common masking is in general. Pretty much everyone does it to some extent, and in some circumstances, like work, many people do it a lot.

If they have a clinical diagnosis of psychopathy perhaps? Additionally other disorders may also be present.

This thread has potential to downgrade the danger that persists around some psychopaths. They can be deeply dangerous for a reason. Let’s not lose sight of that.

There is a forensic psychiatrist called Sohom Das on you time and he talks about psychopathy quite a bit. I think people get confused between that and sociopathy quite often. It's very interesting.