Psychopath

[Namechange50008]

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.

What I find interesting is how so many claim to know male psychopaths... but how few women. They seem to hide it better.

I don't think a clinical diagnosis applies to the majority of people described on the thread.

Some people can be very dangerous for all kinds of reasons, but most aren't, and that also applies to psychopaths. Most aren't Jeffery Dahmer, or even criminals.

It's hard to distinguish though because just like everyone masks to some degree, everyone has narcissistic traits in them.

Same as are all abusive people narcissists because their behavior and patterns of abuse are similar to narcissists and narcissistic abuse. I know they are not but sometimes it's hard to judge, are they just abusive or is there something more at play.

Autistic people vary a lot too and in my experience it's more of a case they mask to fit in because they are aware they do not and have never felt they do. Not because they are trying to manipulate or trick people, they want a real connection and feel they have to fit in in order to do so.

Whereas, someone who's a psychopath or a narcissist does the same, masks to fit in but there's more behind that mask and what they are selling or portraying is perhaps something other people wouldn't want to associate with or be aware of the entire friendship.

Obviously not all have bad intent, theres varying levels but in the circumstance where someone is masking to the point their entire personality and life is fabricated to a third party, that's different. Duping that person into a fake friendship with someone who's a fantasy, only to find everything they have said isn't true or real and in reality, they are doing bad things to people in their true life that does exist.

I think I'm half of one but then I love babies and animals so maybe not? Just grown adults that cry over stupid things or entitlement annoys me?

It’s presenting a facade, which is what I mean by manipulation: it is controlling how one appears to onlookers. That isn’t a value judgement, and I’m not assigning malign intent to it.

My point is that a lot of the time the masking is done for the same reason: presenting the face that best fits in, rather than masking in order to best inflict harm.

What a shocking testimony , are you safe now and have you made a happy life for yourself free from this horrifying man ?
It is unimaginable thinking about the fear you have felt , from the man who should have kept you the safest you could ever have been.

I suppose many serious child abusers fall into this category

Well obviously these people are very good at hiding that at the start! It takes a while before the mask slips. Now I know about love bombing, I understand how it all works. If you met him, you’d think he was charming and charismatic. However the truth is very far from that.

I've name changed for this.

I am probably a psychopath, or at least sit outside of the realms of normal emotional processing.

I can feel empathy for my partner. I am not totally devoid of emotion. Though a lot of my upset and grief in life has been selfish/narcissistic eg I'm unhappy that somebody died because it causes issue for me. I feel sorry only for myself. I cannot stand sick people because of the burden.

I can't stand children. I wouldn't go out of my way to hurt one but the sound of a baby crying makes me immediately think to smother it. I would easily and without guilt be able to take a baby outside to a shed and leave it there knowing it would die, simply because it was noisy or inconvenient. I don't see a point in many people so I feel they are irrelevant and their life, happiness, suffering etc pose no impact to me therefor aren't at all something I concern myself with. I do not experience regret, only again, self pity if perhaps I was caught doing something bad. I do not regret my actions only being caught.

When I was a child I tried to kill another girl. I held a bag over her head until she passed out. I was angry when this happened so I did experience that feeling of rage, again I do not regret it. She didn't die, and being relatively young I did not get in any real trouble.

I have always thought people around me are idiots. I am considered very attractive and I have used this to my advantage a lot. I am very intelligent but I act dumber than I am. I am excellent at masking and people consider me warm and friendly.

I do not have close relationships with any of my family, we rarely speak. I consider them a waste of my time and energy, but not because of anything that's happened.l between us.

The law does prevent me doing bad things, I enjoy comforts as much as anybody else. However if it was guaranteed I would not be caught I I'd probably be much more dangerous. I avoid physical altercations because I'm small and obviously still feel pain, but I know if I killed somebody I'd feel absolutely nothing. I don't feel the need to torture small animals or anything like that but I also don't feel empathy for them. I've killed animals in normal pest control situations. I also shot a pheasant which would crow in my yard daily. But again, they were inconveniencing me.

I have been very successful and I suppose some of that is because I am not risk averse. I can be impulsive but have tempered that as I've aged, and managed to play some of it off as a wild youth. I am happily married and I have softly mentioned some of these things to my partner but he doesn't really believe me, at least not entirely. I think partially he can't compute that inside I'm bad or capable of things he considers abhorrent, and I like him thinking the best in me so I have never pressed it. He is the opposite of me and is very gentle and kind.

I do experience joy, happiness and things can alter my mood. I'm not a robot.

Though my lack of deep caring is not something I can control, and as I said I wouldn't give energy to anything not worth my time, so mindless crime or torture aren't really on my radar but if I was crossed I don't think there is a limit to the actions I would take in retaliation.

So he did show something behind his eyes when you first got together? Or you just didn't notice he didn't and reacted to what he said?

I have no idea as I got married over 17 years ago! The affairs and abuse started around the time DD was born. She’s 14. That’s when he changed completely towards me. I’ve been divorced for 7 years now so have very little contact with him, but he’s totally dead behind the eyes now and has been for as long as I can remember. I’m not going to go into everything he’s done to me as it’s horrific but it was a lifetime ago.

Mine was very convincing at the start and at that point there was none dead eye look, it was perfect but looking back too perfect. The only way I can describe it was it was me, everything matched. Pretty sure I was love bombed it moved extremely fast.

They played innocent and naive, introverted and heavily relied on my support, we were inseparable.

As time went on some things happened but not major, just a bit out there at times. Little bit high maintenance after, nothing too major. Then our eldest was born and it changed, got a bit more intense at certain periods but not major.

Then our youngest was born and that's where it started to go awol and the abuse really started. A more hateful person emerged in general and it was with everything but especially towards me.

Over the years it got more and more extreme. Things that apparently always stood for were no longer valid, views of the world, people and what they would be capable of or fantasied about doing came out openly in conversation like were talking about the weather. It got to the point I was like their moral compass or conscience.

A lot of things happened to me as well, too many to go into detail but I never thought they were capable of it. In the end they changed completely over night and now they are not the same person, their eyes are dead looking, dark around the eyes sunken almost, haggard with no glint. Totally void with an intimidating stare.

Yet at the same time has created a new version of themselves for public and new friends who don't know them well. In that version they are self sufficient lone parent and always have been. I didn't do anything the entire time and I'm extremely dangerous and my children no longer have a father. They are the victim and I'm the abuser.

Believes these lies as truth, all our past has been changed to suit this narrative. Events we shared and even events family were present didn't happen.

So on one hand is doing everything in power holding me back legally from the children and on the other is making out none of that is happening at all, just carrying on with life like I didn't exist. To those who knew me, they are fed the story but others aren't aware at all...just a nice, poor innocent mother with children all on her own.

Yes. I married one. He’s had five wives, and we don’t know how many kids. He just lies through life. He’s broken many women.

I think you are making that confusion, it's clear what the differences are.

I don't quite understand what you are getting at.

I think it's pretty clear, but there are also clearly people on the thread who see psychopaths as being sadistic people, for example, or incapable of any emotion, or incapable of moral reasoning, none of which is necessarily the case.

But narcissism is a clinical feature of psychopathy, @Rudderneck, and many psychopaths are sadistic.

They can be co morbidities (same as with sadism), but there are big differences between narcissistic traits, and NPD, in both the source of them and how the narcissism is expressed.

A narcissist has an emotional need for external validation in order to reinforce a fragile sense of self - a psychopath does not. A narcissistic deeply fears any threat to said sense of self/the image they have created, a psychopath does not. A narcissist will feel shame and remorse and seek to justify their actions to themselves, a psychopath does not and will not.

There are also difference types of psychopaths, as well as different types of narcissistic. Again this is why an understanding that is based predominantly on criminal psychopaths, is a limited understanding.

I'm unhappy that somebody died because it causes issue for me. For me it's the inconvenience of it.
I feel sorry only for myself and society constantly tells us this is bad and selfish when the only people who come out as winners are the people who look out for themselves.
I can't stand children. I wouldn't go out of my way to hurt one but the sound of a baby crying makes me immediately think to smother it. I would easily and without guilt be able to take a baby outside to a shed and leave it there knowing it would die, simply because it was noisy or inconvenient. I don't see a point in many people so I feel they are irrelevant and their life, happiness, suffering etc pose no impact to me therefor aren't at all something I concern myself with. I do not experience regret, only again, self pity if perhaps I was caught doing something bad. I do not regret my actions only being caught. I could've wrote this whole paragraph. The only regret I've experienced was getting caught doing something deemed illegal/fraudulent by not planning better.
I am happily married I am also but my DH thinks I have a personality disorder. He's the one person who I find difficult to emotionally manipulate and in terms of conditions of worth, I think he's the closest thing to acceptance I'm ever going to get. He does try and discourage me from stealing and if the law didn't prevent me from doing other things I'd probably go further.

I tried to commit suicide in my early teens, his controlling and aggressive temper clashed terribly with my biological development to start to move away from him/them. I was unsuccessful thankfully. He was thrown out by the hospital for shouting in my face as my stomach was pumped, that was I was a waste of time and he had lost a days work.
The nurses were much kinder to me after they met him.

I left home at seventeen, struggled terribly initially and finally moved overseas thousands of miles from him.
I built a successful and happy life, I no longer had anything to lose, as I felt I had already lost everything. I have trust issues sometimes, I had lots of therapy around still caring him and I worry about my mother every day. She never left him in the end, and says he has calmed down with age. He hasn’t but it’s a lie she has to tell to keep us all from prying too much. He is not too bad to her as she serves (many) purposes.

I have wished all of my life for a parent that actually feels something for me, he despised us as children, we were in his way. Now, he is simply totally indifferent. We have no relationship whatsoever.

Yes there's a difference between someone who is narcissistic and someone who is actually a narcissist with NPD. Narcissists and psychopaths aren't the same at a deeper level and they vary from one person to another, just like everyone else. It's not as clear cut as saying, that person is narcissistic so they are an actual narcissist or a psychopath is inherently dangerous or a serial killer.

I can't say for sure as I'm no expert only what I have experienced but I've come across many people who would be deemed narcissistic but only one who I think does have NPD and there's a clear difference as far as I have seen.

It is all about protecting their image of themselves at all costs, they have to maintain that current version of themselves. When they do wrong or hurt others they do know what they are doing and they do care but not for the person, for themselves and their image, the shame and remorse they shove down and avoid at all costs because it's too much. They won't ever admit but I have seen it at times, a slight crack here and there and at times full on collapse and that is the saddest most broken person I've ever seen.

That was a rare occurrence, though and mostly everything and everyone was analyzed for some gain for themselves. Highly emotional reactions to everything perceived as a slight that hit their triggers and if they were hit, rage like I have never seen. The levels taken to create or maintain their image was full quite often delusional.

So yeah I think that's the opposite of a psychopath who would likely not give a damn what others thought about them or said, perhaps.

My only confusion in my case is, what if that person shows all the signs of NPD but then alongside this behind closed doors away from public, their more truer self, shows fairly strong psychopath traits as well that are quite disturbing, they have done some things before and you're not quite sure what they would be capable of.

Would that just be overlap or would that be something else entirely like a narcissist psychopath, if that is a thing....

This is where it gets really convoluted, because of the various subtypes of psychopath (and narcissist). There’s a number of different theories that abound in regards to how many subtypes there even are (usually goes from two up to ten), and then there’s confusion as to whether a sociopath is different to a psychopath, or if they’re different names for the same thing. However, the consensus seems to be that a Narcissistic Psychopath is a specific subtype. Although, all that said, while it’s generally understood that psychopathy exists and is distinct from antisocial personality, it’s not even a term that is officially used - the diagnosis is ASPD! It really is a clusterfuck to try and unravel, define, and comprehend.

Overall the understanding of psychopathy is poor, especially so in regards to understanding ‘successful psychopaths’, and female psychopaths. In regards to the latter, at one point, and quite possibly even now, sex could/can determine what diagnosis would be made. A psychopathic man would be diagnosed with ASPD, a psychopathic woman would be diagnosed as Borderline, despite that again being a different condition. Once again it shows how much of a clusterfuck it really is.

Well, no, not necessarily.

It's a generalization for sure, but I've found the true narcissists I've met to be much worse to deal with than psychopaths.

When I join a new work place I sit back and work out who truly holds the power in the workplace. It's often not management but usually one or two individuals who have management twisted round their little fingers and are adept at running the place to suit them . They are usually very confident, charismatic , smiley people. I make it a point to get along with them . If you cross them you may as well sign your resignation because your life will be made a living hell until you do . I can't make up my mind if they are narcissistic or sociopathic.

I don't want to evoke bad memories so thanks for the reply. I've come across one child who could be labelled as a psychopath, no moral compass and he acted in a way his peers were distraught over. He was dead behind the eyes in every situation though

@whumpthereitis Interesting, thanks.

Yes I'm finding intriguing while trying to make sense of my situation but it seems to be a massive rabbit hole with conflicting information.

Narcissist seems to be in at the moment as far as I can work out, it's everywhere but NPD itself aligns very much to what I have been dealing with all this time, everything matches but still I don't know as I can't diagnose it myself. Although, way things are going it may be ordered so may find out one way or the other.

That's something I have come across too, males and females exhibiting differently and as a result, a different diagnosis. Same as apparently female and male narcissists differ, along with malignant and convert narcissists.

Very hard to distinguish what's actually at play considering there's so many similarities, different labels and also stereotypes. Assuming ASPD was to remove that serial killer stigma associated with the name psychopath...