As frightening as movie psychopaths like Norman Bates and Hannibal Lecter appear on the big screen, turns out they may not be as realistic compared to their real-life counterparts. In 2013, Belgian psychiatrists watched over 400 movies to decide which fictional psychopath are based in reality and which ones were pure fiction.
Read the details. URL:http://www.businessinsider.com/most-realistic-movie-psychopath-2016-5?IR=T
By definition, the psychopath doesn’t have successful relationships. Actually, the truth is more about capacity thanquality. With the psychopath, there is an absence of emotional connection and true empathetic feeling. The psychopath simply isn’t capable of trusting and depending on another individual. To sit with them and assess them as I have inforensic settings, it’s as if you’re talking with someone who’s part ice. Though they engage in sex (and other trappings of relationships), their experience of sex is vastly different from their non-psychopathic peers.
First, let’s quickly review the most disturbing traits of the psychopath: According to theAntisocial Personality Questionnaire (Blackburn & Fawcett, 1999), primary psychopathy is characterized by hostility, extraversion, self-confidence, impulsivity, aggression, and mild-to-moderate anxiety. Though the psychopath may commit illegal crimes, a psychopath can go through life wreaking harm on others and yet never commit an actual crime. The traits of the psychopath are deeply troubling when applied to sex and relationships.
Sex is never a mutually emotional experience with a psychopath.
Conventional wisdom suggests that sex should be an emotional and intimate experience. Think of any popular ballad on the radio, and you know what I mean—songs about idealistic, perfect love in which both partners love and trust, and make love until dawn because their emotional connection is so strong. Simply put, a psychopath would be the last person in the world to have that kind of lasting, sustainable connection. Psychopaths are chiefly oriented around getting their most important needs met, regardless of the expense to others.
Because psychopaths don’t have mutually dependent and respectful romantic relationships, they can’t have a healthy sex life, either. The psychopath is often a pro at seducing and getting someone into bed, but the process is more a calculated game than an organic emotional—and then sexual—experience.
What turns on the psychopath?
The psychopath is sexually motivated by power—everything is a means to an end. If having a sexual relationship with a woman means that she will then trust him more or give him more money, he will perform the sexual task with Herculean bravado. Some of the women I have worked with who have gotten involved with psychopaths actually share how amazing sex can be with them.
How could this be so?
Like much of their behavior, psychopaths have mastered the art of performance. They perform in areas of their lives most people wouldn’t even imagine—saying “I’m sorry” with the right sensitive tone, having seen an actor do it really well in a movie; professing love as if the world were to end the next day, reminiscent of lyrics from a popular song; and always dressing the part wherever they may be, understanding that image and first impressions can lure others into their lair. When it comes to sex, psychopaths perform, too.
The psychopath who seeks to drain the bank account of a vulnerable but wealthy individual will have as much sex—or provide the best sex possible—if it helps him or her achieve that goal. Similarly, another psychopath who has sexual urges seeks a willing partner on whom to force himself and have sex as rough as necessary to discharge the dysregulated, hostile energy.
Promiscuous behavior, and multiple short-term relationships.
The psychopath frequently engages in promiscuous sexual behavior or has many short-term marital relationships, both items on Robert Hare’s seminal Psychopathy Checklist—Revised (1991). Ali and Chamorro-Premuzic (2010), for example, found that primary psychopathy was positively associated with promiscuity (e.g., psychopathy meant more promiscuity) and negatively associated with commitment (e.g., psychopathy meant less commitment).
Psychopaths don’t engage in promiscuous sex because they love sex so much; it’s more about boosting their ego when they feel rejected, obtaining power, or defending against the boredom psychopaths often feel. Plus, sex—especially with a stranger—allows the psychopath to get incredibly quick access to another person at their most sexually intimate and vulnerable. Because psychopaths constantly have their eye on a goal, getting someone in a vulnerable position allows them to take more advantage of them. If someone is lonely, they may be more susceptible to the sexual advances of a psychopath—even if their instinct tells them something about this new person seems off or, as is sometimes the case, they seem “too good to be true.”
The psychopath at the bar, restaurant, or other social hangout.
Bars and restaurants with active happy hours are especially popular spots for psychopaths to sexually pursue individuals. With the wheels greased with alcohol, men and women alike are more willing to fall prey to the psychopath’s highly calculated strategies to ensnare. The psychopath in this setting can be spotted by picking up on the following signals: excessive, forced flattery; looking for pity or sympathy; creating a sense that the two share a deep, almost destined connection right from the start; and asking extremely personal questions too soon in service of the need to ascertain the target’s emotional weaknesses.
Finding victims when they’re lonely, depressed, or emotionally lost.
A female client of mine who started her relationship with a psychopath in a bar later told me, “I thought he was coming on a little strong, but I guess I was just really lonely at the time.” Psychopaths are experts at reading cues that indicate vulnerability, as these are the circumstances when normal men and women are most likely to fall for the psychopath’s tactics. It’s critical for everyone to trust their instincts when it comes to the sexual advances of others, especially when they get the sense that the pursuer is dead-set on sealing the deal in that moment—and getting them home.
Disposing of sexual or romantic partners as if they’re unnecessary objects.
Just as a complex dynamic is at work with the abused woman who stays with an abusive boyfriend or husband, an equally complex dynamic is at work with the psychopath and his victim. People often stay with a psychopath far longer than they’re proud to admit because the psychopath has brainwashed the victim over time through a series of self-esteem-killing strategies (isolating them from family and friends, criticizing them in countless ways). It’s often when the psychopath ends the relationship that the victims seek mentalhealth treatment, frequently because they are devastated by the way they were abandoned so flippantly.
It’s hard for most people to understand how anyone could cut off a partner so quickly and callously, but healing from a relationship with a psychopath usually requires that the victim clearly understands the unique psychological profile of the psychopath. Healing also requires that the victim understand how vastly different the psychopath’s needs are in comparison: In essence, their emotional needs are all about serving their own grandioseself-image, and not at all about mutuality or reciprocity.
Most important, the psychopath will never truly honor the victim’s feelings, especially when it comes to asking the psychopath to take accountability for their deceitful andconscience-less ways. There will never be any meaningful, lasting insight from the psychopath. Martha Stout says it best in her book, The Sociopath Next Door:
“In general, people without conscience tend to believe their way of being in the world is superior to ours.”
Psychiatrists have believed that psychopaths are defined by qualities of callousness, lack of emotion, and coldness. They lack empathy, in other words. But a new study identifies that not all psychopaths — or adolescents showing signs of pre-psychopathy — have these qualities, and that diagnosing psychopathy is a lot more complicated.
Published in the Journal of Abnormal Child Psychology, the study argues that this belief actually prevents doctors from properly treating people who have been diagnosed with psychopathy, or have been diagnosed with precursors of it.
What is a psychopath? Despite popular belief, it’s quite different from a sociopath; psychopaths are generally considered to have emotional and chemical imbalances on a genetic level (they barely have a moral compass, or don’t have one at all), while sociopaths tend to develop their skewed moral compass throughout childhood and adulthood. The fifth edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-5) lists psychopathy under Antisocial Personality Disorders (ASPD), characterized by a disregard for laws and rights of others, inability to feel remorse or guilt, and a penchant for violence.
Typically, psychiatrists and doctors believe that psychopaths can’t be cured or really treated, even. Psychopaths, particularly adults, don’t fear punishment or social isolation.
But the new study, which was completed at the University of Vermont, argues that if caught early on enough, psychopathic traits in adolescents might be able to be treated. The researchers examined 150 male and female young people who lived in juvenile detention centers. They were between the ages of 11 and 17, had been classified as “callous and unemotional” (CU), and showed extreme anti-social behavior that was a precursor to developing psychopathy as an adult.
The researchers attempted to examine whether these callous traits were truly psychopathy — or if they were caused by something else. Interestingly, they found that many of these adolescents actually didn’t fit in the definition of psychopathy. They used a more robust psychological test than is typically used to identify psychopathy, which allowed for them to examine a wider range of personality and emotional traits.
“They appear callous and unemotional to others but are actually very distressed, have high levels of anxiety, higher levels of depression, higher levels of emotion,” Tim Stickle, professor of psychology at the University of Vermont and author of the study, said in the press release. “We think of these harmful, antisocial, aggressive kids as being immune to fear, immune to negative feelings, but in fact we’re showing a whole group of them are not only not immune, but are very susceptible.”
Stickle notes that the findings suggest that instead of lumping these kids into the psychopathic classification, they can actually be treated properly with cognitive behavioral therapy that could help them manage emotions. “There is an opportunity to do things differently and more effectively,” he said. “Untreated callous unemotional traits put these youth at risk for becoming lifelong criminals.”
Thus, the researchers argue, using this more effective personality test could allow for a better chance to identify whether adolescents are truly psychopathic, or simply suffering from emotional distress.
“It’s not just one characteristic that allows clear identification of who falls in which group; it takes a wide range of traits,” Stickle noted. “Using a wide range of measures of emotional experience and expression is very important to clearly identify who these individuals are so they can be helped.”
Source: Gill A, Stickle T. “Affective Differences Between Psychopathy Variants and Genders in Adjudicated Youth.” Journal of Abnormal Child Psychology. 2015.
Some would contend that it’s nothing but an irritating fad spurred on by a growing phenomenon of self-obsession and narcissism. But the act of taking “selfies,” or self-snapped photos of oneself typically for the purpose of plastering all over social media, may actually be indicative of a serious mental condition.
Researchers from Ohio State University (OSU) found that individuals who share lots of selfies online actually display clinical psychopathic traits, including a lack of empathy. Particularly men who digitally alter their selfie photos before sharing them, say experts, may be exhibiting narcissistic tendencies and unhealthy patterns of self-objectification.
But women aren’t exempted from this designation. Everyone has seen the infamous “duck lips” photos which are often accompanied by seductive, self-focused poses, which suggest both insecurity and instability by the person taking them. Selfie addiction could indicate that a person is literally maniacal, not to mention impulsive and explicitly self-centered.
Published in the journal Personality and Individual Differences, the new study looked at antisocial traits in participants compared to their individual levels of selfie addiction. They found that participants who regularly post selfies online scored higher than average on the sociopath scale than participants who don’t engage in this activity.
Individuals who doctor their photos to make themselves look especially attractive were found to display signs of narcissism, including the perception that they can only relate to others by feeling more intelligent and attractive than them. On the other hand, individuals who immediately upload photos of themselves after taking them display signs of impulsiveness and a lack of empathy, two indicators, say psychologists, ofpsychopathy.
“Psychopathy is characterized by impulsivity,” said Professor Jesse Fox, an assistant professor of communications at OSU. “They are going to snap the photos and put them online right away. They want to see themselves. They don’t want to spend time editing.”
The survey, which included 800 men between the ages of 18 and 40, revealed what many people might see as obvious — the vanity that accompanies constantly posting images of oneself to social media is not normal and suggests that society as a whole is becoming increasingly more self-obsessed and self-focused.
“It’s not surprising that men who post a lot of selfies and spend more time editing them are more narcissistic,” added Professor Fox, as quoted by the Daily Mail. “The more interesting finding is that they also score higher on this other anti-social personality trait, psychopathy, and are more prone to self-objectification.”
“Most people don’t think that men even do that sort of thing, but they definitely do.”
In women, such actions are generally regarded as problematic in the sense that they can lead to negative self-perception issues that in turn lead to eating disorders, body modifications and other vain attempts to achieve a certain image. But the same problems can occur in men as well, says Professor Fox, illustrating the curse that is social media.
“We know that self-objectification leads to a lot of terrible things, like depression and eating disorders in women,” concluded Professor Fox. “With the growing use of social networks, everyone is more concerned with their appearance. That means self-objectification may become a bigger problem for men, as well as for women.”
Sources:
Learn more: http://www.naturalnews.com/048248_selfies_psychopathy_narcissism.html#ixzz3OiSwJhpL
Neuroscientist James Fallon discusses how he came to discover, and how he’s learned to live with, the fact that he’s a borderline psychopath. Fallon is the author of The Psychopath Inside: A Neuroscientist’s Personal Journey into the Dark Side of the Brain.
watch the video on youtube. URL: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jOyAndLa5HU&list=UUvQECJukTDE2i6aCoMnS-Vg
I found I had the brain imaging pattern and genetic make up of a full-blown psychopath while conducting research – and yet, I turned out to be a successful scientist and family man
I first discovered my “hidden” psychopathy in 2006 during a series of scientific and clinical studies of murderers and patients with psychopathy and schizophrenia, as well as a separate imaging genetics study of Alzheimer’s disease in which I happened to be a control subject.
In that study, we were more than a little surprised to find that I had the brain imaging pattern and genetic make up of a full-blown psychopath. But it wasn’t until 2010, following a public talk in a University of Oslo symposium on bipolar disorder, that I first took my psychopathic traits seriously.
Upon returning to my home in Southern California, I started to ask people close to me what they really thought of me, and if they believed me to be psychopathic. And tell me they did.
The people who knew me well, including family, friends and psychiatrists who examined meall, with the exception of my mother (who later relented and told me secrets of my early life problems that she had kept to herself for over 50 years), finally told me what they felt about my psychopathic behaviors. When tested for psychopathy, I consistently scored as a “pro-social” psychopathic, and borderline to being a categorical psychopath.
There were early signs, but these disturbances were largely offset by my otherwise cheerful, positive and agreeable outgoing traits, ones that would mark me as both class clown in my high school class and Catholic boy of the year in my post-pubertal years. I was athletic, funny, good looking, and popular, often being asked to take on leadership positions from high school to this day as a professor.
But throughout those years, there was always the odd clinician, cleric, or teacher here and there who told me point blank that there was something decidedly evil about me. I always blew them off. While I laughed at their comments, they never even cracked a smile. After all, I knew my constant manipulation of people and of situations was all in good fun.
Although I made pipe bombs as a kid, and did some joy riding in stolen cars and broke into some liquor cabinets as an early teen, we always returned every piece of stolen property. And any time we were stopped by the police, my lack of anxiety meant the police always let me go, even while my buddies were hauled off for questioning. I was devilish for sure, but a sort of tolerable lovable devil. The pranks and manipulations and party mayhem got riskier and would involve tens and hundreds of others as I got older.
One thing pointed out to me was that simply taking on highly risky behaviors by myself was hardly psychopathic. It was when I endangered the lives of others, unwittingly sucked into my games, that they started to resemble psychopathy.
One example occurred in the 1990s when I was living in Africa. One of my brothers from New York visited me and I took him to the Kitum Caves in Mt Elgon, on the border of Uganda and Kenya. After the trip, about two years later, my brother called me in a fury, and really has not trusted me since. He had found out that I had taken him to the abandoned mountain and caves because that is where the deadly Marburg virus was thought to originate. Knowing he would have refused to go if I told him about the virus there (let alone sleeping around a campfire surrounded by close-in lions, hyenas and a leopard all night), I never said a word. Until he found out.
This pattern of dangerous behaviour throughout my life was a telltale sign. I had justified it, and still do, by pointing out that I always engage in the same activities as those I put in danger.
Of the 20 traits of psychopathy on the Hare psychopathy checklist, I score very high on the traits associated with “positive” behaviours within factor 1, or Aggressive Narcissism, and what is called fearless dominance in the psychopathic personality inventory. Some of these traits are prevalent in the most successful CEOs and world leaders. A recent study done on US presidents shows that those such as JFK, FDR, and Bill Clinton, with high scores on this “psychopathic” trait, are also perceived as the best leaders (even though they lied to us).
Can psychopathy be cured? I know of no case of a teenager or adult who has ever reversed categorical, full blown psychopathy. At present pre-pubescent children with signs of emerging psychopathy are undergoing behavioural re-training and although early results are promising, the real test of permanence is not yet known.
For myself, I decided to try to treat my wife and other loved ones with more care. Each time I’m about to interact with them, I pause for a moment and asked “what would a good person do here?” and notice that my instinct is to always do the most selfish thing at that moment. My wife started noticing this and after two months said “what has come over you?”. When I told her that I was trying to use my own narcissism to show that I could, against all odds, overcome my psychopathy, she said she appreciated the effort even though I was not sincere. I still don’t understand how she can accept that insincerity. Perhaps people just want to be treated with respect and kindness. I find that astonishing.
But why, in the light of the fact I have all of the biological markers for psychopathy, including a turned off limbic system, the high risk genetic alleles, and the attendant behaviours, including well over half of those listed in the psychopathy tests and low emotional empathy, did I turn out to be a successful professor and family man? One most likely reason is that although I have the genetic makeup of a “born” psychopath, some of those very same “risk” genes in someone showered with love (versus abuse or abandonment), from childbirth through the critical first few years of life, appear to offset the psychopathy-inducing effects of the other “risk” genes.
This is why I tell my 97 year old mother that the book I wrote about a young boy who could have turned out to be quite a danger to society is just about someone who will do anything to beat you in a game of Scrabble, or follow you into a deadly cave. She still doesn’t realise that the book is not about me, it is about her.
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