Are You A Psychopath? – Toby C
How am I, how are you, supposed to know if you are a psychopath? I know it sounds stupid, but if you are a psychopath that’s all you know, and if you aren’t a psychopath that’s still all you know. Four in every hundred people are psychopaths, now that means that wandering the corridors of RHS there are 28 people who are clinically different to the rest of you, in the way they think, talk and act.
But what even is a psychopath? A psychopath is an individual who has typically amoral or anti-social behaviour, this can manifest itself in showing a lack of ability to love or establish meaningful or personal relationships. They can express extreme egocentricity and demonstrate a failure to learn from experience or from other peoples’ behaviours. Psychopaths often have a superficial charm, high intelligence, and poor judgement.
Psychopathy is something that extremely interests me, not because I am a psychopath, (although I might be) but because I think that the world is run by these psychotic people. I think the ability to disconnect from emotion is one of the most powerful skills when it comes to making it far as a human being. I think emotion is a weakness that has developed from human evolution, and I think that psychopaths display behaviour that gives them an advantage in life, in terms of not letting the small things destroy them. Although the statistic for psychopaths in society is 4 in every 100, this percentage becomes much higher when you look at the percentage of CEOs who are psychopaths, or in other powerful positions, showing their infiltration in our society. Maybe the word infiltration is a little bit harsh considering that they’re not a different species just better, more egotistical versions of your average Joe; with killer charm to get what they want. Although I’m being facetious here, the thing about psychopaths that interests me is what is it that makes someone psychotic? Is it external factors or is it something genetic? with a psychopath they display a very weird mixture of traits; from having an incredibly high intelligence to having a lack of awareness of learning from judgement or from previous experiences, yet being charming and manipulative. These things seem almost incompatible, yet here these traits displayed in one person. How can you charm someone without that being a learned behaviour? How can you be incredibly intelligent but struggle to understand others? The other thing is that because of the high intelligence psychopaths possess, they are brilliant at masking their psychopathy, and this becomes interesting when you think about the way people act. Do you think you could spot a psycho? Do you think you would know if you yourself were a psychopath? One question that I think is fascinating, if you were to ask yourself, or to ask anyone else, is whether psychopaths pose a threat to our society?
Now this is a really interesting idea, I’ve already said that in my personal opinion I think that psychopaths are the more developed (for want of a better word) human in terms of not having a weakness of emotion, but in a society where most people can feel, surely this becomes a “flaw”, and you often see a psychopath depicted as a murderer, or an amoral character because these are traits often associated with psychopathy, but what does that really mean? Not all murderers are psychopaths and not all psychopaths are murderers. I think it’s difficult to make a distinction between having a trait, or a susceptibility, and acting upon it, but it is an important distinction to make.
I think that there are people in society who are more susceptible to being murderers than others, just as some people in society are more susceptible to being drug users or are more prone to depression or anxiety than others. Another question that is food for thought is where you draw the line. If people are more genetically susceptible to being “bad people” i.e., being murderers or displaying anti-social behaviour, is this their fault? Can you punish people for something out of their control? Obviously, I’m not saying that you should just let people go around and kill people because they “can’t help themselves”, I’m merely stating the flaw in a system that we have now, between helping people with disorders and punishing them.
If you haven’t been able to tell already, I’m currently reading ‘American Psycho’. For those of you who don’t know, this book is about a Psychopath, Patrick Bateman, working in America on Wall Street in the 80s, and he is an incredibly influential and rich man, with lots of “friends” at the top of the circle, but in his spare time he goes around and kills people. In the book you see his perspective; you see a psychopaths’ perspective, you see the faked emotion, you see the mask that he wears around in society and you see the other side of him, the “true” side of him as he stabs people to death in his free time. This obviously isn’t the case for every psychopath, like I said a comparatively high percentage of CEOs are psychotic, and I doubt they go around killing people, but I would be interested to know if they still had the urge to, but the more pressing question is whether it is fair to depict all psychopaths like this? Is it a helpful stereotype?
If you’re reading this article and wondering when I’ll come to a point that I’m trying to make, I’m not actually trying to make a point, I just think it’s important to provoke thought. It’s important to realize the fact that not everyone thinks like you do, if you’re a psychopath, most of society doesn’t think the way you do, but if you’re a “normal” person well then again not everyone will think like you, and there will be some people who don’t care about others, but who are clever and funny and smart, and are they less of a human because of a genetic disposition to something they can’t control? Are they “bad” because our society perceives psychotic behaviour to be wrong? Is there a solution?
Again, this is just one aspect of society where there is no right answer, and there is no solution, and I think some people will be confused if there’s even a problem. If I were to really be pushing the boundaries of this conversation, I would compare psychopaths to “divergent’s” in a dystopian world, hiding within society and having to mask who they are to protect themselves, when in reality they know that they are more powerful then the rest of the world. But I won’t make that comparison for fear of overstepping the boundary of speculation, but I will leave it there for you to think about.
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