What Can You Learn From Psychopaths

Psychopathic personalities aren't just found in murder movies. Nearly all of us eventually meet someone who could be described as a psychopath in real life. And the condition isn't especially rare.

Who Is a Psychopath?

While the term "psychopath" is still used in everyday conversation, mental health professionals typically refer to "antisocial personality disorder" or "dissocial personality disorder."

The current version of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (the DSM-IV), which is used by mental health professionals in the United States, defines antisocial personality disorder as a pervasive pattern of disregard for the rights of others since the age of 15, indicated by three or more of the following behaviors:

• Lack of remorse for having hurt or stolen from someone else, not even making an effort to rationalize the act.
• Consistent failure to honor work or financial obligations.
• Reckless disregard for safety of others, while paying attention to safety needs of oneself.
• Aggression or irritability resulting in physical fights with others.
• Failure to plan ahead.
• Conning others for pleasure or gain, a consistent pattern of lying.
• Repeatedly performing acts that are grounds for arrest as a criminal.

The DSM-IV goes on to specify that the diagnosis is not to be made before the patient is 18, that there should have been evidence of a conduct disorder of some kind (for instance, oppositional defiance disorder) before the age of 15, and the behaviors are not the result of schizophrenia, the manic phase of bipolar disorder, or as a manifestation of what is currently called a borderline personality disorder, the need to deal with abandonment issues. Psychologist Theodore Milton further categorized this disorder as having nomadic, covetous, risk-taking, reputation-defending, and/or malevolent features.

In plain language, psychopaths are mean, bullying, con artists. They coldheartedly lie, cheat, and steal, and they manipulate others to maintain a parasitic lifestyle without remorse. They may adopt a hit-and-run attitude toward their victims, or they may be greedy, or they make take risks just for the thrill of it, they may demand "respect," or they may be just plain evil. Most of us know someone who fits the bill.

How Common Are Psychopaths?

Antisocial personality disorders are found in about 1 in 200 to maybe 1 in 100 people in the United States. People who wind up on a medical examiner's table, in one study, were found to have a diagnosis of "psychopathy" in about 1 in 15 cases, and the condition is relatively common in paid mercenaries and, interestingly enough, first-year medical students.

Is Everything About A Psychopathic Personality Necessarily Bad?

It's hard or impossible for most of us to see redeeming qualities in a brutal dictator or a serial killer. The success of a Saddam Hussein or a Ted Bundy is not accidental, however, and there are certain professions in which a lack of empathy for others is actually, within limits, a positive characteristic. Here are some examples.

1. Surgeons.

The most effective surgeons, particularly the most effective neurosurgeons, can't be in the least way squeamish about blood and suffering.

The doctor who wields a surgical knife may have many personality traits in common with the thug who wields a knife in a mugging. There is some evidence that innovative surgeons, however, tend to be empathetic. The pioneer of heart transplant surgery Dr. Christiaan Barnard, for example, nearly flunked out of medical school because he could not deal with cadavers.

2. Military officers.

It's a fact of war that commanding officers sometimes knowingly order their troops to certain death, and must do so to win battles and win wars. Modern military technology minimizes this necessity, and the military training academies (at least in the USA) have taken to turning out deeply reflective, "kinder and gentler" military officers, but a degree of psychopathy is involved in any military command.

3. Medical examiners.

Medical examiners take the bodies of naked strangers, saw out their brains and their vital organs, and find cause of death. An excessively warm and empathetic personality precludes performance of the job.

4. Political leaders.

Chaotic countries seem to attract strong-arm leadership, and probably not without reason. The ability to make hard choices, and not care what people think, pays off in the leadership of a country.

5. Butchers.

Most modern people in Europe and North America have never had to swing an ax and chop off the head of a chicken, followed by pulling out guts and plucking feathers, just to make dinner. We let professional butchers take care of the processing of our meat supply. Most butchers, however, manage to compartmentalize their lack of empathy to their professional activities.

Neurological researchers believe that antisocial personalities involving a lack of empathy can be explained in brain function. In the scan of a brain of an empathetic person making a moral decision, the screen lights up as brain messages are spread from the amygdala to the medial orbitofrontal cortex. In the scan of a brain of a psychopath making an ethical decision, there isn't any lighting up of the screen from these parts of the brain.

Psychopathic personality may be hard-wired into the brain--or the result of an absence of brain circuits, as the case may be. 

But it's a fact of life, and the best way for most of us to deal with it, if we don't have it, may be at a distance.