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Comment by Robert Siciliano on July 21, 2010 at 8:29am

Awesome response Justen, well thought out. Is your rant based on your own observations and findings in The Psychopath Next Door, Political Ponerology, The Mask of Sanity?

Comment by Justen on July 19, 2010 at 3:11pm

I'm going to start a long rant here so bear with me. or skip at your pleasure.

The "one percenter" theory is really spot on. According to statistics 1 in 100 are "classical psychopaths" - people who have the full set of psychopathic symptoms and behaviors. Another 3 - 5 in 100 express some psychopathic features. Fortunately (or unfortunately depending on how you look at it) the vast majority are not serial killers. They channel their destructive impulses and lack of compassion, empathy, and ability to engage in long-term planning into other kinds of predation - in relationships, in the workplace, and most notably in politics, where they can prey on, subjugate and murder entire nations.

Almost everybody knows and deals regularly with petty psychopaths and we all live with the consequences of their larger predations on society, but one thing you *don't* have to fear is that, statistically, one of your fellow shoppers any day at Wal-Mart is preparing to murder someone tonight. They're much more likely plotting a new round of division and strife in the church or at the workplace that they expect to benefit from, or devising a new reason to send your brothers, sisters, sons and daughters off to murder eachother for their own profit.

Dealing with them is a huge problem; not all criminals are psychopaths and not all psychopaths are criminals (in a legalistic sense). Longer sentences aren't a solution because psychopaths are not deterred by consequences - they're mentally incapable of estimating long-term risk/reward so potential penalties do not phase them. Life sentences aren't a great option either because the overall cost to society to incarcerate a petty criminal for life is higher than the cost to just let them run amok in many cases. Death penalties aren't a great solution either, since governments (being run by incompetents, psychopaths, and flunkies in the first place) have an abysmal track record at getting and killing the right person.

The "right" answer probably revolves around education and medical science. Part of the reason there are so many of them is that psychopathy is an adaptive trait; human society is a predator's paradise of ignorance and a tendency to trust and respect strangers (the latter being good things). Making psychopathy maladaptive is as simple as educating people on how to unmask and defeat psychopathic behavior. Detecting psychopathic mental function is also pretty easy; their brains work so vastly different from a non-psychopath that it is easy to test for using modern brain imaging equipment. The question of whether they are human in any real sense and whether they can play a positive role in society despite their apparently incurable and untreatable disorder is an important one to be explored further.

One thing to remember is when it comes down to it, they are just human bodies lacking functional human minds; the only reason they're dangerous is that most people don't know how to deal with them. They're not especially intelligent, strong, or cunning as they are portrayed in fiction. Defeating them mostly consists of identifying and unraveling their web of deceit, something easy to do if you arm yourself with logic and good communication with others.

There are some great books out there on the subject - The Psychopath Next Door, Political Ponerology, The Mask of Sanity.