This is a question of psychopathy. When asked why do I think some people can’t see through the charade and seem unable to unravel what is right before them. My answer was that ‘we the unconvinced’ are all potential psychopaths who have the capacity to be but chose not to use it. And the others are gullible and too trusting. That’s the short answer, and now for the slightly longer analysis of it.

The definition of the term first – “Psychopathy is a neuropsychiatric disorder marked by deficient emotional responses, lack of empathy, and poor behavioural controls, commonly resulting in persistent antisocial deviance and criminal behaviour”.

Sounds scarily like our ‘rulers’ at the moment doesn’t it, although there are many disorders running alongside each other there, and would take more than one post to pick that apart!

But the definition is the starting point, or for how most people see or believe psychopaths are rooted out and identified. I do not entirely agree as it is too broad and the meaning has changed over the decades – so I will do my best to explain what I think about it.

The above definition is an odd one because often when people who are deemed psychopaths, like serial killers for example (the obvious go to), most people didn’t know, or had no idea until they were caught. So were they just faking required emotional responses? Masking if you will, as many people do in society or through life, to ‘fit in’. Is that any different? Showing a lack of empathy towards others – definitely not isolated to psychopaths, but what is the scale we are using to decide? Interestingly, it’s a person who decided the criteria, so what if they themselves were a psychopath who wanted to single out people who they might have deemed unfit – you know, in a eugenicist kind of way. The people who struggle with emotional responses, or who can’t show their empathy, and who might lash out when society gets too much? That doesn’t sound psychopathic after all does it. The original term translated to ‘suffering soul’, and I can’t help but suspect that with many a term for the workings of the mind, they have been changed and repurposed since their conception.

But let’s consider someone who knows what emotional responses they should be deploying, and has a distinct lack of empathy but manages to hide that too behind a facade of concern and outrage. And they have a very tight grip on their behaviour controls, meaning they don’t get caught, and knowing exactly what to do to keep people running in circles around them. Are we to give them the same label? Surely, they are more psychopathic than the first? So maybe I am wrong to even use that term for what is going on now, or for what dwells deep inside most of us, if not all, it just manifests in different ways given different environments and stimuli. And the ones who get caught and defined under societal law, are just the ones who spiralled off into oblivion, and separated themselves from the collective mantra of suppress and deny? We also have a tendency as a species to want to survive and protect ourselves, so maybe the ones who don’t spiral off into what they call anti-social behaviour, are just the ones who realise their ride through society can be an easy one, as long as they ‘play the game’. Having your cake and eating it might be the applicable saying for that.

Bringing me back to the theory that we have it in us, all have the potential you might say. But it is not until given the correct incentive, environment or opportunity does it rear its head or flourish unfettered. And just maybe some people didn’t know it was in them, and never learnt to manage, understand, question or control it and it comes through in different forms. Could be that being a little bit psychopathic helps people survive, and is indeed an evolutionary response as some have theorised? Maybe we will see…

(c) K Wicks