Understanding the Psychopath's behaviour

Do the names Jeffrey Dahmer, Ted Bundy, Charles Manson, Albert Fish and Jack the Ripper ring any bells? They’re a few of the most notorious serial-killers in history. They are also known as psychopaths.

Conscience, as irritating as it may be sometimes, keeps us from being completely free, but if you really think about is, it is one of our best features as humans. Imagine being unable to feel emotions, remorse, guilt, shame over doing something bad, even if it hurts family members or people who love you the most. Imagine being completely free to do anything, anything that comes to mind, and actually doing it, having no self-control, being literally unstoppable.

Imagine being self-confident, charming, very popular among people, but using all these characteristics to manipulate and hurt others, just for satisfying an obsession you may have.

Brief history of Ted Bundy and Charles Manson

Ted Bundy, whose real name was Theodore Robert Cowell, was born on the 24^th November 1946. When his mother, Louise Cowell, remarried, Ted took his step-father’s last name, Bundy. Ted always kept to himself, he didn’t interact socially and was quite shy at school. only his good-looks made him somewhat popular. When he was studying at the University of Washington, he met Stephanie Brooks, the woman who had the most profound effect on him, and with whom he was deeply in love. She didn’t quite return his love and broke up with him very suddenly, which left Ted in a very depressed state, driving him to drop out of University. Eventually, he met another woman, with whom he started a relationship. It’s written that in this time, Ted became a different person, he appeared to be more self-confident, and resumed his studies, earning a Bachelor's degree in Psychology (oh the irony of it all!). As a result, when he met Brooks again, she fell for this confident and successful young man, and they started a relationship, with both girlfriends ignorant of each other's existence. When Brooks started hinting that she wanted to marry him, he broke up with her very suddenly, much like she had done previously.

In spite of all this, Ted had never stopped his obsession with Brooks. Women then started to disappear, women who, was later reported, had similar physical features to Brooks.

Charles Manson was born on 12^th November, 1934, to his 16 year old mother, who couldn’t take care of him properly. He spent his childhood and adolescence at his grandparents, in institutions and detention centers. As he grew up, he committed several crimes, but his worst yet were the brutal murders of five people. He managed to befriend and live with a group of hippies, and he started preaching against African American people, making them all believe that there will be a race war. He believed the Beatle’s song “Helter Skelter” predicted this great war which was going to take place in the summer of 1969. When this didn’t happen, he convinced four of his followers to go and kill people. The victims included a pregnant woman( director Roman Polanski's wife). He was eventually caught and imprisoned for life.

So what would drive people to commit such murders? We all get hurt by people, they make us angry and sad, but we don’t really consider murdering them for our satisfaction. It’s a horrifying thought, but apparently, not for everyone.

Classification - Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders

Antisocial Personality Disorder includes people displaying no empathy towards others and engage in immoral behavior, but appear very normal to other people. These people are typically known as Psychopaths.

Professionals don’t believe there is a cure for Psychopathy, because you cannot force someone to start empathizing. The characteristics of a psychopath include lack of emotion, little or no interpersonal relationships, feelings of satisfaction when committing antisocial, immoral acts, and feeling no guilt or remorse.

Kossan and Suchy (2002) conducted a study to see whether psychopaths were able to tell what emotions were displayed by 30 faces they were shown. Compared to a control group they used, the psychopaths were unable to guess facial expressions related to disgust but could easily recognize anger. Moreover, when tested on their ability to recognize emotional intonation on several words, psychopaths made more mistakes with intonations related to sadness and fear compared to the control group (Blaire, Mitchell, et al, 2002).

Causes

Several studies suggest that Psychopathy is a result of genetic factors, including differences in brain structures in certain areas. Some scientists believe that certain differences in the structure and functioning of their amygdala (associated with emotional learning and control) and the prefrontal cortex, which is responsible for decision-making, impulse-control and behavioural adaptation, may result in psychopathy.

Clear conclusions cannot be drawn because psychopaths cannot be classified as homogenous groups; they may not display the same behaviour nor do they have the same brain structures. Moreover, there are sociobiographical, epidemiological factors to consider.