Psychopaths: 10 myths about the psychopathic personality

Piercing gaze, serious attitude, superb intelligence, neat clothing, wicked thoughts, and bloodthirsty goals. This is how movies and series always paint us psychopaths.

Before continuing to read this post, I invite you to get to know the subject of psychopathy in depth. I leave you a link below:

"Psychopathy: what happens in the psychopath's mind?"

Stereotypes and misconceptions about psychopathy

But, How real is this stereotype that Hollywood sells us with those in real life? In this article that you are reading, we propose to challenge ten of the most popular and widespread myths about psychopaths.

Myth 1: they lack empathy

The empathy It is the ability of human beings to understand the emotions, feelings and moods of other people. Lack of empathy is often associated with psychopathy. In this sense, we have to clarify something.

Empathy comprises two spheres: the cognitive area and the emotional area. The first consists of the ability to understand the feelings of others, to know what emotion the other person experiences; the second includes being able to live, feel or experience what the other person feels when they express it to us.

Psychopaths are able to understand emotions (when someone feels anger, love or fear for example) and even imitate the expected behavior of said emotions. However, they cannot feel such emotions on their own. This is probably due to the fact that as numerous neurological studies endorse, lPsychopaths have alterations at the brain level in specific areas related to this ability.

Myth 2: They can't be afraid.

In order to understand fear we could say that there is a real fear and a unreal fear. The first is that fear that we commonly know, the one that is had by real consequences, for example, to suffer an accident when we are in a speeding car.

On the other hand, the unreal fear that we could call psychotic fear, goes hand in hand with a psychotic-type disorder where there is a fracture of the reality of the psyche of the individual, the subject hears voices that want to kill him or feels threatened by images persecutory.

The first fear is unknown to them, however they might experience unreal fear. It should be clarified that not all psychopaths present psychotic pictures as neither do psychotics have psychopathic traits, but we will talk about that later.

Myth 3: cold stare, serious gestures, superior intelligence

This profile already it has become a cliché for movies and series. We know that there is a correlation between our mood and the facial expressions we make, but as we saw in the previous point, psychopaths are perfectly capable of imitating behaviors related to emotions, even some psychopaths are usually charismatic and kind to go unnoticed and achieve what what do they want.

Refering to intelligence, we could say that not experiencing emotions is a point in their favor, since This encourages their actions to be carried out more coldly and meticulously, in addition to setting instinctive and intellectual goals. However, there is no direct correlation between psychopathy and the person's IQ.

Myth 4: They are the product of a dysfunctional family.

Completely false. We will not argue that there is an important correlation between the family environment and the tendency to offend. Abuse, abuse, abandonment, bad examples as role models are undoubtedly very important criminogenic factors to be taken into account when explaining the criminogenesis of a criminal.

Despite this, there are no conclusive data linking the dysfunctional family as the cause of psychopathic behavior of an individual, as there are multiple examples of psychopaths who have committed terrible crimes but when analyzing their family environment, we found that this nucleus was perfectly functional and integral.

Myth 5: One sixth of people are psychopaths.

Some experts estimate that the world number of psychopaths corresponds to 6% of the world population. Robert Hare, a psychologist renowned for his studies on psychopathy, It is estimated that it is 1% of the world population and 25% corresponding to inmates.

The DSM-5 indicates its prevalence between 0.2% to 3.3% of the world population. However, all these data only collect the number of psychopaths who transgress the norm and cause harm, but as we will see in the second part of this article, not all psychopaths have broken the law.

Some just go through life wearing their seduction skills and deception to suit their needs or they are successful entrepreneurs who have risen to the top using their skills, so all figures are essentially inaccurate.

Myth 6: His crimes are savage, bloody and sadistic.

There is no denying that their lack of emotions sometimes leads them to experience the limits of the human when they commit their violent crimes. But let's take into account that the media (both television and movies and series) live how many viewers always see them and describe a scoop as bloodthirsty draws attention forever, describing their perpetrators as psychopaths, a vision that is often distorted from reality.

Associating psychopaths with violent crimes is sometimes distant from what really happens because they do not always commit crimes related to physical violence, murders, genocides, or rapes. There are psychopaths who are adapted to society and the upper class committing financial crimes, theft of arts, fraud among other white collar crimes.

Myth 7: They are unstable and have uncontrollable needs.

We must not confuse the impulsiveness with the demand for gratification of a need.

The concept of impulsivity refers to the tendency to execute an action without thinking about its consequences, while in the second case and in relation to psychopathy, we could say that by not adapting to the norms, when a need requires gratification the The psychopath will move on to the act of satisfying her without morally debating whether the way to obtain said gratification is right or wrong. Psychopaths have a "cold" mind, They know the consequences of their actions, impulsivity is rarely seen as they tend to execute their actions with a lot of premeditation.

Myth 8: psychopaths are crazy

This could depend on the conception that each one has about the term mad, but if we take the word crazy as someone who has disconnection with reality (without end of stigmatizing, say for example a schizophrenic) the answer to this question of madness, in most cases it corresponds to a resounding no, since they carry out his actions with full conscience and fraud.

Although it could be the case of a psychopath who in addition to suffering from psychopathy suffers from severe psychotic episodes or even the same schizophrenia. The specific study of the subject will yield the pertinent results.

Myth 9: Psychopaths will never integrate or reintegrate into society.

Let's keep something in mind: sWhether or not a psychopath adapts to society, it is because it was completely his decision, and if most of them break the law it has been because they have learned that it is the best way to satisfy their needs.

There are psychopaths who learn to accept some rules if they feel it suits them or as a guideline to achieve a greater end. Regarding reintegration, although it is true that efforts to reinsert psychopaths into society have yielded practically zero results, the criminology learns every day more and more about them and the alterations that characterize the psychopathic personality, which allows acting to propose more effective treatments looking to the future.

Myth 10: All psychopaths are criminals.

We close this article with the most popular myth regarding psychopaths. Let us clarify that the crime as defined by law is the action or omission sanctioned by criminal laws. Understanding this concept, it is easy to understand that not all behaviors that seem bad to us are crimes if they are not sanctioned by law.

Thus, for example, if one day a friend asks us to stay in our house, claiming that life has treated him unfairly and that after one week he will help us with the rent and the duties, but after several months he does not drink, he eats up all the reserves of our pantry, and even borrows our things taking advantage of our goodness to the point where the situation seems to us unfair, Does this deserve to be called a crime? Not at all, well We have been the ones who have let our psychopath friend take advantage. There are thousands of cases where psychopaths spend them like this, leading a parasitic lifestyle but without necessarily transgressing what is dictated by the law.

Concluding

In conclusion, there are many myths that surround the enigmatic psychopaths, many of which have been fueled by the curiosity of urban legends, the media and by supposed by the entertainment industry, who frequently present them to us as evil, twisted and bloodthirsty.

However, the criminological sciences collaborate together to reveal hidden motivations of these beings with the hope that one day they will be given adequate treatment that will allow them to be reintegrated into society.