Sunday, February 16, 2014

Your Friendly Neighborhood Psychopath

(by Sajjeev Antony)

HAVE YOU EVER COME ACROSS A PERSON who exudes goodness at the first acquaintance, but turns out to be unbelievably the opposite later on? If so, chances are you had an encounter with a psychopath or an antisocial personality. Psychopaths comprise about 1% of human population so they are not so rare.

There is a higher proportion of psychopaths among criminal population so the US judicial system defines antisocial personality disorder in a person over the age of 15, as having three or more of the characteristics below:

1. Failure to conform to social norms with respect to lawful behaviors
2. Deceitfulness (repeated lying) or use of aliases or conning others
3. Impulsivity or failure to plan ahead
4. Reckless disregard for safety of self or others
5. Consistent irresponsibility, failure to sustain work and honor   financial obligations
6. Lack of remorse
              
But the above definition is too sparse and does not really bring out the subtleties of psychopathic syndrome. This can be applied to many people we see around us who are not psychopaths. 

So let me explore the matter from my own perspective. What makes psychopaths so destructive is that they make extremely good first impressions. Look at them from any angle, they would seem supernormal and ooze exactly the opposite of those qualities listed in our definition above. They exude kindness, patience and maturity. They are intelligent, spontaneous and win friends easily.

One thing most psychopaths are particularly good at is, talking. They can easily dupe us into believing that they are utterly sincere, wise and have noble aims in life. Even on psychiatric examination it is difficult to find anything wrong with them. But after long time after living or doing business him we find to our shock that all this was part of an effortlessly maintained mask.

Hardened psychopaths are found among crooked salesmen, cassanovas, quacks, money-minded evangelists, gurus . . . It is such psychopaths that I will discuss here. They are the guy-next-door-type –– those who cause a lot of trouble and heartbreaks but stop short of violent crimes. Even at one percent, there may be a few in your neighborhood right now, quite undetected. The following case I personally encountered many years  ago is typical of the manner in which the friendly neighborhood psychopath operates.

Case study (first person account)

Deepak (not his real name) had migrated to the city of Delhi, India ostensibly to prepare for chartered accountancy. A friendly, well dressed 25-year-old with a great sense of humor, courteous and decent, became the center of attention of the youngsters in that Delhi suburb where we  lived together in the large threadbare apartment complex run by a rather money minded Punjabi lady.

While Deepak lived as frugally as any of us, we easily accepted his tales of his super-rich family, his high class education, his political connections etc. He did not want to touch his Father’s riches and even went for door to door sales to supplement his income to be independent of his Father. Very impressive indeed. 

Even our wily landlady fell for him and allowed her daughter to make occasional visits to his rooms to "clear doubts" in her studies. Apparently she saw him as a potential  son-in-law. We used to tease Deepak about her but he was remained so dignified that we developed a respect for both.

Deepak became our natural leader. Then things started going wrong. Money and expensive things were missing. Deepak called a meeting, and with some sharp probing from him the suspicion fell on the most unpopular resident, a small town boy from Bihar. We searched his room. Unable to stand the shame, the boy left us with tears in his eyes. His tears haunt me to this day.

As things returned to normalcy our admiration for Deepak increased. But after a few weeks money started missing again, in exactly the same pattern as before. It was also found out that when we were away at work, Deepak was in the habit of remaining there, often in the company of the cleaning lady who had keys to all rooms. As we were discussing that issue, a penny dropped in someone’s head. Could it be Deepak? It was an "Aha!" moment for the rest of us too. Is is amazing how brainstorming can help shed our mindsets

But no one had the courage to confront him directly. Instead we spent the next few days collecting evidence. Deepak's observation skills were so acute that he would see right through pretenses. We even resorted to illegal measures like intercepting a letter from his home. It was from his Mother. She reminded her son that his father was sick and she herself would be retiring soon, so Deepak had to pass his examinations quickly and be independent. She clearly believed her son to be a bumbling child, prone to get cheated by bad boys he was living with (meaning us). 

Evidently he was squeezing his family, us, and probably cheating his door-to-door customers. A visit to his accountancy firm revealed that he had been dismissed a few months previously due to unreliability.

With all this evidence piled up we confronted Deepak in his room. He propped himself up on pillows on his bed and listened magisterially to us, often confusing an angry interrogator with radically different versions of events that only he somehow seemed to recall with precise time and place. As evidence upon evidence was piled against him the more relaxed and in-control he became. Then one guy lost control and slapped him hard. Deepak instantly burst into tears and wanted his Mother.  We were taken aback by this sudden regression from absolute self-composure. Even more surprisingly, within a minute receiving the slap he  resumed his relaxed, judicious pose.

We told the results of our investigation to our landlady whose first  question was "To Deepak amir nahin hain?" ["So Deepak is not rich?"] The next day she evicted him. Soon our group labelled Deepak  an ordinary con-man and quickly forgot him. But the extremes of his personality kept haunting me and prompted me to do further research.


Awareness and Spontaneity, sans Intimacy

According to Eric Berne, an autonomous human being would have three qualities: awareness, spontaneity and capacity for intimacy. According to Berne the latter was a natural result of the first two. But here, Deepak had the first two qualities in plenty, but not the third. His perpetual awareness, lack of sadness or anxiety in any given situation, spontaneity of responses, lack of fear but immediate response to actual physical hurt, his ability to form great impressions a and manage to keep them up in difficult situations, all indicated to me that we just had encountered an extraordinary phenomenon.



I remembered that Deepak used to hero worship the notorious psychopath, Charles Shobraj. Could Deepak be also be a psychopath? A weekend’s research backed up my own background in psychology showed that Deepak fitted precisely with the 1980s standard definition of a psychopath. I also felt that Deepak was a "genetic" psychopath, that is, born that way. To make sure that his syndrome was primarily genetic I had to find out all I could about his environment. It was a risky task because my friends wouldn't help me. They had lost interest in Deepak. 

I made an unannounced visit to his parents’ home 200 miles away in Jaipur on a day I knew he would be stuck in Delhi. His family turned out to be educated, middle class, religious and cohesive. They were full of questions about their darling Deepu, their youngest and the most pampered. 


On the basis of this case history, and from my subsequent understanding from modern research on psychopathic personality, I am piecing together a picture of what I call a “genetic psychopath.”

How a psychopath differs from a common criminal

Now you may ask, why take such a big production out of this case? We all know a lot of dishonest, heartless, and completely superficial people. Surely they are all not psychopaths! Of course not. Considered individually, none of Deepak’s actions are too extraordinary. But taken as a whole, a sinister picture starts to emerge.

This young man is totally unlike a common criminal, whose sole aim would be to make a quick clean escape with the booty. In Deepak’s case what seems to be important for him seem to be the very acts of lying and stealing. Also, there is an extraordinary lack of conscience and absence of anxiety, guilt and shame. There are more, as we shall see.
Antisocial personality is not a new phenomenon. It is as old as civilization. An accurate picture of a psychopath is drawn by Charles Dickens in in the inimitable character of Alfred Jingle, the confidence trickster, who wanders about changing his identity as it suits him, without any shame even after being exposed repeatedly.



But Dickens botches it at the end. In the final chapter of Pickwick Papers, Jingle melodramatically reforms after Mr. Pickwick overwhelms him with kindness. Had the author let him continue on his happy go lucky ways, Jingle should have been celebrated as a textbook case of psychopathic syndrome.
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Why is the psychopath so? Is it possible that a human being could entirely lack in conscience? These questions have been pondered over by philosophers for centuries. Modern psychology and neuroscience have startling answers –– answers that force us to look into conscience, morality and even love, from a fresh angle.
It has been found experimentally that psychopaths have extremely low levels of arousal in parts of the brain which generate fear and anxiety. Paradoxically, their pain tolerance is normal  (or even less than normal people) but punishments do not evoke sufficient fear in them. This happens because unpleasant emotions that they experience at the moment of punishment are dissipated quickly. The memory of the punishment may remain, sans fear.

This was established decades ago by a simple experiment: Three groups of people, the first group comprising psychopathic criminals, the second, non-psychopathic criminals, and the third, college students –– were told that they would get a painful electric shock after ten minutes and were allowed to watch a clock. During this period the electrical conductance of their skin (a reliable assessment of emotional arousal) were measured. As the tenth minute approached, the “normal” criminals and college students recorded a steady rise in their skin conductance, indicating that they were becoming worried about the coming shock. However, the psychopaths recorded no such change. Another experiment revealed that once the shock was actually delivered, psychopaths may experience more pain than normal people.

Recall Deepak’s behavior. Till the moment of physical assault he was extraordinarily relaxed. But once he felt physical pain his breakdown happened in an instant. (He could not have faked his tears.) As soon as the assault was over he rapidly sprung back to normalcy as if nothing had happened. 

This is the paradox: psychopaths may have lower pain tolerance, but the threat of future pain does not produce enough fear in them. How do we interpret these results? The behavior of a “true” psychopath may be due to a deep seated genetic condition. Later studies indeed bear this out. Antisocial personalities seem constitutionally incapable of experiencing fear and anxiety. That prevents from acquiring the “avoidance learning” skills necessary for social adjustment. 

Is amygdala the clue?

It is possible that genetic psychopaths may have their brain wired differently. The amygdala in limbic system is our chief suspect. Amygdala is an ancient structure present in all vertebrates. Its main job is to scan the brain to find threats and opportunities as reflected by the brain activity, and give it appropriate emotional value. This enables the organism to make an appropriate self preservational response. For animals the role of amygdala functions as it was originally intended –– by responding only to actual physical threats, not imagined ones. In human beings, amygdala seems to stimulated by not only real physical threats but also psychological ones, and imaged ones as well. Amygdala, being a dumb, "reptilian" organ, keeps giving even imagined events the same emotional value as if they were real incidents happening in real time. This may be an oversimplification but it does seem that such tendency of amygdala to mistake imagined scenarios as real was what triggered human conscience. 

Psychopath’s amygdala might have some differences. Either it does not assign emotional values to imagined negative events, or its message does not get through to the rest of the limbic system to give commands for appropriate fear hormones to be released. There is also a suggestion that in some psychopaths, the neurological linkage may be repressed. In my view these are probably due to childhood trauma. There is also the possibility that in such case one of their parents might have been implicated. If the parent is already psychopathic, he would naturally lack empathy with his children and may bang them about. In that case a borderline psychopathic child may pick that up and repress whatever empathy he might have otherwise felt.

Inability to experience love

Whatever be the exact neurological mechanism, for our purposes it may be enough to understand that much of the emotional spectrum of a psychopath is lying blank. The most unfortunate casualty is love. A psychopath is relatively unable to experience love or to reciprocate it. Paradoxically, human ability to experience love is rooted in our ability to experience fear and anxiety. (Here I am going by our usual understanding of love, not the sort of self-less love exhorted by Jesus Christ.) We won’t like to admit that, but it is true. Psychopath’s relative inability to experience fear and anxiety robs him of the capacity for love and attachment.

Unable to experience the healthy emotions of life, driven by his high stimulation hunger, the psychopath remains obsessed with the only things left –– thrill and power. Lack of internal controls enables him to go to any extent for these. In childhood itself he learns that showing love is an effective means to control others. But intimacy is one of the most difficult things to imitate. How does he do it so well?

Psychopaths observe!

Here he has an edge over normal people: in the process of socializing a toddler, some of the desirable traits also get chipped off. Most of us carry in our heads the parental injunction “Don’t stare at others.” Many children translate this into “Don’t experience,” which stunts our natural ability to observe, listen and feel. Consequently we see and hear only what we are “supposed to” and miss the hundreds of messages people send out about themselves by means of body language. As with other parental injunctions, psychopath tends to be unaffected by “Don’t stare” also. He peeks and finds out what people really need. Another factor may be his constant stimulation hunger which keeps him tuned to all outside activities in the vicinity. With awareness, spontaneity comes naturally.

Psychopaths are aware!

Psychopath seems to be “naturally aware”. Many spiritualists consider awareness of the present as the goal of spirituality. Does that mean he is naturally spiritual too? Doesn’t that put a blot on spirituality itself? Not at all. The reason is this:  as he does not feel any inner turmoil, a psychopath has never learned to observe himself. He is not self aware. He really does not understand or care what makes him tick. He is not at all interested in higher spiritual truths though he may pretend to be pious and spiritual. Lack of self awareness means his awareness tends to be predatory. He remains aware of signs of suffering in others, but only enough take technical advantage of it. As Thomas Harris says in Hannibal, “When the fox hears the rabbit screams he comes running, but not to help.” 

Treatment?

There is no treatment for psychopathic syndrome. Structurally there is nothing wrong with the brain of a psychopath. It is not an illness. Psychopaths would never want to change, in any case. They like the way they are. Even though they face repeated failures due to their short term thrill seeking behavior, they forget the pain of these very quickly and start looking for the next thrill. Some chronically anxious and depressed people would gladly switch their brains with that of a psychopath.
What about the future? It is possible that treatment may be available for the misery of the entire human race, not only for psychopathic personality.

Old age

As for everyone else, old age is the worst part for a psychopath. Many start feeling the pinch of the depression they had never experienced in their younger days, they start ruminating on their past mistakes, they lose much of their invincible, superior bearing. As they have seldom suffered lasting mental pain before, it is possible that they may find it even harder than normal people to cope with it.

What to do with a psychopath?

Once you clearly identify that your partner, colleague or team mate to be a psychopath, never attempt to reform him. Never sympathize with him, never try to punish him. Simply stay away. Swallow your ego and let it go. A good psychopath can easily find out when you are trying to reform him and he may "cooperate" so that he can leverage you with that and take away everything you have.

Social Media –– Bane for psychopaths

Till recently it used to be easy for a psychopath to cheat a group of people and re-emerge unscathed in an unknown location, especially in big cities. But social media is making that more and more difficult. Taking a new identity is also increasingly difficult as face recognition software gets better and better. Perhaps the golden age for psychopaths is over.

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Disturbing final questions --
What is morality? What is conscience? What is love?

If like me, you have had a personal encounter with a psychopath, you will start asking some difficult questions about human nature in general. One of the first questions that popped into my mind was, What is the nature of morality? Then I asked myself, what is conscience?  and what is love? It took me years to find viable answers. They are quite unconventional and even disturbing. I shall try to handle them in another blog on a later date. Before that, let me discuss them in the online philosophy forum "Philosophy of Religion."  Do join us there.

Note: Version 1.0. 16/02/2014. I intend to revise and update the article as I get time. 


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This work by Sajjeev Antony (excluding the pictures which are credited elsewhere)
is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

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