“The Mask of Sanity”?
That’s it, thank you! Wiki link for reference.
Charm is indeed one of the traits looked at in evaluating psychopathy, or rather “glibness,” superficial and insincere charm. Glibness/Superficial Charm is Item 1 on the Hare Psychopathy Checklist (Revised) or PCL-R, a psychometric tool used by psychologists to determine psychopathy in an individual. If you have absolutely no conscience, no shame, and no compunctions whatsoever about lying, conning, and manipulating your way through life, the ability to fast talk, make interesting and witty conversation, and present yourself well is a very valuable skill to develop. The ability of a psychopath to charm and manipulate even authority figures in an institutional setting can be extremely surprising. It’s a superficial sort of charm, though (psychopaths “understand the words, but not the music” of human interaction), and not all psychopaths will exhibit it – some will be as charming as something you dug out from between your toes.
Robert Ressler was the founder of the FBI’s Serial Killers unit. He has interviewed dozens of these lovely people.
He went to interview serial Killer Emil Kemper and all went well. He went again, alone, and of course had to give his weapons at the door. When he buzzed the door to leave, Kemper told him the guards were having dinner and it would be about twenty minutes. Then he started talking about how he could killed Ressler and twist his head off to leave as a surprise for the guard when he opens the door.
Ressler realized immediately that he had made a potentially fatal mistake: He had been taken in big time by Kemper. He talked his way out of the situation, and immediately mandated that all interviews were to be conducted by at least two agents.
After “The Stranger Beside Me” was realized, Ann Rule heard from hundreds of women who claimed to have met Ted Bundy. At first she thought it was mass hysteria. Now she realizes that serial killers approach about 10 people to find one victim. So hundreds or even thousands of women could have recognized that something was “off” about this guy and gotten the hell away from him.
If I remember correctly, he was able to con his way to get his classmates to meet then-Vice President Walter Mondale while on a class trip.
Thanks for the response. Men sticking with PPD women is a phenomenon I’ve heard repeated elsewhere online quite often, and your answer described a bit about why this often the case.
Based on my experience about 10 years ago dating a bipolar woman … yup, crazy sex is crazy good. Good Lord, it was good … 
yeah, trust the smiling bandit on that one;)
Yes and no.
If you’re Son of Sam or the Beltway Sniper, and all you want to do is shoot people from a safe distance, charm is unnecessary. On the other hand, if you want to rape or torture people, charm is a very valuable asset.
Remember, dozens of women GLADLY got into Ted Bundy’s car. Dozens of kids HAPPILY went into John Gacy’s house. Those killers COULDN’T have succeeded if they weren’t charming and funny, if they weren’t good at making their victims feel safe and relaxed.
An intelligent sociopath sees the value in learning to read people, figuring out what makes people tick, and knowing how to manipulate them. Charm and humor go a long way.
To a serial killer, charm and humor are valuable tools, just as a duck call is to a hunter.
Actually, they went to Bundy’s car, then got whacked with a crowbar and placed in the car. Having an arm in a cast and walking on crutches manipulated the women into being helpful by carrying his books to the car.
Let’s also not forget that narcissism is a common co-component of these people, but not universal.
I’m also not sure how the male/female breakdown actually occurs. Men are apparently more likely to try direct violence, but women can be extremely callous just the same, but are more lilely to manipulate situations to their advantage rather than try direct assaults.
Do you think this guy might be one of those charming sociopaths? Getting someone to forgive you when you sprayed a caustic, flammable substance on them and ignited it with a torch, injuring them badly enough to require skin grafts- now that takes people skills. Or something.
Don’t you mean “sociopaths” at the bolding?
Nope. Psychopaths make themselves stand out from sociopaths by their charm and people skills. As per Dr. Hare’s description of psychopathy anyway. Others have different definitions.
Huh. All this time I thought the terms were synonymous.
That’s interesting.
A friend of mine chatted with him on the phone once, just before he was caught. Dahmer was friends with her friend’s mother, and my friend answered their phone one time when he called. Apparently they were coworkers, would go for coffee together before their shift, etc. So, if not oozing charm, he was at least apparently amiable and social.
Charm is virtually a pre-requisite to be a serial killer. Most of them like to kill by being right up close and personal with their victims (that is, serial snipers make up a relatively small proportion of the total serial killer population, for example). He can’t get that close to someone if he comes off as creepy and wrong. They’d run away well before he could get his kill kit out.
IIRC, Dahmer lured boys into his house with the promise that penis would ensue. Who’d want to get nekkid with a guy who creeped you right out?
My caveat about the couple of people I’ve met in a professional capacity who had a diagnosis of Antisocial Personality Disorder- they can be charming as long as things are going their way.
One of my patients was a guy who only really functioned in prison or high-security psychiatric wards. His skills consisted of being the scariest guy in the place and thus gaining power and control through a combination of violence, manipulation and fear. This is the guy who would punch or kick someone hard enough to hospitalise them for no other reason than to assert his control of the room.
That skill doesn’t really translate well on the “outside”, and he knew it. He would tell you whatever he thought you needed to hear in order to get where he wanted to be. A nice comfy psychiatric hospital was choice number one, failing that, prison was a close second.
To one doctor he’s say how depressed and sad and suicidal he was and how he really needed the secure ward “to be safe”.
To another he’d say how he really felt that his childhood had messed him up too much to be in society and he needed bars to make him feel safe.
To yet another he’d describe how “the voics” were telling him to kill himself or others.
To someone else he’d explain how he felt compelled to spend all his money and help feed the world.
I’ll be very clear- this guy wasn’t depressed or psychotic or manic- he just knew which button to push for each doctor.
He’d tell each doc exactly what would make them most likely to send him to the secure ward, and most of them did it, over the years.
Watching his response to being told that no, the locked ward was for people with mental illness, he had a diagnosis of APD and his previous behaviour in the secure ward had shown that it wasn’t a healthy environment for him or other patients when he was there…well, the guy went from charming and affable to pure, cold fury in an instant.
Really, really scary.
Of course, he got his way by causing enough damage to property that he got arrested- in his world, a positive, but not ideal, outcome.
Wait, what was the fatal mistake he made? Were the guards actually having dinner, and if so, wasn’t that THEIR mistake? And was he in the same cell as the guy or separated from him by bars?
You’re not alone, there’s a lot of confusion and disagreement about the terms. Sociopathy and psychopathy are frequently used interchangably, but there’s a trend towards either not using using sociopathy or using it to refer generally to antisocial personality disorder (APSD), and psychopathy as its own particularly malignant strain of it. The DSM-IV-TR currently lists them both as synonyms for antisocial personality disorder, a term which was supposed to replace both, but forensic psychologists and psychiatrists are increrasingly insisting upon a distinction for psychopathy. Some are lobbying to have psychopathy listed as a separate diagnosis in the DSM. The problem is “construct drift” - the DSM criteria for ASPD refer to persistant behaviors that violate the rights of others, while the psychopathy model takes into account not just behaviors but patterns of thought, personality and motivation. The end result is that the APSD definition will include a lot of general criminal conduct committed by people other than the true “prototypical psychopath” - about 75%-80% of the prison population will meet the criteria for ASPD, but only about one third of those (20%-25% of the whole) will qualify as truly remorseless psychopaths. Dr. Hare wrote a paper that explains the difference much better than I could:
Psychopathy and Antisocial Personality Disorder: A Case of Diagnostic Confusion.
Same locked room. He said his mistake was going in to talk to Kemper alone, and trusting him and the guards for his own safety. After that protocol was changed so interviewers were always in at least pairs. Chilling quote from his book:
“Relax. They’re changing the shift, feeding the guys in the secure areas.” He smiled and got up from his chair, making more apparent his huge size. “Might be fifteen, twenty minutes before they come and get you.” Though I felt I was maintaining a cool and collected posture, I’m sure I reacted to this infomation with somewhat more overt indications of panic, and Kemper responded to these. “If I went in apeshit in here, you’d be in a lot of trouble, wouldn’t you? I could screw your head off and place it on the table to greet the guard.”
Whoever Fights Monsters: My Twenty Years Tracking Serial Killers for the FBI