Ever Meet a Psychopath?

[Swallowed_My_Cellphone]

@Triskadecamus

Yes, you are crazy. That doesn’t change the fact that you are dangerous.

And don’t misunderstand the way an insanity defense works. It usually does NOT mean “you are free to go”, it primarily affects the nature of your incarceration. Jail or hospital.

A lot of people misunderstand that. Pleading insanity after a particularly heinous crime will mean that you’ll spend the rest of your days involuntarily committed to a mental institution where you will be monitored 24 hours a day (and probably studied to see what went wrong and how they could fix it so other people don’t do what you did).

[Annie-Xmas]

There are people who try to use the “temporary insanity” defense. “Yeah, I did it, but I was crazy at the time, but now I’m not crazy, so I can be let out.” It rarely works that way.

Billy Milligan, who attacked several gay men and later raped several women, claimed he was a multiple personality and his other personas did it. Then he stated he was integrated and deserved to be set free. This was in the midst of the whole Sybil bruhaha.

[Saintly_Loser]

I’ve got a brother. Actually, I’ve got four, but I’m just talking about one of them.

He could walk into a strange bar in a strange town, hit on every woman in the joint, right in front of their boyfriends or husbands, walk out of the bar with not only the phone number of every one of those women, but a “loan” from every one of the men to the extent of their bank balance, and have every one of the guys buy him a drink on the way out. He could proceed to sleep with every one of the women over the next few weeks, steal stuff from their homes, “borrow” their life savings, leave them pregnant and broke, and blow town.

A year later, everyone of those women, and the men as well, would swear that he was a great guy, that they fully expected to be repaid, or get child support, or whatever, and they’d appear as character witnesses in court on his behalf.

Not only could he do all that, he would, and he has. Any number of times.

And all those people would still remember him fondly. I, on the other hand, have known him for more than forty years.

He’s a sociopath for sure. Not a psychopath, if there’s a difference. He doesn’t want to kill anyone, or inflict pain on them (not directly, anyway, although the consequences of his actions are not something he views as his problem).

If you met him, you’d love him. You’d be absolutely charmed by him. Until you noticed that your bank account was empty, your girlfriend was gone and he’d been living in your house, in your bedroom while you crashed on the couch, for quite a while. Eventually you’d catch on. But it would take a while.

[Saintly_Loser]

@Swallowed My Cellphone

A schizophrenic who is in the throes of a major psychosis might think the neighbour is an evil demon that escaped from a hell portal to suck his soul painfully through his chest and will hit the neighbour with an axe because he’s afraid for his life. He has no clue what’s going on in the real world.

A sociopath knows damn well that murdering your neighbour is illegal, agaist the rules of soicety, and is “wrong”, but will murder the neighbour anyway because he wants to see how much blood will come out.

A sociopath wouln’t necessarily have aberrant desires. He or she might want the same things you or I want, but have no scruples when it comes to getting those things.

I heard somewhere that a schizophrenic doesn’t know the difference between right and wrong. A sociopath knows, but doesn’t care.

[Larry_Borgia]

@Argent Towers

I met Gunnar Hansen, who played Leatherface in the Texas Chainsaw Massacre. But he’s definitely not a real psychopath - he was more like Santa Claus in person.

I hung out with his girlfriend a couple of times. I couldn’t resist making a lot of obvious jokes, which she politely tolerated.

@QN Jones

IME, a psychopath can observe some of society’s major rules and regulations. For example, my dad never committed a major felony (that I know of). He also managed to follow the rules at work well enough to be promoted to a position of some respect. However, it is not possible for a true psychopath to completely pass for normal. Even people who do not know him well figure out there is something wrong with him shortly after meeting him. People who have known him for years know he is an irredeemable bastard. There is not one longstanding acquaintance who likes him. Psychopaths just don’t have that much control.

This makes sense to me. A big part of being human is engaging in meaningful relationships with other humans. Psychopaths are incapable of this, and substitute destructive thrills for real relationships. Even if they stay on this side of the law, they’ll give out a vibe astute people can pick up on. Often they’re simply not capable of conforming to social norms, no matter how advantageous it would be to them. There’s a book I read that goes into this in great detail, but I can’t remember the name.

In fiction, Psychopaths are represented as amoral supermen. In real life, a lot of them are pretty self-destructive and disfunctional.

[Hostile_Dialect]

Yeah! When I stabbed this dude for not paying me back my $4.73, he didn’t even apologize. He just slumped to the floor drooling blood like a dumbass.

God, what a dick.

In all seriousness, yeah, I think I know a guy like that. He’s quite generous, especially at parties (always willing to supply hookah, beer, substances if it’s that kind of party, whatever), and if he’s close to you he’ll be quite pleasant to you, but only to the extent that it keeps you around–if he enjoys your company, that is. Other than that, he’s willing and able to use everybody and everything around him to his advantage without stopping for a moment to consider whether or not it will inconvenience other people. He openly steals from his roommate and feels no need to justify it; it’s perfectly acceptable to him because it has a benefit for him. (To be fair, he has no major problem with his roommate stealing from him, which seems to be what’s keeping both of them sane.) You can buy things for him and let him buy things for you without a problem, but if any of your money plans to touch his hands, he’ll come up with a way to screw you over and leave you totally convinced that you should trust him. He’s raped before, but for some reason his victims have forgiven him. They seem not to be too messed up by it in the long run, and they still hang out with him, even if they don’t let him in as close. Strange character.

I’m not sure whether he falls into the “I’m the only one that matters” category or the “I’m first and everyone else is second” category. It’s honestly hard to say whether he occasionally feigns interest in the consequences of his actions on other people or he really is concerned at a very minimal level that ensures a good outcome for him. It’s probably the latter, since people don’t really get a “something is fundamentally off about this guy” vibe from him–if anything, they think he’s more harmless than he is. ETA: And I don’t know which way this tips the scales, but if you get close enough to him he won’t bother pretending to be concerned about your needs. He would tell his mother flat out that her problems are just not his problems, and he pretty much has.

@Kevbo

Hyde is/was a documented schizophrenic. IANAPsychologist, but I think that is different from a psychopath.

It is. Schizophrenics suffer from delusions, while psychopaths are highly rational, to a level that’s creepy and weird.

The American Psychological Association on schizophrenia. FTR, the one schizophrenic I’ve met that I know of is a really sweet guy, in his own quirky way. Functional, but quirky.

[chorpler]

@CaerieD

The closest I have ever been:

At the hotel I used to work at back in Nevada, we had a man come in one night to get a room. My friend was working the front desk that night and checked him in. Apparently, there was something “not right” about the man and after he’d gone up his room, my friend came into the PBX room to inform everyone that he had “just checked in a psychopath.” Nobody really took him seriously, but he insisted that he’d gotten some sort of instinctive sense that this person was not a good man.

Later that night, the guest called down for extra towels. The guy I was seeing at the time was the night manager and, without really thinking about it, sent up one of the hotel porters. Her shift was just about to end, so when he didn’t see her again he didn’t think much about it.

They eventually found some of her body parts floating in a fishing pond.

I think it pretty much messed up the guy I’d been seeing for life. I hope he finally managed to get over the guilt, but it was a topic to never be brushed upon for years and years until I finally lost touch with him.

Holy crap. Sorry for resurrecting this two-month-old thread, but I just saw this post because I searched for Amazon Floozy Goddess’s posts, wondering why I haven’t seen her distinctive username lately, and I came across this thread.

Was that the murder at the Hacienda in Boulder City, the one down by Lake Mead? I’ve taken my daughters fishing at that pond a few times … when they found the woman’s body parts floating in that thing, it freaked everybody in town out. As I recall, they found some more body parts in his car when they finally located him.

I wonder what ever happened to that guy. Haven’t heard anything in the news. We only just started going back to the Hacienda’s buffet about five months ago – until then my wife was still a bit too freaked out by the murder.

[chorpler]

Deleted duplicate post.

[Khadaji]

I had a guy working for me temp-to-perm. He was slightly odd, but nothing that really stood out. Until he told the story about being in the hospital under armed guard. The guard’s gun was loose in the holster. The man told us how he considered grabbing the gun, shooting the guard and everyone else.

The coworker who was the main listener sort of laughed uncomfortably. The temp went on to say: No! You don’t understand! I was *really *going to kill those people.

I had to let him go.

[matt_mcl]

@Hilarity N. Suze

Now wait a minute, are you saying that if you fantasize thusly, you’re a psychopath?

In that case, I am a psychopath. And the details were pretty vivid, too.

I’m pretty sure that just about everyone has those fantasies from time to time, but they dismiss them, or just enjoy the fantasy but understand that it has no basis in reality and are not conflicted about the fact it must never be realized.

[Maastricht]

A very cool read on psychopaths is the standard book about them, “the Mask of Sanity” by Dr. Hervey Cleckley. It’s over fifty years old and is still the best book on the subject. It reads like it was written yesterday, in a style very similar to that of Oliver Sacks. Just check out the raving reviews on Amazon. Drawback is that the book is over 500 pages long and the current price is between 1000 and 100 dollars second-hand. The cool thing is, some enthusiasts scanned the book and put it online as a free downloadable PDF.

Highly recommended.

[ASAKMOTSD]

I am surprised no one has questioned the interchangeability of “psychopath” and “sociopath”. They are not identical. The best, simplistic description of the difference I have heard is that a psychopath does not see any difference between what others would call “right” and “wrong”; whereas a sociopath sees the difference but does not care.

I can not say I have known any psychopaths. I have known a diagnosed sociopath and he almost destroyed my family before we put some distance between him and us. I hope never to encounter him or another one.

[hajario]

@ASAKMOTSD

I am surprised no one has questioned the interchangeability of “psychopath” and “sociopath”. They are not identical. The best, simplistic description of the difference I have heard is that a psychopath does not see any difference between what others would call “right” and “wrong”; whereas a sociopath sees the difference but does not care. .

See Post #64

[The_Them]

My brother. He has neither remorse, nor sense of cause and effect. You OWE him, and that’s the end of it.
He’s alienated everyone; the only people who will still speak to him are his parents, and “friends” who fell for his Little Boy Lost routine recently enough not to know what he’s like.
I spent my childhood dodging him; adults just wouldn’t believe me.
He TRASHES- not messes up, TRASHES every single place he’s ever lived.
Last I saw of him, I was visiting Mom, and he was calling 2-3 times a day to ask for $15, or $5, just a loan, pay it back right away. Mom refused him, and now she doesn’t live there anymore, so he’s got a problem.
Just walking down the street, he crowds everyone.
He made mortal threats to my niece over some misbehavior so minor I couldn’t figure out what it was.
He has a heavy drinking problem now, and I feel fine hoping that he dies from that, or a barfight.

[vison]

Yes, I’ve met a psychopath.

Without going into too much detail, I can also say that there are circumstances when it is very difficult to get such a person out of your life. It could be your parent or your sibling or even your child - it is simple enough for people to advise you to “cut him out of your life”, but things are seldom that simple.

This is a painful thread for me to read because the person I know could has done just about all of the things described here, except the murders. He’s too smart for that. He’s the smartest person I know, and dealing with him has been utterly exhausting, you have to be one step ahead all the time, you have to think like he does, in some fashion, and not flinch away from it. He is an extremely good poker player, and would probably be a very high-ranked chess player if he cared to put any effort into it. It is my hope that as he gets older (he’s 43 now) he will burn out. For family reasons he is “part” of our lives, albeit on the edge of outside.

[Jennshark]

I suspect that my BF from high school was/is a sociopath. He would do awful things to people and their property and then laugh.

My sister seems to have some sociopathic tendencies. I’m not sure that she believes that other people really exist. She continually screws people over and then is surprised that, yes, they really are still pissed off at her when she asks to come live with you/borrow money/borrow and wreck car/etc