# Who are some famous psychopaths/sociopaths **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [August 21, 2010, 9:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-are-some-famous-psychopaths-sociopaths/550998 "2010-08-21T21:29:59Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![pravnik](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/8edcca/32.png) [@pravnik](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pravnik)\ **Post date:** [August 25, 2010, 1:25am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-are-some-famous-psychopaths-sociopaths/550998/41 "2010-08-25T01:25:22Z")
> [@Annie-Xmas](#): > > Read the tale of [Kevin Coe](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kevin_Coe). Better yet, read Jack Olsen’s book “Son.” As an aside, I work with a forensic psychologist who used to do psychological evaluations at the Special Commitment Center on McNeil Island in Washington State, where Kevin Coe is civilly committed as a sexually violent predator. It’s out about three miles from the mainland and only reachable by boat or helicopter. Kind of strikes me as the closest thing to a real life Arkham Asylum or Shutter Island. ---
**Author:** ![pravnik](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/8edcca/32.png) [@pravnik](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pravnik)\ **Post date:** [August 25, 2010, 1:37am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-are-some-famous-psychopaths-sociopaths/550998/42 "2010-08-25T01:37:20Z")
> [@Anne\_Neville](#): > > > [@pravnik](#): > > > > Psychopaths are generally very good mimics of human behavior and have often learned how to express remorse, but even the best mimics will break character once in a while. They’ve learned what responses are appropriate to show to certain questions or situations, but lack the insight to understand _why_ those responses are the appropriate ones. > > They do the same thing the rest of us do if we’re missing some abilities that normal people have, in other words. I can’t read nonverbal communication. But I’ve learned to make eye contact with people when I’m conversing with them. I don’t get any additional information from the eye contact, but I’ve learned that other people expect it. Exactly. A common analogy compares psychopaths to the color blind - if I’m color blind I might be able to get along in the world by observing that everyone else refers to apples as red and grass as green, and with enough practice might be able to keep those around me from figuring out that I’ve never really seen the colors I’m talking about. A psychopath is the same way, but instead of color blindness, he has “moral blindness.” He may learn what responses are appropriate in society, but doesn’t really understand them. ---
**Author:** ![pravnik](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/8edcca/32.png) [@pravnik](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pravnik)\ **Post date:** [August 25, 2010, 1:49am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-are-some-famous-psychopaths-sociopaths/550998/43 "2010-08-25T01:49:48Z")
> [@InterestedObserver](#): > > Aileen Wuornos. Very much so. Several forensic psychiatists evaluated her before her death and concluded she manifested prototypical psychopathy, Antisocial Personality Disorder, and Borderline Personality Disorder. You can even read their paper online: [The Role of Psychopathy and Sexuality in a Female Serial Killer](http://forensis.org/PDF/published/2005_TheRoleofPsycho.pdf) The PCL-R score that they they list is her Psychopathy Checklist Score. A score or around 30 and above is indicative of prototypical psychopathy. Wuornos scored a 32. ---
**Author:** ![Kolga](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/e56c9b/32.png) [@Kolga](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kolga)\ **Post date:** [August 25, 2010, 2:03am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-are-some-famous-psychopaths-sociopaths/550998/44 "2010-08-25T02:03:20Z")
> [@causticsubstance](#): > > Not historical famous, but an extremely interesting insight on psychopaths nonetheless: > > [http://raising-a-psychopath.blogspot.com/](http://raising-a-psychopath.blogspot.com/) That is perhaps the most horrifying blog I’ve ever read, not because of the actions of the child described therein, but because it seems to me that that parent was convinced from the get-go that his son was broken, and then set out to prove him broken. ---
**Author:** ![Zsofia](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/z/7bcc69/32.png) [@Zsofia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Zsofia)\ **Post date:** [August 25, 2010, 2:10am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-are-some-famous-psychopaths-sociopaths/550998/45 "2010-08-25T02:10:39Z")
Okay, I guess it’s totally impossible that the guy might know what he’s talking about? More than, say, somebody who has never met the kid? ---
**Author:** ![Freudian\_Slit](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/5daacb/32.png) [@Freudian\_Slit](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Freudian_Slit)\ **Post date:** [August 25, 2010, 2:20am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-are-some-famous-psychopaths-sociopaths/550998/46 "2010-08-25T02:20:26Z")
> [@Kolga](#): > > > [@causticsubstance](#): > > > > Not historical famous, but an extremely interesting insight on psychopaths nonetheless: > > > > [http://raising-a-psychopath.blogspot.com/](http://raising-a-psychopath.blogspot.com/) > > That is perhaps the most horrifying blog I’ve ever read, not because of the actions of the child described therein, but because it seems to me that that parent was convinced from the get-go that his son was broken, and then set out to prove him broken. Just started reading it. Do we know if it’s real? It sort of reminds me of that case with the three boys who had reactive disorder (I think that’s what it was called) and basically tried to murder their adoptive mother (not sure what they were doing to the father). And also killed all the horses in the stable… ---
**Author:** ![Kolga](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/e56c9b/32.png) [@Kolga](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kolga)\ **Post date:** [August 25, 2010, 2:22am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-are-some-famous-psychopaths-sociopaths/550998/47 "2010-08-25T02:22:18Z")
> [@Zsofia](#): > > Okay, I guess it’s\*\* totally impossible\*\* that the guy might know what he’s talking about? More than, say, somebody who has never met the kid? > [@Kolga](#): > > That is perhaps the most horrifying blog I’ve ever read, not because of the actions of the child described therein, but because \*\*it seems to me \*\*that that parent was convinced from the get-go that his son was broken, and then set out to prove him broken. (bolding added) It also \*\*seems to me \*\*that there might be a middle ground there in between “totally impossible” and “completely 100% true.” The tone I inferred from the parent’s post on that blog was…odd. I’ve read other accounts of parents with children diagnosed with RAD and/or Conduct Disorder/Oppositional Defiant Disorder, I’ve read the Hare books and the Stout book, and I took a 2-day training session with Dr. Hare and other experts in the field of child and adult psychopathy this past March. I say this not to brag but to establish that I do have a small amount of clinical information in this area. In the readings I’ve done, interviews I’ve seen, and people I’ve talked to, I did not encounter the…dispassion…toward a child that this blogger **seemed** to display. The first posts in that blog **seemed to me** to start with an assumption that the son was going to have problems. The descriptions of some of the “interventions” by the parents also struck me as extremely different from any of the other interventions that I’ve read about or that have been studied. ---
**Author:** ![Freudian\_Slit](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/5daacb/32.png) [@Freudian\_Slit](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Freudian_Slit)\ **Post date:** [August 25, 2010, 2:25am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-are-some-famous-psychopaths-sociopaths/550998/48 "2010-08-25T02:25:33Z")
The attitude of the father is pretty weird–that is, they didn’t feel they’d have time for an infant so they adopted a child who’d probably been through more in his six years than most of us have in our entire lives? And yeah, he does seem very cold. ---
**Author:** ![Kolga](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/e56c9b/32.png) [@Kolga](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kolga)\ **Post date:** [August 25, 2010, 2:27am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-are-some-famous-psychopaths-sociopaths/550998/49 "2010-08-25T02:27:45Z")
> [@Freudian\_Slit](#): > > Just started reading it. Do we know if it’s real? It sort of reminds me of that case with the three boys who had reactive disorder (I think that’s what it was called) and basically tried to murder their adoptive mother (not sure what they were doing to the father). And also killed all the horses in the stable… I remember reading that. And the emotional turmoil and struggle of the parents in that story was VERY different from the display of emotion (or lack thereof) in the blog posts on that blog. The blogger “feels” (for lack of a better word)…off…to me. ---
**Author:** ![Freudian\_Slit](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/5daacb/32.png) [@Freudian\_Slit](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Freudian_Slit)\ **Post date:** [August 25, 2010, 2:35am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-are-some-famous-psychopaths-sociopaths/550998/50 "2010-08-25T02:35:42Z")
Yeah. This is getting creepier and creepier. The way “Harry” describes his son is as though the boy is some kind of broken object. I’m assuming (or hoping, really) that there is no Lucas. It might make for an interesting short story/novel–unreliable narrator turns out to be the true psychopath. The whole “I feel a lot like Harry in the TV Series Dexter” reads like this guy is hoping that his blog will get discovered and made into a book or movie. Also, I noticed that the blogger says the punishments escalate to beating/spanking, but then later says that he and his wife never hit Lucas. ---
**Author:** ![Kolga](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/e56c9b/32.png) [@Kolga](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kolga)\ **Post date:** [August 25, 2010, 2:52am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-are-some-famous-psychopaths-sociopaths/550998/51 "2010-08-25T02:52:42Z")
Yea, I noticed some discrepancies in the stories, too. I really hope it’s a hoax, because it seems almost that the father/blogger took a pretty traumatized son (who may or may not have had RAD, CD, or ODD) and ran with his own assumptions of how children SHOULD be versus how this child WAS, and created a worse situation based on his pre-existing opinions. ---
**Author:** ![pravnik](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/8edcca/32.png) [@pravnik](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pravnik)\ **Post date:** [August 25, 2010, 2:57am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-are-some-famous-psychopaths-sociopaths/550998/52 "2010-08-25T02:57:28Z")
I’m hoping it’s a viral ad campaign, and the kid turns out to be the villain in the next Christopher Nolan Batman movie. ---
**Author:** ![Freudian\_Slit](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/5daacb/32.png) [@Freudian\_Slit](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Freudian_Slit)\ **Post date:** [August 25, 2010, 3:20am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-are-some-famous-psychopaths-sociopaths/550998/53 "2010-08-25T03:20:22Z")
I also thought it was strange that Harry mentioned (as an example of Lucas showing emotional shallowness) that Lucas doesn’t seem to get upset when he breaks up with a girlfriend. Except how many girlfriends can he have had at age eleven? I assume that having a girlfriend or boyfriend at that age pretty much consists of holding hands or eating lunch together a couple of times. It’s expecting quite a lot of him to be really broken up over a “relationship” at that age! ---
**Author:** ![Zsofia](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/z/7bcc69/32.png) [@Zsofia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Zsofia)\ **Post date:** [August 25, 2010, 4:01am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-are-some-famous-psychopaths-sociopaths/550998/54 "2010-08-25T04:01:05Z")
Well, if it’s a stunt it’s the crappiest viral stunt ever, since there are only a few posts per year. ---
**Author:** ![Nava](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/da6949/32.png) [@Nava](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Nava)\ **Post date:** [August 25, 2010, 5:03am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-are-some-famous-psychopaths-sociopaths/550998/55 "2010-08-25T05:03:37Z")
hijack: > [@Anne\_Neville](#): > > > [@pravnik](#): > > > > Psychopaths are generally very good mimics of human behavior and have often learned how to express remorse, but even the best mimics will break character once in a while. They’ve learned what responses are appropriate to show to certain questions or situations, but lack the insight to understand _why_ those responses are the appropriate ones. > > They do the same thing the rest of us do if we’re missing some abilities that normal people have, in other words. I can’t read nonverbal communication. But I’ve learned to make eye contact with people when I’m conversing with them. I don’t get any additional information from the eye contact, but I’ve learned that other people expect it. I don’t think the eye contact is to get additional information, so much as to give it. When I moved to the US I had to change the way I made eye contact: expectations of how much, when and in which way are cultural. Same as the amount of waiter interaction that tells Americans they have an attentive waiter is considered “hovering” in Europe and the amount expected in Europe is considered “bad service” by Americans, the long times of eye contact expected by Americans would make Europeans uncomfortable and the intermitten way Europeans do it is viewed by Americans as a clue to get closer and/or start seeking the other person’s eyes. It’s about telling the other person “I’m paying attention”. /hijack ---
**Author:** ![Kolga](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/e56c9b/32.png) [@Kolga](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kolga)\ **Post date:** [August 25, 2010, 5:45am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-are-some-famous-psychopaths-sociopaths/550998/56 "2010-08-25T05:45:21Z")
> [@Freudian\_Slit](#): > > I also thought it was strange that Harry mentioned (as an example of Lucas showing emotional shallowness) that Lucas doesn’t seem to get upset when he breaks up with a girlfriend. Except how many girlfriends can he have had at age eleven? I assume that having a girlfriend or boyfriend at that age pretty much consists of holding hands or eating lunch together a couple of times. It’s expecting quite a lot of him to be really broken up over a “relationship” at that age! “Harry” seems to have no idea of what a normal (non-traumatized, non-adopted) child would or would not do in any given situation. I am perfectly willing to admit that (obviously) I have no idea what the full extent of the story is regarding “Lucas’s” behavior. I just think that the examples of Lucas’s psychopathic behavior that Harry gives are odd choices for someone trying to convince complete strangers that a child is psychopathic. I also questioned how he basically twisted Hare’s diagnostic criteria to fit whatever he felt was appropriate for Lucas. ---
**Author:** ![Superhal](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/b4bc9f/32.png) [@Superhal](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Superhal)\ **Post date:** [August 25, 2010, 8:13am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-are-some-famous-psychopaths-sociopaths/550998/57 "2010-08-25T08:13:46Z")
> [@Tranquilis](#): > > I conclude from those experiences that, at least in some envirnments, there is some functional benefit to being an Antisocial Personality Disorder-type of asshole. Definitely. One way to summarize Sun Tzu’s the Art of War is simply, “Become a psychopath.” ---
**Author:** ![Zsofia](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/z/7bcc69/32.png) [@Zsofia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Zsofia)\ **Post date:** [August 25, 2010, 1:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-are-some-famous-psychopaths-sociopaths/550998/58 "2010-08-25T13:26:20Z")
I don’t have any real dog in the Lucas fight, but it’s worth noting that at the time of the first post they’d been living with Lucas for five demoralizing years. I can tell you, as somebody who has to deal with a downright evil person on a somewhat regular basis (Christmas and Thanksgiving, at least) that your standards and expectations for that person become completely changed from the norm, because you’ve been burned a thousand times and have had to make peace with the fact that they are not and never will be a normal, empathetic person. ETA - my half brother is nothing like Lucas, though - I think Lucas really has something else going on, assuming he is as he is reported. Maybe additionally to psychopathy, maybe something different. Of course, I see my brother mostly from the outside, while the blogger sees Lucas on a daily basis. ---
**Author:** ![Annie-Xmas](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/ecc23a/32.png) [@Annie-Xmas](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Annie-Xmas)\ **Post date:** [August 25, 2010, 1:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-are-some-famous-psychopaths-sociopaths/550998/59 "2010-08-25T13:34:41Z")
> [@KarlGauss](#): > > And the fact that his DNA was found in the vagina of one his victims, well, well it must be a false positive. Or maybe it was planted. That’s it! That SOB district attorney must have planted it there. > > This guy is psychopathy personified ([text link](http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/24922815/#fullstory), [video link](http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/24922815/24932052)) Read Coe’s latest version of the story at [Justice Denied](http://www.justicedenied.org/issue/issue_25/kevin_coe.html) ---
**Author:** ![Freudian\_Slit](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/5daacb/32.png) [@Freudian\_Slit](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Freudian_Slit)\ **Post date:** [August 25, 2010, 4:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-are-some-famous-psychopaths-sociopaths/550998/60 "2010-08-25T16:30:12Z")
> [@Zsofia](#): > > I don’t have any real dog in the Lucas fight, but it’s worth noting that at the time of the first post they’d been living with Lucas for five demoralizing years. I can tell you, as somebody who has to deal with a downright evil person on a somewhat regular basis (Christmas and Thanksgiving, at least) that your standards and expectations for that person become completely changed from the norm, because you’ve been burned a thousand times and have had to make peace with the fact that they are not and never will be a normal, empathetic person. But it just seems like the guy views fairly normal things (Lucas thinking he’ll bring home all A’s or Lucas not doing his homework) as evidence for stuff that may not be there. He’s way too close to the situation. It’s sort of burned a hole into my brain, though. I’m thinking of starting a thread on this blog… [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-are-some-famous-psychopaths-sociopaths/550998.md?page=2) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-are-some-famous-psychopaths-sociopaths/550998.md?page=4)