These Shameless Psychopaths: Myths And Reality

2024 Author: Harry Day | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 15:43

Something about them has been talked about lately with horror. Meanwhile, they have always been, and the probability of meeting them throughout life is probably close to one hundred percent. There are quite a few of them, and modern culture also encourages their existence in every possible way. What you will not hear about them. And that they look like the devil himself. And what they are not capable of feeling. And that their main goal is to make your life hell. And … And a lot more exciting.

For the most part, these are myths. The truth, as it should be, looks dull. Maybe someone sees demonism in the eyes of a psychopath - an individual matter. As for me, the usual fish-eye, colorless, deaf. This is because psychopaths are non-empathic - incapable of empathy. Metaphorically, we can say that their gaze is constantly turned inward in search of deep and subtle emotions that are not there. But this does not mean that they are incapable of feeling at all. Of course they can. Try to make such a person angry - and you will see the result, and even, perhaps, report it if you stay alive. In fact, this is also not so difficult. A psychopath - he's not an idiot, a formally healthy person, he won't rush to the superior force of the enemy in vain. Why are some so impressed by these eyes? Perhaps because the psychopath is trying first of all to establish visual control in order to eventually move to total.

Shameless. This is about them. Where does conscience come from if there is no sympathy?

And brave. Where does caution come from if there is no conscience?

Probably, in the eyes of any psychopath - and they are different - we, miserable creatures, afraid to hurt, striving to understand, forgive, suffering and mistaken, are nothing, not worthy of existence. However, he needs us, and therefore he adapts. Psychopaths are ideal players, and instead of deep feelings, their strange nature has given them great imitation abilities.

I had an interesting case. In one room, at the mercy of, sorry, at an interview with psychologists studying psychiatric propaedeutics, they gave two patients, seated them in different ends of the room.

With one of the girls, everything was clear: skin and bones, thin hair, whiny and at the same time slightly arrogant behavior - anorectic.

The other is a flirtatious beauty in graceful jewelry, with a gentle face, a meek look and a terrible fate. She really had hard times, there was as much violence in her life. And she looked like a typical victim of depression. The jewelry caused a slight dissonance, but not so much: sometimes women in depression carefully watch themselves. The beauty spoke of her bitter fate, carefully keeping up her own script and avoiding embarrassing questions. I found the most vulnerable spectator and burst into tears. Tears, however, did not flow from under the fingers squeezing his face. It was a little difficult for her with a heterogeneous group, but she coped great: in a few minutes we saw a frightened victim, an aggressive clever girl, a meek beauty, a deeply wounded child …

In general, a gallery of modern images of suffering. But by the time I sobbed, laughter was picking me up. It's not that I didn't sympathize with the poor girl - there was something to sympathize with! But her mirrored, metamorphic essence played a cruel joke on her: she saw an anorectic woman and was carried away by a new role. Somehow gracefully sucking in her peach cheeks, she switched to the drama of refusing to eat and, playing too much, rejected even the offered sweets, which she, poor, rarely received.

The new role swallowed her up without a trace - and here we have an embodied hunger, unacceptable, unrecognized.

Of course, only a young experimenter could have pierced so absurdly.

Grows up - learns to build performances according to all the rules. By the way, this is with psychopaths and the difficulty. They know how to attract, charm and deceive others in such a way that even their victim will sooner or later believe: she is to blame for everything. In the end, the victim speaks only the shabby truth, while on the psychopath's side there is an immeasurable, boundless lie that would never occur to an average person burdened with conscience. However, the fact that a psychopath is looking for a victim for himself is another myth. The only thing he is looking for is his own comfort, pleasure, success, in the end. The victims are themselves, guilty of being in the way of this search. You don't even need to interfere, because sooner or later something will not work out, and you, the reason for the failure, will be there. You don't even need to wait for failure, because a psychopath is never completely satisfied with the result - he does not know happiness, like all other subtle feelings. But envy knows, and it invariably pushes him to new deeds. Again, it is easier for him to achieve his goal by tormenting others than by some non-constructive workaround. After all, he really does not care how you feel.

There is a version according to which not all psychopaths end their days in the dock, where, sooner or later, brainless vulnerable people strive to shove them. According to this hypothesis, some of our shameless heroes are able to stay within the fine line of the law and make a successful career. Looking at the present century, which has elevated mental deafness to the rank of social values, cowardice disguised as tolerance, “charisma” devoid of minimal intelligence and achieving at any cost such dubious success as wealth, power, fame, I begin to believe in it more and more …

Illustrations: Dutch artist Levi Van Veluw