Can We Understand A Psychopath?

Emotionless, cold-blooded and heartless- words that we often associate with being a psychopath. But what character is hiding behind the mask? There is a school of thought about how being a psychopath is innate and shall remain unchanged, but is it the truth? Or psychopaths developed this specific type of personality due to a series of traumatic events that happened throughout their lives?

I Am Not Born A Psychopath; I Become A Psychopath?

Most psychopaths are known to have had a hard childhood, from abuse to neglect. They had a trauma that forged their character, turning them into insensitive beings. Here when we talk about trauma, we not talking about the divorce of our parents. We are speaking of events like parents being crackheads, being tortured every day after school by a family member; make that clear we are not talking about one event; we are referring to multiple events that repeatedly happened over time.

These events will lead children to build a character to protect themselves, and most of the time, it is as atrocious and manipulative as their oppressor. A perfect example of how children can be manipulative is to cry on cue and attract sympathy to gain something; a worse example would be children torturing their pets for their personal pleasure.

Are We Born This Way?

Some scientific research may have proven that psychopaths are born with an impaired mirror neuron system. Chances are psychopaths are only sick people suffering from a brain abnormality? Though many researchers try to prove that being a psychopath is a health-related issue, for now, it is not considered a diagnosis.

Are All Psychopath Criminals?

Surprisingly or not surprisingly, we have all encountered a psychopath at least once in our lives. Some studies come out with the fact that around 1 % of the world population are psychopaths. You may find this amount insignificant, but keep in mind that the world population is estimated to be 7,9 billion people, and 1 % is equal to 79 million people considered psychopaths; this is more than France’s population (67.06 million).

Now that you know the numbers, your blood is certainly running cold. But are all psychopaths criminals? There are several aspects of being a psychopath, and a psychopath may not fulfill all the aspects. While it is recurrent that psychopaths are mostly linked to criminal behaviors, not all of them do.

Some psychopaths understand that their actions are not appropriate thus restrains from these. At some points, people believed that every psychopath is dangerous because research carried out in the past regarding psychopaths was mostly done in prison.

The Charming Psychopaths

Psychopaths have personality disorders, thus adapting and changing traits as it pleases. Some utilize fake personas as acting as their true self, and they would have been rejected by society as they are commonly anti-social.

Most of the time, they try to match the personality of the person they are dealing with or embody one. Most psychopath though they take on a fake personality, they tend to enact them perfectly, leading to the ‘spellbinding effect’.

Most psychopaths have a spellbinding effect on people around them, and they are blind to their lies or even wrong-doing. Psychopaths are, most of the time, very intelligent and witty, so it is sometimes impossible for you to tell if they are psychopaths in the first place, which can be annoying for people who have already seen through their games.

Some psychopaths agree in seeking professional help, as they can be suffering from this disorder and want to know how to control it to be able to get involved in society. Let us know in the comments if you have known a psychopath…