We, serial killers, are your son, we are your husbands, we are everywhere
What is a Psychopath?
While psychopathy is not a clinical diagnosis, it is frequently used to describe someone who has an antisocial personality disorder.
What is Antisocial Personality Disorder (ASPD)?
Few Psychology terms are as perplexing as “Psychopath”. Even though the term “Psychopath” is commonly used to describe someone with a mental health condition. It is not an official diagnosis. Instead, it’s an informal term for a condition known as Antisocial Personality Disorder.
Serial Killers, or people who murder others recurrently, elicit both revulsion and amazement in the general public. But what can modern psychology and neuroscience tell us about what is happening inside such people’s heads?
According to Neuroscience:
One perplexing aspect of serial killers’ minds is that they appear to lack- or have the ability to override- the emotional responses that allow us to identify and empathize with the pain and sufferings of other humans.
A recent brain imaging study identified one possible explanation for the deficit. This revealed that Criminal Psychopaths had reduced connectivity between the amygdala– a brain region that processes negative stimuli and those that elicit fearful responses- and the prefrontal cortex, which interprets amygdala responses.
When connectivity between these two regions is low, amygdala processing of negative stimuli does not result in strongly felt negative emotions. This could explain why Criminal Psychopaths do not feel guilty or sad when their victims suffer.
However, serial killers appear to have increased emotional drive, which leads to a desire to harm and kill other people. This apparent contradiction in emotional responses must still be explained neurologically. We also should not ignore social influences in developing these contradictory impulses.
It appears that serial killers have learned to view their victims as mere objects to be abused, or even as a collection of unconnected parts. This may explain why some killers have sex with dead victims or turn their objects into useful or decorative parts, but it does not explain why they seem so driven to hurt and kill their victims.
One explanation for the latter phenomena is that many serial killers are insecure people who feel compelled to kill because they are afraid of being rejected. In many cases, the fear of rejection appears to be the result of being abandoned or abused by a parent.
Such terror may drive a budding serial killer to seek out and destroy any objects of their interest. They may come to believe that by destroying the person they want, they can avoid being abandoned, shamed, or otherwise hurt as they were as children.
Serial killers simply lack a moral compass as well. We learn to distinguish between right and wrong from our parents, siblings, teachers, peers, and other people who influence us as we grow up. This is what keeps us from engaging in antisocial behavior.
Yet serial killers appear to believe they are exempt from the most effective social reprimand of all; not taking the life of another person.
For example, during his trial, Richard Ramirez, dubbed the “Night Stalker” by the media, stated that “You don’t understand me. You are not required to. You are not capable of doing so. I am superior to your knowledge. I am beyond the realms of good and evil. I don’t believe in this so-called civilized society’s hypocritical, moralistic dogma.”
It is unclear why a few people respond to abuse or trauma in their early lives by becoming serial killers later in life.
However, new insights into the psychological or neurological basis of their actions may help us identify future possible serial killers and deter them from committing such heinous crimes in the future.
Serial killers are characterized by a lack of empathy for others, as well as an apparent lack of guilt over their actions. At the same time, many can be endearing on the surface, luring potential victims into their web of destruction.
One explanation for such cognitive dissonance is that serial killers have two minds-one rational, capable of successfully navigating the complexities of acceptable social behavior and even charming and seducing, and the other far more sinister, capable of the most indescribable and violent acts against others.
Symptoms of Psychopaths-
. Lack of Empathy and Remorse
. Inability to distinguish between right and wrong
. Behavior that conflicts with social norms
. Manipulating and/or hurting others
. Disregard for safety and responsibility
. The tendency to lie often
. Problems with the law
. Expressing anger and arrogance on a regular basis
Difference between Psychopaths and Sociopaths-
Informally, the term “Psychopaths” and “Sociopaths” are frequently used interchangeably to describe someone with ASPD. Because Sociopath is not an official diagnosis, it is often lumped in with psychopath under the umbrella diagnosis of ASPD. The two terms have no clinical significance.
Other terms or ways to describe ASPD include psychopath and sociopath. The behaviors that are frequently observed in both tend to fit the ASPD criteria.
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