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Psychopaths,
Mentally ill offenders,
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Good and Evil - Psychological Aspects,
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Personality Disorders,
Antisocial Personality Disorders
the moment. In John’s world, only fools believed that they were their brothers’ keepers. . . . John could say to me, with all seriousness, during one of our last sessions together, “I have lived every fantasy that I have ever had. I’ve done everything I wanted to do. And the real mistake I made in life was letting myself be surrounded by weak people.”
Largely because psychopaths lack any moral center, and because they also project their own desires onto others, they are unable to imagine moral, ethical qualities in others. At Walker’s sentencing hearing, Judge Harvey said to the defendant, “One is seized with an overwhelming feeling of revulsion that a human being could ever be as unprincipled as you.” Walker said nothing to the judge at that time, but later told Earley, “I figured Harvey would grandstand for the press. Fuck ’em.”
Here again is the fundamental difference between normal human beings and psychopaths. As Kernberg puts it, “The antisocial personality’s reality is the normal person’s nightmare; the normal person’s reality is the nightmare of the psychopath.” For example, most people would find spying against their country to be utterly repugnant and could not imagine doing so. In contrast, the psychopath who spies finds commitment to another person, to family, and to country ridiculous, and cannot imagine making or keeping such commitments.
After his conviction in 1995, Aldrich Ames, the CIA agent turned KGB spy, responded to a CNN interviewer who asked why he had committed his crimes, “You might as well ask why a middle-aged man with no criminal record would put a bag over his head and rob a bank.” And he added, “At the time that I handed over the names and compromised so many CIA agents in the Soviet Union…I had come to the conclusion that the loss of these sources to the United States government, or to the West as well, would not compromise significant national defense, political, diplomatic interests…. And I would say that this belief of the noninjurious nature of what I was doing…permitted me to do what I did for much more personal reasons. The reasons that I did what I did were personal, banal, and amounted really to kind of greed and folly…. It was a matter of pursuing an intensely personal agenda, of trying to make some money that I felt I needed very badly, and in a sense that I felt at the time, one of terrible desperation.”
While Robert Hanssen felt he was keeping his commitments to his wife and family, he stockpiled pornographic images on his computer and dallied with a stripper, giving her expensive presents, including a Mercedes, a computer, and a sapphire necklace. He expressed contempt not only for his FB I associates but also for his KG B handlers, believing he was too smart and too sophisticated to be caught, except by a betrayal.
The Psychopaths Among Us
At one time, people thought there were few psychopaths among us, but now that estimate has to be revised upward. Moreover, society is beginning to recognize that psychopaths, more than people with any other mental disorder, threaten the safety, security, and serenity of our world. The history of humankind is replete with the incredible destruction inflicted by nations upon one another. What is less readily visible is the harm done to individuals, to families, and to society by antisocial behavior. And it is important, finally, to understand that the antisocial tendencies that emerge in psychopaths are harbored by every human being.
A national comorbidity survey found that 5.8% of males and 1.2% of females showed evidence of lifetime risk for psychopathy. Antisocial personality disorder is most commonly diagnosed in the 26- to 40-yearold age group; in those older than 40, the incidence diminishes. Approximately 20% of prison inmates are psychopaths, and they are responsible for more than 50% of violent crimes. In maximum-security prison populations, 75% or more of the inmates may have the