When someone says the word psychopath what comes to mind is usually names such as Clifford Olson, Paul Bernardo and Robert Pickton. Serial killers, however, are just the extreme side of a sliding scale of psychopathy that includes, well, almost everybody.
At the core of psychopathic behaviour is self-interest, lack of empathy and disregard for right and wrong. Very few of us would be unable to think of a time when we have done something wrong-for example lie-to satisfy our own self interest at the expense of another or others.
That doesn't make everyone a psychopath, however. I only bring it up because I think psychopaths truly strike at the core of humanity-good and evil, yin and yang, darkness and light-which is why they so fascinate us.
We tend to think of psychopaths as abnormal, but they are not. They are at the one extreme of normal human variation. Just as there is extreme variation in skin tone among our species, there is a continuum of behaviour that ranges from complete altruism to true psychopathy.
This is the most difficult thing, I believe, about psychopaths. As far as current research goes, they are not diseased and you cannot even really consider it a disorder.
Certainly, they operate outside what is commonly considered social norms and conventions, and are completely abhorrent in their victimization of others.
The vast majority of psychopaths are not serial killers, however. All psychopaths are not created equal, however. There is also a continuum among psychopaths dependent on what the need is they are trying to fulfill.
At the low end are people who are simply trying to meet basic desires, a place to live, cigarettes, what have you. They may be sex-driven, power-driven or money-driven. There is little doubt, for example, that the economic crisis of 2008 was precipitated by Wall Street psychopaths.
Whatever the motivation, rather than striving for their goals in an ethical manner, psychopaths share the behaviour of doing whatever it takes, without remorse, to get what they want including lying, stealing, cheating, manipulating and coercing.
They are frequently extremely charming, highly intelligent and inscrutable, able to mimic emotions even though they don't feel them.
And they are not uncommon. Most experts put the number at about one per cent of the population. That means there are roughly 350,000 psychopaths living in Canada right now.
You probably know a few. I am not a psychiatrist, but I am convinced I used to work for one.
What brought this topic up for me was a Doc Zone episode titled "The Psychopath Next Door" I watched Saturday evening.
I found it very interesting that CBC chose to air this documentary back-to-back with the Fifth Estate episode "The Unmaking of Jian Ghomeshi."
I am not diagnosing Mr. Ghomeshi as a psychopath. I am not suggesting CBC programmers intentionally scheduled the two shows to make that inference, but it was pretty provocative nonetheless.
Ghomeshi was fired a few weeks ago by CBC over allegations that he abuses women. As yet, this has not been proven in court.
The portrait Fifth Estate painted of Ghomeshi was of an exceptionally charming, highly intelligent and ruthlessly ambitious man with unusual desires. Sound familiar?
In any event, and at the risk of offending some people, I have to throw one thing out there. Humanity might not have gotten very far without psychopaths. They are the risk takers, the bold, the impulsive, willing to do what others are not to get ahead.
Broad variation within a species is an evolutionary trick. Because evolution is a natural process, it is not concerned with esoteric concepts such as good and evil. Variation allows natural selection to pick what works best for the survival of the species.
A great example of this, I think, is cats. Over millions of years, evolution turned cats into the perfect terrestrial predator. While there was at one time broad variation, cats have changed very little over the past 10 million years. Specifically, I am talking about the family Felidae, which includes lions, tigers, wildcats and housecats. Not only is there very little variation within species, there is little, besides size and colour, within the family. Just compare the behaviour of your furry friend with footage of tigers in the wild.
That is not to say cats will some day have to evolve again, but for the last 10 million years they have been perfectly suited to the conditions on this planet. Why change?
But while psychopathy may have, at one time, contributed to liberating us from cave-dwelling, going forward it may be our undoing.
If Homo sapiens sapiens is to survive, I believe the worst traits of psychopaths will have to be purged from the species. As long as psychopaths who wield non-proportional power and wealth and don't care about the rest of us or the environment or anything but themselves, we could be in big trouble.
At least you can put a serial killer in jail and throw away the key.
