Psychology for Dummies (66 page)

When I think of the perfect example of a criminal, a few images come quickly to mind — the criminal mastermind plotting the ultimate crime, the callous armed robber putting a gun in a bank teller’s face, or the serial killer cleverly evading the police.

Each of these images represents an aspect of the stereotypic villain — intelligent but demented, cold and ruthless, violent and destructive. Batman fought against the Riddler, Catwoman, and the Joker. Superman battled Lex Luthor. All of these villains represent people who often engage in extreme criminal behavior and challenge our concept of morality. Such people have intrigued professionals for years. They’re on the front page of the newspaper, and they’re the lead story on the evening news. They sit in our prisons, and they’re sometimes executed for their horrific behavior. These are the
psychopaths.

There have been a lot of definitions of the psychopath. In fact, some professionals don’t see psychopaths as necessarily criminals at all but rather as suffering from a clinical disorder. The title of this section may imply that all psychopaths are criminals, but, in fact, this may not be true. It is a fact, however, that many psychopaths act criminally, and when they do, they typically represent a level of seriousness unparalleled by non-psychopathic perpetrators. Therefore, for the purposes of this chapter, I focus on those psychopathic individuals who do often commit crimes or end up involved with the criminal justice system.

Robert Hare gives us a comprehensive list of psychopathic personality traits that outline the major features of this disordered personality.