What is a Psychopath?

This term has become a popular on the internet lately with the recent murder of Jessie Davis, the pregnant woman from Canton, OH who was found dead after a massive search.  Her boyfriend, Bobby Cutts is the prime suspect.  I saw an interview on a morning news program where an FBI profiler said men who murder pregnant women are psychopaths.  They discussed Mark Hackett who killed his pregnant wife Lauri in Salt Lake City, UT and Scott Peterson who murdered Lacey and their unborn son.

The profiler went on to say that these men are psychopaths because they only care about themselves and have little concern for the victims.  She went on further to explain that a common reason they kill is because when their significant other gets pregnant, it stirs up emotions that may make them realize they made a mistake and they need to erase their mistake.  So to get out their situation, they kill. 

The news program played an excerpt of an interview with Bobby Cutts (Jessie Davis’ accused killer) where he told a local newspaper that he “can’t sleep, can’t eat”.  The profiler used this as an example of how he, just like the other psychopaths only think about themselves.

Although I agree psychopaths have very little feeling for others, I thought it was a bit simplistic to use Cutt’s interview to show that he was only thinking of himself.  If his girlfriend is missing and he’s upset by it, what’s he supposed to say?  In fact, if he told reporters he was eating and sleeping fine and not that worried, he actually would look more like a psychopath.

Psychopathy is a term synonymous with sociopathy that describes a person’s attitude toward others.  Robert Hare, Phd. from Canada has studied psychopathy extensively and designed a checklist of characteristics used to diagnose psychopathy.  These characteristics include:

glibness
shallow emotions
lack of remorse or empathy
manipulation of others
lying
egocentricity
low frustration tolerance
few and shallow relationships
parasitic lifestyle
persistent violation of social norms

I used the picture of Hannibal Lecter because he is a good media example of how these individuals can be very charming and intelligent, but cold and cunning. For more information, you can read one of Dr. Hare’s many books.