The Psychopath’s Mask Of Sanity
I remember watching a television programme a year or two ago, about this man who’d been a hit man for the Mob. He was known as the Iceman. Some of you may well have watched it too. It was incredibly chilling.
A psychiatrist was interviewing him and at one stage, the Iceman said;
“You’re beginning to make me angry.” His tone was absolutely calm. His voice wasn’t raised.
“Would you kill me if you could reach me?” asked the interviewer.
“Yes, probably,” the Iceman replied. “Let’s change the subject.”
Then he started to tell the psychiatrist about his childhood. How he loved to torture animals in various ways, which I have no intention of repeating. The psychopath’s mask of sanity. Yet was he insane?
Now, I love animals, and if I found someone being cruel to one, I’d do them serious harm. The awful part about this interview was that when he was recounting the ways he used to hurt animals, I didn’t really feel any hatred towards him. I do now, looking back, but he’s dead, thank God!
But he told of his cruelty in just the same tone of voice as you and I would use if we were chatting about generalities over a couple of whiskies in the club.
He was a physically huge man and had once been handsome. He told of various times how, when he was having dinner with his family, a Mob boss would ring him and say that a certain person they wanted killed was at a particular location, would he kindly do the honours?
He’d ask his wife to keep his dinner warm, go out, kill the individual, come back home and finish his meal.
Psychopaths have this incredible, ineffable charm about them, that they’re capable of making even the most shockingly outrageous deeds seem quite normal and understandable, as he did when he was recounting the ways he used to ill treat animals.
I wouldn’t have missed this interview for the world, because it shed such light into the mind of this type of person. As you may imagine, they also have this ability of feigning empathy.
There’s a mild form of Autism known as Asperger syndrome. Those unfortunate enough to suffer from this condition find great difficulty in empathizing with others, because they’re what the psychologists term ‘emotion blind.’ The emotions of other people are virtually a closed book to them.
They find it very difficult to read the feelings of others and at the same time, what they themselves have said or done is also difficult for them to fathom. Now, it’s only natural that because of this, they seem cruel and to possess a couldn’t care less attitude at times, but they simply can’t help it.
To their minds, other people view the world in just the same way that they do, and they struggle hard to understand that there are different points of view. This makes the Asperger sufferer far less likely to try to deceive someone, because they see no need for it.
Not so the psychopath.
Hello again. Mike Bond with another little adventure into the mind of the psychopath. I do hope you come to visit my Website to see everything I have on hypnosis and psychology. Don’t forget your free downloads, of course, by clicking onto http://www.wealthyoldman.com