Psychopath

“Be a better psychiatrist and the world will beat a psychopath to your door.”

~ Oscar Wilde on Psychopaths

Psychopaths, or sociopaths, are people whose only real crime is having their eye on the prize all the time. The poor psychopath has been sorely maligned by popular culture. This article attempts to set the record straight.

Giving a psychopath a weapon is not a good idea.

Stereotypes and the realities behind them

Psychopaths are geniuses: This is such a load of bunk it can be dismissed in a heartbeat. Some psychopaths are the dumbest people I've ever met, and have no remorse, even for themselves. As their lives implode around them, they don't seem to comprehend their own plight. A lot of them are loudmouthed and overbearing. This is seen when they enhance their sense of superiority over others by appearing to be intelligent. However, most of the time they do things which bring them back down to reality, such as cutting their own heads off with a chainsaw in a party game.

Psychopaths, for all their charm, have no love for others: This is unfair to psychopaths. You haven't given them a chance. Come on. One more. Just one more chance. Pretty please?

Psychopaths would slice your throat as soon as look at you: You've been watching too many Hollywood movies, haven't you? That machete you found in your psychopathic boyfriend's dresser drawer wasn't for harming anyone! It's a hobby of his! He's a knife collector! Sharpens that one every day. He takes care of his stuff. Hey! Come back! Why are you walking away?

Psychopaths would huff kittens if you let them: Aw, they used to do that when they were kids. You know, pull apart limbs of small animals. Didn't every kid? But no, they're not into that now. And honestly, I haven't kept up with what he's into today.

Precursors

It might just be that psychopathic kids might have psychopathic parents.

Children practice up for psychopathyhood by keeping a lot of dead and dismembered kittens in the freezer. Then they make up elaborate stories as to how the kittens got there and how they must have dismembered themselves.

Signs that your child might be a psychopath could include broken bones (of him and his friends) resulting from many reckless incidents such as skateboarding on a building ledge, inserting a bottle rocket into your nether region as a young "experimenting" teen, or losing at Russian Roulette.

Uses

Where psychopaths hang out

Killing large animals with their bare hands: Psychopaths don't experience "fight or flight" as we do. This means that the lion or alligator they are in the throes of fighting is in more of a state of panic than the psychopath. This same process also indicates that they don't care if they die, so try not to get jealous of this.

Moving up the corporate ladder: They are charming, manipulative, and think they are God's gift to humanity. They can lie in order to cheat or defraud seniors of their life savings, and children of their lemonade stand money, with disdain for those they have duped. Remember Enron? They were once rumored to have given out MVP awards for the most valuable psychopath on their staff.

Mercenary work: If you are a "soldier of fortune", patriotism wouldn't be required; and conscience and remorse are too burdensome. As a mercenary, you can kill soldiers, women, children, infants, seniors, priests, and journalists without all the bother of inner conflict, empathy, or remorse.

The Ideal Human Being: Imagine living a life without worry, without anxiety, no regrets. Imagine never needing to feel anxious or fearful. Never needing to say you're sorry. Always living in the present; sparing no thought about the past. If you want all those things for yourself, then toss away all those books by these so-called psychiatrists and therapists who claim to help you to do this. They don't know shit. What you really need is to become a psychopath. Because they think – well, not just think, but know – that they're perfect, they always live without regret. Because of their sense of their own perfection, they don't need to reflect and improve on their behaviours. Hence, no anxiety over that. And because their only true love in their life is themselves, there is no worrying about others.

This, however, makes life easy for the psychopath and hard for everyone else. (Oops, sorry, I gave away their secret!)

Epidemiology

The good news is that psychopaths make up only about 1% of us. The bad news is, one in every hundred of us are potential serial killers! Pscyhopaths like to "fuck and run", so if the condition has a genetic component as many therapists believe, then their larger than normal contribution to the gene pool will guarantee that it won't stay low for too many more years. This, however, is mitigated by the fact that they often find stupid ways to die through reckless behaviour, such as planking across a balcony, or stealing copper wire while it is still carrying a current.

Legal response

In some parts of North America, it is illegal to be a psychopath. This is difficult to enforce, as they often comprise the Chief of Police, some politicians and businessmen. Some of them like it that way.

Military response

After killing people in battle, you are expected to be a "man" about it. Things like post-traumatic stress disorder, gulf war syndrome, and a ton of psychosomatic disorders are what pussies and pantywaists feel after seeing children blown up by shrapnel, babies skewered at the end of bayonets, pregnant women lying lifeless in gutters. What generals expect of their soldiers is that soldiers feel nothing. If everyone in the infantry were psychopaths, PTSD wouldn't exist in the military, there would be no Gulf War Syndrome, and thus generals would have an easier time managing their troops and fending off PTSD lawsuits. The military needs more psychopaths in its infantry. If you are a remorseless, un-empathetic person who comes in your pants every time you see a schoolbus (full of enemy children [but does it really matter?]) exploding, or if the biggest thing on your mind after seeing all your infantry comrades machine-gunned to death is what to have for dinner, then Uncle Sam Wants You!

Natural habitat

A psychopath living under the inside of my backyard. Her pet is a giant rabbit.

It's an uncommon sight to see a psychopath on the street – they mostly stay where most people don't.

• A mental hospital
• Peach Creek
• Russian caves
• Bunkers
• In the woods
• Wherever a ninja happens to be
• In a public urinal talking on a cell phone
• In your bedroom closet

Weapons

Psychopaths were really stupid to handle artillery, but they were still able to use these.

• Knife – used a lot by Michael Myers.
• Axe – decapitation.
• More knives – repetition.
• Machete – used by that undead guy from Crystal Lake.
• Plunger – beware its suction cup!
• Stick – nothing but everyday useless objects help in karate.
• Scissors – self-explanatory.
• Chainsaw – Leatherface's only friend.
• Spoon – one hero and one spoon unite.
• Banana – don't ask me why.
• Everything else – just forget it.

Psychopaths today

The psychopaths were once rejected by horror film survivors. But today, people accept psychopaths in public and even get a job on slaughtering terrorists (and eating them), being bodyguards who are able to castrate intruders with their pinky fingers, and many other things quite useful. People complained about psychopaths killing everyone, including the innocent, but the government doesn't care. Today, everything is bloody as heck.