Are Psychopaths Mentally Superior?
Getting Inside the Mind of a Psychopath or Narcissist
Psychopaths are free from guilt, remorse and shame. They don't beat themselves up for doing a bad thing or being a bad person. They don't harbour niggling doubts that maybe something they did has unwittingly harmed another person. They just don't care.
Maybe a hundred times a day, if necessary, they instantaneously reframe facts into pretty aromatic lies that shine a light of virtuosity on themselves and implicate others (often the kindest and most virtuous of people) as sinners. This mental reframing has become second nature over the years, and the uncomfortable processes of contrition and atonement are places they simply never have to visit. They never feel the need to apologise. They believe themselves blameless and mentally superior.
When they recognise that they have hurt someone whom they cannot, as yet, replace as a source of supply, and detect the impending withdrawal of that supply, rather than apologise, they will revert to the love-bombing that won over the target in the first place. Very public displays of gifting, praising, flattering, celebrating their 'love' or 'admiration' for the target. And with domestic partners, accompanying this public display with private undermining and disempowerment by smear campaigns, gas lighting, goading, belittling and projecting.
This complicated dance in lieu of an apology is easy and un-stressful for these experienced manipulators. Their only inconvenient requirement as a result of causing indelible harm to another lies in locating and charming their next supplier before they lose the current one.
Reduced amygdala function
Their reduced fight/flight response means they have a limited capacity for anxiety and fear. Their ability to manipulate, use and control others means that, as long as they are not alone, they are able to engage in activities that alleviate their chronic boredom easily. By having others do their bidding, either willingly (by manipulation of their natural cooperative tendencies) or by coercion (armed with intimate secrets the other is afraid will be revealed).
They can indulge in James Bond-like risk-taking activities to stimulate their under-active fear receptors, further enhancing their public billboards (since we admire risk-takers when they are successful). They can fairly accurately predict how others will react or respond so are able to control their external environment to a greater degree than most of us. Some are able to simultaneously control large groups of people, religious followers, complex legal processes, legislative processes and stock markets.
Charm
Inexhaustibly charming, they accumulate fans, enablers and staunch allies more easily than the rest of us, creating a human firewall that protects their massive egos. Human parasites, they easily seduce hosts who will keep food in their belly and a roof over their heads without them having to conquer their inbuilt laziness. They find ways to have most of their needs met most of the time by those around them.
Empathy deficit
Extremely low on empathy, catastrophic events and the suffering of others have little effect on them. They do not suffer the compassion fatigue or burnout that is plaguing so many in the helping professions in modern times. They do not suffer the PTSD of our front-line protectors and defenders of our social cohesiveness.
Unencumbered by genuine loyalty or honour, they do not feel duty-bound to expend time or energy on their intimate others. Incapable of gratitude (but able to mimic it with ease), they do not feel it necessary to return a favour. Unbound by any feeling of indebtedness, they just cut ties on impulse with those who have offered them supply.
Gratification at causing harm
Furthermore, they take secret pleasure from the confusion and resentment that such behaviour might have inflicted on those whose largesse they have enjoyed. Using and manipulating the finer human qualities of the lesser beings around them is gratifying. Destroying lives, reputations and careers is gratifying. All the more so if the target of their destructiveness is challenging by nature of their competence, strength, talent or virtue.
Pathological lying
Prideful of their ability to lie, steal and defraud, many the high-functioning psychopath moves through life without detection. Any threat to their higher and higher esteem in society is easily discredited. Their victims, traumatised by their entanglement, disappear into the undergrowth, having realised that trying to expose a psychopath will only result in further damage to themselves. So they conveniently remove themselves from that dangerous orbit, making a clear path for the psychopath's onward and upward trajectory.
If we remove the clearly sinister aspects of the psychopathic mind - the gratification they experience by duping and destroying others - isn't this easeful state of mind what we all aspire to? This freedom from guilt or remorse? This ability to have such confidence in ourselves? This freedom from shame, anxiety or depression? Are not these qualities the very mark of a mentally healthy person?
Moral bankruptcy
Why is it that our society is now bowing under the weight of mental ill-health that has become common-place? Why is it that wrong is fast becoming the new right? That false is becoming the new true? That abuse is now an acceptable form of debate? Could it be the insidious influence of the psychopaths moving among us and in positions of leadership? Could it be the prevalence of narcissism intruding into the psyche of every user of social media? Could it be the dominance of psychopathic morality in our corporations and media ownership? Could it be that our psychopathic rape of the earth, the rivers, oceans, forests, mountains and animals is undermining our very existence on this planet? Could it be that our adherence to the traditional misguided trope of "all's fair in love and war" is leading our culture to its ultimate destruction?
Who knows? One wouldn't ever wish to be accused of making mountains out of molehills, now would one? One wouldn't wish to be a nay-sayer, or prophet of doom. Better we all turn a blind eye to the creep of narcissism and psychopathy that have become normalised, and desirable human qualities. Those of us who live by vows of morality are perhaps the foolish ones. For it is we who are the targets, the canon fodder, the collateral damage. It is we who suffer anxiety, depression, stress, burnout and PTSD. Already, it seems that the narcissists and psychopaths are considered the mentally healthy among us. We have already retreated into a Dark Age. But the choice is still entirely up to us as individuals. Which kind of person do we want to be?
©Margot MacCallum
