Hey Athena... How Do I Write A Psychopathic Character

Will you help me?

Photo by Aaron Burden on Unsplash

No. No, I will not.

I get questions like this all the time. So often, in fact, that I have a standard answer on Quora that I will be elaborating on for this post. People really want to include a psychopath in whatever novel, short story, fan fiction, or some other form of the written word, and they will hit me up on a pretty consistent basis.

I was nice in the beginning. I tried to provide helpful information that they could draw from and hopefully not make too big a mess of it, but after a while, I simply stopped. Why did I stop? Because every single time it was an unmitigated disaster.

Psychopathy is a very interesting thing to many people. It intrigues people and makes them want to somehow interact with it. Be it they want to be friends with a psychopath, they want to be a psychopath, they want to write a psychopath, or they want to demonize a psychopath… or rather all psychopaths as that tends to go.

Let me go through the main issues that I have had to deal with when it comes to this writing aspect. Neurotypicals, and those that aren’t neurotypical, literally cannot comprehend how our minds work. It is outside of their comprehension, and most people have dreadful cognitive empathy, so it isn’t even something that they can imagine.

Non-psychopathic people have no idea how much their emotions shade and cloud their everyday experiences. To them, they are being logical and reasonable, but to a psychopath that lacks some emotions and the rest are seriously turned down, we can see very easily that isn’t the case at all.

One of the best examples of this is when I write an answer on Quora that is then read through the emotional lens of a neurotypical. Because that is what shades their worldview, they apply tone and tenor to the answer that simply isn’t there. They assume that it is intended to be read the way that they are perceiving it. Here is a great example:

https://www.quora.com/Are-the-people-who-claim-to-be-psychopaths-on-social-media-even-legit-See-comment

Here is the comment in question:

So i've come across the usual wannabe psychopaths on social media who claim to be psychopaths by bragging about killing animals and manipulating people etc, recently though i came across another wannabe psychopath who goes by the name User, to mention a few things that he said were quite off were that he disliked people who emotionally manipulated others and that emotions like anger do not control his action rather these emotions are just fleeting and most of the time he's unaffected, let me tell you my cousin was diagnosed as a psychopath and since then my uncle has dedicated his life into understanding the psychopathic behaviour and guess what each and every psychopath that they "experimented on" turned out to have poor impulse control and would do anything for their own benefit including manipulating other people which is quite contrary to what User states about disliking them. If this guy really has all the traits he has mentioned he'd be a zen buddhist not a psychopath.

Now, before I get to my response, it is important to note that the individual that the person was asking about, the one that I put the term “user” for, discovered that he in fact was not a psychopath, and instead had ASPD from childhood experiences, but had head trauma, depression, and autism (I believe), as well. I could be wrong about that, but he wasn’t a psychopath. Anyway, here is my response:

First and foremost, this is a massive BNBR violation. So enjoy getting slapped for that and likely banned.

Secondly, you clearly do not know what psychopathy is. By the argument that you gave then I can now decide that you are the same as my ex-brother-in-law. He’s neurotypical and tortured a kid to death over a period of months. Isn’t that fun? Now you get to be lumped into that category. Does that seem unfair to you? Well, too bad. You set up the reasoning for this question.

A piece of advice for you. Mind your own house before critiquing others. You need to clean up your own messes before you sit on your throne of judgment. As for psychopaths and not liking emotional manipulation, I don’t care for it either. It makes for needy people, and I dislike needy people. Why would I create a situation that would be annoying to me in the long run?

I believe that your cousin is a “diagnosed psychopath” like I believe you are a purple unicorn Pegasus named Happy. If that’s the narrative that you are standing by, this is you for the rest of the answer.

Great, now I have a face to work with. Listen Happy, you have no idea what you are talking about, and you aren’t remotely qualified to give an opinion on anyone else. I would suggest checking your thought process, bringing it down out of the Messiah realm, and come back to planet Earth. I am sure there are people here that miss you. We won’t, you’ve been blocked. I don’t have time to deal with someone who thinks that they are more educated in something than we actually are.

Why don’t you go find a cancer patient and tell them that they don’t have cancer because your aunt interviewed a bunch of cancer patients and they don’t fit your belief about cancer? Better yet, why don’t you go “experiment” with them like your uncle supposedly did with psychopaths? He sounds like a real humanitarian.

That answer was fun for me to write. I enjoy being a bit snarky and it is rather rare that an opportunity to be such presents itself on Quora, as they have their, Be Nice, Be Respectful, rule. As this person decided that their opening gambit was going to be snarky I figured that I could respond in kind without the Quora gods coming down on me. Did you know that the only BNBR violation I ever got was from referring to Robert Hare as an idiot? I shouldn’t have anyway, as I don’t know the man, but I find his presumptions idiotic. I just thought that was funny.

Anyway, other than returning the tenor of the comment I didn’t have any emotion in regard to the response at all. I still find it a bit amusing, but that’s it. Other people read a ton of things into it. I, apparently, according to people who read it through their own lens was:

Offended

Angry

Hurt

Defensive

Offended was the most common. People read the question and the comment and knew that the individual who asked it was intentionally being offensive, and therefore applied offense to my response. This is a common thing. People assume that they know the tenor behind my words and read it through that specific assumption.

Now, if someone wants to write a psychopath, they would have to know all the places in their lives where they demonstrate that behavior. They would have to know every single emotional filter that they are applying to every single interaction. This takes a great deal of introspection, and most people simply cannot do it.

It is sort of like the fear article that I wrote way back in the beginning. People cannot separate the emotional response which is fear from the physiological response which is your body responding to a dangerous situation. At a time of threat, you are going to feel both, whereas a psychopath only feels the one. However, if those two things go hand in hand in your experience, you aren’t going to think to separate them from each other, but to be accurate with the character you would have to know that about yourself and about the psychopath.

I live with people. I know, hard segue, but it’s true, I do. I live with them, I interact with them, I speak with them, I have long drawn out and interesting conversations with them. These people know me better than anyone else on the planet save for the other psychopath that I know. My Significant Other knows me better than I know myself sometimes, which is why I will ask him things like:

“Do I want to game?”

or

“Do I want a glass of wine?”

He almost always reads me correctly and responds accurately. He has a tremendously high level of cognitive empathy, and he is also who taught me a great deal about utilizing it when interacting with others. Without him, I wouldn’t have the ability to read people the way I do, or describe psychopathy to you in such a clear manner.

Another person that I live with spends hours trying to understand how I think and why I do what I do. She asks me questions, and she really takes her time to think about what I respond with. She also will try to figure things out about me and how I do things on her own, but then after considering it for a while will ask me if she is correct. There are times she is, there are times that she is on the right path but clarification is required from me, and there are times that she is not correct. When she is, she is pleased that she was able to come to that insight on her own, the times when I fill in some blanks she will take it to heart and expand her thinking, and when she gets it wrong she will take what I say and incorporate it into her understanding of me and how I think.

However.

Even after spending a ton of time with me, both of them are still incorrect quite often about how my mind works. On the other side of this, I write neurotypical characters. I also have understood since childhood that I am different than pretty well everyone around me. I have had my whole life sorting out, comparing, and contrasting those differences. I have also had my whole life to construct the emulation of the neurotypical experience so people believe that I am like them.

That has often required me to explain why I “think” about a certain situation in the way that I do. I have to be able to explain the neurotypical way of thinking in order to blend in with them. I have had to understand how people interact, think, feel, act, process, and how important those emotions are to NTs. They not only arrange how people interact, but also how they are compelled to behave.

A lifetime of observation, and being immersed in neurotypical circuitry has given me excellent groundwork for how they function. Add to this, when I don’t know I can always approach the people that I live with like a three-year-old just discovering the question, “Why?”. And believe me, when I say, this is a constant question that I have about people’s behavior, and when they are unable to tell me a response because it is outside their understanding, I have to find a place that can explain it to me. I always want more information, so I will go and look. I like to understand the people who have constructed the world in which I have to live because it makes me better able to function within it.

I have access to a lot of information regarding that how and why people do what they do. I have lived in this world my whole life. I am intelligent and an excellent observer. I have learned to mimic the appearance of the emotions that I lack or those that are too quiet to make a noticeable appearance on my face even when I feel them. I have been watching and reading all the content that is available to me that is largely constructed by neurotypicals explaining their life experiences, what is important to them, how different things affect them, and how it makes them feel.

I still get things wrong all the time, and I still don’t understand why certain things matter to people. Even with all the resources available to me I am still mistaken or make assumptions that have no place in reality.

Now let’s talk about psychopaths.

How many actual psychopaths has any given neurotypical known? Not many. Out of those, how many are not only aware that they are psychopathic, but have spoken openly and directly with neurotypicals? How many of those few neurotypicals have the inclination to write a psychopathic character?

With each question, the pool of examples gets smaller and smaller, to the point that the person writing is only drawing on snippets of information. They have never had the ability to observe psychopathy in a natural state, nor have they had multiple examples. Psychopathy itself is plagued by myths and bad ideas that they would have to know to discard, and they would have to understand a method of thinking that is lacking their core functionality. That is, their emotional state.

Psychopathy doesn’t bend to an author’s desires for the character. You can’t want a psychopathic character that falls madly in love.

“But”, the author argues, “it’s just that one person, and that’s what makes it so unique!”

Nope, that’s what makes it wrong. You just discounted how psychopathy works. No oxytocin processing. No chemical love, bonding, jealousy, or trust, and that doesn’t change because they write “the most specialist person ever for the psychopath to fall in love with”.

“But… it’s another psychopath!” They counter. “Surely they can bond?! They understand each other!”

*Head on desk* Nope. Not how it works.

“Oh, okay, I understand. But, my psychopath is a woman and she has a husband that she loved *sigh* and he was murdered…. *uh-huh*… and she is driven to avenge *SIGH* his death, but but also… she has this child *oh good lord* that she is willing to give her life for, because it’s the only piece of him left and the only person that she feels anything for.”

…just no. So so much wrong there. You can’t force psychopathy to fit your narrative, and a psychopath isn’t a dark horse emo character that needs to be saved, is actually fully feeling, but just with *that person or person’s*, isn’t looking to be like everyone else, or isn’t a super villain.

Out of all the examples out there, the most accurate ones don’t have a label attached. This is the smartest way of handling it because then there is cover if there is a misstep. Authors have a habit of telling their story, not the character's story necessarily. They want X, Y, and Z happening, so they will tool their characters to accomplish that end. This never bodes well for a character intended to have psychopathy. Once you set the parameters in place, any deviation is going to have an echo effect backward on that character.

Interestingly, I had someone who contacted me wanting to write a psychopathic female and I responded with my standard response that includes the part about there being just one person that she loved, as well as the bit about the child. They responded a bit sheepishly that they had that exact plot line in their character design (I can’t remember if the child was a part of it or not, but definitely the part about falling in love with that one special person was in there). Yeah, I didn’t include it in my standard response because they were the first person that came up with that idea. It’s weirdly common.

Today I was asked:

What are some tips for writing a realistic psychopath without villainizing them?

Most people would think, aww… they are at least trying. Maybe give them a hand. They seem like they have the right idea in mind.

Nope, they don’t. In fact, this question demonstrates to me how far off the mark they are.

“How so, Athena? It sort of sounds like you are being judgy.”

Fair point and you’re probably right, but it’s the assumption built into the question. How do I write them realistically without villainizing them? The built-in assumption is that the psychopath construct is, by definition, a villain. They aren’t approaching a psychopath as a person who is living a life that is interesting enough to detail for a reader. Nope, instead it’s, how do I make them realistic without the villain aspect?

To begin with, you learn enough about psychopathy to understand that the villain trope is such a stereotype that you disregard it completely. You read enough to have the basics down about psychopathy and then go from there. By the time you are ready to even consider writing a character like this, the psychopathy angle should be a reference only for how they would or wouldn’t respond to things, but they haven’t even done the bare minimum.

This, of course, is not helped by the extremely limited availability of source material that isn’t going to be based on the prison population or from nutjobs who think that their entire pool of exes are all psychopaths. Seriously… do you not see the common denominator there? It’s you…it’s… it’s definitely you.

When someone tries to do even a modicum of research into psychopathy they will find a treasure trove of people that are all too happy to inform the world regarding how we think when they have no idea. I see this in everyone from cops to psychologists. They all think that they get it, but that emotional lens means that they are totally in the dark. It’s kind of amazing to watch really. A great example would be the Paul Bernardo interview tapes that you can find on YouTube. There are all these conclusions about his behavior, and as far as I can tell, these conclusions are so far off the mark that I find it amusing. If you guys want a post going over that, let me know.

Neurotypicals are not the only ones that have a habit of making a mess of psychopathy. I got this comment recently:

I remember a couple of years ago reading a blog of a writer who was trying to write a psychopathic character. They did things like having the character save a girl not because of any sort of care for the girl, but rather because he was the sheriff and as a citizen of his jurisdiction, she was “his” in a sense.

The author also showed the character’s thought processes to the readers so that the audience would know that the character thought differently than a normal person.

When the author showed their work to test readers, people hated him. One reader said ‘you know I want to root for this guy, but the way he thinks makes me hate him’.

Psychopathic thinking is so far outside the understanding of normative thinking that authors not only have to contend with their own biases but also the biases of their audiences

.I’m not sure if the portrayal of psychopathy was accurate or not since I haven’t read their work. I only found their blog after googling psychopathic characters. The general consensus of the comment section of that blog was that writing psychopathic characters is hard.

Funnily enough that particular author was autistic and wanted to portray psychopathy accurately. Regardless an autistic author would still have the same issues as a neurotypical author in the sense that they’re both trying to write about a neurology so far outside their experience in a way that is both accurate and relatable to a general audience.

Another thing to consider is target audience. As much as we talk about “relatable” characters when it comes to writing, not everyone finds the same things relatable. Most people are not going to relate to a story about genocide, because they never lived through genocide. Men are probably not going to relate to a story about pregnancy and childbirth. Similarly the same problem will happen psychopathy. You can make the most accurate portrayal in a positive light, and some people just won’t get it.

That brings to bear another aspect of where this tends to go off the rails, and that is humanizing a psychopath or making that character relatable. If you cannot relate to, empathize with, or humanize the character, there is no story to tell. It creates a dead character. There is no life there, no attraction. To overcome this they add some aspect that is again contrary to who the person should be. It makes them interesting, but it also makes them not a psychopath.

People fall into the stereotypes like hyper-intelligent, or vicious serial killer, or criminal mastermind, because they do not have the ability to empathize with a psychopath, either emotionally or cognitively. This means that the character, without the external support of myths and nonsense, isn’t interesting. They are flat and boring, two-dimensional, and without anything to make a reader attracted to that character in whatever role they are meant to fill.

This, however, is not reflective of psychopathy in the real world. A quick reminder of the traits of psychopathy:

Ruthlessness

Fearlessness

Impulsivity

Self Confidence

Focus

Coolness under pressure

Mental toughness

Charm

Charisma

Empathy-cognitive only

Conscience-cognitive only

These should be excellent guidelines on how to make a character intriguing, but without understanding how it is that we utilize these traits, which means that the author would have to actually know and observe a psychopath on a pretty regular basis. Most people simply do not have this as an option.

A non-psychopathic person who might be able to write a psychopath well would be someone that not only knows a psychopath, but also is directly having that psychopath assist with the writing. That would:

Require both the non-psychopath and the psychopath to be excellent in communication and writing skills.

It would require that person to be able to rid themselves of any of their preconceptions about how psychopaths think.

They would have to be able to make the character relatable but different from what people expect from a psychopathic character.

They would have to be fine with failure, because they are going to get a lot wrong.

They would have to be fine with rejection, because many people will refuse to accept that a psychopath could be anything other than evil.

They would have to know that people are going to assume from the beginning, that the psychopath is the villain, and may well not like their story because they didn’t keep to the narrative.

It would be a very difficult task. I have no problem writing a psychopathic character because I am a psychopath, so I am not trying to figure out what my responses would be because I know myself. I can make myself relatable because I have had to be relatable my whole life. However, even being capable of doing so, a psychopathic character that I write isn’t going to be any more accepted by a general audience because it still subverts expectations, and while people do sometimes like that, often it makes them angry.

If you need proof of that, look at how many people get angry at me for simply daring to write about psychopathy without being on one end of the spectrum or the other. I am not screaming from the hilltops about how evil all psychopaths are, and yes, I have seen many people who claim to be psychopaths do this. Nor am I proclaiming to all that will listen that I am the end-all, be-all, superior being without any flaws. Also something that I see on a regular basis.

Psychopathic characters are best left out of narratives for a good long while yet. There are certainly ways to make a psychopath a relatable character, but it takes a person who can relate to that mindset to be able to bring that character to life without cheating. Neurotypicals so far have demonstrated that they are not capable of doing that successfully.

The only thing that has come out of NTs writing about psychopathy is more nonsensical myths about it, ridiculous stereotypes, and really strange obsession from people that fall in love with some dark horse fantasy that they think they can save.