1) I agree that Ted Bundy had NPD. In Elizabeth Kendall's book "The Phantom Prince: My Life with Ted Bundy" Ted is described as a vulnerable person with unstable self-esteem. He was also often nervous and after the trial (in 1976) his clothes were all wet with nervous sweat. He was also often jealous of Liz. He often cried and was sad. This behavior is not like the behavior of a psychopath.
2) He also cannot have SPD. Relations with Liz were very turbulent from the very beginning. They moved in together too quickly. He was close to her psychologically and physically. Often spoke words of love. He told her his secrets. He was constantly striving for prestige. He extremely wanted to look handsome, sophisticated. He was worried about what people would think of him. He wanted to be associated with the "top" of society. It doesn’t look like a schizoid at all, and I say this as a person with SPD.
This is a bit unrelated to the post and I know you get a lot of questions like this, but this time I really think that this serial killer might be an actual clinical criminal psychopath. Please read until the end as you might find it interesting! His name is Futoshi Matsunaga and he did many horrific things even though it seems like he had a relatively normal upbringing. I don't think you ever covered this person in any of your posts, but correct me if I'm wrong.
"Futoshi Matsunaga was born in Kokurakita Ward of the city of Kitakyūshū in Fukuoka Prefecture, and grew up in Yanagawa. Matsunaga received good grades in school and had a charming personality, but tended to exhibit disciplinary problems. He was transferred to another high school after engaging in a relationship with a junior high school girl. He married at 19 and had a son."
Intelligent, charming, but also a juvenile delinquent. Married early.
"Despite being married, Matsunaga was involved with at least ten mistresses."
Highly sexually promiscuous.
"Despite being married, Matsunaga was involved with at least ten mistresses. In October 1982, during his marriage, he became involved with Junko Ogata, one of his former schoolmates from Yanagawa. In 1984, Matsunaga promised to marry Junko, but her mother, Shizumi Ogata, did not approve of the relationship because of Matsunaga's abuse of her daughter. Matsunaga raped Shizumi as a result. In 1985, Matsunaga convinced Junko that her family hated her because of a suicide attempt and persuaded her to move in with him."
Cunning/Manipulative, lack of empathy, lack of remorse. I'm not clear as to what happened to his kid. If he abandoned him, that's also irresponsibility.
In the wikipedia of Junko Ogata (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Junko_Ogata), it also says that she was wealthy (maybe that's why he chose her and it also says that her personality changed after she met him so maybe she was easily influenced -- another reason he chose her) and that he abused her severely.
Moreover, "He insisted that Junko's mother tried to seduce him, so he abused her, but during the trial Junko began to suspect that Matsunaga had raped her mother"
He was lying to her and failing to accept any responsibility (rationalizing his actions).
Additionally:
"Matsunaga lived in a condominium in Kokurakita-ku. His first victim was a married woman with three children. In April 1993, he convinced her to leave her husband and run away with him, telling the woman that Junko was his sister. One of her children died under mysterious circumstances in September 1993. Her two other children went to live with their father and grandfather the following month. During their relationship, Matsunaga defrauded the woman for 11.8 million yen (about US$145,510). She died mysteriously in March 1994, and the police were unable to prove that Matsunaga had killed the woman or her child."
Parasitic lifestyle, more deceitfulness.
"Soon after, Matsunaga found another target in a female acquaintance of Kumio. He convinced the woman that he was a graduate of Kyoto University and promised to marry her. Instead, he defrauded her of 5.6 million yen (about US$69,066). As before, the woman and her daughter were confined to Matsunaga's apartment. The woman escaped by jumping from the second floor in March 1997. She was put into the care of a mental hospital and her daughter was released."
And so on. These are just some little snippets that I posted while hoping that it might peek your interest even just a little bit.
Having said all this, could I most kindly request that you look into this case as it seems like this person might be a genuine psychopath and I haven't really seen other people write about him. It seems quite interesting, but I'm not nearly as educated on the topic of psychopathy as you are, so I'd like to have someone with expertise like you to take a look at it.
Thank you very much and I really hope you see this! I love your substack!!
Looking at his profile, he seems to be very sadistic, which would be contrary to psychopathy. Sadism has a very high emotional payoff for those that participate in it. Psychopaths lack this.
He seemed to get great pleasure out of the things that he was doing.
I guess you're right, but in that case, what else could it be?
His behaviour is so extreme and was like that from an early age even though he had a rather normal upbringing and doesn't really show signs of being a pathological narcissist, etc.
It's true that he seems sadistic, but his behaviour also goes beyond mere sadism (deceitfulness/manipulation, lying, promiscuity, lack of empathy/remorse, doesn't accept responsibility, parasitic, etc). Do you think he could really be just a neurotypical?
Your hypothesis of psychopath's amygdala getting enlarged by early abuse and thus possibly causing them to become sadistic is by far the best explanation we have, however given that he wasn't abused, maybe he just behaved in a sadistic way in order to engage in an extremely high risk thrill seeking activity?
This kind of sadism would only require cognitive empathy and could perhaps even cause him to feel euphoric because of doing a high risk thrill seeking activity. Or maybe he is grandiose and he was expressing/externalising his grandiosity (psychopathic self-contained grandiosity, not the narcissistic kind) through such an activity. But perhaps at this point, I'm just trying to rationalise it since I really can't explain it in any other way.
What do you think? How to square the circle here given his profile? Just a messed up neurotypical, or some kind of a psychopath despite his sadism? I really don't understand it :/
It's impossible for me to say. Unfortunately, Japan is not very clear when it comes to communicating criminal activity, and even more so when it comes to mental health as it is not a very addressed subject there. There could be vast amounts of information censored, or not even looked at to begin with. My understanding is that Japan cares very little for the reasoning of behavior, and they just address the subject at hand. If you commit murder, this is your punishment.
This is so much the case that one of their most notorious criminals, Issei Sagawa, who is a murderer, cannibal, and necrophile known for the killing of Renée Hartevelt in Paris in 1981. Sagawa murdered Hartevelt then mutilated, cannibalized, and performed necrophilia on her corpse over several days.
Not only is he out of prison, despite that crime, but he is also a "food critic", or at least he was, even releasing a cookbook. When he was prosecuted, his very wealthy family paid to have him found to be mentally unfit to stand trial, and he was placed in an asylum. From there he told his story to an author, had it published, was found to not be crazy, but the charges in France were dropped fore some reason, and as they no longer existed Japan could not hold him. He checked himself out from the asylum, and is free to this day.
No diagnosis was ever released for him, and his motivations were deemed to be due to "perversion".
That is very true, Japanese mental health system, and let alone their criminal justice system is quite behind in many respects. I don't even know if they assessed for psychopathy. I know that in Korea, one female fraudster, arsonist and serial killer who was a primary psychopath was misdiagnosed as Borderline or something like that lol
Her name is In-Sook Eom if you want to check out a mini documentary about her "Full Score on the Psychopath Diagnostic Test (PCL-R) Serial Killer Ms. Eom | Serial Killer Series"
And the story of Issei Sagawa is... damn, its quite disturbing. Unfortunately, its also not the only one in Japan.
What you wrote about Issei Sagawa reminds me of the case of Shinichiro Azuma who when he was 14 brutally killed, tortured, dismembered and sexually assaulted several younger children for "fun". Not only did he spent little time in juvie and was released, but he also got fame from both media and politicians and partnered with a major publishing house in Japan in order to publish his book (autobiography I think?) from which he made quite a lot of money. As far as the victims go, I am not aware of any compensation for them though I could be wrong. The stories of Shinichiro Azuma and Issei Sagawa have some parallels I think and its quite sad that those were not isolated incidents.
Also I heard that in Japan, the reason why their conviction rate for criminals is super high (something like 99%), is that they basically use borderline torture techniques in order to force you to admit that you are guilty even if you actually aren't.
The whole thing is so backwards though I think it is ultimately improving.
All things considered, you're right that its basically impossible to asses whether someone is a psychopath or not based on their Wikipedia page. Ultimately its fine, you're a talented writer and so I look forward to reading just about anything you write.
Thank you for answering my questions, I appreciate it!
I see nothing in Kim Sun-ja's crimes that indicate that she was psychopathic.
The PCL-R is not a good tool for assessing psychopathy. In fact, it's garbage. Someone diagnosed with "psychopathy" from the PCL-R is unlikely to be. I wrote a three part series here about why it is such a bad checklist and why it needs to be done away with entirely.
She was a gambling addict, not something that psychopaths can be, she was a poisoner which is contrary to psychopathy as well.
Poisoners tend to have a sense of inadequacy, for which they compensate through a scorn for authority, a strong need for control. Often they are highly narcissistic, not psychopathic.
This type of individual would be very much like Dee Dee Blanchard, who had Munchhausen syndrome by proxy. They are attention seekers, they do not want to accept responsibility for things, and feel entitled to what they want.
Interestingly, Dee Dee Blanchard poisoned her stepmother for financial reasons. She failed, but she tried poisoning before she had her daughter to use as a tool.
Interestingly, Kim Sun-ja's, last words supposedly were:
"I both envy and hate the rich. If I were to be born again, I want to be born rich and live like them. If I committed a crime, it was the crime of being born poor.”
Kim Sum-ja (김선자) and In-Sook Eom (엄인숙) are two different people!!!
In-Sook Eom came from a wealthy family herself and she's still alive, she is in prison and is in her 40s now, serving a life sentence with no parole. So two different people!
And I don't want to look up Dee Dee Blanchard 😭😭😭. I read the opening paragraph on Wikipedia and it scared me too much I almost threw up so I don't want to read more. The case of In-Sook Eom also used to scare me before because she would poke people's eyeballs out.
I believe In-Sook Eom was assessed as 38/40 or 40/40 on the PCL-R. I know the checklist is kinda... to put it politely, of highly limited use, but nevertheless such a high scorer deserves to be looked at, no? Dr. Kent Kiehl said that in his neuroscience research that people who score 35+ out of 40 on the PCL-R are almost invariably psychopaths assuming that they also don't show a lot of symptoms of pathological narcissism or other mental health problems (which I think In-Sook Eom doesn't).
For In-Sook Eom, she would murder people, poke their eyeballs out, pour boiling oil on them, etc. so that she could maximize insurance money she could get before killing them. She would go and manipulate guys, convince them that she is super kind, rich and generous, marry them, and then poke their eyeballs out (3rd highest insurance payout) and then lit their houses on fire and pour things like boiling oil on their face (2nd highest insurance payout) and finally murder them (highest insurance payout). She used to work for an insurance company but quit because she was bored after a few months, but from there she learned the best techniques in order to obtain insurance $. Everything she did was maximized purely in order to gain profit. And she also did this to her own family. Moreover, she came from a good family and was not abused a child. She was extremely manipulative and did many things like stab her ex-husband, etc., its not limited to only poisoning, mostly whatever she could convince the insurance companies in order to get money which she would use to take trips and buy luxury items for "fun".
Poisoning was one of the means to an end and prosecutors described her as highly confident and calm and sociable, not narcissistic or to have feelings of inadequacy. Everyone who knew In-Sook Eom (except her family. her brother said she was utterly chaotic trouble maker) said that she was always super kind and never thought she could do something like that. In-Sook Eom is also not an attention seeker, in fact she would completely make up info about herself when introducing herself to potential husbands and their families and when she was done with obtaining the money, she would immediately cut them off with no explanation and she wasn't a gambler as far as I'm aware. And also I don't think she's "entitled", she simply wanted things and would do whatever she thought was easiest in order to obtain them regardless of the consequences, she was never like "Damn these people with money, I hate them!!
Ultimately I don't know. You know much more about psychopathy than I do, but I think you mixed up two people and their circumstances. If you're interested, you can watch the video mini-documentary (only 11 minutes long) on YouTube about In-Sook Eom which explains her case: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HHG9Tr8lKoI
Thank you for reading all this and answering more of my questions 😅
It's worth to notice that much like psychopathy is not ASPD, narcissism is not NPD.
People keep forgetting it's the *disorder* that is the problem, not the trait.
"Narcissism" is just another word for self-esteem. It's a valuable, even essential human trait.
A person can have too little narcissism and be a victim, or they can have too much and be an abuser, or they can have the right, flexible amount - and be a healthy human.
NPD is another word for "being addicted to replenishing one's self-esteem directly at someone else's expense (often obliviously so), as though life were a zero-sum game." The irony is that people who have NPD don't actually have self-esteem, which is why they're over reliant on others-esteem.
In other words, pathological narcissists don't really have healthy narcissism.
By analogy, maybe it could be inferred that ASPD's don't have healthy psychopathy.
I really have to say I get such a kick from your sense of humour sometimes. The line ‘last helicopter out of Nam’ had me laughing out loud.
I found this article the most erroneous also. It was the first one I read by the author, and when I saw the comments and attention it got, I was saddened that people just assume that, if a person writes like they are an expert, they should just be believed. Every single thing should considered critically. What varies is the amount of energy applied. If you are reading an article from a source you already trust, very little. If you are reading something from an unknown author making claims, take your time and think. If the world could just do this, and practice careful consideration and proceed with logic, not emotion, we’d live in a veritable utopia - with fewer serial killers, at least! I admit to how difficult this is (I actively fight my very emotional brain all the time), but the ability to do it is what separates us from other animals.
> If someone is addicted to sex, they are not a psychopath.
If someone is "addicted to sex" they are using a cop out. Sex addiction is not even a real thing and the world's heroin and meth addicts laugh at everyone who is stupid enough to believe they're a sex addict.
The propaganda regarding psychopaths really has gone too far, from serial killers to mass murderers. There are psychologists out there who described Adolf Hitler as a neurotic psychopath which is an absolute oxymoron. With Ted Bundy and other serial killers I'm almost at the pointing of wanting to scream out "WHO CARES?!" He's already been so oversensationalized for being white, somewhat charming and not ugly.
Perhaps the most ironic part about how much misinformation came about regarding psychopathy through the lens of psychiatry is that the father of psychiatry Sigmund Freud himself is now being suspected of having psychopathy. Such madness, I can't take anything with the word psychopathy involved seriously anymore if it was published before a certain date and doesn't have hard science or personal experience involved in the source.
Even autism doesn't have the same stigma when it comes to deviant brain structure but sadly it still exists even there. Though, autistics often face far less deleterious stigma than psychopaths.
I must quickly say that addiction is a very complicated issue, but also stems very much from a brain that has abnormal functioning, as many who show traits of addiction have this as a both a ‘personality disorder’ as well as a genetically-inherited disease. Sexual addicts do exist. People can get addicted to anything. The fact that those addicted to hard drugs have the horrific side effects of physical withdrawal to deal with in addition to the mess that is addiction itself is more than unfortunate. Curious people without addictive tendencies have tried these drugs and become physically addicted. I think, and this would be an interesting topic, that addiction from a illness/psychological point of view is separate from what the actual form of addiction is. Do they choose? Is it engrained/socialized (eg. children of alcoholics have a far greater chance of becoming one themselves as compared to the general population)?
I’m not minimizing the devastation that is drug addiction. I’m just pointing out that the ‘addicted brain and personality’ can literally become addicted to almost anything. Unfortunately for some (and those without this issue who are curious) the side-effects of withdrawal from certain drugs just add to the horror of the addictive cycle. After all, a person can become severely addicted to marijuana and live their lives almost constantly stoned, even though the side-effects of withdrawal are mainly psychological in nature.
Everything else you said, spot on. And I don’t disagree from a place of just sport - information that I know is factually incorrect can put people into tricky situations if they read it and don’t think critically for themselves, so if I know for sure there’s a piece missing, I’m the annoying person with a need to fix it. As a commentary? Sure, the sex addict seems to have it way easier. From a scientific standpoint? Addicts and their choice of ‘material’ can be studied separately, as well as together and from a purely neurological point of view, I do believe they are considered as a group, regardless of that material. I do admit to not being an expert here.
Chronic masturbators exist, people who are compulsively hypersexual also exist - but I consider this psychological. Addiction is a spectrum though and I don't consider sex addiction to be such a bad thing since everyone has sex all the time. The problem starts when compulsive sexual behaviors rear their ugly had at unfortunate times and places but that's far more psychological, I could liken it to cocaine addiction in terms of dopamine which is serious but you aren't dying of sex withdrawals just like no one dies from cocaine withdrawals.
There are pathological gamblers and liars as well, those I'd say are less addictions but compulsions. I have a hard time comparing it to hardcore drug addiction in any way, where your brain needs the drug while it's also deteriorating it. Habit is powerful but some of this is comparing apples and oranges. Particularly when it comes to dope, alcohol, xanax, etc. If you stop gambling or masturbating abruptly, you're not going to die. Sunrise to sunset stoners exist and may smoke weed like it's heroin but they'll never experience the same sickness and depth of addiction. These stoners may be terribly lazy and unproductive but this addiction is benevolent otherwise.
Psychologically speaking, if you engage in addictive behaviors that are also as dangerous as drug addiction - you probably have borderline personality disorder... just speaking from experience and a large amount of people I've met in treatment. Antisocial is also frequent but they're a lot less likely to end up in drug treatment unless they're forced by the courts. Borderline and antisocial traits are seen in just about any drug addict, I'd suspect dependent, histrionic or narcissistic traits more so when it comes to compulsive sexual behavior.
From what you have said about your SO, he sounds like a very remarkable person. A psychopath's usually successful manipulation tactics not working on him is no small thing, won't you agree? My question is, what is it about him that makes him so different from other NTs? Is that why you were attracted to him in the first place?
I was attracted to him because he is attractive. He is also compatible with me as a person. The rest of it came later. The reason that he is not able to be manipulated is that he has very high cognitive empathy and can read people even better than I can.
I'm trying to get why a sexual serial killer would be pro-social anything?
Right? It's entirely nonsensical.
1) I agree that Ted Bundy had NPD. In Elizabeth Kendall's book "The Phantom Prince: My Life with Ted Bundy" Ted is described as a vulnerable person with unstable self-esteem. He was also often nervous and after the trial (in 1976) his clothes were all wet with nervous sweat. He was also often jealous of Liz. He often cried and was sad. This behavior is not like the behavior of a psychopath.
2) He also cannot have SPD. Relations with Liz were very turbulent from the very beginning. They moved in together too quickly. He was close to her psychologically and physically. Often spoke words of love. He told her his secrets. He was constantly striving for prestige. He extremely wanted to look handsome, sophisticated. He was worried about what people would think of him. He wanted to be associated with the "top" of society. It doesn’t look like a schizoid at all, and I say this as a person with SPD.
That is super interesting. That being the case, I agree with you.
Definitely not schizoid.
Hi Athena,
This is a bit unrelated to the post and I know you get a lot of questions like this, but this time I really think that this serial killer might be an actual clinical criminal psychopath. Please read until the end as you might find it interesting! His name is Futoshi Matsunaga and he did many horrific things even though it seems like he had a relatively normal upbringing. I don't think you ever covered this person in any of your posts, but correct me if I'm wrong.
Based on his wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Futoshi_Matsunaga) and murderpedia (https://murderpedia.org/male.M/m/matsunaga-futoshi.htm), we have the following:
"Futoshi Matsunaga was born in Kokurakita Ward of the city of Kitakyūshū in Fukuoka Prefecture, and grew up in Yanagawa. Matsunaga received good grades in school and had a charming personality, but tended to exhibit disciplinary problems. He was transferred to another high school after engaging in a relationship with a junior high school girl. He married at 19 and had a son."
Intelligent, charming, but also a juvenile delinquent. Married early.
"Despite being married, Matsunaga was involved with at least ten mistresses."
Highly sexually promiscuous.
"Despite being married, Matsunaga was involved with at least ten mistresses. In October 1982, during his marriage, he became involved with Junko Ogata, one of his former schoolmates from Yanagawa. In 1984, Matsunaga promised to marry Junko, but her mother, Shizumi Ogata, did not approve of the relationship because of Matsunaga's abuse of her daughter. Matsunaga raped Shizumi as a result. In 1985, Matsunaga convinced Junko that her family hated her because of a suicide attempt and persuaded her to move in with him."
Cunning/Manipulative, lack of empathy, lack of remorse. I'm not clear as to what happened to his kid. If he abandoned him, that's also irresponsibility.
In the wikipedia of Junko Ogata (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Junko_Ogata), it also says that she was wealthy (maybe that's why he chose her and it also says that her personality changed after she met him so maybe she was easily influenced -- another reason he chose her) and that he abused her severely.
Moreover, "He insisted that Junko's mother tried to seduce him, so he abused her, but during the trial Junko began to suspect that Matsunaga had raped her mother"
He was lying to her and failing to accept any responsibility (rationalizing his actions).
Additionally:
"Matsunaga lived in a condominium in Kokurakita-ku. His first victim was a married woman with three children. In April 1993, he convinced her to leave her husband and run away with him, telling the woman that Junko was his sister. One of her children died under mysterious circumstances in September 1993. Her two other children went to live with their father and grandfather the following month. During their relationship, Matsunaga defrauded the woman for 11.8 million yen (about US$145,510). She died mysteriously in March 1994, and the police were unable to prove that Matsunaga had killed the woman or her child."
Parasitic lifestyle, more deceitfulness.
"Soon after, Matsunaga found another target in a female acquaintance of Kumio. He convinced the woman that he was a graduate of Kyoto University and promised to marry her. Instead, he defrauded her of 5.6 million yen (about US$69,066). As before, the woman and her daughter were confined to Matsunaga's apartment. The woman escaped by jumping from the second floor in March 1997. She was put into the care of a mental hospital and her daughter was released."
And so on. These are just some little snippets that I posted while hoping that it might peek your interest even just a little bit.
Having said all this, could I most kindly request that you look into this case as it seems like this person might be a genuine psychopath and I haven't really seen other people write about him. It seems quite interesting, but I'm not nearly as educated on the topic of psychopathy as you are, so I'd like to have someone with expertise like you to take a look at it.
Thank you very much and I really hope you see this! I love your substack!!
Looking at his profile, he seems to be very sadistic, which would be contrary to psychopathy. Sadism has a very high emotional payoff for those that participate in it. Psychopaths lack this.
He seemed to get great pleasure out of the things that he was doing.
I guess you're right, but in that case, what else could it be?
His behaviour is so extreme and was like that from an early age even though he had a rather normal upbringing and doesn't really show signs of being a pathological narcissist, etc.
It's true that he seems sadistic, but his behaviour also goes beyond mere sadism (deceitfulness/manipulation, lying, promiscuity, lack of empathy/remorse, doesn't accept responsibility, parasitic, etc). Do you think he could really be just a neurotypical?
Your hypothesis of psychopath's amygdala getting enlarged by early abuse and thus possibly causing them to become sadistic is by far the best explanation we have, however given that he wasn't abused, maybe he just behaved in a sadistic way in order to engage in an extremely high risk thrill seeking activity?
This kind of sadism would only require cognitive empathy and could perhaps even cause him to feel euphoric because of doing a high risk thrill seeking activity. Or maybe he is grandiose and he was expressing/externalising his grandiosity (psychopathic self-contained grandiosity, not the narcissistic kind) through such an activity. But perhaps at this point, I'm just trying to rationalise it since I really can't explain it in any other way.
What do you think? How to square the circle here given his profile? Just a messed up neurotypical, or some kind of a psychopath despite his sadism? I really don't understand it :/
It's impossible for me to say. Unfortunately, Japan is not very clear when it comes to communicating criminal activity, and even more so when it comes to mental health as it is not a very addressed subject there. There could be vast amounts of information censored, or not even looked at to begin with. My understanding is that Japan cares very little for the reasoning of behavior, and they just address the subject at hand. If you commit murder, this is your punishment.
This is so much the case that one of their most notorious criminals, Issei Sagawa, who is a murderer, cannibal, and necrophile known for the killing of Renée Hartevelt in Paris in 1981. Sagawa murdered Hartevelt then mutilated, cannibalized, and performed necrophilia on her corpse over several days.
Not only is he out of prison, despite that crime, but he is also a "food critic", or at least he was, even releasing a cookbook. When he was prosecuted, his very wealthy family paid to have him found to be mentally unfit to stand trial, and he was placed in an asylum. From there he told his story to an author, had it published, was found to not be crazy, but the charges in France were dropped fore some reason, and as they no longer existed Japan could not hold him. He checked himself out from the asylum, and is free to this day.
No diagnosis was ever released for him, and his motivations were deemed to be due to "perversion".
That is very true, Japanese mental health system, and let alone their criminal justice system is quite behind in many respects. I don't even know if they assessed for psychopathy. I know that in Korea, one female fraudster, arsonist and serial killer who was a primary psychopath was misdiagnosed as Borderline or something like that lol
Her name is In-Sook Eom if you want to check out a mini documentary about her "Full Score on the Psychopath Diagnostic Test (PCL-R) Serial Killer Ms. Eom | Serial Killer Series"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HHG9Tr8lKoI
And the story of Issei Sagawa is... damn, its quite disturbing. Unfortunately, its also not the only one in Japan.
What you wrote about Issei Sagawa reminds me of the case of Shinichiro Azuma who when he was 14 brutally killed, tortured, dismembered and sexually assaulted several younger children for "fun". Not only did he spent little time in juvie and was released, but he also got fame from both media and politicians and partnered with a major publishing house in Japan in order to publish his book (autobiography I think?) from which he made quite a lot of money. As far as the victims go, I am not aware of any compensation for them though I could be wrong. The stories of Shinichiro Azuma and Issei Sagawa have some parallels I think and its quite sad that those were not isolated incidents.
Also I heard that in Japan, the reason why their conviction rate for criminals is super high (something like 99%), is that they basically use borderline torture techniques in order to force you to admit that you are guilty even if you actually aren't.
The whole thing is so backwards though I think it is ultimately improving.
All things considered, you're right that its basically impossible to asses whether someone is a psychopath or not based on their Wikipedia page. Ultimately its fine, you're a talented writer and so I look forward to reading just about anything you write.
Thank you for answering my questions, I appreciate it!
Her actual name was Kim Sun-ja.
I see nothing in Kim Sun-ja's crimes that indicate that she was psychopathic.
The PCL-R is not a good tool for assessing psychopathy. In fact, it's garbage. Someone diagnosed with "psychopathy" from the PCL-R is unlikely to be. I wrote a three part series here about why it is such a bad checklist and why it needs to be done away with entirely.
She was a gambling addict, not something that psychopaths can be, she was a poisoner which is contrary to psychopathy as well.
Poisoners tend to have a sense of inadequacy, for which they compensate through a scorn for authority, a strong need for control. Often they are highly narcissistic, not psychopathic.
This type of individual would be very much like Dee Dee Blanchard, who had Munchhausen syndrome by proxy. They are attention seekers, they do not want to accept responsibility for things, and feel entitled to what they want.
Interestingly, Dee Dee Blanchard poisoned her stepmother for financial reasons. She failed, but she tried poisoning before she had her daughter to use as a tool.
Interestingly, Kim Sun-ja's, last words supposedly were:
"I both envy and hate the rich. If I were to be born again, I want to be born rich and live like them. If I committed a crime, it was the crime of being born poor.”
Psychopaths don't envy, nor do we hate.
Ahhhh nonononono!!!!
Kim Sum-ja (김선자) and In-Sook Eom (엄인숙) are two different people!!!
In-Sook Eom came from a wealthy family herself and she's still alive, she is in prison and is in her 40s now, serving a life sentence with no parole. So two different people!
And I don't want to look up Dee Dee Blanchard 😭😭😭. I read the opening paragraph on Wikipedia and it scared me too much I almost threw up so I don't want to read more. The case of In-Sook Eom also used to scare me before because she would poke people's eyeballs out.
I believe In-Sook Eom was assessed as 38/40 or 40/40 on the PCL-R. I know the checklist is kinda... to put it politely, of highly limited use, but nevertheless such a high scorer deserves to be looked at, no? Dr. Kent Kiehl said that in his neuroscience research that people who score 35+ out of 40 on the PCL-R are almost invariably psychopaths assuming that they also don't show a lot of symptoms of pathological narcissism or other mental health problems (which I think In-Sook Eom doesn't).
For In-Sook Eom, she would murder people, poke their eyeballs out, pour boiling oil on them, etc. so that she could maximize insurance money she could get before killing them. She would go and manipulate guys, convince them that she is super kind, rich and generous, marry them, and then poke their eyeballs out (3rd highest insurance payout) and then lit their houses on fire and pour things like boiling oil on their face (2nd highest insurance payout) and finally murder them (highest insurance payout). She used to work for an insurance company but quit because she was bored after a few months, but from there she learned the best techniques in order to obtain insurance $. Everything she did was maximized purely in order to gain profit. And she also did this to her own family. Moreover, she came from a good family and was not abused a child. She was extremely manipulative and did many things like stab her ex-husband, etc., its not limited to only poisoning, mostly whatever she could convince the insurance companies in order to get money which she would use to take trips and buy luxury items for "fun".
Poisoning was one of the means to an end and prosecutors described her as highly confident and calm and sociable, not narcissistic or to have feelings of inadequacy. Everyone who knew In-Sook Eom (except her family. her brother said she was utterly chaotic trouble maker) said that she was always super kind and never thought she could do something like that. In-Sook Eom is also not an attention seeker, in fact she would completely make up info about herself when introducing herself to potential husbands and their families and when she was done with obtaining the money, she would immediately cut them off with no explanation and she wasn't a gambler as far as I'm aware. And also I don't think she's "entitled", she simply wanted things and would do whatever she thought was easiest in order to obtain them regardless of the consequences, she was never like "Damn these people with money, I hate them!!
Ultimately I don't know. You know much more about psychopathy than I do, but I think you mixed up two people and their circumstances. If you're interested, you can watch the video mini-documentary (only 11 minutes long) on YouTube about In-Sook Eom which explains her case: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HHG9Tr8lKoI
Thank you for reading all this and answering more of my questions 😅
It's worth to notice that much like psychopathy is not ASPD, narcissism is not NPD.
People keep forgetting it's the *disorder* that is the problem, not the trait.
"Narcissism" is just another word for self-esteem. It's a valuable, even essential human trait.
A person can have too little narcissism and be a victim, or they can have too much and be an abuser, or they can have the right, flexible amount - and be a healthy human.
NPD is another word for "being addicted to replenishing one's self-esteem directly at someone else's expense (often obliviously so), as though life were a zero-sum game." The irony is that people who have NPD don't actually have self-esteem, which is why they're over reliant on others-esteem.
In other words, pathological narcissists don't really have healthy narcissism.
By analogy, maybe it could be inferred that ASPD's don't have healthy psychopathy.
Yes, quite true
I really have to say I get such a kick from your sense of humour sometimes. The line ‘last helicopter out of Nam’ had me laughing out loud.
I found this article the most erroneous also. It was the first one I read by the author, and when I saw the comments and attention it got, I was saddened that people just assume that, if a person writes like they are an expert, they should just be believed. Every single thing should considered critically. What varies is the amount of energy applied. If you are reading an article from a source you already trust, very little. If you are reading something from an unknown author making claims, take your time and think. If the world could just do this, and practice careful consideration and proceed with logic, not emotion, we’d live in a veritable utopia - with fewer serial killers, at least! I admit to how difficult this is (I actively fight my very emotional brain all the time), but the ability to do it is what separates us from other animals.
Yes, I agree.
> If someone is addicted to sex, they are not a psychopath.
If someone is "addicted to sex" they are using a cop out. Sex addiction is not even a real thing and the world's heroin and meth addicts laugh at everyone who is stupid enough to believe they're a sex addict.
The propaganda regarding psychopaths really has gone too far, from serial killers to mass murderers. There are psychologists out there who described Adolf Hitler as a neurotic psychopath which is an absolute oxymoron. With Ted Bundy and other serial killers I'm almost at the pointing of wanting to scream out "WHO CARES?!" He's already been so oversensationalized for being white, somewhat charming and not ugly.
Perhaps the most ironic part about how much misinformation came about regarding psychopathy through the lens of psychiatry is that the father of psychiatry Sigmund Freud himself is now being suspected of having psychopathy. Such madness, I can't take anything with the word psychopathy involved seriously anymore if it was published before a certain date and doesn't have hard science or personal experience involved in the source.
Even autism doesn't have the same stigma when it comes to deviant brain structure but sadly it still exists even there. Though, autistics often face far less deleterious stigma than psychopaths.
Yes, I agree, The amount of misinformation in the world is incredible.
I must quickly say that addiction is a very complicated issue, but also stems very much from a brain that has abnormal functioning, as many who show traits of addiction have this as a both a ‘personality disorder’ as well as a genetically-inherited disease. Sexual addicts do exist. People can get addicted to anything. The fact that those addicted to hard drugs have the horrific side effects of physical withdrawal to deal with in addition to the mess that is addiction itself is more than unfortunate. Curious people without addictive tendencies have tried these drugs and become physically addicted. I think, and this would be an interesting topic, that addiction from a illness/psychological point of view is separate from what the actual form of addiction is. Do they choose? Is it engrained/socialized (eg. children of alcoholics have a far greater chance of becoming one themselves as compared to the general population)?
I’m not minimizing the devastation that is drug addiction. I’m just pointing out that the ‘addicted brain and personality’ can literally become addicted to almost anything. Unfortunately for some (and those without this issue who are curious) the side-effects of withdrawal from certain drugs just add to the horror of the addictive cycle. After all, a person can become severely addicted to marijuana and live their lives almost constantly stoned, even though the side-effects of withdrawal are mainly psychological in nature.
Everything else you said, spot on. And I don’t disagree from a place of just sport - information that I know is factually incorrect can put people into tricky situations if they read it and don’t think critically for themselves, so if I know for sure there’s a piece missing, I’m the annoying person with a need to fix it. As a commentary? Sure, the sex addict seems to have it way easier. From a scientific standpoint? Addicts and their choice of ‘material’ can be studied separately, as well as together and from a purely neurological point of view, I do believe they are considered as a group, regardless of that material. I do admit to not being an expert here.
Chronic masturbators exist, people who are compulsively hypersexual also exist - but I consider this psychological. Addiction is a spectrum though and I don't consider sex addiction to be such a bad thing since everyone has sex all the time. The problem starts when compulsive sexual behaviors rear their ugly had at unfortunate times and places but that's far more psychological, I could liken it to cocaine addiction in terms of dopamine which is serious but you aren't dying of sex withdrawals just like no one dies from cocaine withdrawals.
There are pathological gamblers and liars as well, those I'd say are less addictions but compulsions. I have a hard time comparing it to hardcore drug addiction in any way, where your brain needs the drug while it's also deteriorating it. Habit is powerful but some of this is comparing apples and oranges. Particularly when it comes to dope, alcohol, xanax, etc. If you stop gambling or masturbating abruptly, you're not going to die. Sunrise to sunset stoners exist and may smoke weed like it's heroin but they'll never experience the same sickness and depth of addiction. These stoners may be terribly lazy and unproductive but this addiction is benevolent otherwise.
Psychologically speaking, if you engage in addictive behaviors that are also as dangerous as drug addiction - you probably have borderline personality disorder... just speaking from experience and a large amount of people I've met in treatment. Antisocial is also frequent but they're a lot less likely to end up in drug treatment unless they're forced by the courts. Borderline and antisocial traits are seen in just about any drug addict, I'd suspect dependent, histrionic or narcissistic traits more so when it comes to compulsive sexual behavior.
From what you have said about your SO, he sounds like a very remarkable person. A psychopath's usually successful manipulation tactics not working on him is no small thing, won't you agree? My question is, what is it about him that makes him so different from other NTs? Is that why you were attracted to him in the first place?
I was attracted to him because he is attractive. He is also compatible with me as a person. The rest of it came later. The reason that he is not able to be manipulated is that he has very high cognitive empathy and can read people even better than I can.
People like that are rare, aren't they?
Quite so