Murderous Minds (27 page)

Lawrence, Barry, Zach, and Andy, as different as they appear to be, all share key features of psychopathy, including childhood behavior problems, lack of guilt or remorse, failure to accept blame or responsibility, shallow
affect, lying, and irresponsibility. That is how they all scored high on the PCL–R test. They all “are criminals who happen to exhibit symptoms of a mental disorder.”

Psychopathic Subtypes

Psychologists Carolyn Murphy, Ph.D., and James Vess, Ph.D., noticed significant differences in behavior among the psychopaths confined to Atascadero State Hospital back in 2003.
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Even though they shared core traits of psychopathy, patient/inmates with strong psychopathic traits included some individuals who were more sneaky than confrontational and others who were more aggressive and hostile. The psychologists divided them into four subgroups:

1. The Narcissistic Psychopath, with superior airs, self-absorption, a sense of entitlement, and who is likely to put down or belittle others.
   
2. The Borderline Psychopath, who is impulsive, needy, and liable to change moods frequently and easily.
   
3. The Sadistic Psychopath, who seems to take cruel pleasure in observing or making people suffer.
   
4. The Antisocial Psychopath or remorseless criminal, who is not attuned to the suffering of others and acts aggressively toward others.
   

Of course, any group, psychopathic or non-psychopathic, will contain individuals with different personality traits, but the forensic psychologists thought that subdividing the inmates with psychopathy confined inside a forensic hospital might have benefits for the staff who have to deal with them. Perhaps the knowledge could provide clues about what to expect from them and aid in communicating with them. Staff will know what to watch out for as they work with the different types of psychopaths, and better protect both themselves and other inmates. It is also conceivable—if a longed-for and long-sought treatment for psychopathy is ever developed—that identifying the behavioral subtype of a psychopathic inmate might improve his or her chances of responding effectively to a therapeutic approach that might take this information into account.

The presence of mental disorders in addition to the personality disorder of psychopathy would be expected to affect their behavior. It is also possible that they reflect variations in personalities of men who score high on the psychopathy checklist. Anxiety, for example, could be one factor that distinguishes these individuals. It’s also possible that they represent examples of a more widely recognized system for classifying psychopaths first suggested over seventy years ago.
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I Come First, You Come Second

In 1941, psychiatrist Ben Karpman suggested that psychopathy consisted of two distinct groups, each with its own cause. The first group consists of idiopathic or primary psychopaths who have no identifiable conditions that can explain their “psychopathic indulgence.” They might have psychopathic traits because they were born with them. Eric Harris and LTK may belong in this group. Despite supportive upbringing, good socioeconomic status, and average or above-average intelligence, rare individuals may develop psychopathic traits that leave the rest of us perplexed and astounded. Andy from the hypothetical study above would fit into this group.

The other group consists of symptomatic or secondary psychopaths. In Karpman’s scheme, these individuals behave like psychopaths because they have other conditions, something that psychologists can identify such as anxiety disorder, bipolar disorder, borderline personality disorder, or brain damage. Someone like Barry would be a good candidate for this group.

“For decades, there’s been some concern about there being different types of psychopaths,” Robert Hare recalled.
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“The common way of looking at it is to call one group primary psychopaths that have all the psychopathic features, and the other group secondary psychopaths who have the features but also who experience or exhibit signs of some sort of neurosis, anxiety, or underlying conflicts.”

According to Hare, the secondary psychopath is not really a psychopath in Karpman’s conceptualization. “These are people who exhibit some of the behaviors [of psychopathy], but for some underlying reason—maybe they are psychotic, have another psychiatric problem, brain damage, all sorts of thing—but they’re clearly not psychopathic. They put on a façade
somehow.” Such a façade gives them “the mask of sanity” seen in primary psychopaths, but it hides different underlying pathologies.

In fact, Karpman was so concerned about the façade element that he tried to introduce a new term for primary psychopaths to distinguish them from secondary psychopaths: he called them anethopaths. The term never caught on. “But among the so-called anethopaths or primary psychopaths,” Hare remembered, “Karpman identified one variation that he referred to as ‘the passive parasitic.’” These individuals are very manipulative; they con and suck you in. The other variation is antisocial and aggressive. In Hare’s words: “They don’t talk, they do.” In the hypothetical group discussed above, this describes Zach.

In 1941, the same year Karpman announced the need to separate psychopaths into two subtypes, a 27-year-old doctor from Italy named Silvano Arieti began his residency at Pilgrim State Hospital in West Brentwood, Long Island.
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He had come to the U.S. in 1938 to escape from Benito Mussolini’s fascist regime. Arieti would go on to earn a national reputation based on his writings about schizophrenia and about creativity. He also talked about psychopaths in much the same vein as Karpman.
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“He started talking about psychopaths and then pseudo-psychopaths,” Hare said. “And pseudo means just what it means: pseudo.” Pseudo-psychopaths seem psychopathic in terms of their aggressive, antisocial behavior, but they differ from psychopaths in other ways: they don’t con, manipulate, or lack feelings or emotions, as true psychopaths do.

Furthermore, Arieti divided true psychopaths, those Karpman wanted to rename anethopaths, into two main variations: the simple and the complex. “The simple psychopath had all of the characteristics of psychopathy and was highly aggressive. His motto was: ‘How do I do this?’” Hare said. “The motto for the complex psychopath was: ‘How do I do this and get away with it?’” Unsuccessful or criminal psychopaths would seem to fall into the simple category. Successful psychopaths—the businessmen, politicians, and con artists who get away with conning—would fall into the complex category.

“So, the division had been set perfectly [over seventy years ago]. People forgot all of this. Now in the literature, people are talking about primary
and secondary psychopathy as if they are both forms of psychopathy, and it’s driving me crazy,” Hare said.

It is easy to understand why Hare is distraught at the confusion and lack of consensus regarding subtypes of psychopaths that characterize the field today. There is order in Karpman’s distinctions between Primary (true) psychopaths and Secondary (pseudo) psychopaths and more order in the breakdown of Primary psychopaths into Complex (successful) and Simple (unsuccessful) psychopaths.

More than half a century later, Jennifer Skeem and her colleagues looked for subtypes of psychopaths among 123 criminals with PCL–R scores of 29 or higher. They assumed that psychopathy is hereditary in primary psychopaths and due to environmental influences in secondary psychopaths.
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The assumption was that they are all true psychopaths. Those called secondary psychopaths—those with identifiable past experiences that seemed to be risk factors—turned out to be more anxious than primary psychopaths. Although these criminals had fewer psychopathic traits, their antisocial behavior was on the same level as that of primary psychopaths. Furthermore, the secondary psychopaths were more likely to have symptoms of major mental disorders, to have features of borderline personality disorder, and to have more trouble successfully interacting with other people. Although the authors assumed that primary and secondary psychopaths were indeed subtypes of one population of psychopaths, their results support the view of Karpman, Arieti, and Hare that secondary psychopaths may actually be pseudo-psychopaths.

Other researchers claim primary psychopaths are those with strong traits of callousness, arrogance, and manipulative behavior, while secondary psychopaths are more likely to be antisocial and impulsive. In this take on psychopathic subtypes, corporate psychopaths would belong in the primary category and criminals in the secondary category.

Thus, it depends on who you talk to and which research papers you read to make sense of psychopathic subtypes, as long as you are willing to dismiss competing classifications. Other assumptions may influence which classification system you prefer. Some people claim psychopathy exists on a spectrum or is dimensional. In other words, it is a variable trait like height or skin tone; some people can have a little
psychopathy and some can have a lot. Others think psychopathy is an all-or-none trait, like being a shark;

you are either a cold-blooded predator or you are not. You cannot be 50 percent shark and 50 percent Labrador retriever.

Different research results point to different profiles of psychopathy. No one knows enough yet to determine if one of these models is correct or not, because the nature of psychopathy has not been agreed upon. Should the term psychopath be reserved for those with the extreme psychopathic behaviors? Or does it apply to anyone with more than an average psychopathic profile? Perhaps small research groups working independently and arguing with one another will not be able to resolve these issues. A large cooperative project, as proposed at the end of this book, might speed understanding along.

One and the Same but Different?

Successful and Unsuccessful Psychopaths

A few neurobiological studies of non-criminal psychopaths have been published in recent years. The result has been more references to another way of subdividing and classifying psychopaths: successful versus unsuccessful.

It’s not clear how many successful psychopaths end up successful in life in the traditional sense. Full-blown psychopathy is characterized by antisocial traits that often create disadvantages for an individual. Just because a person doesn’t have a criminal record doesn’t mean they haven’t screwed up their lives and the lives of those around them. Is that success? Also, it’s important not to confuse full-blown psychopathy, which is often self-destructive, with the presence of some psychopathic traits, like James Fallon has, which, as Oxford University research psychologist Kevin Dutton points out, can contribute to success in many careers as diverse as surgery and military Special Forces.
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Despite the confusion and debate surrounding psychopathic and anethopathic, primary and secondary, pseudo and not-pseudo, simple and complex, if you have strong psychopathic traits and end up in prison, you are, in nearly everyone’s opinion, unsuccessful. You got caught. You can’t take more than four or five relaxed, straight-line steps in your six-by-eight-foot cell. And when you are allowed to leave your cell, you are confined to a cell block in the company of many similarly confined people of the same sex with resentful attitudes, all kept there by thick, strong walls, bars, and guards.

Outside those walls, other people with strong psychopathic traits have

managed to avoid 48-square-foot cells to live instead in 3,000-square-foot or larger Manhattan condos or apartments. They are guarded by doormen instead of guards. And they hold all the keys.

A very small number of high-ranking businessmen (there appear to be fewer women in the ranks of psychopaths and the upper echelons of business), chief executive officers, corporate board members, lawyers, politicians, physicians, and even scientists belong to the upper class of the psychopath community. Fearlessness, coolness under pressure, glibness, superficial charm, concentrated focus, the ability and inclination to con and manipulate others, and a willingness to backstab competitors without appearing too obvious while doing so, can all be very useful attributes in competitive occupations. Corporate psychopaths (who Karpman and Arieti would have us classify as Primary, Complex psychopaths and who are now known as “corporate” and “successful” psychopaths) manage to balance several classic features of the psychopathic personality while at the same time avoiding situations that require them to exchange their large homes for six-by-eight-foot cells. Usually, anyway.

We know more about the brains of criminal psychopaths than we do about the “snakes in suits,” as Paul Babiak and Robert Hare refer to corporate psychopaths in their book about predators in the business community.
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They are certainly not easy to study, as Cynthia Mathieu, a Professor of Business at Université du Quebec a Trois-Rivierès has found. Her Ph.D. in psychology and postdoctoral training in forensic psychology do not open boardroom doors the way requests for fMRI volunteers open prison cell doors.

“When you are a young or new professor in a business department and you’re a woman, that is strike one. When that woman is a psychologist: strike two. And when that woman psychologist tells businessmen or business academics—because they can own their own businesses as well as be academics—that she is studying psychopathy: strike three.”
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Mathieu is interested in linking psychopathic traits to leadership behavior and to the perception of leadership. The business world community, however, does not take the study of psychopaths in their midst seriously. “Not in my department, not anywhere we go,” Mathieu reported. “It’s very hard to
present on corporate psychopathy. We’ve been rejected at all of the business conferences that we have applied to. I was at a conference that was mostly industrial, organizational psychologists that we applied to two weeks ago and we had to defend the existence of psychopathy. They think it’s just a correlate of narcissism and they are comfortable with narcissism, while they are very uncomfortable with psychopathy.”