R.K.: Now, I interviewed the author of Confessions of a Sociopath who uses a pseudonym, M. E. Thomas. She's a lawyer in her early thirties and I asked her for advice on how to detect somebody who is a psychopath and you're a profiler. What advice would you give to somebody on how to get an idea if someone they're dealing with is a psychopath?
M.O.: Well, what I tell people is this. Don't have that tunnel vision about whether they're psychopathic, or not psychopathic. Look for behaviors and look for patterns of behavior. Maybe this pattern of behavior doesn't rise to the level of calling them psychopath because, again, the number of psychopathic individuals is small, but there are still dangerous people out there.
Again, suspend the label, but look for patterns of behavior and you look for things, not just going out one night with someone the first night you've met them, you go out and you see them doing one thing. You don't do a whole assessment on one behavior. You look for patterns of behavior and you look for people that lack empathy, or compassion.
That's very important. You look for behaviors where people have anger management issues. You look for patterns of behavior to suggest that someone is very impulsive, disregards the feelings of others. In my book, Dangerous Instincts, I talk about these patterns of behavior. Whether, or not, they ever rise to an assessment for psychopathy, or not, these are still patterns of behavior that can be harmful to you if you let that person into your life, either physically, emotionally, financially, or otherwise.
What I have seen over my career in law enforcement is that often times we'll meet someone and they will, they're very charming with us in the beginning. There are a lot of people out there who are charming, but not psychopathic, but they're charming, but the world is all about them and we're so taken with them that we don't know, and we don't know how to read for warning behaviors.
We just look for people that are nice to us, for people that seem to have a steady job, for people that have these trappings of normalcy. That has nothing to do with whether, or not someone could be violent, or hurt us.
R.K.: What I've been struggling with is we know there are one percent of the population who are predators who their meaning in life comes with playing with people, manipulating them, ripping them off, doing things that are hurtful,
M.O.: Right.
R.K.: ...and you've told me that the FBI and law enforcement can only act if somebody breaks the law, but if somebody has a disease, a communicable disease, we want to know about it and we want to identify them so we can protect the public.
Is there any kind of program that's been developed that can help people protect themselves, or protect other people, or just protect people from psychopaths? Is there anything like that underway? Has there ever been anything like that? Is there something wrong with that idea?
M.O.: Well, the flaw in that idea, I mean, I understand the sense behind it, the feeling behind it, but you're describing behaviors that could be applicable to many, many people who would never be diagnosed as psychopathic. So, are there mean, hurtful people out there who will steal your money and sexually assault your children? Yes. Are they necessarily psychopathic? If I were to formally assess them using the PCLR, not necessarily.
So, it's the same concept as this. What are the mental illnesses that exist in these mass shooters? There is kind of a sense out there that they all have the same kind of mental health issue. Well, you know what? No, they don't. So, that's not the answer. The same is true here.
You have people out there that don't rise to the level of having an assessment for psychopathy. Does that make them less dangerous, hurtful, concerning, threatening? No, it does not. So, we're trying to lump all bad behavior into the box called psychopathy
.
R.K.: No. I'm not, I'm not, but it's pretty widely accepted that one percent of the population is psychopathic.
M.O.: But that means ninety nine percent of the population isn't and that's important because it does not, of that ninety nine percent, there are people in the ninety nine percent who can be hurtful, dangerous, molest children, become rapists, even murder, but they're not psychopathic.
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