Some years ago, when loitering in bookstores was still an option, I chanced upon a book whose conspicuous title, 'The Sociopath Next Door’, lured me in for a closer look. I ended up standing at the book table and read half the book on the spot. As the title declares, they are here, living in our communities whether we’re aware of them or not. The author, psychologist Martha Stout, reports that “About one in twenty-five individuals are sociopathic, meaning, essentially, that they do not have a conscience.”[1] Hearing this somewhat astonishing statistic, as well as the definition Stout has given, it's hard not to feel the unrelated malady of paranoia creeping in. Moral zombies walk invisibly among us.
That I would find a book on this topic so fascinating probably says something about my perspective on mankind. Why do I find these deviant specimens of humanity so intriguing? For one thing, delving into this topic is a way of circling around my own dishonest tendencies. Strategies of deception are a part of the human playbook and in this sense there’s a sliver of sociopathy in every heart. The average, neurotypical person compartmentalizes this mischief, maintaining boundaries to contain it. Certain areas of life remain sacrosanct and immune from our forays into devious behavior. Maintaining these sanctuaries enables us to return to a place of ethical normalcy.
I also find something uncanny in the alien capacity to do very bad things while remaining devoid of remorse and being altogether unencumbered by considerations of empathy. It directly contradicts our most closely held notions of what it means to be human. It’s also possible that my sense of gleeful curiosity vis-a-vis the exploits of con-artists and the rubes they swindle, is a cousin of the German notion of Schadenfreude. I'll admit to having taken the occasional hint of pleasure at the spectacle of another's sufferings. (The imminent divorce of the Golden Bachelor for example.)
Lastly perhaps, I have an affinity for the horror genre, the vicarious thrill of peering into the abyss from behind the velvet rope. When I did a little reading however, and discovered what the word psychopath means - psyche (soul), pathos (suffering) - 'suffering soul’ - the awful darkness surrounding this subject sunk in.
It’s difficult to grasp how someone with “a condition of missing conscience” fits into the human family. To what degree can a person without a conscience still be thought of as entirely human? Physical form alone doesn’t validate human status. The social contract by which we navigate our relationships assumes that empathy is in circulation, at least potentially. This capacity for emotional exchange is the very stuff of human connection. Martha Stout observes, “for every limitation conscience imposes on us, it gives us a moment of connectedness with an other, a bridge to someone or something outside of our often meaningless schemes.”[2]
The Buddhist monk, Hye Wol Sunim once gave a dharma talk around the time a notorious serial killer was making the news. That is how Jeffrey Dahmer made his way into the dharma discussion that evening. What stands out in memory is Sunim’s expression of incomprehension and revulsion as he considered the psychic state that had revealed itself in such monstrous acts. Human birth and life is thought of as incredibly auspicious in Buddhist thought. It is however, understood in its potentiality, as an opportunity to cultivate spiritual awakening. It is seen as a precarious blessing, with no metaphysical guarantees. The spectrum upon which human life can rise or fall is vast. That in itself is profoundly mysterious.
The existence of sociopaths poses a thorny problem for the Christian theologian. When asked to account for evil the theologian will likely point an accusatory finger at human freedom. This takes God off the hook and casts all the blame onto His most prized creation. Even Satan, that black hole from which even love cannot escape, is saddled with personal responsibility. The sociopath, however, can hardly be held accountable for his moral deficiencies. He has been assembled with a moral compass that is spinning wildly or was never installed in the first place. The blame must fall elsewhere. The theologian consequently finds this intrusion into an otherwise unsullied natural order quite disturbing. For the presence in creation of an entirely amoral variant leads directly back to the Creator. How else to account for the existence of evil that has agency in personified form?
On the other hand, in her study of Adolf Eichmann, Hannah Arendt "notes that the accused, as with almost all his fellow Germans, had lost track of his conscience to the point where they hardly remembered it.”[3] This evokes a metaphorical maze, in which one too many false turns, leads to a state of being entirely, and perhaps eternally lost. Arendt’s insights do suggest a pathway to sociopathy through human agency and freedom. They also imply a gradual degradation of character and conscience before things finally switch off.
Perhaps this sort of theological speculation is anachronistic nonsense, and the neurosciences will ultimately provide a clearer understanding of the phenomenon. One study has already shown that psychopaths "have reduced connections between … the part of the brain responsible for sentiments such as empathy and guilt, and the amygdala, which mediates fear and anxiety.”[4] Such insights, at the level of brain function, may eventually lead to forms of treatment. We can only pray.
Consider this definition of a human being, “as a person in relation to other persons, to society, to God, and to the end, or purpose of human life.”[5] Relationality is the essence of what defines us as human. The neurodivergent sociopath, whose lack of conscience leaves a void where higher emotions - empathy, humility, compassion, and love - should be functioning, exists in a state radically cut off from authentic relationship. "If you think about it, you will realize that what is missing in this picture are the very qualities that allow human beings to live in social harmony.”[6]
"In contrast with our extreme emphasis on individualism and personal control, certain cultures, many in East Asia, dwell theologically on the interrelatedness of all living things. Interestingly, this value is also the basis of conscience, which is an intervening sense of obligation rooted in a sense of connectedness.”[7]
Many Indigenous cultures also cultivate an awareness of this fundamental quality of interdependence, or inter-being, to use Thich Nhat Hanh’s chosen term. That is the axis of reality around which spiritual life circles. In Western societies we lament the disturbing trends toward communal dissolution and intensifying loneliness. Our national mythologies celebrate ‘rugged individualism’, the ’self-made man’, even, as Martha Stout puts it, the ‘cold will to win.’[8] Our original sins are bound up with our creation myths.
My father once said that a small percentage of people create most of the troubles in the world. "Roughly 4% to as high as 12% of CEOs exhibit psychopathic traits, according to some expert estimates, many times more than the 1% rate found in the general population and more in line with the 15% rate found in prisons. What is it about the human condition, or this era of civilization, that pushes the most potentially destructive people to the top of decision-making hierarchies?"[9] If there is truth in these statistics we may be in for an increasingly rough time as a society, and perhaps as a species. Andrzej Lobaczewski has coined a new term that speaks to this - pathocracy - "wherein a small pathological minority takes control over a society of normal people….if an individual in a position of political power is a psychopath, he or she can create an epidemic of psychopathology in people who are not, essentially, psychopathic…”[10] America may be about to put this model to the test.
[1] Martha Stout, The Sociopath Next Door (New York: Harmony, 2005).
[2] Stout.
[3] Wikipedia, “Hannah Arendt,” Hannah Arendt, n.d., https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hannah_Arendt.
[4] University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health, “Psychopaths’ Brains Show Differences in Structure and Function,” November 2017, https://www.med.wisc.edu/news/psychopaths-brains-differences-structure-function/#:~:text=The%20study%20showed%20that%20psychopaths,which%20mediates%20fear%20and%20anxiety.
[5] Loyola University Chicago, Department of Philosophy, “Being Human: Philosophical Perspectives,” n.d., https://www.luc.edu/philosophy/coursedescriptions/180.shtml#:~:text=As%20a%20treatment%20of%20the,or%20purpose%2C%20of%20human%20life.
[6] Robert Hare, Without Conscience (New York: The Guilford Press, 1999).
[7] Stout, The Sociopath Next Door.
[8] Stout.
[9] Jack McCullough, “The Psychopathic CEO,” Forbes, December 9, 2019, https://www.forbes.com/sites/jackmccullough/2019/12/09/the-psychopathic-ceo/?sh=2de0eecc791e.
[10] Andrew Lobaczewski, Political Ponerology (Alberta, Canada: Red Pill Press, 2022).
Fascinating!
First of all, Schadenfruede ist die beste Freude!
Second, as far as I know, there is a distinction between sociopaths and psychopaths. But, I believe they share the lack of conscience.
I put sociopaths and psychopaths in the category of pure evil. They have been created by God as a kind of virus to test the rest of normal society. Normal society has to "manage" these people in the same way that normal society has to manage evil in general.
It is interesting that a large percentage of CEOs are psychopaths. These are sometimes called "socialized psychopaths", which suggests that there is a "spectrum", maybe similar to autism. The socialized psychopaths play by a set of rules that keeps them out of jail, but they are willing to make "sacrifices" for the good of the company.
The last part of your discussion is very interesting; the idea that these pathologies might be contagious. There have been many examples, thoughout history, of one psychopath leading an entire society astray, by normalizing unthinkable behavior. Hitler did it 100 years ago. Trump is doing it today. These people are a constant test of human society.
Mercy.