"The Fine Print", by Michael Schrader

WHAT LURKS WITHIN

(Written and posted 29 March 2010)

Several weeks ago I was watching an episode of “House” about a psychopath. This particular episode sent chills up my spine, and brought back flashbacks of “The Good Son” in my mind. After I watched the episode, I told my daughter that a person we know is exactly like the character on the episode is a psychopath. Of course, she responded back I only thought that because of the episode, and that that wasn’t really the case. Imagine my surprise when my daughter told me the other day that she had been doing some research into psychopathy and had come to the same conclusion. It was one of those creepy moments.

When someone says “psychopath” the immediate thought that pops into one’s mind is “serial killer”. That is incorrect, however. Many serial killers are “psychotic” and not “psychopathic”. From the research I have done on the subject, a “psychopath” is a person devoid of emotion. A good way to think about it is a psychopath thinks like a robot, in that there is an objective and the only thing that matters is achieving that objective, no matter the cost. There have been many science fiction shows and movies made about computers that kill humans in order to complete the “prime directive”, as a computer is devoid of all emotion and, well, humanity. Think of a psychopath as a human computer.

From what I have read, psychopaths lurk everywhere. They pretend to have emotion, and are master liars. They can be your pastor or your doctor or your accountant. They can be your spouse or your child. Who knows who is a psychopath and who isn’t. And, you wouldn’t believe it if you were told someone was indeed a psychopath. The thought of someone who is completely devoid of emotion, and thus, humanity, is too terrifying to wrap your mind around. It’s one thing to be immoral, because you still know that what you did was wrong; it’s quite another to be amoral, because you don’t know what you did was wrong, because you lack a moral compass of any kind.

Do you remember “The Good Son”? When the Elijah Wood character, Mark, tells his aunt that his cousin, Henry, isn’t the sweet angelic boy that everyone thinks he is, Henry lies and convinces his mother that it is Mark that is the liar; the result, then, is that every time Mark sees Henry do something bad, no one will believe him even though he is telling the truth. Fortunately, Mark puts enough doubt in his aunt’s mind that she starts to get suspicious of Henry and in the end chooses Mark over her own son.

There are two main parts to the movie that I think resonate home more than any. First is the frustration Mark felt trying to convince others of Henry’s psychopathy. He knows about the true Henry, we, the audience know about the true Henry, but nobody else does, no matter how hard he tries. We share in his frustration. We share his fear, not only for his safety, but for others, too. We share in his feeling of powerlessness.

The second thing is the reaction of the mother when she hears about Henry. At first, she is in outright denial, as Henry was raised in a good and loving environment and thus there is no way that he could be malevolent. Then, when she starts to realize that perhaps Mark is right, she is horrified at the thought that she gave birth to a child who has no humanity. As I was a parent when I saw this movie the first time, I could only imagine the heartbreak a parent would feel looking at his or her child and seeing someone without a soul, without any sense of good and evil.

How would you feel if you realized your child is a psychopath? Disbelief, perhaps? Denial, perhaps? Perhaps you’d want to send them to counseling time and time and time again to try to fix them, to try to make them better, knowing full well that the problem is a biological one and that all the counseling in the world will not make them one iota better. Perhaps you’d want to keep them “in the nest”, smothering them and overprotecting them to keep them from harming themselves and others. How many parents would be willing to be like Mark’s aunt and sacrifice their own child so that someone else’s child can live?

I could talk until I am blue in the face to try to convince someone, anyone, that this person I know is a psychopath. I could tell you that this person exhibits pretty much all of the traits of a psychopathic person listed on the “Hare Psychopathy Checklist”, which is considered the “gold-standard” of evaluation tools, and you still wouldn’t believe me. Why? Because it is to horrible to think about; it is too horrible to acknowledge that there are people out there, living among us, who lack a conscience. Rather than face the terrifying truth, it is much easier and comforting to pretend it doesn’t exist.

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