Hiding In Plain Sight

Imagine, the person sitting next to you on the bus or the person that just served you at your local Starbucks is planning to kill you. Scary right? Seem far-fetched? Well maybe but maybe not. The fact of the matter is that a person can be a psychopath and yet seem like a totally normal member of society. What does it truly mean to be a psychopath? It is a term that is widely overused nowadays. Psychopaths hide in plain sight every day. Anyone could be a psychopath. In his book, Fallon describes psychopaths as "deeply disturbed individuals who ultimately cannot control their innate aggressiveness and show little regret or sympathy for their violent actions." Similarly, in his article, David Wilson, states that psychopaths have defective emotional responses, lacking remorse for their manipulative, reckless behavior and find it impossible to truly understand why it is that people might actually find their behavior wrong. They operate in their own moral universe and are so detached from reality that they don't realize how strange their behavior has become. A clear example that comes to mind is Dexter Morgan from the television series Dexter, which I highly recommend if you're like me and watch a lot of TV. Dexter is a normal looking and behaving person. He has a family, loves boating, and the best part is that he works for the police department as a forensic scientist. To the outside world he is a perfectly normal person. But he has a deep dark secret. He has these unusual violent urges. He is a cold blooded killer that cuts his victims into pieces with mechanical tools. This is very similar to Dennis Rader, the psychopathic killer Wilson discusses in his article. Rader, who dubbed himself as BTK - bind, torture, and kill - was seen by his community as a perfectly normal person. He attended church, was a scout leader, and had a family. Wilson describes him as the "perfect" psychopath. He was a ruthless and disturbed individual but no one would be able to tell by interacting with him. According to his son, Rader was a "perfect father" and his wife described him as a "Good man that would never hurt anyone." He had all the characteristics of a typical psychopath yet in public he showed none of them. The fact that psychopaths are able to hide like this in plain sight is what makes them even more dangerous. So next time think twice before you take a sip of your "Pumpkin Spice Latte". Alright maybe I'm being a bit dramatic but you get my point.

Refrences

Fallon, J. (2013). The psychopath inside: A neuroscientist's personal journey into the dark side of the brain. New York: Current.

Wilson, D. (2015, February 24). How psychopathics hide in plain sight - a psychological analysis of serial killer Dennis Radar. Retrieved February 28, 2015, from http://www.independent.co.uk/