If a person has an illness that leads them to commit an evil deed then they are not responsible as such. They will taken out of society and given treatment.

But lets take the seemingly accepted practice of waterboarding...what can we say about the people that carry out this practice on orders. This behaviour is inhuman and carried out by supposedly civilized people. What can we say about supposedly honorable soldiers who can shoot children without batting an eyelid????

This is very interesting..thank you for posting it.
I was reading the link you provided and this caught my eye:

One very interesting aspect of the psychopath is his "hidden life" that is sometimes not too well hidden. It seems that the psychopath has a regular need to take a "vacation into filth and degradation" the same way normal people may take a vacation to a resort where they enjoy beautiful surroundings and culture. To get a full feeling for this strange "need" of the psychopath - a need that seems to be evidence that "acting human" is very stressful to the psychopath - read more of The Mask of Sanity, chapters 25 and 26.


One of my sons is getting a divorce. While getting his discoveries together, he found a secret ( or she thought it was secret ) life his soon to be ex-wife was living, and had been living since before the marriage. Phone calls, text messages, explicit pictures she had posted on internet sites. The list goes on and on..it was sickening to realize what all she had been doing. He loved and had trusted her. Even when she was alienating him from his family and friends.

There is evidence that the human brain can make a person do something that they can't control.
Example:Parkinsons disease,epilepsy,turrets,short tempered people,alzheimers,people who are dying of cancer when cancer hits their brains they can't control their actions.Unfortunately i have seen all of these.This to me is evidence that our brain can cause us to do things we can't control(kind of like our brains have a brain of it's own?).So there could be a disease that causes serial killers to do what they do,hell look at law abiding citizens that just get up one day and go into their place of employment and open fire.I just think they are crazy but there is something in the brain that sometimes makes our conscience go away temporarly or permanent.

Imagine - if you can - not having a conscience, none at all, no feelings of guilt or remorse no matter what you do, no limiting sense of concern for the well-being of strangers, friends, or even family members. Imagine no struggles with shame, not a single one in your whole life, no matter what kind of selfish, lazy, harmful, or immoral action you had taken.

Last night I watched a 1951 first episode of Dragnet and the bad guy was a classic psychopath. Lee Marvin played the part. The show was all about the interview and he confession to murdering about 7 people.... for little or no reason.

The stories on Dragnet say they are based on true events. I guess psychopaths have been around for a while.

I think it's scary when you can recognize the traits of a psychopath in people you know or are associated with. I guess really, anyone could be one.

They can seem like normal people until you get to know them and listen carefully to them. They seem to be observers who look at the world of non-psychopaths with curiosity. The don't understand attachment, love, compassion etc. This character in the show didn't think anything about killing someone for $16.00.

That is so freaking interesting. I bookmarked the page to check out the other articles.

I know an online personality from other sites that fits this description. He of course is blocked at all my social networking sites.

Because he IS a psychopath.

Without Conscience: The Disturbing World of the Psychopaths Among Us
by Robert Hare

Just got this on my Kindle last night.

you just described a newborn

That sounds more like a sociopath to me.

Another good one from him is ......This Charming Psychopath
How to spot social predators before they attack.

Here is a list of ways to identify a sociopath. This list is from "Profile of a Sociopath." Is is a pretty good list of sociopathic indicators.
2,3,4 6 Glibness/superficial charm
2, 3, 4, 6 Manipulative and conning
1, 2, 3, 4 Grandiose sense of self
Pathological lying
6 Lack of remorse, shame or guilt
Shallow emotions
5 Incapacity for love
Need for stimulation -- all humanity
4, 5 Callousness/lack of empathy
1, 2, 3, 4, 6 Poor behavioral controls/impulsive nature
(This is an enigmatic problem in abnormal psychology, better to stay away from dealing with it, as it is really controversial; people react to this unpredictably, and therefore causation is either not true, or governed by factors we don't know about: Early behavior problems/juvenile delinquency
1, 2, 3, 4 Irresponsibility/unreliability
2, 3, 6, possibly 4 (not sure) Promiscuous sexual behavior/infidelity
1, 2, 3, 4, 6 Lack of realistic life plan/parasitic lifestyle
6 Criminal or entrepreneurial versatility (6 only because torture is a crime)
2, 3, 4, 6 and sometimes but not always in case of 1 as well Contemptuous of those who seek to understand them
1, Does not perceive that anything is wrong with them
Authoritarian
1 Secretive
1, 5 Paranoid
2, 3, 4, 6 Only rarely in difficulty with the law, but seeks out situations where their (tyrannical) behavior will be tolerated, condoned, or admired
2, 3, 4, 6 Conventional appearance - well, you can't call all strangers on the street who look normal "psychopaths"
1, 5 Incapable of real human attachment to another
Unable to feel remorse or guilt
1, 2, 3, 4, 6 Narcissism, grandiosity (self-importance not based on achievements)

The rest, below, are typical characteristics of sadistic personality disorder, which is different from psychopaths or sociopaths (name in DSM: antisocial personality disorder)
6 Goal of enslavement of their victim(s)
6 Exercises despotic control over every aspect of the victim's life
(This is ********: Has an emotional need to justify their crimes and therefore needs their victim's affirmation (respect, gratitude and love))
6 Ultimate goal is the creation of a willing victim
May state readily that their goal is to rule the world

There was a show on television -(it was a movie)- about a man who was a serial killer and would pick up prostitutes and take them to his place and strangle them. He had just picked one up and before he could do the deed he was hit by a car.

He survived the accident but his head was injured and he forgot who he was and what he had been doing. The prostitute that he had been with became his girlfriend and they eventually fell in love and got married.

Then the police finally found him and realized he had been a killer. But now he was a changed person with no memory of the crimes.

So it could be something in the brain was altered.

I agree, Jeanniebean. Scientists and researchers should watch more fiction movies and glean insights into human behaviour that the movies suggests.

In fact, the Russian Bolshevik Revolution was started because someone had taken a joke for real, and the meteorite killed most of the dynosaurs because of a movie in 1952, which was the first to shoot the actual event and play it in movie houses.