All too often it seems that the psychopath must find release. Many psychopaths find that they live with an unquiet mind that seeks out antisocial behaviors for the sake of it. While I usually write regarding successful psychopaths, this post will focus on the less successful and more criminal ones. These less successful psychopaths find that they not only crave bloodletting in order to satisfy their darkest desires, but enact such deeds.
There are innumerable accounts of such behavior in any of the sensationalist reads on psychopathy. Whether it regards the psychopath who is given parole only to kill again that very same day (Robert Hare’s Without Conscience) or the one who straps firecrackers to animals for fun (Martha Stout’s The Sociopath Next Door), countless accounts of the more criminal and impulsive psychopath can be easily found and may explain why 77% of psychopaths are incarcerated. I do not waste my time with those antisocials that reach out to me with such stories. They are lost causes and certainly not worth my time.
I cannot understand why one would let their demons out in such a fashion. I will not lie, for reasons I do not fully understand I find that I have my own dark desires of mayhem. My dreams are filled with violence and destruction as are some of my conscious thoughts. However, I know that such bloodletting is counterproductive. I value my freedom and my quality of life and giving into such desires, regardless of whether I know their origin or not, guarantees neither.
Hervey Clerkley in The Mask of Sanity noted that many psychopaths held “inadequately motivated antisocial behavior”. Simply put, many psychopaths act out simply for the sake of doing bad things. Kent Kiehl in The Psychopath Whisperer, notes the same citing cases in which assessed psychopaths would kill for no reason other than to see it happen with their own two eyes. There is no immediate gain for such actions except to satisfy that which resides in the mind. And, quite often, this leads such psychopaths to the attention of the authorities and effectively ends their freedom.
No matter what dark fantasies reside between one’s ears, restraint dictates that those fantasies must never become reality. The psychopath that fails to distinguish his cherished fantasies from the reality his must walk will spend most of his life behind bars. I have no sympathy for such wastes of life. We do have choice in what we do even if we lack choice in many of the thoughts in our heads. Bloodletting serves no one and destroys all, both psychopath and victim.