Political Ponerology: A Science on the Nature of Evil Adjusted for Political Purposes

Many psychopathic Don Juans are able to play the lover’s role

well enough for their partners to accept it in good faith. After

the wedding, feelings which really never existed are replaced

by egoism, egotism, and hedonism. Religion, which teaches

love for one’s neighbor, also strikes them as a similar fairytale

good only for children and those different “others”.

One would expect them to feel guilty as a consequence of

their many antisocial acts, however their lack of guilt is the

result of all their deficits, which we have been discussing

here.57 The world of normal people whom they hurt is incom-

prehensible and hostile to them, and life for the psychopath is

the pursuit of its immediate attractions, moments of pleasure,

and temporary feelings of power. They often meet with failure

along this road, along with force and moral condemnation from

the society of those other incomprehensible people.

In their book Psychopathy and Delinquency, W. and J.

McCord say the following about them:

57 Robert Hare says, “What I thought was most interesting was that for the

first time ever, as far as I know, we found that there was no activation of the

appropriate areas for emotional arousal, but there was over-activation in other

parts of the brain, including parts of the brain that are ordinarily devoted to

language. Those parts were active, as if they were saying, ‘Hey, isn’t that

interesting.’ So they seem to be analyzing emotional material in terms of its

linguistic or dictionary meaning. There are anomalies in the way psychopaths

process information. It may be more general than just emotional information.

In another functional MRI study, we looked at the parts of the brain that are

used to process concrete and abstract words. Non-psychopathic individuals

showed increased activation of the right anterior/superior temporal cortex.

For the psychopaths, that didn't happen.”

Hare and his colleagues then conducted an fMRI study using pictures of

neutral scenes and unpleasant homicide scenes. “Non-psychopathic offenders

show lots of activation in the amygdala [to unpleasant scenes], compared

with neutral pictures,” he points out. “In the psychopath, there was nothing.

No difference. But there was overactivation in the same regions of the brain

that were overactive during the presentation of emotional words. It’s like

they're analyzing emotional material in extra-limbic regions.” ( Psychopathy

vs. Antisocial Personality Disorder and Sociopathy: A Discussion by Robert

Hare; crimelibrary.com)

132

PONEROLOGY

The psychopath feels little, if any, guilt. He can commit

the most appalling acts, yet view them without remorse. The

Psychopath has a warped capacity for love. His emotional re-

lationships, when they exist, are meager, fleeting, and de-

signed to satisfy his own desires. These last two traits, guilt-

lessness and lovelessness, conspicuously mark the psychopath

as different from other men. 58

The problem of a psychopath’s moral and legal responsibil-

ity thus remains open and subject to various solutions, fre-

quently summary or emotional, in various countries and cir-

cumstances. It remains a subject of discussion whose solution

does not appear possible within the framework of the presently

accepted principles of legal thought.

~~~

Other psychopathies: The cases of essential psychopathy

seem similar enough to each other to permit them to be classi-

fied as qualitatively homogenous. However, we can also in-

clude within psychopathic categories a somewhat indetermi-

nate number of anomalies with a hereditary substratum, whose

symptoms are approximate to this most typical phenomenon.

We also meet difficult individuals with a tendency to be-

have in a manner hurtful to other people, for whom tests do not

indicate existing damage to brain tissue and anamnesis does not

indicate abnormal childhood experiences which could explain

their state. The fact that such cases are repeated within families

would suggest a hereditary substratum, but we must also take

into account the possibility that harmful factors participated in

the fetal stage. This is an area of medicine and psychology

warranting more study, as there is more to learn than we al-

ready know concretely.

Such people also attempt to mask their different world of

experience and to play a role of normal people to varying de-

grees, although this is no longer the characteristic “Cleckley

mask”. Some are notable by demonstrations of their strange-

ness. These people participate in the genesis of evil in very

different ways, whether taking part openly or, to a lesser extent,

when they have managed to adapt to proper ways of living.

58 McCord, W. & McCord, J. Psychopathy and Delinquency. New York: