February 7 (Urgent.bo).– In movies, a psychopath tilts his head to the left or right, then smiles and stares at his victim. But is it possible to identify a psychopath with the naked eye? The president of the College of Psychology, Verónica Alfaro, mentions that no, but that you can distinguish this type of people by their behavior. They could be our co-workers, friends, they are people we just bump into at some point in our lives.
Psychopathy is understood as an antisocial personality disorder and is characterized by a lack of affection, empathy or absence of a feeling of guilt, explains Alfaro to Urgent.bo.
However, not all psychopaths end up committing a crime, since there are those who adapt perfectly to society and it depends a lot on their family or upbringing whether they commit serious crimes. That is, there are adapted psychopaths and those who could commit a crime.
“In those adapted, the role of education plays a lot from a very young age. As for those who are prone to delinquency, they actually have certain characteristics of their environment that allow them to do these kinds of things and encourage them,” he says.
adapted psychopaths
“In society we have these types of subjects walking with us (…) we also have adapted psychopaths in society, who are in very high positions, within government situations and manipulate us,” said the psychologist.
One of the characteristics of these subjects is that they have superficial charm to achieve the ends they seek, they could even extort money.
The adapted have the possibility of living with people and may not get involved in criminal matters, since their goal could be different.
“In the same job we see people who, for example, want to be the manager, have more power, reach higher levels and are not interested in going through people who have had a career, who have experience, they are always trying to hurt them, so that he comes to light and as the best ”, exposes the psychologist.
Even this person is capable of manipulating the owner of the company or other people to attack a third party.
criminal psychopaths
Unlike an adapted psychopath, the criminal seeks to satisfy more intense needs and commits crimes. They start at a very young age and one way to identify them is that they start mistreating animals or their own classmates at daycare or school.
“They even reach a moment when they feel that killing becomes addictive and causes this subject to have no qualms, not even with his family,” says Alfaro.
These people do not have the possibility of changing, that is to say that there is no psychological and psychiatric treatment to intervene in their way of thinking or acting.
Her CARACTERISTICS
Criminal psychopaths lack empathy, they cannot identify other people’s feelings and emotions and this “activates them towards a coldness of social skills, these subjects cannot sympathize with a child, an animal, or adults (…) this person does not feel discomfort or suffering in others”, says the psychologist.
Another characteristic is narcissism or egocentrism, that is, they tend to think that they are superior to others, have a higher self-esteem than normal, and it is related to a lack of empathy.
In addition, the professional indicates that “there are some investigations where it has been detected that the prefrontal cortex in these subjects is thinner, that is to say that with these characteristics they are different from other people.” This would have a relationship with some hereditary or genetic components that could influence.
For the criminologist Ismael Vizcarra, psychopaths are born with this condition, meaning that there is no rehabilitation for them.
Difference between a psychopath and a murderer
Alfaro details that antisocial disorder has sociopaths and psychopaths in its components. There is a slight difference between one and the other.
The psychopath is impulsive, in addition, he has a superficial charm, emotional poverty and difficulty in empathy.
The criminal psychopath tends to hurt, to hurt, what gives him pleasure is not sexuality, but the damage it can cause. “He is moved more by those kinds of emotions”, he is capable of torturing, humiliating and making the person feel bad because that gives him satisfaction.
While a murderer kills with another connotation and without causing suffering to the victims.
“We cannot classify a serial killer, for example, he may be in a category of sociopath, who, for example, has a fetish or something that causes him to kill certain people, not all, for example, women who wear heels, with this fetish is going to kill these types of people,” says Alfaro.
In Bolivia, it is known that 1% of inmates suffer from some antisocial disorder with psychopathic characteristics and traits.
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