Understanding the psychopath: investigative strategies. a follow-up on understanding the violent personality: antisocial personality disorder, psychopathy, & sociopathy explored (Johnson, 2019)

Abstract

Identifying and dealing with the psychopathic offender is challenging. Psychopathic individuals live lives that can be chronically unstable on one extreme to appearing stable on the other. Their anti social behavior may or may not have been revealed as they are good at not getting caught for their criminal behavior or at least at times not caught for several years or even decades of engaging in deviant and antisocial behavior. Psychopaths are callous and engage in the remorseless use of others and live a chronically antisocial lifestyle. The psychopath has the job of fooling investigators, of effectively blaming victims, and of portraying themselves in a favorable light. The goal for investigators is to pay attention to the indicators of a lack of emotionality and a sense of faking emotional reactions as well as to paying attention to the language the offender uses. This article updates what we have learned about psychopaths.1 Certain personality factors have been correlated to violence in general, including sex crimes. Those with personality traits including, but not limited to narcissism, antisocial, psychopathic and other deviant traits may simply not be concerned with the risks involved in violent crime or may become aroused to hurting or taking advantage of other and to the risk of getting caught. In addition, such individuals may give little if any regard to the consequences or punishments for their behavior.2s,3 Those who engage in the more severe form of psychological abuse of gaslighting appear more likely to present with psychopathic traits: high degrees of cunningness, being able to calmly con others (lie, manipulate- even towards law enforcement), and their apparent lower degree of anxiety or fear expressed when others are present.