The Wisdom of Psychopaths

Who in the rainbow can draw the line where the violet tint ends and the orange tint begins? Distinctly we see the difference of the colours, but where exactly does the one first blendingly enter into the other? So with sanity and insanity. – Herman Melville

The psychopath, it’s been said, gets the words, but not the music, of emotion.

‘mad without being mad’. Manie sans delire.

ASPD is psychopathy with added emotion. Psychopathy is an emotionless void.

pivot solely around self-discipline? Everything else being equal, such a possibility might actually hold some water. The ability to delay gratification, to put on hold the desire to cut and run (and also, needless to say, to run and cut), might well tip the balance away from criminal activity towards a more structured, less impulsive, less antisoci

the will becom[ing] the involuntary vehicle of vicious actions, through the instrumentality of the passions.’

‘They do emotions by numbers,’

The psychopath, he observes, is an intelligent person, characterised by a poverty of emotions, the absence of a sense of shame, egocentricity, superficial charm, lack of guilt, lack of anxiety, immunity to punishment, unpredictability, irresponsibility, manipulativeness, and a transient interpersonal lifestyle

Socialite–Hermit divide (Histrionic and Narcissistic on one; Schizoid, Schizotypal and Avoidant on the other) posted, respectively, high and low scorecards on Extraversion, while those either side of the Easy Rider–Control Freak border (Antisocial and Borderline in one camp versus Obsessive-Compulsive in the other) were similarly bipolar when it ca