Author: Kent A. Kiehl
The Psychopath Whisperer is an incredible book. It uses scientific information and the research experience of the author and presents this information in an appealing way that anyone can understand. The book is thus useful to both academic and general audiences.
I read this book after I read Jon Ronson’s book, The Psychopath Test (read blog here), followed by watching the Dexter series about a serial killer who witnessed his mother’s murder and became a serial killer, which instigated sociological interest in me to understand to what extent environmental factors influence psychopathy and not just genetics and brain composition. This book gave me a definition of psychopathy and sociopathy, which was interesting because whilst I often colloquially use the term sociopath for people who show problematic and insensitive leadership, behavioural and communication styles, I always thought that psychopathy and sociopathy are two different things: but then I read somewhere they were synonyms, which confused me. This book, written by a notable psychologist Dr Kent A. Kiehl, offered two definitions and clarified that while there are similarities, two concepts are not the same. Sociopathy describes individuals who act anti-socially, and the cause is social and environmental, whilst psychopaths have a biological condition that stems from their genetics and their brain’s makeup, and environmental factors come as a plus. This was incredibly useful, and it goes back to the assertion of an American sociologist Lee Robins, who did not allow the American Psychiatrical Association to put psychopathy and Hare’s psychopathy checklist into one of their diagnostic manuals. I do think that perhaps a psychiatric association should have that, especially now that I have also read this book and that her definition of antisocial personality disorder links to sociopathy. Dr Kiehl says in this book though that DSM-III is heavily influenced by behaviourist theory and thus places an emphasis on environmental factors more than genetics and brains.
What was also interesting in this book is Dr Kiehl’s rich descriptions of interviews with incarcerated psychopaths. He reviews their files and then conducts a very thorough interview lasting several hours and scores them on Hare’s psychopathy checklist. Then, he also scans their brains to find differences with the general population, which his research has consistently found. Fascinating stuff and written in a very appealing way. I particularly enjoyed detailed descriptions of psychopaths’ personal lives (albeit there could have been more of that) and their lack of empathy. Also, what is fascinating in this book are descriptions that characterise psychopaths and help psychologists diagnose them, stemming from Hare’s psychopathy checklist which I read about in Ronson’s book too but did not write down all descriptions,
- glibness/superficial charm (they speak fast, interrupt a lot, bombard people with information, and are quick-witted and likeable but there is that gut feeling that something is off with them)
- Grandiose sense of self-worth (a belief they are better than others even if uneducated, for example, psychopaths often try to defend themselves in court because they do not trust lawyers despite often not even completing high school; the author described interviews with some psychopaths as nauseated grandiose and vanity in describing self-worth)
- Need for stimulation / Proneness to boredom (everything bores them; switching tasks frequently; poor academic work and relationship outcomes)
- The desire for high life, luxurious status and prestige but do not want to put work into earning it and making it happen
- Pathological lying (even about obvious stuff such as qualifications)
- Conning/Manipulation
- Lack of Remorse or Guilt
- Shallow Affect (sex equalized with love; low emotional responses)
- Callous/Lack of Empathy
- Never sorry for their behaviour, mental and physical abuse of their wives if they marry
- Parasitic lifestyle
- Poor behavioural controls
- Promiscuous sexual behaviour
- Early behavioural problems (a nightmare for parents; stubborn and cannot be controlled; fights with other children, lack of attachment to parents, especially mothers; no friends/loners; often diagnosed with ADHD in childhood)
- Lack of realistic, long-term goals
- Impulsivity
- Irresponsibility
- Failure to accept responsibility for their actions
- Many short-term relationships
- Juvenile delinquency
- Revocation of conditional release / failing when allowed to redeem themselves
- Psychopaths do not learn from experience and the threat of punishment does not stop them
- Criminal versatility
What I also found fascinating in this book is an in-depth and easily comprehensible analysis of how the brain functions. So, the author says that it is not clear whether the psychopath’s brain was atrophied from birth or whether the psychopath’s life experiences had caused the brain to atrophy over time. In other words, if you don’t use parts of your brain, it will shrivel, stop working and eventually die. Therefore, the author then designed research to study atrophy and paralimbic atrophy, which is present at birth. He presents his various results that show psychopathic brains (which are different from the regular population) and how even teenagers can have these brains. But he also introduces the success of the Mendota Juvenile Treatment Center, particularly working with teenage psychopaths (who are not given that diagnosis formally not to condition children to act in a way they were expected and/or not to cause stigma) to reduce crime and was wildly successful thus showing that cognitive therapy can make a difference if an intervention is done early enough. This also reminded me of Jon Ronson’s assertation that perhaps a difference between psychopaths is how they grew up and whether they were from dysfunctional poor families or more stable and rich ones.
Finally, I also liked how the author used his personal experience of growing up in an area where Ted Bundy, a serial killer, was from, which instigated his interest in psychology, and also how he got used to startling his sisters when they were growing up as a form of revenge (rather than attacking them) and nowadays he does that to his stuff by randomly startling them, and this also reassures him that his colleagues are not psychopaths because they rarely startle.
Overall, this is a book anyone could read and whilst you might not like all the details about the crime psychopaths from the book committed, you will definitely be able to better understand the world around you and the people who make up the world.
Thank you for reading!