Writing characters with: psychopathy
I’m going into this topic assuming that most people who write psychopathic characters write them as villains. It makes sense, of course. We believe that someone who is a psychopath is always needlessly cruel and sadistic, which makes them perfect villains/antagonists in stories. I’ve become more and more interested in well-done redemption arcs recently, though, and, as it turns out, no human being is inherently evil. Shocking to some of you, I know, because some people certainly act like they were born evil. But the vast majority of the time, people who act in a cruel and dismissive way are products of their environments. I could write an entire separate article on how vast wealth corrupts someone’s ability to feel empathy, for example.
‘Well’, says the imaginary reader in my mind, ‘that’s all well and good, but isn’t the entire point of a psychopath that they were born evil?’
Nope!
—> Why should I listen to you about psychopathy?
During my time as a psychologist, I encountered more than one client who presented with psychopathic traits. I’ve experienced what it looks like from the outside, and I’ve listened to the lived experiences from the inside.
I’ve also done a lot of my own research on psychopathy for writing purposes. Experts often disagree on the specifics, partly because psychopathic traits vary so often between individuals, but it won’t surprise you to hear that Hollywood’s idea of psychopathy is completely unfounded, warped from vague half-truths, and in some cases utterly ridiculous.
—> Okay, so what is psychopathy?
Psychopathy describes the neurological condition where someone is born with a limited capacity for empathy. People often throw ‘psychopath’ around to describe anyone who exhibits any form of cruelty; for our purposes, I’m using the word to describe the specific diagnosable clinical condition. Anyone, after all, can be cruel.
We don’t know what the exact contributing factors are. We don’t know if there’s a genetic component. Children’s brains develop incredibly fast as they grow up, and there’s a lot we still don’t understand, because intensive research on children is difficult to do. (For good reasons, obviously! Science is not science unless guided by ethics.) Psychopathy could be caused by an error somewhere in a young child’s brain development, damaging the usual path by which children learn to connect with others. Whatever the cause, though, psychopathy can actually be observed in an MRI scan; the brain of someone with psychopathy is functionally different from a neurotypical brain.
Psychopathy is not sadism. Sadism is the tendency to enjoy inflicting pain and suffering on others. That’s often what people think of when they think of ‘psychopath’, and it makes for a pretty convenient villain character — who needs sound motivation or a specific goal if you can just say your character is insane and enjoys pain? Psychopathy and sadism are two different things, though. Psychopathy can involve sadism, but usually doesn’t. People with psychopathic traits do not necessarily feel any compulsion to be homicidal or cruel.
It’s also not narcissism, which is a personality disorder involving an inflated sense of self-importance and a deep need for excessive attention and praise from others. Narcissism is its own spectrum again. People with narcissistic personality disorder can sometimes show a lack of empathy, and people who present with psychopathic traits are likely to show narcissistic traits as well, but once again, they’re not the same thing.
‘Is it the same thing as sociopathy, though?’ I’m sure I can hear you ask, and the answer is no, even though they’re similar enough that a lot of people use the two words interchangeably. The precise differences are still debated in academic circles, but in general, here are the current conclusions:
Psychopaths have a limited capacity for empathy from a very young age. It doesn’t matter how they’re raised, or what their environment is like, because that limited capacity may well have been there from birth. Sociopaths are a product of their environments, usually the result of intense abuse, changed forever by their violent experiences. Simply put, psychopaths are born, sociopaths are made.
Psychopaths have a limited capacity for guilt and remorse, both of which are usually borne from empathy, leaving them fairly consistently apathetic towards others. Sociopaths vary widely here; many feel strong remorse unpredictably, and many have a hard time controlling any emotions, leading to periods of apathy followed by periods of violent behaviour.
Psychopaths don’t inherently enjoy inflicting or receiving pain, though they definitely understand its impact and might choose to take advantage (manipulation, emotional abuse, etc.) Sociopaths report frequently imagining inflicting pain, and often self-report sadistic traits.
Psychopaths tend to understand and follow social rules, and are capable of being traditionally successful. Sociopaths tend to display disorganised thinking and have much higher rates of arrest and incarceration. Psychopaths can be social and develop relationships with others; sociopaths are characterised as anti-social.
Generally speaking, sociopaths can respond well to treatment — psychological therapy, etc. — depending on their circumstances and their past experiences. Psychopaths don’t respond to treatment. As far as we currently understand, there is no way to teach a person empathy if the inherent capacity isn’t there. Instead, psychopaths will often learn to ‘fake’ empathy, in order to function successfully in society.
Psychopaths are not serial killers. They do not fantasise about murder. They don’t worship chaos. They don’t necessarily wish harm on others for no reason, or act to harm others. They’re not illogical, or unreasonable, or fanatical, or ‘criminally insane’. They do not know what you did last summer, and probably wouldn’t care even if they did.
‘But isn’t it more likely for a psychopath to be a serial killer?’ I imagine you asking.
Again, that’s an area of some debate. Generally, serial killers are driven to kill by a variety of factors, and where they sit on the spectrum of psychopathy is only one of them. As a species, we’ve evolved not to kill other human beings; overcoming millions of years of evolutionary failsafes in the brain requires a lot more than just a lack of empathy. It’s usually the culmination of many factors, some invisible, and some more overwhelmingly obvious.
I know there’s been a fascination in media with the ‘child psychopath’, which always, without fail, features a child with psychopathy killing someone and not understanding why everyone is kicking up such a fuss about it. Psychopathic traits don’t rob you of the intellectual ability to understand hurting someone is wrong, and in real life, people with psychopathy quickly learn all the explicit social skills they need to pass unnoticed. People don’t typically commit murder and pass unnoticed — at least, not without an incredible amount of social privilege.
‘But what about feelings like love? Aren’t psychopaths incapable of it?’
It depends. Some people with psychopathic traits report that they do experience love for others, in the sense that they want to spend time with those people, and would be angry if anything happened to those people. Others report that they don’t. It’s unclear why or what those differences might be, but it’s a much more nuanced issue than the blanket ‘psychopaths are incapable of feeling anything’ take. Our need for social interaction and validation is inherent and ingrained, and unrelated to our capacity for empathy.
As an example, someone I spoke to who presented with psychopathic traits explained to me that they loved their family the same as anyone else, but also didn’t particularly mind if anything happened to any of their family members. Given the obvious pain people go through when they lose someone they care about, this person admitted they believed they’d gotten the better deal.
—> Have you written any characters with psychopathy? How did you do it?
I have not, but I absolutely have plans for it. I’ve always been fascinated by characters who choose to be good people despite everything about their environment pushing them towards cruelty, and psychopathy as a trait lends itself very well to that.
Someone I worked with who presented with psychopathic traits told me how they understood that they were ‘missing’ something, and desperately wanted to know what empathy properly feels like. That’s inspired one of my characters — someone chasing a ‘cure’ for their difficulty connecting with or caring about others, and getting more and more agitated when they can’t find it, leading to some pretty poor decisions. I’m interested in the ending of this character’s story, and whether or not they can make peace with who they are. I’m also interested in the coping mechanisms they settle on; i.e., learning social skills that ‘fake’ empathy, being upfront in personal relationships, etc. I’m interested in the redemption a character can obtain when they don’t have the sort of conscience most people would consider vital to being a good person, and how this redemption would affect everyone around them.
—> So what tips do you have for writing psychopathy?
Avoid the stereotype that psychopath = evil. If your character is a villain, you absolutely need much more to motivate them than just ‘they’re insane!’ No one acts without a reason, and people with psychopathic traits are no exception. A lack of empathy might inform how they approach their goals, but it’s not a goal in and of itself.
I need to emphasise that again: psychopath =/= evil.
Ask yourself why your psychopathic character is doing the things they’re doing. If your answer is vague, or any variation of ‘i don’t know, they’re just nuts’, then go back to the drawing board. Any other character, and it would be considered bad writing; I’ve never understood why psychopathic characters are somehow an exception to that rule.
An example of a character in media I think is very well-done: Gentarou Hongou from the game 9 Hours, 9 Persons, 9 Doors (999). He’s never explicitly labeled a psychopath, but I find him fascinating because his driving motivation in the game is to feel the same empathy and connection for other people that everyone else does. He has prosopagnosia, which is an inability to recognise human faces (and I am absolutely going to do a whole separate article about prosopagnosia, because it makes for a fascinating character trait, but that’s for another time). The cross between Hongou’s prosopagnosia, which prevents him from differentiating between human faces, and pre-existing psychopathic traits, gives him one of the most fascinating motivations in the game. He’s desperate to understand what it’s like to recognise someone, to care about someone, and he’s willing to go to unconscionable lengths in order to achieve that goal.
‘I wanted to see the faces’, is what Hongou says at the end of the game. Given that the best motivation I’ve seen from other psychopathic characters is ‘I just want to screw with people’, it was amazing.
Don’t get me wrong, he was absolutely an asshole. But he was a fascinating asshole. Characters can be irredeemably cruel, and still be compelling, so long as they have a clear and interesting motivation. He’s also a good example of a psychopathic character committing murder in a believable and self-serving way, so take it as inspiration that you can indulge in character tropes without making them a boring and irritating facsimile.
—> Any other things I should keep in mind for my character?
Your character doesn’t necessarily need to be likeable in order to be engaging and interesting to read, just like antagonists can be relateable and still be antagonists. In my experience, as long as your character continues to try for better — whatever their version of better may be — then they’ll be engaging to read. We can all relate to the eternal struggle for better.
Similarly, we’ve all had moments where it was very, very difficult to drum up any empathy for someone we know. We’ve all been there. You know what that feels like, so draw on that, and imagine what life might be like if it was that difficult to care about anyone. How would your daily struggles change? Would you care about trying to become a better person? If you were born without empathy, would you be happy that way? How long would it take for you to understand that you were different from everyone else?
As with all other mental conditions, the answers to the above questions will change depending on your character’s environment, setting, and upbringing.
This would normally be where I link to firsthand accounts from people with psychopathy, but a genuine account is ridiculously hard to find. Most of what is freely available online is either sensationalised, or descriptions written by people like me, and it’s always been very important to me that understanding of mental health comes first and foremost from those who have the condition in question. I hope what I’ve given you here is enough to help you in your writing, but if you know any resources it would be appropriate for me to link here, please let me know. I’m always happy to edit them in.
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