Summary Of Monsters And Men: The Psychopath Phenomenon

Of Monsters and Men: The Psychopath Phenomenon
Psychopaths became a hot topic in American pop culture during the 1980s and 90s, with the gruesome exploits of real life monsters such as Ed Gein and Ted Bundy being adapted for the silver screen with films like Silence of the Lambs and Friday the 13th setting the foundations for the serial killer thriller. This glorified image of the intelligent psychopath, the social outlier that has risen above the laws of the average human, has risen to become a part of popular culture myths. Instead of fearing these figures of cold indifference like we should, we idolize and covet the power they wield. The psychopath has come to replace the vengeful gods of myth within our popular culture. Modern nihilism
and the fetizishation of a certain type of power of individual behavior have led to this perverse obsession with acts of great cruelty, warping what the mental disorder of psychopathy actually is. The glorification of the psychopath is an American phenomenon bred out of culture of violence and constant need to deviate from social norms.
So first off, let’s establish what a psychopath is versus the way they are perceived and treated in pop culture. Diagnosing a psychopath includes a thorough check of personal and criminal histories, a thorough interview with a psychologist, and a score determined by the H-PCLR (Hare Revised Psychopath Check List). Some of these traits include superficial charm and glibness, conning and manipulation, lack of guilt/remorse, and apathy. There are a total of 20 components all graded on a scale of 0-2 by a medical professional. These are just some of the aspects of the psychopath that, while not necessarily viewed as positive traits, are more commonplace than many realize. The average person typically scores around 4-6 and scores above 30 indicate a criminal psychopath. Often psychopathic traits can become blurred with the qualities that we look for in leaders: superficial charm equates to people skills, manipulation to utilizing a team’s specialties to achieve goals. Some companies even screen for psychopathic characteristics- the concentration of psychopaths doubles in corporate positions, going from 2% to 4%. The hypercompetitive nature of many workplaces unknowingly nurtures the psychopath, normalizing, and praising their behaviors. Psychopaths have the ability to act normal and even excel at it. What truly distinguishes the psychopath from the rest of the population is the way that they perceive the world.
Psychopath’s brains biologically do not function the same way as everyone else’s, specifically in response to threats and emotional stimuli. A study carried out by in a 1994 prison population measured the cardiac, facial muscle, and electrodermal reactions of psychopathic and non psychopathic individuals in response to and found that subjects with low-psychopathy had more significantly higher responses to fearful imagery than the psychopathic subjects (Patrick 1994). More recent studies utilize electroencephalograms (EEGS) in order to monitor brain activity. Electroencephalograms (EEGs) done on certified psychopaths and non-psychopaths show certain areas of the brain do not physically react the same to emotional or physical stimuli. The standard human brain “tends to respond automatically, even reflexively, when processing oddball or salient target stimuli” (Kiehl, 92), but the psychopath’s brain has abnormal responses, typically not as strong. Their amygdala, which processes emotions and reactions to stimuli, does not process words with emotional connotations much differently than neutral words such as “kill” versus “table” (Kiehl, 114). They are not capable of feeling the remorse that comes to most naturally, freeing them from the moral obligation the rest of society is controlled by. Psychopaths do not have impulse control in how little they consider the
consequences of their actions. While many view this as an obvious weakness, it is this very lack of care that attracts many people to the image of the cold, calculating psychopath who can exist without caring about anyone else. This very specific way of glorifying the psychopath and serial killer is an almost uniquely American mentality. There are serial killers in Colombia and China with body counts reaching into the hundreds, higher than Bundy, Manson, and Dahmer combined, but none are as household names as American serial killers. Calling someone a psychopath after saying something borderline apathetic is commonplace in day to day talk, and they’re even referenced in the music we listened to; Ke$ha’s song “Cannibal” artfully name drops a serial killer in the line “I’ll eat your heart out like Jeffrey Dahmer.” It’s believed that this is normalization is because the psychopath reflects many of the traits that a capitalist and increasingly morally skewed America values. The most well-known serial killers are the ones who are attractive, the ones who are charming and seem in all other respects normal. Jeffrey Dahmer had friends in his community who never would have thought him more than a little odd, and Ted Bundy used his charm to lure women to be later become his victims. Americans like a very certain brand of crazy, also known as the ones who are easy on the eyes.
The American public’s obsession with violence has not gone unnoticed; we all have access to movies such as Kill Bill or the Hannibal series, where multiple people are killed in artistic fashions. Children can play Mortal Kombat and kill someone by hitting off their jaw with a police baton and then taking a selfie with the corpse, or murder hundreds of innocent civilians in Grand Theft Auto where the only consequence they have is a Game Over. Special effects in film have gotten to the point where staged violence almost perfectly reflects reality. America exists in a culture where violence can be found everywhere in the media we consume. We make military service, where murder is normalized and an actual career, appear to be a noble sacrifice for the sake of our country. Some feel that this constant presence teaches us to normalize violence and causes aggression. Others however, would argue that this genre of media serves as an outlet for violent urges and keeps them in check rather than encouraging them. Shows like Game of Thrones have mass murders, rape, and just general cold-blooded homicide regularly portrayed, yet still manage to maintain a large viewership.
There have been numerous studies attempting to find a link of causation between violent images and actual violence and aggression. While it’s impossible to establish it as a definitive factor due to the low rates of extreme violence being demonstrated, it has been determined to be at least a risk factor. By examining results across many experiments testing for a correlation between violent images and physical violence, it can be hypothesized that “exposure to media violence leads to aggression, desensitization toward violence and lack of sympathy for victims of violence, particularly in children” (Pozios 2013). The surgeon general, NIMH, and the APA along with many mental health organizations acknowledge the fact the exposure to violent media is a risk factor for violent behavior. During interviews after his capture, Jeffrey Dahmer said figures such as Emperor Palpatine (ACTOR) from Star Wars and the Gemini Killer (ACTOR) in Exorcist III heavily inspired him because of the extreme power they exerted. It would not be academically sound to say that the media we consume explicitly affects us, but these images stick around and leave impressions that we may not even realize, particularly from repeated exposure at young ages
Despite their popularity, serial killers are still killers, humans who have violated our laws that prohibit murder.
Yet whenever we watch their movies, it is typically not the heroes being hunted that we root for, but rather the killer. Hannibal Lecter is a perfect example of a bad guy that we love to hate, because he seems above the average person. He is highly intelligent, only targets the disrespectful, and seems unbeatable by law enforcement. Serial killers are the ultimate avengers, indiscriminately interfering in the lives of mere mortals. These characters let us imagine life without the constraints of laws and social norms and taboos. We can imagine a version of humanity where consequences of actions don’t need consideration or filtering what is acceptable to say becomes unnecessary. In this world, if someone annoys you in at work, just punch them in the face or tell them you hope they get hit by a bus. In reality, you just grin and bear it until you get home and work off your frustrations by binge-watching Criminal Minds. These figures transcend our social order, but it is important to note that this romanticization is almost entirely fictional. There are no charming serial killers like Hannibal Lecter who will quite literally wine and dine as Beethoven’s Goldenberg Trio plays along in the background. Real psychopaths are capable of acts of extreme cruelty and brutal murders that aren’t as easy to stomach as the artistic and censored representations we see on screen.
Not all psychopaths are cold-blooded killers, either; they are individuals with mental disorders who simply don’t experience the world as the majority of humanity does. Yet psychopaths have come to represent the perverse side of human nature that we all hope to understand one day. If we keep watching in the hope that if we can figure out how they work, maybe one day we can figure out how we work.