The term ‘psycho’ is often used to describe murderers who behave in an irrational and bloodthirsty way. Alfred Hitchcock’s film helped the word to enter the public consciousness. People use the term when someone loses their temper, but true psychopathy isn’t widely understood.

I wrote a novel called ‘The Perfect Murderer’ in 2014, in which one of the lead characters is a psychopath. He’s a respected member of the establishment but has killed a victim a year for four decades. I toyed with the sympathies of the reader, as he killed only villains, usually nasty criminals who society was better off without. Most people would secretly approve of his activities.

The genesis for the novel was partly inspired by reading Jon Ronson’s ‘The Psychopath Test’, a couple of years ago. He’s best known as the author of ‘Men Who Stare At Goats’, that was made into a movie.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jon_Ronson

Much of his book on psychopaths deals with the invidious DSM manual put together by the American Psychiatric Association, and which is used to ‘diagnose’ a bewildering range of mental disorders – most of them are phoney. For instance, anyone who spends more than a few hours a day online could be labelled as having Internet Addiction Disorder. The whole enterprise is tied to the activities of drug companies, who market medication to treat the ‘condition’, adding to their vast profits.

Ronson also writes about the Hare test for psychopathy, a well-respected diagnostic checklist which is much-used to identify those with this disorder.

It’s worth doing, though as with any questionnaire there’s always a certain amount of ambiguity when it comes to interpreting what the question actually means. I scored 4 when I last did it.

In fact, psychopaths only make up 1% of the general population. They are often very successful, at least in terms of money, fame and power, becoming film stars, singers, captains of industry, politicians, bankers, lawyers, doctors and sportsmen. But when things go wrong, look at the disaster that befalls the rest of us!

Just think of the collapse of the world economy, the recent sex scandals in the U.K. and such stories as cyclist Lance Armstrong cheating by using performance-enhancing drugs. He still doesn’t see that he did anything wrong, lacking the empathy to appreciate the damage that he did to people’s faith in who they thought he was. His latest lies about drink-driving only confirm his lack of character. He has no shame because he can’t understand the concept.

The recently convicted paedophiles are apparently the same way, with Rolf Harris trying to get the length of his sentence reduced. It’s a chilling thought to realise that many of the people we admire, who are seen as role models, praised for their achievements, focus and determination are actually rather repulsive as human-beings.

Although they walk among us largely without causing disruption, psychopaths represent about 20% of the population in prisons. They’re also responsible for causing more disruptive incidents while inside, and the likelihood of their re-offending is a depressing 85%.

I should point out that simply being a psychopath is not illegal, any more than being depressed, schizophrenic or bipolar is against the law. Mind you, the old expression ‘the lunatics are running the asylum’ might be more accurate than it first appears.