WISDOM OF PSYCHOPATHS
Snippets and Thoughts.
Normally, when people hear the word ‘psychopaths’, we immediately think about serial killers like Ted Bundy, John Wayne Gacy, or other ruthless cold-blooded people who are capable of premeditated murders and committing serious crimes. As a matter of fact, the ratio between psychopathy and crime is more complicated than it seems.
In his most recent book, Dr. Kevin Dutton, a British clinical psychologist at Oxford University wrote:
‘‘In reality, psychopaths by common knowledge refer to a distinct subset of individuals with a specific constellation of personality characteristics such as ruthlessness, fearlessness, mental toughness, self-confidence, coolness under pressure, and emotional detachment.’’
None of these traits are evil however when they are deployed in the right amount and the appropriate context, they could rather prove useful. The key lies in context and levels.
In essence, we all need to employ some bits of psychopathic behavior in our pursuit of excellence or towards attaining any goal in life.
Imagine you’ve got the skill set to be a top surgeon but you lack the skillset to disengage emotionally from your patients.
Imagine you’ve got the skill set to be a top lawyer but you lack the pathological self-confidence to be the center of attention in a courtroom. You essentially lack that narcissism to be the big shock in front of a jury.
Imagine you’re a top successful businessman but you lack the ruthlessness to fire someone who is underperforming or even the coolness under pressure or the sheer balls required to take a calculated risk.
My sister is an RN in Maryland. She has been working in the health sector for quite some time now. I was a bit taken aback when she first told me the number of workers in the health sector, she observed, who had some kind of addiction. Most of them confessed it was sort of their coping mechanism to the ever-demanding pressure of the health field.
Neurosurgery is very interesting because it is the only branch of surgery that the slightest mistake made can leave the victim permanently blind, incapacitated, or even lead to death. There is no other branch of surgery like this due to the less margin of error between crucial capillaries.
And to think the neurosurgeon who must be emotionally detached from you to remove that tumor in your brain might be a psychopath is really daunting.
The same could be said with orthopedics. I once spoke to a surgeon, Dr. Uğur asking him:
‘What is the big difference between people that are great in surgery and people that are merely good?’
And he had no hesitation in saying ‘‘it’s the ability to make a crucial decision under pressure.’’
It’s not technical ability.
Ever since I incorporated workouts and going to the gym into my daily routine, I have come across a couple of psychopaths. ‘Crackheads’ as I usually like to call them. Interactions with them especially during mid-work-out breaks are always compelling and refreshing as well.
Gyms generally are very weird places, especially the ones I go to. Almost half of the regular attendants are crackheads, psychopaths, ex-convicts, creepy make-up artists, the list goes on. You wouldn’t come across a crazier demographic in life within a square meter. I promise you.
WHAT COULD WE LEARN FROM PSYCHOPATHS?
Dr. Kevin Dutton in one of his writings makes a really compelling argument why psychopaths are better at persuasion than the rest of us. He suggests that they’ve got the charm and charisma, two characteristics crucially important for persuasion. Moreover, they aren’t caught up in the emotional attachment of persuasion. They are very manipulative and can move you around the social circle like a top tennis player.
He further goes on to unravel that: ‘If psychopaths are good at persuasion than the rest of us, what else are they good at than us?’
It’s very easy to think psychos are rapists, murderers, and serial killers but actually no, not all of them.
I have always thought politicians ranked high on the psychopathic spectrum. Because you really need to be a pathological psychopath to be a successful politician. Lies, deception, crowd control, and manipulation, trumping on your opponents for political victory are classic cues from the playbook of a psychopath.
Moreover, you need to develop a very tough skin to detach emotionally from people’s sufferings. Anybody who has followed African politics either closely or from an eagle eyes’ view especially can unflinchingly attest to the psychopathy of the politicians we have there. It’s not rocket science.
Politics = Poly (Many) + Ticks (Blood Suckling Insects)
The same could be said for sports. There’s an element of real pathology in being a top-level sport athlete. You have to have that tunnel vision and ruthlessness in the pursuit of excellence.
Cristiano Ronaldo, Zlatan Ibrahimovic, Neymar, Mohammed Salah etc wouldn’t have reached the pinnacle of the footballing world if they had been ‘nice guys’.
When you get to the higher echelons of sports, you realize that talent is relatively similar (to some extent) and that the difference-maker is how badly you want it. How ruthless you are. Whether you’re prepared to push yourself into the dark for success. It’s no wonder the term ‘serial winner’ is often a common term in sports to describe athletes who are wholly obsessed with winning. An otherwise term usually preserved for only psychopaths.
Furthermore, in order to be an Olympic champion or an elite athlete, you’ve got to be high on the psychopathic spectrum. Roger Federer no doubt is one of the nicest guys superficially. In games, however, he usually studies the opponent for the first few moments and then later comes to slice his opponents like a ruthless psychopath. If Roger Federer were to apply this behavior to people in public in oblivion, he’d find himself in a different court. Pun Intended.
It is impossible to succeed in sports especially if you lack ruthlessness in the pursuit of excellence.
Imagine you want to pick someone to kick the last penalty shootout to win let’s say the World Cup. A moment closely being watched by about 1.5 billion people (a fifth of the world), you would certainly pick someone who’s very high on the psychopathic spectrum. Cool, calmness under pressure, tunnel vision, someone detached from the noise, and then BANG!
It’s no news that life is rife with hardships, betrayal, heartbreaks, struggles, bitter losses, tumultuous challenges, deaths, and the list goes on. It will be foolhardy to confront all these with a sympathetic and naive attitude.
We all need a bit of psychopathic traits whether mental toughness, fearlessness, self-confidence, coolness under pressure, ruthlessness, and emotional detachment to keep our heads above water.
Since the earthquake happened three weeks ago, most of the victims I spoke to have all been able to cope with their fair share of losses from the same tactics.
OCCUPATIONAL PSYCHOPATHIC SCALE
· CEO’s
· Lawyers
· Media Personnels
· Sales People
· Surgeons (neurosurgeon, cardiothoracic, orthopedic surgery)
· Police/Emergency Service People
NB: Studies reveal successful people at these jobs are usually high on the psychopathic spectrum.
Growing up, there were many kids who suffered from severe medical conditions and eventually died due to their parents’ inability to raise sufficient money to fund their surgery. I naively considered the surgeons very cruel and heartless.
‘How could they possibly allow an innocent child to die because their family couldn’t raise enough money?’
‘Why not just do the surgery out of compassion and love for humanity?’ Lol.
WHAT DOES A FEMALE PSYCHOPATH LOOK LIKE?
There’s enough evidence to show that female psychopathy may be akin to looking like something we call borderline personality disorder. Narcissism, manipulation, black-and-white mood swings, black-and-white thinking, emotional blackmail, emotional puppeteering. In essence, all females. Lol.
A CHANGE IN COURSE?
I believe, instead of stigmatizing outlier psychopaths who are extremely high on the spectrum, we should interact more with them to help them with their predicaments. The same reason we don’t stigmatize people with ADHD, ASPD, Schizophrenia, people with anxiety, etc, why do we stigmatize psychopaths, often treating them with so much disdain and dishonor? Of course, he might not be the most empathic person you have ever met but he might be that guy to have that coolness under pressure to remove that tumor in your brain.
He may be an arrogant, narcissist. But actually, he might be that guy to have that coolness under pressure to remove that tumor in your brain.
Or even be the fire serviceman who would climb three floors and break into your house to rescue your baby during a fire outbreak.
In summary, I’m not trying to glamorize psychopaths at all. What I’m trying to point out are a few useful personality traits we could adopt from psychopaths.
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