Rage: The True Story of a Sibling Murder by Jerry Langton

Author:Jerry Langton [Langton, Jerry]
Language: eng
Format: epub, pdf
Tags: True Crime, General, 0470154411, Murder, Wiley
ISBN: 9780470154410
Publisher: Wiley
Published: 2008-05-04T14:00:00+00:00

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Bundy is a crystallization of what differentiates a psychopath from a sociopath—his or her ability to mimic the outward signs of being a caring person. Early in his life, Ted Bundy realized that if he wanted to get what he wanted—eventually the total control he enjoyed through torture, murder and sex with corpses—it would be easier to get if he pretended he was “normal.” By looking like a regular, even desirable, guy he could gain the trust of and, therefore, access to women that an obvious sociopath like Cho could only dream about. While Cho repulsed the women around him with his desperate overtures, calm cool Bundy had his pick of them. In fact, all of his victims had the same look—long, dark hair parted in the middle with no bangs, because that was his favorite hairstyle.

“If you really want to get down to brass tacks, a psychopath is a smarter—or at least more pragmatic—sociopath,” the doctor from New York told me. “While the sociopath makes his illness obvious and scares off the people he most wants to be in contact with, the psychopath lures them in with a veil of normalcy, even exceptionality.”

That’s the problem with psychopaths; they blend in among us.

Most of them, according to the medical literature I’ve read, come across as confi dent, charming, friendly and intelligent. Not only is it hard to identify them, it’s hard not to fall under their spell. And if you 92 | R A G E

think that their victims come from the weakest, most needy or least intelligent sectors of our population, you may want to think again.

“Psychiatrists are often helplessly manipulated by the psychopath,” says Dr. Ken Magid, a clinical psychologist and author of High Risk: Children Without a Conscience. “Just as are the psychopath’s other victims.” While a sociopath won’t seek help because he or she denies the problem, the psychopath not only denies the problem, but has learned the ability to hide it from others, including the doctors who could potentially help them.

Of course, the doctor from New York reminds me, not all psychopaths are serial killers. It just doesn’t make mathematical sense. While people with APD make up maybe four percent of the population, murderers are a tiny fraction of that and serial murderers are a tiny fraction of them. What, I ask, do the other psychopaths do?

“Well, I know one of them who works at a Lexus dealership,”

says the doctor.

He’s only half-kidding, but he makes a point. Dr. Robert Hare calls psychopaths who don’t break laws (or at least don’t get caught and punished) “subcriminal psychopaths.” Psychopaths in our society can be the dashing cad, the Type-A personality, the two-timing boyfriend or just an otherwise ordinary person who puts themselves before others. Dr. Sheila Wilson, a psychiatrist who works with the victims of psychopaths, points out that psychopaths often prey upon the weaker members of our society, and neither side may realize it.

A psychopath who pays excessive attention to an emotionally needy person, for example, will fi nd it much easier to borrow money from them and is unlikely to pay it back.

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