Knowing the Psychopath : The Beauty of Detachment
One of the major advantages of my psychopathy is my detachment from human beings. It underpins so much of what I am, what I achieve and of course how I see the world. There will be some of you who will admire this detachment, likely wish you could adopt it for yourselves, others will be repulsed by it and thankful you can attach and willingly do so. Whatever your view might be, it is fundamental for you to understand this perspective to enable you to gain the necessary insight into my world.
When we think of navigating through life, we imagine the immense human capacity for empathy as a vital compass. However, for individuals with no emotional empathy, our perception of the world is vastly different. Understanding how we with complete emotional detachment perceive the world can shed light on our thoughts, decision-making, and interactions with others.
In the realm of the psychopath with no emotional empathy, those of us with the higher executive function,it is rationality that is the dominant lens through which we see the world. Every situation is analyzed and evaluated with objective reasoning, unaffected by emotional attachments and biases. Emotions are mere abstractions, and we perceive them as superfluous to our understanding of reality. We perceive emotions in others as tools to manipulate or irrational hurdles faced by those who cannot think logically.
For someone with no emotional empathy, relationships are practical endeavors founded on mutual benefits rather than emotional bonds. Our interactions with others revolve around logic, adaptability, and personal gain. We are skilled at observing social cues and mimic emotional responses to avoid arousing suspicion or to attain certain goals. We understand that emotions can be exploited by playing the role of a concerned friend, loyal partner, or supportive colleague without experiencing these emotions genuinely.
With emotional detachment comes a heightened ability to manipulate those around us. As individuals lacking emotional empathy we view emotions as vulnerabilities to exploit. We can effortlessly analyze the emotional responses of others, identifying weaknesses and using them to our advantage. Many individuals with complete emotional detachment find themselves in professions like law, management, or politics due to their ability to dispassionately manipulate individuals and systems for our personal gain.
While moral values are part of social structures, we perceive morality as a futile concept. Without any emotional mechanisms to process moral dilemmas, ethical considerations become intellectual constructs rather than deeply ingrained feelings. Our kind often, albeit not always adhere to societal norms and moral codes to avoid social consequences rather than from a genuine concern for others.
Some of our kind with a lower cognitive function may struggle to understand the concept of affection, experiencing it as an abstraction or social obligation. Feelings of love, care, and compassion are foreign concepts however to us all, making it impossible for us to establish genuine connections. We might mimic affection based on external cues, using socially acceptable behaviors to fulfill societal expectations while never truly experiencing the underlying sentiments.
Living a life devoid of emotional empathy may in the mind of others create an inherent sense of isolation. As they cannot comprehend or share the joys, sorrows, and intimate connections that emotions facilitate, those that look on us believe that the world can seem hollow and distant, but that is the projection of those who are not us. Their own feelings in relation to such a scenario becomes how they believe we are, even though it is not the case. Often our victims wish that this is what we experience, a form of revenge for dragging them into our world in the first instance.
Our kind who experience this lack of empathy may face challenges in understanding and relating to others. To navigate through these challenges, we often employ coping mechanisms such as rationalizing emotions as illogical or obscure constructs. By reframing feelings as unnecessary elements of human existence, we create a cognitive buffer that can help us adapt and manage our relationships with minimal personal intensity. The degree of success by which this is done very much depends on the relative executive function of the individual concerned.
All of this enables us to move through the world unaffected by its emotions and the hindering impact of feelings. We are detached and this is where its beauty works for us. Not for you, but you are not of us. It is clean, straight forward, minimal and beautiful in its simplicity. Whilst I understand those of you who regard such a way of being as abhorrent and frightening, it is what we are and it provides us with the means of being. To us, this detachment is a beautiful thing.
17 thoughts on “Knowing the Psychopath : The Beauty of Detachment”
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In the movie The NeverEnding Story, there are three trials one must pass through.
Out of one of them, the strongest of warriors come running back out, screaming in insanity.
What lies within the trial?
A mirror.
Based on the Latin phrase “temet nosce”, or know thyself, it has basis in Greek mythology.
HG has looked in the mirror and laughed at what he saw.
My heart longs for him to view his reflection from a different perspective, as many of us do; we simply cannot help ourselves. Our vision is skewed by our own perception of the model person.
Yet perhaps It is the greatest of triumph to know thyself as one truly is, and not desire to change a single thing.
A cop-out? Some may say.
But stand behind HG and view his reflection as he does; you’ll see the ultimate act of self acceptance.
Btw, this comment was meant as a reply to Beth’s observations.
Dorian Grey also looked at a mirror….if fiction is at issue
Katastrophe, I love that film! I hate it!
The Swamps of Sadness scene is the one that stayed with me the most. It is unbearable to watch, and yet impossible to forget.
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“Atreyu and his faithful white horse, Artax, must cross the Swamps of Sadness. The swamp’s magic works by pulling down anyone who succumbs to despair—the sadder you become, the heavier you get until you sink into the mud. While Atreyu stays strong, Artax gives in to the overwhelming hopelessness of the swamp. Atreyu desperately tries to pull Artax by his reins, crying out famous lines like: ‘Fight against the sadness, Artax. Please, you’re letting the sadness of the swamps get to you. You have to try. You have to care!’ Artax remains still and slowly sinks below the surface while Atreyu watches in agony.
In Michael Ende’s original novel, the scene is often viewed as even more devastating because Artax can talk. He uses telepathy to speak to Atreyu, explaining that he is too heavy with sadness to go on and begging Atreyu to leave him so he doesn’t have to watch him die.
Fans of the film often find solace in the final scenes: when Bastian recreates Fantasia through his wishes, Artax is brought back to life, and Atreyu is seen riding him again in the closing sequence.”
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It all entered the psyche of a child who did not yet understand that films are not real, that happy endings are not guaranteed, no matter how strongly one wishes for them.
A child believes in resolution by will, by feeling, almost by magic. And that is both beautiful and devastating. Because what happens when reality does not comply? What is the point of presenting such illusions to a child, when the world does not operate by those rules?
Some scenes do not resolve. They remain. That scene could have played out as in HG’s story, what happened at the lake. No happy ending. That loss became one of the foundational stones of his construct, something that has been nagging at his core ever since.
Regarding the mirror, I do not recall the name of the article. One of the good doctors gave him a mirror. He looked at it briefly and then threw it away, because he did not like what he saw. He did not see himself in it, he saw “her”.
Whilst I agree that the past cannot be altered, it is still the past which governs the pursuit of fuel for every narcissist.
The past cannot be silenced at will, yet it is precisely those earlier constructions that render present behaviour so predictable. The severance from those formative states, where adult influence constrained the child’s spirit, cannot truly be enacted by most people, I believe.
However, time, as we perceive it, dissolves within the realm of energy. The past does not sit behind us, it coexists. And so people remain bound to it, not because they lack awareness, but because awareness alone does not grant alteration.
To face one’s wounds is, in truth, the simpler task. To dismantle the identity forged from them is another matter entirely. Most attempt change, yet only succeed in layering a new construct upon the ruins of the old, erecting something fragile upon a compromised foundation.
The true act would be far more radical: to uproot the foundation itself, entirely, and rebuild beyond the inherited delusion.
And that is the point. It was never anyone’s choice to inherit it.
As children, we do not choose. We copy, because we must survive. And once that construct is in place, we no longer recognise it as something imposed. It becomes indistinguishable from what we believe to be ourselves.
Yet even in adulthood, we cannot simply undo it by will. What we learn instead is how to function within it, how to navigate a system where our will has already been shaped, even distorted, by something we did not consciously choose.
But here is the fracture in that system: none of us ever signed a contract agreeing that it must remain this way.
And that is where the real possibility lies. Not in denying the construct, but in recognising that its authority was never absolute to begin with.
But perhaps it is just me being Bastian, recreating Fantasia, trying to save Atreyu and Artax… who knows.
Here is the thing… HG often refers to the fact that what created him also made him effective in what he does, the “bad man doing a good job” aspect.
So in that sense, allowing a person to be exactly as they are has a certain validity within a larger picture.
What amazes me is the level of intelligence used to study people, read their emotions, and exploit their empathetic traits, yet never once turn that same level of focus inward. To control others is one thing, but to conquer yourself is another.
It makes me wonder what would happen if that same energy used to gain power over other people was used to face the pain within, the wounds, the emptiness, and whatever drives the need for control in the first place.
To me, real strength is not in exploiting someone’s love, compassion, and light. Real strength is having the courage to turn the mirror inward and face yourself. One can gain control over others and still remain unconquered within.
Sometimes what looks like power is actually avoidance of one’s own pain
I have full control of myself, there is nothing to conquer.
There is no pain within, nor are there wounds. I do find the preoccupation with supposed wounds from the past quite ridiculous. It is the past, you can do nothing to alter it.
I have faced myself, how do you think I know so much about me? I stared into the abyss and I relished what I saw.
Funny. Revenge is all about the future then?
The now and the next. You cannot execute revenge in the past.
Ahhh HG, the abyss:
Friedrich Nietzsche, stated, “He who fights with monsters should look to it that he himself does not become a monster. And if you gaze long enough into an abyss, the abyss will gaze back into you.” Ahhh the darkness….present and real.
Hello Beth,
I found your comment thought-provoking, particularly your emphasis on “turning the mirror inward.”
You describe amazement that such insight is not directed at the self, but that appears to come from an assumption that inner pain, wounds, or emptiness are present for everyone. That may be true from an empathic perspective, but it does not necessarily apply to narcissists or psychopaths.
HG’s response reflects that difference in perception. He is not describing avoidance, but an internal state that does not contain what you are expecting to be there. From that perspective, there is nothing to confront or overcome, and therefore no drive to engage in the inward-looking process you describe.
It raises the question of whether inner woundedness is universal, or is it inferred from a particular perspective and then applied to others?
You speak about strength as the courage to face oneself, which is valid and meaningful from your perspective. Others may define strength in terms of control or effectiveness, without any sense of inner conflict to resolve. Whether one is more correct than the other may depend on individual outlook. Perhaps both are valid.
The mirror metaphor could invite further reflection. In suggesting others have not looked inward, is it also worth considering that you may be expecting to find something that is not actually there for them?
Fair observations.
One more thing as an example: my ex monster in law, we were ten minutes late leaving Glastonbury to Nether Stowey in bringing her fish and chips….short trip. She screamed on the phone over the fact that we were ten minutes late and said that we were the” most selfish people she ever met”. She had”” no desire to ever see us again and she planned on “disinheriting my then husband from the family home and inheritance and giving it to the cat society.” I was shocked and horrified. He turned to me and said “ a little over the top?”AndI realized this is who she was and was always when he was a child. Imagine that….the shame she imposed over nothing for no reason. Hideous.
Contagious–
“The shame she imposed over nothing for no reason. Hideous.”
“For no reason?”
That is a strange remark.
The turmoil she experienced, and felt compelled to discharge over something so minor, does not point to “no reason”, but to how deeply unstable and frightened she is. Her sense of safety is so fragile that even a small trigger becomes overwhelming. What may be ten minutes to others can feel like an eternity to her.
It is not hideous. It is sad.
It reflects how far removed she is from any stable sense of inner security, from simply feeling safe in her own existence. Instead, she is driven to externalise it immediately, to reach for the phone, to release it in a way that appears disproportionate, yet is very real to her.
People like this are not consciously evil. They are unstable, psychologically fragile. And from that fragility, aggression emerges.
I enjoyed reading your perspective Mari.
Ta, Narc Angel 🙂
Modern day psychology has often asserted and contended that narcissists do not reflect inward. To me, it is evidence they don’t accept accountability. They always blame others. They are incapable. Why?
1. I used to ask my ex husband once a LMR if he was shamed for being at fault as a child even if he was or was not. His response was YES.
2. If you have no empathy, how can you? You must love yourself to love others. And it follows you must love yourself to reflect, take responsibility and survive another day….
DNA and childhood environment as HG says….
“If you have no empathy, how can you? You must love yourself to love others. And it follows you must love yourself to reflect, take responsibility and survive another day….”
If the empath would love themselves, they would not remain in relationships where this love is not reflected back at them, no?
That is the contradiction.
Taking responsibility for oneself and reflecting upon one’s behaviour is not necessarily tied to loving oneself. If it were, the empath, the codependent, the so called victim or volunteer would remove themselves from abusive dynamics. That would be an actual demonstration of self regard.
But they do not.
So where is the love for the self? Where is the responsibility?
Instead, what you see is a continuous cycle of seeking validation from the very person who withholds it. The same dynamic repeated from childhood, only now consciously lived out, yet still unrecognised.