On Psychopaths and Free Spirits
A Conflation of Type
The psychopath is an enduring, somewhat elusive personality archetype with negative social connotations. The archetype of the psychopath is often seen as dangerously attractive, even mystical in its manifestation. Psychopaths challenge the status quo, refusing to conform to social norms and the prevailing morality of their environments. Their existence in popular culture presents a conundrum of definition.
If one were to sample a random segment of the population, one would be hard-pressed to determine a consistent pattern of understanding regarding the psychopath, as opposed to a concept like depression, which carries a more straightforward symptom set and is already clearly defined in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Fifth Edition (DSM-V). Most everyone shares an agreed-upon schema for the depressive type.
Further convolution of the psychopathic type presents itself in the concept of the sociopath, and the two terms are often used interchangeably. For purposes of clarity and consistency, both terms will be explored here under the umbrella term psychopath.
Clinically, what is understood as a psychopath is defined by antisocial personality disorder (ASPD), a Cluster B personality disorder defined in the DSM-V by a recurring pattern of at least three or more of the following criteria: failure to conform to social norms, deceitfulness, impulsivity or failure to plan, irritability and aggressiveness, reckless disregard for the safety of others, consistent irresponsibility, and lack of remorse.
ASPD is behavior-dependent. Like other Cluster B personality disorders, ASPD is mostly concerned with a pattern of behavior rather than an abiding set of personality traits. This is due to a demand for utility in diagnosing and defining mental disorders forensically, as the intersection of psychology and the justice system demands a definitive guideline for criminally deviant behavior.
The terms psychopath and sociopath appear nowhere in the DSM-V and are not considered clinically relevant, though they are often acknowledged by diagnosticians and have contributed considerably to the psychological evolution of categorization for the criminally deviant personality type. The concept of ASPD reflects an overarching evolution in abnormal psych categorization towards a behavior-dependent perspective: what does the subject do? He behaves antisocially.
In clinical psychology, antisocial behavior is distinguished from asocial behavior, though the terms are consistently conflated by the general public. Antisocial behavior refers to behavior that tends to infringe upon the rights of others, violates social norms, and is often hostile in general. Asocial behavior is what most people mean when they use the word antisocial. Asocial behavior refers to the tendency for introverted individuals to avoid interaction with others altogether, characterized by an aversion to social interaction without any component of hostility or immorality.
… serial killing presupposes antisocial behavior, but not all people who behave antisocially are serial killers.
In popular culture, the term psychopath is thrown around quite loosely. The uninformed conflate psychopathy with serial killing. Cinema, literature, and art in general haven’t done the elucidation of this archetype any favors. Although there is a certain overlap between what is defined as psychopathic and the patterns of behavior involved in serial killing, the concepts are again distinct: serial killing presupposes antisocial behavior, but not all people who behave antisocially are serial killers. Delving deeper, one can see that murder itself is an antisocial act, but not all people with antisocial traits commit murder, let alone engage in a pathological pattern of murder with idiosyncratic signatures (serial killing). For instance, Jeffrey Dahmer was not a psychopath and was diagnosed as suffering from borderline personality disorder (BPD). Yet, he was one of the most notorious serial killers of all time due to his antisocial behavior of pathological murder.
Perhaps the most well-known fictional psychopath in popular culture is Hannibal Lecter. Hannibal Lecter is a villain created by novelist Thomas Harris. The Academy Award-winning cinematic adaptation of Harris’ famous novel, The Silence of the Lambs (1991), can be credited with making Hannibal Lecter a household name. Hannibal is defined in the film as “a pure psychopath" by the character Dr. Chilton, the supercilious director of the sanitarium where Hannibal is imprisoned.
To give the sententious Dr. Chilton credit, Hannibal Lecter presents as a psychopath and a serial killer. He exhibits many of the traits associated with ASPD while also being pathologically murderous. He is callous, deceitful, instrumentally violent, lacks remorse, and fails to conform to social norms. However, Hannibal Lecter is also piercingly cerebral, exhibiting an exceptionally gifted IQ. He displays an abyssal depth of intellect that makes it seem as if he’s privy to ungraspable existential and psychological truths. He knows things that you don’t. This giftedness is instrumental in serving as a mechanism for Hannibal’s somewhat philosophical approach to the violation of conventional morality.
Audiences love Hannibal Lecter. Why? They love him because he is intelligently, consciously unfettered by conventional morality. Rather than failing to conform to social norms, one might say he consciously eschews them. He is beyond good and evil in the strictest sense; he behaves immorally, deliberately outside the bounds of the Judeo-Christian moral framework that serves as the bulwark of social behavior. He is the embodiment of the fictional, intellectually psychopathic archetype, or what is sometimes referred to as the evil genius. Such Hollywood portrayals — though fascinating and seductive— have contributed considerably to the misunderstanding of ASPD as it relates to the enduring psychopathic archetype. Hannibal’s alluring, conscious abnegation of conventional morality is also observed in Friedrich Nietzsche’s concept of the free spirit.
In Human, All Too Human: A Book For Free Spirits (1878), Friedrich Nietzsche defines the free spirit:
“He is called a free spirit who thinks differently from what, on the basis of his origin, environment, his class and profession, or on the basis of the dominant views of the age, would have been expected of him. He is the exception. The fettered spirits are the rule; the latter reproach him that his free principles either originate in a desire to shock and offend or eventuate in free actions, that is to say in actions incompatible with sound morals.”
(Aphorism 225)
Sound morals are, of course, relative and context-dependent. They do not equate to absolute truths. Often, they are devoid of even a hint of truth. Their soundness should be consistently and rigorously examined. Most often, their soundness is defined by the state’s perception of their utility, not the inherent truths therein (or lack thereof).
The concept of victimless crime provides a fitting example. The buying and selling of narcotics is illegal in the United States. 44% of federal inmates are incarcerated for drug-related offenses. One must remember that someone wanted to buy those drugs, and someone else wanted to sell them. There is no victim in the traditional sense. Someone in power once declared the effects of drug use immoral. Consequently, the causes were conflated with the effects, and all future participants in the associated transactions—both buyers and sellers—were assigned a negative value judgement, complete with the requisite prison sentences. Reason stands on its head, and morality is used to obfuscate a complex public health phenomenon.
As a result, the root cause of the immoral effects—poor mental health and a degenerate psyche—is left ultimately unexamined and untreated. The incidental acts of buying and selling are viewed as inherently immoral, as the buyer and seller are imbued with immoral causal agency: they’re at fault. They consciously chose to behave in a way that violates social norms. How dare they! Buyer and seller are thrown in jail, off the street, and everyone feels that justice has been served: the value judgement is useful. Paradoxically, one can see how arbitrary such an assignment of value is when one observes the morally sanctioned and legal sale of alcohol. Such valuations are truly cold-blooded.
Nietzsche is one of the most misunderstood, misrepresented, and misappropriated philosophers of all time…
One would be committing a gross error if he were to equate Nietzsche’s concept of the free spirit with psychopathy. At no point in his collected works does Nietzsche ever sanction brutality or barbarism by virtue of his endorsement of the free-spirited type. Nietzsche is one of the most misunderstood, misrepresented, and misappropriated philosophers of all time, so it’s crucial to exercise intellectual integrity when wrestling with his value theory (or with anything, for that matter).
Nietzsche was most concerned with the psychology of the individual as he or she relates to society, especially in the context of conforming (or not conforming) to prescribed social norms and the prevailing morality. Nietzsche identifies the free spirit as someone who is also unfettered by conventional morality, predominately manifested as a rejection of what he saw as the life-denying, dogmatic Judeo-Christian moral framework that has permeated social norms beyond the confines of religion itself. This eschewing of established morality does not automatically necessitate an infringement upon the rights of others. However, it is a testament to humankind’s reliance on Christianity for its system of values that one is routinely seen as devoid of values when he repudiates religion and conventional morality in general; as if Christianity were the arbiter of all value.
Psychopathy is also quite often conflated with sadism in popular culture. Sadism refers to the proclivity for deriving pleasure from inflicting suffering and humiliation on others. The unknowledgeable tacitly assume that psychopathy presupposes sadism. Sadistic acts are inherently antisocial in that they infringe upon the rights of others, but there is considerable nuance here that is consistently ignored: sadists typically possess antisocial traits, but not all antisocial individuals are sadistic. A penchant for sadism is definitively absent from the diagnostic criteria for ASPD.
The psychopath exhibits a pattern of expediency in his actions. He is a self-serving doer, dominantly exerting his will upon his environment. This expediency can be seen as attractive, as most people are too inhibited to act this way. They conform to social norms; they adhere to the prescribed set of value judgements inherent in their culture. They wait in line. They’re careful not to offend. They’re reverent, cordial, and submissive in a myriad of ways that the psychopath is not.
Nevertheless, the antisocial effects of this expediency are frequently mistaken for sadism in the psychopath: the psychopath is often instrumentally violent, using violence as a means to an end. This behavior is often labeled as cold-blooded, but its distinction from sadism cannot be overstated. The psychopath’s low frustration-tolerance, irritability and aggressiveness can also lead to reactive, hot-blooded acts of violence, but this too lacks the sadistic derivation of pleasure as a defining feature.
Social value judgements extend into every facet of human existence. Every single behavior, as seemingly arbitrary as how much one tips a waitress or whether one chooses to tattoo himself above the neck, is laden with a value judgement: a yes or a no, a good or a bad, and sometimes an evil. Evil is often defined in the social context as profoundly bad or profoundly immoral, usually signaling an infringement upon the rights of others and manifested via a seemingly selfish expediency. The psychopath is unencumbered by habituated moral constraints that would otherwise inhibit his expediency. His ends justify his means.
Nietzsche posits that a spirit becomes unfettered—a free spirit—when he begins to consciously reexamine the prescribed set of ‘shoulds’ and ‘should nots’ imposed on him by the society in which he finds himself. He unburdens himself of their chains. This presupposes that the free spirit was, at one time, burdened by them. Like his fellows, he was habituated to conventional morality through social indoctrination and moralization. At some point in his journey, he begins to question these constraints. Perhaps he feels averse to the sense of shame imposed upon him by his fellows. Perhaps he dared to act with expediency in some way, pushing the boundaries of social norms, only to be moralized by his compeers.
The common utterance “you should be ashamed of yourself" or “shame on you” is so much a part of contemporary social training that one could scarcely find a living soul who hasn’t been shamed at some point in his life. The free spirit rises up defiantly against such moralizations and seeks to examine their philosophical underpinnings: is there any truth in here? Has one gotten to the root of the violation of the norm? Or is one being shamed simply for daring to question the boundary itself, however unexamined the boundary may be? Intellectual cleanliness in such matters is the exception.
Perhaps the most glaring criterion for ASPD is a lack of remorse. Remorse can be defined as a distressing emotional state caused by a moralizing self-evaluation. It often accompanies the experience of cognitive dissonance — in this case when one’s actions conflict with one’s thoughts and values. Going beyond mere cognitive dissonance, remorse presupposes a certain level of shame, which psychopaths tend to lack. To be unencumbered by remorse carries a distinctive allure.
In those with an inordinate psychological curiosity there exists a suspicion that remorse — and its associated component of shame—may be a superfluous moralization: it doesn’t hold up under scrutiny.
To be able to realize that one has blundered, acted in error, and consequently is resolved to learn from this misstep is the mark of a noble nature. Undue shame and self-loathing can appear quite maudlin. Upon closer inspection, they exist more for the satisfaction of the victim than for the benefit of the wrongdoer. Yet, the idea of remorse is intricately etched into contemporary morality. It is woven so deeply into the fabric of societal value judgements that one’s lack of remorse is often (erroneously) taken for an admission of guilt. The rabble moralizers cry: he has learned nothing from his immoral actions! How can he be rehabilitated without first experiencing shame? He must be humbled!
In Human, All Too Human Nietzsche writes: “Never yield to remorse, but at once tell yourself: remorse would simply mean adding to the first act of stupidity a second…”
The psychopath experiences a lack of remorse as a defining feature of his character. It is this absence of remorse that contributes to the seductive allure of the psychopath. The fettered spirit desires to be unburdened from it as well, but his inhibitions prevent it. However, the free spirit consciously chooses to eschew the shame and self-loathing inherent in remorse, and instead takes a cerebral approach to adjusting his behavior to prevent future blunders. This distinction is crucial.
It is probable that the diagnosis of ASPD—as a psychological category—will evolve over the next several generations. Current scientific and psychological understanding, by no means, represents the zenith of scientific achievement. It is more reasonable to view this point in the evolution of psychological knowledge, like all scientific progress, as occupying an arbitrary position in the ongoing timeline of human existence. The psychopath’s free-spirited allure as one who doesn’t conform, blazes his own path, and acts with expediency will likewise continue to evolve.
It behooves man to understand exactly what it is he finds himself attracted to: it is the free-spirited revaluation of a constraining morality and one’s subsequent rising above and beyond it.
