Lionel Shriver’s novel 'We Need to Talk about Kevin' follows a mother's attempt to understand the mind of her teenage son after he guns down children at his school.
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Is torturing animals at an early age mean a person will become a serial killer? Is it necessary that gruesome scenes from early childhood turn an individual in to a serial killer later? How are serial killers made? Modern works of fiction, books and movies, provide some insight. I feel sorry for people who feel guilt."īut where do serial killers, criminals come from? She worked with Ted Bundy and the two were great friends until the day she realised he was a murderer, something she writes about in 1980's 'The Stranger Beside Me.' Ted Bundy was the same person who went on to say, "I don't feel guilty for anything. Take the much-known case of Ann Rule, author of countless true crime novels. Back in the 18th-century, French psychiatrist Philippe Pinel tried explaining immoral and antisocial behaviour with the term 'mania sans délire.' People with such traits don't really show any particular signs of mental illness and live out their life in society just fine. According to what Dr Stephen McWilliams writes on thejournal.ie, the psychopath is not a recent product either.Īround 300 BC, one of Aristotle's students, Theophrastus, identified 'psychopathic traits' in who he called the 'unscrupulous man.' Dr McWilliams goes on to explain that Greek and Roman mythology, the Bible, even the plays of Shakespeare are filled with stories of individuals with psychopathic traits. In the case of a psychopath, the condition is intrinsic and not acquired. A sociopath is any person displaying anti-social behaviour that is often the result of environmental factors.
A psychopath is not to be confused with a sociopath. If anything, a serial killer is a psychopath with deadly intentions.
Many in the field of psychiatry have arrived at the one definite conclusion: 'Not all psychopaths are serial killers, but all serial killers are psychopaths.' One common mistake we all make is thinking that they're geniuses gifted with exceptional IQs.