Can a psychopath have emotions?

[Fej]

I'm talking about moderate to strong emotions

[TheLastMohican]

Of course. They are just misplaced.

[Rocky]

I would think every human, including psychopaths, have emotions no matter how strong.

[Vivid]

Certainly. They can even have completely emotions at the right time in the right place.

[Jgib5328]

Ted Bundy was really hurt when his longtime college girlfriend left him. All of the girls he bludgeoned resembled this girl too, or so they say. He also got back with the girlfriend after they had broken up and he made something out of himself and right when they got engaged he dumped her. He said, "I just wanted to prove to myself that I could have her." So yes psychopaths have emotions, they just can't deal with them.

[Uberfuhrer]

Ted Bundy was really hurt when his longtime college girlfriend left him. All of the girls he bludgeoned resembled this girl too, or so they say. He also got back with the girlfriend after they had broken up and he made something out of himself and right when they got engaged he dumped her. He said, "I just wanted to prove to myself that I could have her." So yes psychopaths have emotions, they just can't deal with them.

This is the kind of mindset I have, although not to the extreme of murder, mind you. Murder is against the law, but dumping someone to break their heart isn't.

A man can't help but become bitter at the idea of someone he's attracted to rejecting him. And he falls into despair because that person he had his eye on had the sort of features that he was demanding about, and the whole painstaking effort to find someone who meets his demands has gone to waste.

So he becomes destroyed inside and is compelled to drag others down with him.

So psychopaths also have empathy; they know how their victims feel and want them to feel that way.

[sriv]

So psychopaths also have empathy; they know how their victims feel and want them to feel that way.

But their empathies are directed askew. When they empathize, they look at other people's problems with extreme bias. The psychopath is unwilling or nonchalant when looking at things from perspectives other than his own and has a general disconcern with fairness and justice.

[Rowan]

According to wikipedia (To view links or images in this forum your post count must be 2 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.) the following list details the usual diagnostic criteria for ‘psychopathy’:

Factor1: "Aggressive narcissism"

Glibness/superficial charm
Grandiose sense of self-worth
Pathological lying
Cunning/manipulative
Lack of remorse or guilt
Shallow affect
Callous/lack of empathy
Failure to accept responsibility for own actions
Promiscuous sexual behaviour

Factor2: "Socially deviant lifestyle"

Need for stimulation/proneness to boredom
Parasitic lifestyle
Poor behavioral control
Lack of realistic, long-term goals
Impulsivity
Irresponsibility
Juvenile delinquency
Early behavior problems
Many short-term marital relationships
Revocation of conditional release

Traits not correlated with either factor

Many short-term marital relationships
Criminal versatility


This list mentions a lack of remorse, guilt and empathy as well as a ‘shallow affect’, so it seems likely that they have impaired emotions. However, there is no indication that psychopaths lack all emotion and, in fact, many of the criteria suggest certain emotions. I also found this (To view links or images in this forum your post count must be 2 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.) article (I don’t know how reliable it is) that states:


Although psychopaths demonstrate emotional abnormalities such as shallow affect, lack of empathy, incapacity for love, lack of guilt or remorse, lack of fear, and emotional processing and response deficiencies they may show normal emotional responses or emotional hypersensitive in other areas. The correlates of emotional incapacities, emotional hypersensitivity, and normal emotional activities in psychopaths are studied and discussed in this paper. Emotional hypersensitivity might be linked with: a history of neglect, rejection and abuse; insult; changes which are forced or not under control of the psychopath; obstacles that prevent the psychopath to do what he or she wants to do; narcissistic injury; broken friendships or relationship. Normal emotional functioning might be associate with grief, warm relationship, adequate attention, disease, academic and/or occupational success, impressive events, confrontations, contemplation and maturation, hidden suffering (also as a result of neurobiological determination).

It seems to me that the psychopathic mindset is more about a need for attention (à la histrionic and narcissistic) than specific emotions per se; it seems that it is rooted in a parasitical need for acceptance that is ultimately as self degrading as it is destructive.

This is the kind of mindset I have, although not to the extreme of murder, mind you. Murder is against the law, but dumping someone to break their heart isn't.

The pessimistic and nihilistic Romanian philosopher Emil Cioran once claimed, ‘Revenge is not always sweet, once it is consummated we feel inferior to our victim.’

[Lilo]

So yes psychopaths have emotions, they just can't deal with them.

Good point. Also explains why when I can't deal with my emotions I start to wonder if I have psychopathic tendencies.

[Retz]

Well I think that most psychopath's have something like a misplacement of emotional "tripwires" (my new favourite metaphor).

So all it means is they have a different criteria that their minds meant to set up emotions.