Why Do Psychopaths Exist? - Mark Freestone

There are heritable characteristics in psychopaths. Psychopaths don't really seem to feel any remorse for what they do. They struggle to have empathy with other people, and they can be very callous. They can do things that, and not really feel sorry for them. They don't have the connection between the prefrontal cortex of the brain and the amygdala that the rest of us do to identify things like disgust, fear, anger. The psychopaths don't really interpret those signals in the same way. (wind blows)

Mark Freestone, welcome to the show.

Thanks, Chris. Pleasure to be here.

For those people that are watching on YouTube, you may notice a, uh, slight change in my usual recording setup. I'm still here in Guatemala. Uh, it's taking a little bit longer than expected to get my visa back from the US Embassy, so this is the hotel room locale, uh, and I've brought a, uh, coconut from downstairs at the breakfast buffet. So, all is not completely terrible. Uh, but today, speaking about psychopaths, why is it that you got into working with psychopaths, Mark? I don't know what compels someone to think, when they're in their youth, that this is the road that they want to travel down.

Well, that's a re- really good question, Chris. I think lots of people do wanna be forensic psychologists. I think, you know, crime scene and CSI and all that stuff has got the word forensic into peoples' brains as something glamorous maybe, and there's never a sort of shortage of people with an interest in serial killers, quite a few of whom tend to be psychopaths, although by not all means all. But I, I didn't... I, I kind of didn't really have any of that. I just sort of fell into it. My, my, my job was as a sociologist. I was a, a sociology PhD student and, and the way that I, um, practiced was, uh, using a technique called ethnography where you basically put yourself in with a group of people doing something that you think is cool and interesting. You watch them do it, you do a little bit yourself maybe, participant observation, and then you write about it. And my PhD was on anti-globalization protest, which is miles away, but just as I was finishing, the local mental health trust opened a new wing in Rampton Hospital, which is one of the three maximum security mental hospitals in the UK, uh, for people that were called dangerous and severe personality disorder. So that means basically people who are psychopaths or people who have very, very complex and, and, and usually, uh, high-risk personality disorders such as antisocial or borderline personality disorder. It means that they're at risk of committing a crime. And, and the opportunity came up to do an ethnography there and I was like, "Yeah, that sounds great. Cool. Sign me up. What's a psychopath?" And I just sort of (laughs) I just sort of stuck there. So I really did honestly fall into it. Um, and I think early on in my career, I was a little bit kind of running from pillar to post, being manipulated, confused, and, and not generally getting the whole thing. But with time, you know, it, it sort of comes, I guess.