Psychopaths Have No Anxiety, Nor Empathy

On May 6, 2011, Jon Stewart interviewed Jon Ronson, the author of “The Men Who Stare At Goats”, and “The Psychopath Test: A Journey Through the Madness Industry”.

Jon Stewart asked Mr. Ronson, “Why would you put yourself in the way of psychopaths?”

Jon Ronson concedes that interviewing them seems silly, “especially because I'm a very anxious person. I suffer from debilitating anxiety, so it seems like a kind of stupid idea to spend two years hanging out with people who basically want to kill me. I'm a neurological opposite of a psychopath, literally. Psychopaths feel no anxiety, and I feel too much anxiety.”

Jon Ronson was interviewing Toto Constant, a CIA operative who was wanted in Haiti for war crimes, when the psychopath (Toto Constant) said that he wanted Jon Ronson to like him. Jon Ronson asked Constnat, “Well, isn't that a kind of weakness, to always want people to like you?”

Toto Constant responded: “No, it's not a weakness, because if you can get people to like you, then you can manipulate them to do whatever you want them to do.”

“The only motive that there ever was was to completely control a person–a person I found physically attractive. And keep them with me as long as possible, even if it meant just keeping a part of them.”

~Jeffrey Dahmer

“It’s a process, it doesn’t happen overnight, when you depersonalize another person and view them as just an object. An object for pleasure and not a living breathing human being. It seems to make it easier to do things you shouldn’t do.”

~Jeffrey Dahmer

Two main characteristics that I associate with psychopaths are a lack of empathy, and a lack of anxiety. Logically, both of them make sense. A psychopath doesn't care about other people, which is why they are able to murder without considering their victim's perspective. And since they do not care what other people think, they have no anxiety.

“I took the drill while he was asleep.”

~Jeffrey Dahmer

“I don't feel guilty for anything. I feel sorry for people who feel guilt.”

~Ted Bundy

“Yes, I do have remorse, but I’m not even sure myself whether it is as profound as it should be. I’ve always wondered myself why I don’t feel more remorse.”

~Jeffrey Dahmer

“I'm as cold a motherfucker as you've ever put your fucking eyes on. I don't give a shit about those people.”

~Ted Bundy

“I don’t even know if I have the capacity for normal emotions or not because I haven’t cried for a long time. You just stifle them for so long that maybe you lose them.”
~Jeffrey Dahmer

“I separated the joints, the arm joints, the leg joints, and had to do two boilings. I think I used four boxes of Soilex for each one, put in the upper portion of the body and boiled that for about two hours and then the lower portion for another two hours. The Soilex removes all the flesh, turns it into a jelly like-like substance and it just rinses off. Then I laid the clean bones in a light bleach solution, left them there for a day and spread them out on either newspaper or cloth and let them dry for about a week in the bedroom.”

~Jeffrey Dahmer

"The killing was a means to an end. That was the least satisfactory part. I didn't enjoy doing that. That's why I tried to create living zombies with uric acid in the drill [to the head], but it never worked. No, the killing was not the objective. I just wanted to have the person under my complete control, not having to consider their wishes, being able to keep them there as long as I wanted."
~Jeffrey Dahmer

The definition of oppression: 

“Oppression is the exercise of authority or power in a burdensome, cruel, or unjust manner. It can also be defined as an act or instance of oppressing, the state of being oppressed, and the feeling of being heavily burdened, mentally or physically, by troubles, adverse conditions or people, and anxiety.”