This neuroscientist accidentally discovered he was a psychopath. How can you pick them?
James Fallon was almost 60 when he learnt the truth about himself. And it was by accident. In 2005, the US neuroscientist was poring through brain scans for research when he stumbled upon the signs of that infamous rarity in human nature: a psychopath.
The discovery would make Fallon rethink the importance of nurture as opposed to nature. Biologically, his brain had all the markers of a dangerous psychopath. “But I’d never wanted to hurt anyone,” he says. Though he’d always been a risk-taker, driving fast cars and motorbikes in his youth, extreme skiing, he’d never run afoul of the law. “I had no need to, I had a great childhood, surrounded by this sea of love in a big Irish Sicilian family who kept an eye on me, kept me busy. So I got lucky.
Bates killed while in the grip of a psychosis. Bateman too, though more the picture of cold remorseless psychopathy in his designer suits, was also experiencing delusions. Psychopathy, by contrast, Sullivan says, tends to be stable over time. “It’s not a mental illness that you’ve developed one day. This is kind of hardwired into your personality.”
People can have psychopathic traits without quite making the cut-off for clinical psychopath, Sullivan adds. That’s determined by psychiatric assessment. Fallon himself sits right on the borderline.While those who are mentally unwell are more likely to be the target of violence than to carry it out, psychopaths are much more likely to harm those around them. A high percentage of violent offenders are psychopaths and a high number of psychopaths are violent offenders.