A disclaimer before I go on:

I am in no way an expert in any behavioral science. Nor have I made a disciplined and thorough, academic study of psychopathic behavior. I’ve read a lot, thought a lot, and engaged smart people in conversations. Here are my thoughts, for whatever they are worth.

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Serial killers have strange sounding names. Corrl, Chickatello, Fish, Dahmer, Gacy. Or maybe they have the power to ruin a name, to twist it somehow, so that it sounds off-key in our ears.

Bundy.

See what I mean?

Clearly serial killers have embedded themselves, almost mythically, into our cultural consciousness. We are afraid of them, and even mentioning their names gives some people the shivers.

“They’re psychopaths,” people say. And then, as if you didn’t get it the first time, they repeat the word. “PSYCHOpaths!”

Psychopaths are people who cannot feel for others. They don’t feel pity or compassion. They seem to be missing some precious human component that most of us take for granted. Psychopathy exists on a continuum, as does almost everything. Serial killers are on the far end of that continuum. There are many people in our world who have a hard time feeling compassion. That doesn’t make them bad people or likely to become serial killers. Most of them do the best they can. You have probably known people like this. These are people who seem rather cold and distant. They can be a little selfish or even narcissistic.

I’ve read about psychopathy, but I can’t understand it at a gut level. If the psychopath cannot imagine what it means to feel love or compassion, I can’t imagine what it would be like NOT to feel those things. What I’ve looked for is some explanation of what a psychopath experiences, what life is like for him or her. So far I’ve not found anything that describes the condition emotionally in ways that help me to understand it.

So, like any good writer, I simply made something up. After a number of years of trying to understand the mind of a psychopath, I’ve come up with a way of thinking about how their minds work. I offer this to you for your consideration and with the complete understanding that it is simply my best guess.

I will describe this imaginary person as a man, because almost all serial killers are men.

Imagine that you are in a room full of people. All of them are holding bricks. To your great surprise, these people seem very attached to these bricks. They dress them in little clothes, coo at them, and tell stories about them. They take turns holding each other’s bricks, and they pet the bricks gently with their hands. Everyone seems to be having such a good time with the bricks.

Suddenly, a brick is dropped and broken. The entire room is seized by a collective spasm of grief and horror. Some people run over and desperately try to put the brick back together. Others stand about crying and sobbing uncontrollably. All the while, you stand there, stony-faced, trying to figure out what is going on. You’re a smart person, so you obviously understand that everyone likes these bricks a lot. But you cannot muster any feelings for them, either positive or negative. They are just bricks. So what if one is broken?

People look strangely at you because you aren’t showing emotions. You solemnly nod and try to look sad and concerned because you want to fit it. But it is impossible to make yourself feel something that you do not feel. No one can do that. You can't make yourself feel compassion or sympathy for a brick.

Over time you begin to understand that there is something missing inside you. And you can tell it is something that is very important and wonderful. You pretend to care about other people because you need to get along and because you would like to be a part of the game of love that everyone else seems to be enjoying. You become rather sophisticated at this, saying and doing the right things at the right time.

You do feel something that you call love, but it is only a very selfish and primitive kind of love, though you have no way of knowing that. For you, love feels more like possessing someone, having them for your own. You also have a sex drive. You understand that need. You are fascinated by women and drawn to them sexually, though you aren’t able to care for them as individuals. This causes you a lot of difficulties as you repeatedly try and fail at one relationship after another. Having the sexual drive without the caring component means that all of your attempts at romance have been stilted, awkward, and unsatisfying. You have a few relationships, but certainly not with healthy women. Over time you develop some very unbalanced ideas about women, and your anger grows.

There is one feeling that you have and recognize. It is the wonderful feeling of having your own needs met. When you get something you want, you feel a surge of happiness. Every human experiences happiness, of course, but since you have fewer avenues to find happiness, you cling to this one kind of happiness with an obsessive need that is very dangerous. You will stop at almost nothing to get what you want, because other people don’t really matter, and getting what you want is the greatest feeling in the world.

I don’t know how close to reality this picture is, but I believe it is a better way to think about serial killers than simply calling them monsters or saying, derisively, “They don’t feel anything!” as though they have some control over that. The psychopath is dealing with a limitation that causes extraordinary problems living with other people, and we should recognize that no one ever chooses to be a psychopath.

The psychopathic personality is but one component in the volatile mix that ultimately produces a serial killer. There are at least three components, as far as I can tell.

First, there is the psychopathic person, who is created by a combination of genetic, biological, and environmental factors that are not clearly understood by experts. I'm not sure our experts are even close to understanding these factors.

Second, there is the present environment or situation in which a psychopath finds himself. In the right environment and with some help, perhaps this person finds ways of coping. In other environments, his condition worsens.

And finally, there is the most mysterious component of all – human choice. Most people in the worst circumstances still do not become serial killers. There is the matter of our freedom and our choosing. In all human behavior, one choice leads to another. Choices along a certain path become both easier and harder. It is easier to hurt someone the second time and easier still after that. And it is harder to say no to an addictive need the farther you go along the addictive journey. But at the beginning, somewhere, you had some choices.

At the end of many paths are extreme behaviors that seem insane to most people. There are people who weigh 900 pounds and cannot get out of bed. They are not the only people with eating disorders, and they did not fall into that situation easily. There are men whose entire lives revolve around the acquisition and consumption of hard-core pornography. The end-of-the-line stuff. Any reasonable assessment of the content of that pornography would reveal that it is not beautiful or sensuous in any common definition of those words. Those who crave it might not even enjoy experiencing the acts depicted. But they lust after their pornography with an intensity that is frightening. In most of these cases, there were combinations of emotional and/or mental illness AND personal choice all along the way.

So too, those who lack any recognizable ability to love and feel for others. Some of these find themselves in some unique or tragic environment that feeds their psychopathy. And some of these, in weakness, make a series of choices that lead them down an unthinkable path to the end of the line. By the time they reach the end, they have very little freedom of choice left, if any. But it is this critical choice element that means they are responsible for their actions. To take away their responsibility is another way of dehumanizing them.

Serial killers must be held responsible for hurting others, but our growing understanding of the complex nature of their personalities must guide us as we decide how to deal with them.

Coming next: What we should do with serial killers when they are caught, both from a cultural and a spiritual point of view.

rlp