Dancing With Devils

A renowned forensic psychiatrist on spotting psychopaths.

By Anastasia Toufexis, published on May 01, 1999 - last reviewed on July 21, 2009

PD: There are only so many strategies available. By going through an algorithm, it's fairly straightforward to determine: Is the person going to remain an employee? Is there a treatable mental disorder? How anxious are the people dealing with it? From that information alone, it's fairly clear which direction things are going to go. Then we discuss with the client how to proceed. We discuss scripts for various conversations that will have been had with the threatening person, and caution about bad advice the client is likely to have been given. There are some things that seem tight but can often make a situation worse.

AT: Can you give me an example?

PD: The three most common are restraining orders, calling the police and referral to a mental health professional. Those are all powerful interventions for good or evil, and you have to use them with the right cases. It's like prescribing a medication that's very potent. If you give it to the right patient, she recovers. If you give it to the wrong patient, she dies.

AT: Do you tell women being stalked to change their identity and move?

PD: Not exactly. I give the victim all her options. I'll explain to her directly, or through the employer, that in order to be totally free of risk, it would be necessary in certain cases to move and change identity. To be mostly free of risk it would be necessary to move and conceal home address and work location. To stay in town and work at the same job is to carry a much heavier risk and here's how to minimize it. Only the individual can decide what level of risk she can tolerate and what level of freedom she's willing to sacrifice for the sake of safety.

AT: So much of your life is spent viewing the worst of what human beings can do to each other, but you seem not to be affected by it.

PD: Well, I actually think that there are fewer people that could cope with the work load than could cope with the emotional aspects of the work ! do. If I were to suggest that I had some strength, it would be staying power and energy rather than being able to withstand the stimuli. I think it very much like dealing with anything that is inherently aversive. Consider surgeons and their work. It's unthinkable to put your hands in the warm blood of another human's gut. Even with rubber gloves on. Who'd want to do that? But surgeons get over it.

AT: But the intent there is to help, and what you're seeing is the result of an intent to hurt.

PD: If the question is why I don't get angry, I guess my answer's different from why I don't cry every time.

AT: I'm more interested in why you don't cry.

PD: Once in a while I do.

AT: You'd be sick if you didn't...

PD: It's really bad to cry in front of juries. [Laughter] And it would mislead people, too. The context is different.

It's one thing to come on the hot scene and realize that minutes earlier this young person was alive and had a future and now is dead and lifeless. That would be a highly emotive experience. But when a case comes to me, I'm more remote from the suffering. I've generally already at least heard over the phone the details of the crime and read many documents concerning the case long before I ever see a photograph.

AT: I've always had trouble in hospitals watching operations on live people, but I have no difficulty watching autopsies. Is it that difference?

PD: Exactly, and it's a better analogy than any I've come up with. One of the few times I'm hit emotionally is when I listen to the tapes sadists make of torturing their victims. There the person is currently suffering, you can hear them suffer, and that calls out for an empathic response. But when they're dead, when they're no longer suffering, when it's over, it's hard to feel empathetic for the corpse.

AT: With all that you've seen, how do you retain a positive view of human nature? Or do you believe that people are basically good?

PD: No. No. I think people are inherently self-aggrandizing, pleasureseeking, unempathetic, self-serving, greedy and lustful.

AT: Are you joking?

PT: Just a little.

Dietz in Brief

THEODORE KACZYNSKI The Unabomber

"The fact of the matter is that while he had all the non-diagnostic signs of schizophrenia, like social isolation and poor performance in society, we still don't know about the one diagnostic sign that matters: did he have delusions? His only alleged delusion was his political ideology about technology harming the environment and taking us further from Nature. And lots of sane people believe that."

TAWANA BRAWLEY Allegedly kidnapped/raped by police

"To this day, she's never talked to officials so no one is sure what happened. Actually, if you look at what she said, she never lied. She never made the claims that proved false; her advisers did. What site did was point at someone's badge when asked a question, but she never explained what that meant. She seems to have been caught in a situation that got away from her."

JEFFREY DAHMER Serial killer-necrophiliac-cannibal

"I really liked him. He's one of the few killers I've met who seemed to genuinely want to understand himself. He was cooperative and he saw the humor in some questions. To see if the cannibalism was part of a ritual, I asked him if he had done anything romantic, like eating by candlelight or with mood music. He said, 'No.'"