They possess.Ĭhildren, for instance, are an irritation, products of the loins that may occasionally cause trouble, but which ultimately serve a purpose, useful in keeping up social appearances (if that fails, children can always be disowned). Family members are possessions, tears of loss for an important object their deepest sentiment. Perhaps it occurs to you that even wife-beaters must love their wives, or why keep them around otherwise? Sociopaths don't always fake emotion or attachment. Well, you get things like human trafficking, plutocratic oligarchies, and Donald Trump. if ego were all that mattered, a desire to dominate others, the shameless manipulation: quintessence of a creature with the mind of a man but the soul of an insect, no trappings of honor or personal responsibility (let alone personality). if impulse control simply meant biding your time. What do you get when you hollow a human of conscience? If there were no empathy, no guilt, no shame, no anxiety, no compunction. Perhaps the most heartrending moment of the video is near the beginning, when in a tiny voice the girl cries out: “Dad.” an instant before he starts to hit her.

Not even the mother in the video, who – both because of her husband’s behavior and in spite of it – exposed her children to his malice in the misguided faith that deep inside we are all essentially the same - that beneath her husband’s veneer of cruelty was someone ill and needy, someone she could change - that he could be a better man. Not in the justice system, which cannot prosecute him (statute of limitations being what it is - hey, it’s not like he did drugs or anything, he was just sadistically beating a child).

Not in punishment or revenge, but as a simple matter of course. If only someone could walk into the scene and drag that man away - end him cleanly somewhere off stage. Her mother tells her to 'bend over and take it like a woman' moments after the man's sadistic promise to beat her 'into fucking submission', to teach her obedience, hitting her while she begs from a corner of the room so all the camera can catch are her screams. ***Warning: this review is not for the fainthearted.***Ī video recently went viral of a Texas judge savagely beating his disabled teenage daughter with a belt.

The Psychopath Test by Jon Ronson