Whither the Psychopath? Dr. Ed Iannuccilli

Whither the Psychopath? Dr. Ed Iannuccilli

My first encounter with bullies who, in retrospect, I believe were sociopaths, or maybe even psychopaths, was when I was in the fifth grade. Gilbert and Robert approached me in the schoolyard, pushed me against the fence, and asked me for a nickel for protection, “Or we beat the crap out of you!”

I had the nickel Dad gave me to buy some candy at Abe’s Variety, so I offered it up out of fear. Their cold, vacant stares gave me pause. I was protected, I guess. From what, I was not sure. From whom was a no-brainer.

I thought little of them as having a condition. Rather, I thought they were just tough kids, bullies. Until years later when I read that Gilbert blew his fingers off holding a cherry bomb, and Robert was serving a life sentence for murder. The word psychopath cropped up.

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Over the years, I learned of sociopaths and psychopaths in medical school and in my training, and I experienced a few while I was in practice. It was neither easy to define them nor to deal with them, especially when one came to the emergency room in the middle of the night, and I was on call. I learned to recognize the dangerous ones by that glare; a glare that looked beyond me while looking through me.  I received a believable (for me) death threat once and quickly moved out of the examining room as I went for help.

The word psychopath (suffering soul), originated in Germany in the eighteen-eighties. It is the person who obeys his/her impulses regardless of social policies. In the nineteen-twenties, “constitutional psychopathic inferiority” had become the phrase psychiatrists used for a mixture of violent and antisocial characteristics found in incurable criminals. They seemed to lack a conscience.

My experiences come to mind as today I witness the brutal terror and the man who orchestrates that terror in Ukraine. And I observe, thankfully from afar, the behavior that, for me, fits into the category of psychopathic. Putin lacks a conscience.

Here is a dangerous and destructive individual who in pictures exhibits that stare, that look . . . direct, intense, piercing, and caged. It’s the look I remember on those rare encounters. It’s the one that prison guards speak of when they experience hardened criminals.

In his behavior, Putin displays a resentful, monstrous embodiment of evil and delusion; a germ that invades anything human with bitterness and predatory paranoia. As I watch innocents die, I realize that his behavior has yielded to the grotesque.

He is wanton, isolated, and free of contrary counsel. I’m not a psychiatrist. I don’t need to put a mental disorder label on him, save for the word evil.

To be inhuman is to find joy in the cold-blooded killing of innocents. To be human is to look for joy, love, and hope. I am pleased to see so many behaving humanely. I have hope for that. We must have hope in that.

Life is worth much more than a nickel.

Dr. Ed Iannuccilli is the author of three popular memoirs, “Growing up Italian; Grandfather’s Fig Tree and Other Stories”, “What Ever Happened to Sunday Dinner” and “My Story Continues: From Neighborhood to Junior High.”  Learn more HERE.