Now compare to another type of serial killer - Jeffrey Dahmer - whose pathology was more skewed towards possession and partialism (attraction to parts rather than to the whole). Dahmer was certainly selfish and suffered from significant mental and personality disturbances, but was driven more by loneliness and the desire for companionship (albeit a type of companionship that would make most of us retch) than by hate or anger.
A pretty ****ed up example, but when they were uncovering body parts, they found the mummified genitalia and hands of one particular victim. Because he was especially FOND of that person, and wanted to keep him around.
Dahmer is one of a few serial killers that I don't consider completely evil. For some reason, it is easier to feel sympathetic towards him more than the other really gnarly killers.
But you basically answered your own question. If he's on the more extreme range of sociopathy (and like all things, there are ranges - some people who might meet criteria for antisocial personality disorder are going to have more empathy and consideration for others feelings than others), he probably literally just feels no guilt or shame for anything.
Colloquially this might best be explained by simply having a lack of a conscious. No one really understands how it happens, but some people do appear to simply lack the capacity (or have an extremely stunted capacity) to appreciate the emotions or needs of others. If you care only about your own comfort/wealth, it's not that far of a stretch, depending on who you meet, to end up with criminals. And if there's someone in your organization who lacks empathy and doesn't really value life, having that person become a killer for you is a pretty logical choice. This isn't someone who is going to allow sentiment or guilt get in the way of business.
As I said though I'm not familiar with him/his case so there may be more to it. But if he's on the extreme end of sociopathy he just doesn't care about the lives of others or about lying to his family.
He was definitely remorseless...but pertaining to his family...I think he felt he was just trying to protect them from his work.
The only thing he showed any remorse about was his family having to live with the shame of being "Richard Kuklinski's family" after he was incarcerated
Here are the complete interviews....interesting watch IMO.
There's a passage in the graphic novel Goodnight Moon where the author pens "goodnight nobody" and I always liked that part.
I love this book and it's a good thing as I have most definitely read it > 2000 times as both of my kids loved it too when they were younger. It was either Goodnight Moon or Pat the Bunny!
One of the worst things about being old(ish) and broken is the loss of my athletic ability. This is not to say that I was ever a great athlete; I was a decent one for my high school level, and I never embarrassed my friends on intramural teams in college, but I was hardly elite. I was strong for my size and speedy in bursts, but more importantly, I just loved sports. I played some type of team sport on and off from Little League/AYSO all the way through college. One year in college I counted and over the course of the two semesters I played on nine different intramural teams (class? **** class, I've got a floor hockey match!), and some of my best memories include pivotal games/wins. The varsity patches I got in high school. The game winning goal in indoor college soccer vs. TKE.
Now I can throw my back out just by standing up wrong or sneezing (literally). My boyfriend has never seen me do anything more athletic than throw a frisbee around. I miss that. I think that's a large part of why I enjoy poker tournaments so much. Poker isn't a sport (ldo), but it's at least competitive to some degree, and I very much enjoyed competing, even if that used to involve far more bruises and sweat than you normally find at a poker table.
I wouldn't go back and not join the Army, but having my back get screwed up is far and away the one thing about that entire experience I wish I could change (well that and being sexually assaulted).
So like two weeks ago now, there was a fire in the apartment above mine. Actually there were two fires in my apartment complex that week - one two or three buildings down from mine, and the one above my apartment. The other one was MUCH bigger. Watching outside you could see actual flames shooting from the balcony and roof, and the next day (when we could walk around that building again) it was obvious that several apartments, at least five or six, are gutted or close to. A couple of others have to have fairly significant smoke/water damage. I think they suspect arson in that one, there were cops and other official looking vehicles here just yesterday parked outside that building again.
The fire above my apartment was much smaller (thank heavens). It's a vacant, and apparently while doing some work in there they left a vent fan on and something shorted and caught the insulation on fire. It was a small, smoldering affair. By the time it set off any alarms it had already caused a decent amount of damage in the are the insulation caught, but it never got that big or hot, so it was put out very quickly. For which I of course am eternally grateful. While I have renter's insurance, replacing a bunch of stuff still would have been a massive pain in the ass. Instead it was a fairly minor annoyance - we had to evacuate for about an hour and a half while they put the fire out, then were kicked out of our place for the night while the fire marshall did whatever fire marshall's do at a fire scene that night. The complex paid for a room. We got power back about noon the next day (Friday), and got our cable and internet back late Saturday afternoon. I got to see the damage while the Comcast guy was here since he had to get into the burned apartment to splice the lines back together - they were severed during the fire dousing efforts.
Probably one of the most stressful parts of the entire escapade was having to wrangle my two cats (a 4.5 year old male and a 1.5 year old female, both Siamese). I was in the living room waiting for Thursday night football to start when I saw the lights from the emergency vehicles out in the parking lot (my fire alarm never went off, nor did the big building one). I poked my head out the side door and one of them shouted at me to get out of the building. ****.
Otis (the boy) was fairly easy to catch. When I first got him, he never fought much when I tried to put him in a carrier. But he's too smart for his own damn good; it took him like two times to figure out that if the carrier appeared in the living room, that meant he was going in it fairly soon. This resulted in several comical and bloody incidents where I learned exactly how strong his back legs are.
Proving that I am not as smart as my cat, I did it the hard was at least 4 or 5 times before figuring out that if I just threw a blanket over him and wrapped him up, he couldn't see what was happening OR kick me until it was too late. Now he gets a bit suspicious when he sees me walk towards him holding a blanket, but fortunately during the day he's mostly sleeping so it's easy to surprise him. He wasn't sleeping here, but he also didn't try to get away with anywhere near enough speed or urgency, so he was quickly and efficiently wrapped up and chucked into a carrier.
Then there was Phantom.
Phantom is new, and she is not the easiest cat to approach even when she's relaxed and eager for attention. She was originally in a feral colony, and while she was pretty clearly not fully feral and has fit in very well, she had only been in our home for a month when this happened.
So there's noises she can now hear from the apartment upstairs. So she's in my walk-in closet, which is close to perfect, right? It's an enclosed space with limited places to hide. So this will be quick and painless! Grab another blanket and get her so I can go outside before the apartment burns down.
Unfortunately, I am not, as I already admitted, as smart as my cats. Or even smart enough to CLOSE THE BEDROOM OR CLOSET DOOR!
And for an 8.5 pound cat, she can struggle pretty fiercely even when partially wrapped up in a blanket.
So now she's scared, and she knows I'm trying to catch her for some unfathomable reason. I can't find her at first. The noises upstairs are getting louder, although I don't see any smoke. Am I in danger? Am I going to burn up trying to find a damn cat?
Well, obviously not, but this was my frame of mind.
It took me 1 minute to catch Otis. It took at least 25 to catch Phantom. She hide behind the couch, then under the dresser, then back in the closet. Eventually I managed to get her in a small enough space and with the blanket firmly enough over her that I was able to claim victory, sweaty and triumphant, over a tiny little cat.
They got to spend the night at home even if we didn't. The hotel they sent us to took pets, but I had let them out of the carriers as soon as we were allowed back into the apartment, and damned if I was going to go through all that again.
... The game winning goal in indoor college soccer vs. TKE.
Reminds me of my own college IM days, playing soccer and beating the frat boys was always very satisfying, especially when I was in graduate school and my team was much older then them (and much more sober). Ironically, I now play against one of the guys I played with 20+ years later and 1200 miles away.
Anyway, thanks for the entertaining read, and GL finishing up the dissertation.
