Do Psychopaths Genuinely Lack Empathy, Or Are They Feeling You?

The most common observation made about psychopaths is that they feel no empathy. I have said it myself in Courtroom testimony, repeating a truism I picked up years ago: “they fail to empathize and are therefore prone to victimize.”

Empathy refers to the ability to understand and share the feelings of others.

As noted in an essential text (The Psychopathic Mind by J. Reid Meloy, Ph.D.) the science unequivocally “supports the hypothesis that psychopathic individuals“ (i.e., those with “antisocial personality disorder”) “are autonomically hyporeactive.”

 

Paul G. Mattiuzzi