Most of what I’ve read about psychopathy includes the lack of conscience in psychopaths.  In The Sociopath Next Door (good book, I’d call it a must-read), Martha Stout describes conscience as an intervening sense of obligation based in our emotional attachment to others.  I think that’s a very good description, and it makes sense.

My psychopath’s attachments to others were about as strong as his attachments to the objects in his possession.  Any sense of obligation was weak at best, and its demonstration was usually the bare minimum required to keep things the way he wanted them or to preserve the image he presented to others.  He would choose the things he wanted to do in preserving his image.  Example:  for his image as a good father he spent hours with one child at sports practice (public place: great dad!), something he liked, but no one-on-one time with the special needs child that would help improve skills or grades (at home: not so great!).  My conscience bothered me and they weren’t my kids.  It didn’t bother the psychopath any more than not paying his bills.  I didn’t consider until much later that he might not have a conscience, but it seems more obvious now.

Why is it so hard to see that someone doesn’t have a conscience? There’s quite a bit of information in Martha Stout’s book.  We might assume a person is acting out of conscience when really the person is acting due to social pressure or self-esteem or to avoid a consequence.  Our observation might be clouded by charm, seduction, etc., or the role they play in society.  It might be our conscience itself acting against us – Stout says “The self-questioning of conscience seldom admits absolute certainty into the mind, and even when it does, certainty feels treacherous to us, as if it may trick us into punishing someone unjustly, or performing some other unconscionable act”.  Even how we are brought up plays a role.  That makes me feel like less of an idiot but not less of a victim.

Some people claim psychopaths (who are without conscience) are less than human.  My conscience certainly doesn’t care for the idea, it rebels against it.  Of course, it didn’t like the red flags my intuition sent up, either, and I was taken in.  This same conscience berates me for having been taken in.  It’s hard to sleep some nights with all that activity, and I try to imagine what it would be like to not have a conscience, and to fall asleep at the drop of a hat.  I just can’t do it, how quiet and empty and alien that would be is beyond me.  Anyway, I heard the unexamined life is not worth living, and that’s a happy thought my conscience can totally embrace.