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M.K. Styllinski
Most people will think that the existence of female psychopaths is negligible if they exist at all. Television, plays, movies and pulp fiction have all portrayed the female psychopath alongside her male counterpart drawn from myths, folklore and fables since time immemorial. The femme fatale and scheming devil-woman have all gone through the mill of the artist’s imagination feeding off the potent archetype of the feminine vampire.
Admittedly, the influence of male prejudice and patriarchal residues still echo through literature and cultural mores of the day, but taking into account such bias, we seem averse to the idea that female psychopathy could be a significant reality. A serious lack of data and knowledge regarding the dynamics of the female psychopath has stemmed from our preconceived ideas about gender roles largely sourced from ideas of Mother Nature and nurturing; that women are passive, weak and non-violent. A male can be evaluated and found to be psychopathic, whereas a female can take advantage of these cultural stereotypes, often playing on the dominance of male bias in law enforcement and related institutions thereby escaping true diagnosis, usually in favour of histrionic or Narcissistic Personality Disorder (NPD).
Since the female psychopath has both a mask of sanity and the imbedded cultural bias she has a double advantage which allows her to escape detection. Robert Hare asks us not to be deceived as the: “… variety and severity of criminal acts performed by these women, as well as their capacity for cold-blooded violence, are similar to those committed by their male counterparts.”
The pathological narcissist, the Histrionic Personality Disorder (HPD) and the female psychopath all conform to the archetype of the feminine vampire. Of course, this energy sucker is neither male nor female in reality but the methods of energy extraction are different for each. The female vampire goes for the pity hook of a damsel in distress while the male stimulates the “mother instinct” in the guise of the “little boy lost” playing on the passivity, sensitivity and vulnerability so enamoured of gender stereotypes. This has particular relevance in that so many ordinary people exhibit these traits to a greater or lesser degree and as a general symptom of a society saturated in narcissistic values.
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