By Daily Mail (U.S.) | Created at 2026-06-12 09:52:34 | Updated at 2026-06-12 17:18:58
7 hours ago
The opening scene to the TV show of my life might go something like this.
Two female, 20-something, super-smart graduate lawyers are talking over lunch. One of them appears confident and assured, immaculately dressed. The other woman is dishevelled and crying. She’s just heard some terrible news: her father has terminal cancer.
She doesn’t know how she’s going to cope, she says. She loves her father very much and wants to be there for him, but she’s worked so hard to get on this graduate program.
How lucky they are to have each other for support, she says, and reaches for her companion’s hand. The confident woman eyes her coldly, before pushing her hand away. ‘I think it’s best if we don’t see each other any more,’ she says. ‘You are looking for an emotional caretaker, and that is not a role I am willing, or able, to offer.
‘Maybe call me once the situation is resolved.’ Then she picks up her handbag and walks out – leaving her crying ‘friend’ stunned.
That was me – or a stylised version of me – more than 20 years ago. Not the terribly wronged one, but the one walking away without a backwards glance.
Does my behaviour sound callous to you? Monstrous even?
I expect it does – not that I care. I am a psychopath, you see. Yes, a real, living, breathing and actually rather charming, one.
Jamie Townsend was officially diagnosed as suffering from antisocial personality disorder in 2010, at the age of 30, after years of living under the radar
I was raised in San Diego in a religious, Mormon family with a violent and shaming father and an indifferent, sometimes hysterical mother, writes Townsend
I was officially diagnosed in 2010, at the age of 30, after years of living under the radar – a wolf among sheep. Through dual quirks of genetics and environment, I suffer from what psychologists now refer to as antisocial personality disorder, characterised as ‘a pervasive pattern of disregard for, and violation of the rights of, others’.
Key among the characteristics of the diagnosis are a lack of remorse, a penchant for deceit and a failure to conform to social norms. Also on the list are our huge sense of self-worth and megalomania, talent for manipulation – of people and situations – impulsivity and dangerous thrill seeking.
I say ‘our’ because psychopaths are not as rare as you’d think; some estimates say as many as one in every 25 people is one. That’s higher than the percentage of people with autism.
Oh, and we routinely dispose of people once their burden to us exceeds their utility – as I did with my good friend, whom I’d met at law school, all those years ago.
I still feel no remorse about how I treated her. It had to be done; all I felt afterwards was relief.
I know many people reading this will be baulking in horror at that word: ‘psychopath’.
It usually conjures up thoughts of serial killers or fictional monsters such as Hannibal Lecter.
In reality, however, I’m just like you. OK, maybe not exactly like you. As an accomplished attorney and law professor, I am probably more intelligent than most. I’m a highly skilled musician and sportswoman too, and a trusted member of my community.
I have a close circle of family and friends whom I love – yes, psychopaths are capable of love – and who very much love me, and I have been in a committed and loving relationship for eight years. I’m not a criminal; there’s no murder kit in the boot of my car nor severed human body parts stashed in my freezer.
In fact, only 20 per cent of prison inmates are psychopaths (although we are probably responsible for an estimated half of serious crimes committed).
I prefer to see my psychopathy as a set of traits that inform my personality but don’t define me. I am generally free of entangling and irrational emotions, such as guilt and empathy, but can also struggle to react appropriately to other people’s confusing and emotion-driven social cues.
The silent majority of psychopaths live freely and anonymously, doing no serious harm – except offending a few people now and then. That’s not to say I have never wanted to kill someone – haven’t we all? One incident that springs to mind is a Metro worker in Washington DC who, a few years back, shouted at me for accidentally using a closed escalator. Outraged at the injustice of the verbal assault, I followed him down the tunnel, my mind calm with purpose. I envisaged an empty hallway, my thumbs digging deeply into his throat, his life slipping away under my grasp. How right that would feel...
In the end, I lost him in the crowd. I doubt I actually would have killed him; my self-imposed rules – my carefully constructed ‘trip switch’ that keeps me in line with acceptable behaviour – would have stopped me. Plus, I’m only 5ft 3in and weigh less than 9st. I put the feeling down to a fantasy and moved on.
I’ve felt this way my whole life. I was raised in San Diego, the precociously bright middle child of six in a religious, Mormon family, with a violent and shaming father – a lawyer too – and an indifferent, sometimes hysterical mother.
Dad was quick with his temper. Mum, meanwhile – a gifted piano teacher who dreamed of becoming an actress – lived her life in a state of dissatisfaction and frustration. Whenever one of us would get sick or hurt, my mother would throw up her arms and cry: ‘Oh great! Well now what am I supposed to do?’
While I never doubted their love for me, that love was inconstant and sometimes very ugly. Were they psychopaths too? While I am the only one with a formal diagnosis, my parents raised all their children with a shared perspective of blunt practicality and disdain for moral sentiment.
It’s a fair assumption, therefore, that they had a personality disorder of some description.
The question of nature versus nurture for psychopaths is controversial. Arguing ‘nature’ seems to give us a free pass, that being ‘born with it’ somehow makes us more pitiable and acceptable by society. Whereas arguing nurture suggests that one day we might ‘get better’.
The answer is probably both. While there is a clear genetic link, psychologists believe environment plays a significant role in triggering those genes.
Personally, I think I am how I am because I never learned how to trust. Rather than looking to other people for stability, I learned to depend on myself.
Apparently, when I was left at nursery for the first time, I was the only baby who didn’t cry or ask for my parents, playing happily until I was picked up. It made no difference to me where I was or who was looking after me.
My parents didn’t notice my oddities; how I never formed connections with my childhood acquaintances, never seeing them as anything more than moving objects in my games.
I lied all the time and stole things, but more often than not I would just manipulate other children into giving things to me – favourite toys and new pencils.
Recklessness and thrill seeking is another trait of the child psychopath. I always upped the ante of neighbourhood games; if we were jumping off the diving board into the pool, I’d be the one suggesting we jumped off the roof.
You might think other parents dreaded me coming over – but I probably would have charmed my way past them if they did.
Once, alone at a pool, I saw a baby opossum – a type of marsupial native to America, which some consider a pest – in the water. It was probably only a week old, its tiny pink paws frantically paddling, its even tinier pink nose struggling above the surface. Another person might have helped it. I watched it drown.
I didn’t feel sad or happy about it. I took no pleasure in its suffering; I simply did not give it a thought. I was concerned only for myself. It wasn’t likely the creature would cause me much harm if I saved it, but there was no upside for me if I did.
As a teen, I was that nihilistic fool riding in a shopping trolley towed behind a car, and the one getting into fist fights and hitching lifts in strangers’ cars – always in search of a rush. Although I was largely immune to how dangerous this behaviour was, my siblings and friends weren’t, and they’d beg me to be more careful for their ‘peace of mind’. But my mind is almost always at peace no matter what I do. Which is why I never bothered to be careful.
Besides, I had my own rule book, collected over a lifetime observing ‘empaths’ (as we psychopaths call the rest of you) and working out a social code to keep me alive, out of jail and in gainful employment. It was that code book I referred to that day on the Metro in Washington DC. It was the rule that reminded me ‘I’ve decided not to kill people, so I won’t strangle this obnoxious man’, not an innate sense of guilt, morality or right and wrong.
That’s why religion has always worked well for me, because its rules are very explicit. I was able to make up for my inability to intuit social norms by following the church’s expectations. I’m sure I’m not alone in these ‘masking’ behaviours among psychopaths, which is why you probably haven’t spotted any of us among your friends, colleagues and even lovers.
While it may sound rather depressing to you, there are advantages to being a psychopath – we make great lawyers, writes Townsend
Townsend's parents didn’t notice their daughter's oddities – such as how she never formed connections with childhood acquaintances
Dating as a psychopath is interesting. What I seek in a relationship is power. There’s the power of being desired or admired. But also the power to touch, mould or ruin people – not because I want to witness the results, but simply because I can. Power is all I’ve ever cared about.
I have a cavalier attitude towards gender too – I date both men and women. Our lack of empathy and blindness to social norms mean psychopaths do not have an established default position on anything, including our sexuality. I see no point in making fine distinctions between people based on the equipment they were born with.
I have the same attitude to cheating, which is probably why the longest relationship I had until I met my current partner, at 37, was just eight months.
While it may sound rather depressing to you, there are advantages to being a psychopath. We make great lawyers. Not only are the psychopaths willing to do the dirty work, but they are also often better at doing it.
We recognise the self-interest that hides in every heart, ferreting out the hidden motivations and dirty secrets.
I was in law school when a colleague casually raised the idea I could be a psychopath – the first person ever to do so. A theology student, we’d got into a discussion about guilt and empathy, and she picked up how clueless I was on the subject. I was not offended. I was already well accustomed to the idea there was something different about me, and determined to find out more.
In 2008, two years before my official diagnosis, I started writing my anonymous blog called SociopathWorld.com, which I intended as an online community for people who identify as sociopaths or psychopaths
The two personality disorders are very similar, with the difference chiefly being that psychopaths are often considered to be ‘born’, while sociopaths’ behaviour is seen as stemming from environmental factors. In America, sociopath is the generally used term.
Soon I was attracting thousands of followers every day. When I eventually sought an official diagnosis in 2010, it came as a relief; I was glad there was a word for what I’d known all along, that I wasn’t the only one like this.
Since then, I’ve been selective about who I tell and when. From a legal perspective, professionally I’m not obliged to disclose it, and I’ve become attuned to when it’s simply easier not to say anything.
When I wrote my best-selling book, Confessions of a Sociopath, in 2013, I did so under the pseudonym M.E. Thomas as I was aware of the negative connotations associated with my personality disorder. Despite my best efforts, I was quickly outed. How many Mormon, female law professors are there?
I was working as a visiting professor at a university law school in San Francisco when I received a message from the administration asking me outright: ‘Is this you?’ When I confessed it was, I was quickly ordered to stay ‘1,000 yards away from the college campus’. Students were worried they’d be murdered by their professor, apparently. These were the same students I’d been teaching for two terms, without incident. I was popular and respected.
I lost my job, my income – everything. I even had to move, as my apartment fell within the exclusion zone on campus.
Even a colleague I was working alongside as a researcher on an academic paper called me to tell me to ‘keep her name out of my mouth’ and said she wanted nothing more to do with me. Some might call it karma – hadn’t I dealt with people with similar calculating indifference over the years? But the whole incident traumatised me.
It led to years of therapy but today, aged 45, I find myself in a much calmer, happier place.
I’ll never regret writing the book. It became like a ‘bat signal’ to a whole new world of psychopaths, and I’ve met so many cool people. Besides, I always manage to bounce back – eventually.
I am back working as a jobbing attorney, practising company law. If my employers know about my diagnosis, they don’t mention it. I’m good at my job, which is all that really matters.
I am also in my first successful relationship. I met my girlfriend – a fellow psychopath, though she’s not ‘out’ as one – through my blog. When we first kissed, it was like we were soul bonded.
We have clear rules, however, such as strict ‘no manipulation, no lies’ boundaries. It seems to work – two misunderstood people finding understanding.
I’m often asked if a pill existed to make me ‘normal’, would I take it? The answer is yes, of course I would, but not because I want to stop being a psychopath – that has been too much fun. No, I’d take it just for the experience – I’m still always looking for the next big thrill. But then I’d be happy to go back to being me.
- Adapted from Confessions of a Sociopath by M.E Thomas (Pan, £10.99). © M.E Thomas 2013. To order a copy for £9.89 (offer valid until 25/06/26) go to www.mailshop.co.uk/books or call 020 3176 2937. Free UK delivery on orders over £25.
