Posted on 31/05/2024 in Dorothy Says, My Diary

So, how do you deal with your friendly neighbourhood psychopath?

‘They’re over-represented in politics for sure.’ That’s what the clinical psychologist I spoke to when I was researching Give Him To Me told me when we discussed psychopaths. ‘You definitely meet more in every-day life than you do in say prisons, but they do seem to be over-represented in politics and political life.’

According to VeryWell Health: ‘Researchers use the term “psychopath” to describe a person who exhibits consistently callous and unemotional behaviour. A person displaying psychopathy lacks empathy, shame, and remorse, which leads them to consistently violate the rights and well-being of others. They may lie, cheat, or steal to get their way.’

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I mean, this isn’t something I didn’t know, but it was properly clarified when I wrote Every Smile You Fake. The profiler and therapist I spoke to then explained that people who show signs of psychopathy are very often specifically recruited to high level positions in companies and government. Why?

Well, as my main character, Kez, in Every Smile You Fake explains: ‘Psychopathy is a trait that I’ve seen displayed by so many people in the upper echelons of the businesses I consult for. They are there because they have no conscience about doing whatever is necessary to get a company what it wants. They are recruited for this reason. They will do the things other humans – normal humans who know what it is to feel empathy and worry and love – will not do. They have no conscience and will readily twist a narrative to make themselves the victim, to make you the enemy for questioning them.’

Substitute ‘business’/ ‘company’ with ‘political party’ and look where we are. At the moment, it feels like a lot of politicians are going out of their way to prove both psychologists’ points, because what the hell? What the actual hell is going on?

We have the billionaire Prime Minister trying to convince us that the last 14 years, which have seen their policies cause poverty and suffering to reach epidemic levels, haven’t actually been that bad, so we should vote for him. And then we have the leader of the ‘opposition’ walking, talking and acting like a dictator, deciding his way is the only way, and not listening to what voters are saying they actually want from a change of resident at number 10. Remind you of anyone who was resident at Downing Street circa 2019-2022?

All of this is against a global backdrop of political leaders who are actively ignoring their populations’ pleas and calls for an end to genocide, massacres, fighting, famine and slavery. It’s truly horrifying.

Although I’m politically vocal and active in real life, I don’t usually talk politics online because it often leads to arguing with people I don’t need to engage with, but these past few months, weeks and days have been so distressing I’m having to express myself here.

And this time period have brought home in the strongest terms the psychology behind the thirst for political power. How that thirst can act as a trigger for expressing psychopathic behaviours in the characters in the stories I tell and, it seems, in the people who run the world.

You know, when someone in public life or in politics displays again what I’ve come to see as psychopathic traits, I have to remind myself: You can’t shame these people/politicians/High-Functioning Psychopaths (HFP) into doing the right thing. They do not feel shame, they will not be upset when you show them the consequences of their actions. The only way to get through to them is to make them see that it’s in THEIR best interest to do what you are asking them to do

And that gives us substantial power and is how you deal with these ‘friendly’ neighbourhood psychopaths. A note to your MP threatening to withdraw your support and vote is going to have much more impact than asking them to think about whose life is going to be effected when they privatise the NHS. (Make no mistake, both of the ‘main’ parties are openly promising to do this right now – they’ve been grooming us for years to accept that the huge amounts of money we already pay isn’t enough and we need to give more to the private sector to sort out our health service’s problems.)

But on the point that we have power over our MPs, we’ve seen it in action time and again – kicking up enough of a fuss on and off social media, almost always causes whichever HFP we’re dealing with to back down, change tact or resign. If enough people oppose them, they’ll either pretend they were never going to do that thing, that you never saw or heard them try to do that thing, or they’ll try to change the policy/law to allow them to do that thing (anti-protest laws anyone?).

High functioning psychopaths (HFP) as I think they are, care more about how something effects them and their public standing than how it can potentially upend or even end ordinary people’s lives. So this is the time for us to step up and flex our power.

It might seem inevitable that we’re going to be trading one set of high-functioning psychopaths for another, but I truly believe that it’s important to try to mitigate the coming storm even if we can’t prevent it by making our voices heard before it happens. Write to the leader of the opposition, to your MP or the person standing in your area and make your concerns clear, remind them that YOU can stop them getting that spot in power they’re chasing. Remind them that they work for you, not the other way around.

Babes, I’m not going to tell you who to vote for – that’s between you and your ballot paper, but even if I was that way minded, I’d have no clue who to suggest.

I know that in the past I’ve held my nose and voted because one group of HFP was absolutely and objectively worse than the other. But now, in this here 2024, with the real-life big reveals about previous candidates of choice, I just don’t think I can hold my nose again. And that’s got me feeling a lot like Kez at a certain point in Every Smile You Fake – each choice I have comes with huge downsides and I’m not sure which downside I can live with more than the others.

At this point, I am keeping my fingers crossed that I’ll get a last-minute plot twist that will see a common-or-garden politician who comes with a normal amount of sleaze and dodginess swooping in to offer a viable option.

Yes, I know hoping for a ‘normal’ dodgy politician isn’t ideal thinking, but at the moment, I’d take one of those old-school politicians who’d resign for fiddling their expenses over the truly terrifying psychopathic levels currently being displayed by leaders and politicians across the world and in this country right now. Wish me – and you – luck, I think we’re all going to need it.

That’s all for now, lovelies. Hope you’re as OK and sheltered from this storm as you can be.

Dorothy x

You can pre-order Every Smile You Fake paperback (on sale 29 August) here: Pre-order Every Smile You Fake paperback and Give Him To Me hardback (on sale 15 February) here: Pre-order Give Him To Me