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Essay on John Wayne Gacy
The work of Hare and his associates clarified a set of diagnostic criteria that offers a practical approach to both the assessment and treatment of psychopaths. Too many people hold the idea that psychopaths are essentially killers or convicts (Hare, 1991). The general public hasn't been educated to see beyond the social stereotypes to understand that psychopaths can be entrepreneurs, politicians, CEOs and other successful individuals who may never see the inside of a prison and who don't commit violent crimes. However, they do often commit violations of another sort: They exploit people and leave them depleted and much the worse for the encounter (Hare, 2003).
They prove to be treacherous employees, conniving businessmen, or immoral officials who use their position to victimize people and enrich themselves. Hare says that we know little about these individuals in terms of systematic study about how the disorder manifests in the public at large. Nevertheless, there are indications that the personality structure and propensity for unethical treatment of others is common to both criminal and non-criminal psychopaths.
Yet while not all killers are psychopaths, and not all psychopaths are killers, Hare does describe cases of conscienceless killers who appeared to show no human feeling for their victims. Among them, Hare listed The psycho-pathic serial killer John Wayne Gacy murdered thirty-three young men and boys, but described himself as the victim because he had been robbed of his childhood.
The type of violence in which he engage is qualitatively different from that of non-psychopathic offenders in that it is likely to be more predatory, motivated by identifiable goals, and carried out in a calculated manner without an emotional context (Hare, 1991). He tended not to commit crimes of passion, such as during a domestic dispute or extreme arousal. Hare believes that psychopaths may be motivated by weak emotions breaking through weaker restraints.............
