Everyone deserves our empathy, even when, or more accurately, especially when they have harmed us. This is different from forgiveness. Empathy opens up the heart even wider because it is an aspect of love. It allows us to walk in another person’s shoes, to see and feel life from their perspective. It expands our humanity and enriches our life because we are able to give and receive more love. It allows us to heal the wounds that we have suffered at the hands of the wounded people who have been in our lives. As we let go of the pain, anger and negative emotions, we make more room for joy, happiness and love.
Abusers and Killers Can Be Psychopaths
Our current understanding of psychopaths is that they are incapable of change. They have no ability to experience empathy or remorse and will actually use the information that they learn about human nature to increase their ability to hurt people. I know one such person who schooled himself in psychology in order to use the information to manipulate others. He read the complete works of Freud and other books like The Games People Play to use as ammunition in his ongoing need to hurt others. He and those like him actually feel good when they are able to control the people who look to them for love and/or leadership. By definition, psychopaths are abusers. Some kill with a gun; others kill with words and actions. In their important book, Snakes in Suits: When Psychopaths Go to Work, Paul Babiak and Robert D. Hare say: “Several abilities – skills, actually – make it difficult to see psychopaths for who they are. First, they are motivated to, and have a talent for, ‘reading people’ and for sizing them up quickly. They identify a person’s likes and dislikes, motives, needs, weak spots, and vulnerabilities… Second, many psychopaths come across as having excellent oral communication skills. In many cases, these skills are more apparent than real because of their readiness to jump right into a conversation without the social inhibitions that hamper most people… Third, they are masters of impression management; their insight into the psyche of others combined with a superficial – but convincing – verbal fluency allows them to change their situation skillfully as it suits the situation and their game plan.”
What I have observed is that because psychopaths feel no empathy or remorse, they don’t waste their time in non-productive ways, including emotions. They focus on succeeding at work and at home by doing what is important to them and by manipulating others to use their time and energy to help them succeed. This is psychological and emotional abuse. That we allow it and even reward it with promotions, praise and recognition belies the unseen harm that they are doing.
We think that because they act as if they care, that they really do. We need to look more deeply at the havoc they wreak, listen more carefully to the words they use and pay closer attention to the way they treat people. Emotional and psychological abusers are killers of the spirit and the soul. We don’t put them on trial, but they are lethal and often destroy people’s lives, at home, at work and/or in the community. They can turn people into what I call “the walking dead” having sapped their energy, self-esteem and ability to experience joy and love outside of pleasing the abuser. The highly respected psychoanalyst, Dr. Leonard Shengold wrote a book about these abusers and he telling called it, Soul Murder.
Rehabilitation is Better Than Punishment
Some killers are psychopaths, but this is not always the case. Whether a killer is a psychopath or not, how we respond to killers is important in determining who we are as a person. It is easy to have compassion for murder victims and their families. To expand our compassion to the point of empathy for the perpetrators, is harder. When we are able to do so, we actually grow our humanity and help human beings to evolve to higher levels of existence. Dr. James Garbarino is a passionate advocate of helping killers, who are not psychopaths, become empathetic, loving and productive human beings. This perspective and his knowledge about what pushes someone to kill caused me to think more deeply on this subject.
A few years ago, I saw an Oprah Winfrey show spotlighting Glenn Close and an organization she supports called Puppies Behind Bars. Their purpose is to teach prisoners how to train puppies who will become service dogs for wounded war veterans. The brilliance of this project is that some of these prisoners experience love for the first time. They learn how to take responsibility for another living being. This requires them to learn life skills and along the way they bond with the dogs and are able to trust and give and receive love within a safe relationship. When possible, the veterans will bring the dogs back for a visit with the prisoner who trained them. They showed one such reunion on air, and it was very moving. The prisoners have a sense of pride, knowing that they are contributing to someone else’s wellbeing plus they have the experience of love, which changes them as human beings.
When our prisons focus on rehabilitation rather than punishment, they are often able to help people truly change. I want to emphasize often. Some people are not capable of change, like psychopaths. But those who are capable of change should be given the chance. Successful programs exist and include first helping prisoners heal from the childhood abuse that they experienced and then helping them develop empathy for others. A spiritual component of prayer and/or meditation along with reading actually changes the person’s brain, which promotes rehabilitation, even of killers.
This was driven home to me in the HBO documentary, Toe Tag Parole: To Live and Die On Yard A. About a unique prison program in California, it makes many of the same points that Dr. Garbarino does in his recent book, Listening to Killers: Lessons Learned from My 20 Years as a Psychological Expert Witness in Murder Cases. Listening to the prisoners who were sentenced to life without the possibility of parole, watching them in their daily activities, discussion, prayer and meditation sessions shows viewers that even killers are capable of learning empathy, feeling remorse, healing and changing. To keep them incarcerated seems like cruel and unusual punishment. Many of these prisoners were sentenced when they were still juveniles whose brains were not fully developed and they were not yet capable of making fully informed decisions. A combination of factors including childhood abuse, gangs, PTSD, etc. led them to become killers.
Each case is different. Yet, to paraphrase Dr. Garbarino, if you understand the circumstances and the mitigating factors, each murder always makes sense. This rung true to me. About 15 years ago I was in a Toastmasters’ group when a member gave a speech about how her son killed a man. She revealed that she had been raped as a young woman. Every time she heard about a rape, she would turn to her son and say, “That man deserves to die.” Caught in her own anger and unhealed pain, she didn’t fully realize the impact that her words were having on her young son. As a teenager, he heard that a rapist, who he knew, was being sought by the police. He took it upon himself to be a good son and do what his mother wanted. He found the man and killed him.
Empathy Changes You
As a society, what does it say about us if we label him and other killers as irredeemable? “… in the long run, holding on to our anger and hurt imprisons us, just as seeking compassion and caring liberates us. This is why we must go beyond our horror and rage to a place of compassion and caring, even for the killers, so that we may foster these qualities in ourselves, as people and as part of an American society in which these qualities are often in short supply.” (Dr. Garbarino, Listening to Killers)
The following information presented at the end of the HBO documentary is jolting. The cost in dollars and the waste in human potential is too high a price to pay. We are all culpable unless we choose to change our own attitudes and do what we can to change the system.
* The California Department of Corrections spends $10 billion a year on its prisons.
* The average annual cost per inmate is $62,000.
* The U.S. Supreme Court in 2012 ruled mandatory Life Without the Possibility of Parole for juveniles unconstitutional.
* However, in all states juveniles still can be sentenced to life in prison.
* The European Court of Human Rights ruled in 2013 Life Without the Possibility of Parole to be inhuman and degrading stating that no prisoner should be deprived of any real hope of release.
