I, Psychopath

I've just seen this great peace of film on "arte".

It was a very impressive documentary about a man (Sam Vaknin) who claims to be a psychopath and manipulates the people around him. the filmmaker Ian Walker accompanies Sam and his wife Lidija in journey through Europe, visiting psychologist and Neuroscientist to test Sam's psychopathy.

The interesting point of the film is not proceeding on the assumption that psychopaths are criminal, mass-murderers or even (physically) dangerous nor that they can be recognize at first sight.

In contrast to most other psychopaths, Sam wants to find out about his character/substance and why he is ready to hurt him and others to achieve his goals.

i am very sorry for Ian Walker. he sacrifices himself to his film, science and the truth, while being attacked by Sam the whole time. i have hardly seen filmmakers committing mayhem to themselves like this. (:

I've followed Sam's writings for years. Interesting to see him 'live'.

I've had such people in my life & frequently experienced situations like one the Film maker described. Where he had no idea what mood Sam would be & how Sam'll fly in a rage with no obvious external 'provocation'. Some of the bad footage was done on a secret camera to counter Sam's careful manipulative stunts & how he was trying to keep control the whole process. I've seen these subtle stunts for well over a decade with such horrors in my life.

I found it interesting to see what was NOT said - some of his background was not confirmed - was his mother verbally abusive or was it just a sympathy ploy? What did his family have to say about it?

It was painful watching when the Film maker caught some of the subtle belittling attacks - words with the cutting percussion of a surgical blade. (but leads you open to amateur efforts ) The Film maker was only exposed to this bloke for a few weeks & he was scared, he'll never forget this experience.

.

The whole point of Sam taking part in this documentary was self promotion, to promote his book and to show the world how intelligent he is. When things did not go his way, the diagnosis he is not narcissistic and his credentials were questioned, he decided to sabotage the documentary by escalating.

This behaviour was to intimidate the film-maker into ending the project. IT WORKED! I think this could have been predicted. This is one of the tactics of the psychopath. I think the film maker should have researched more and been prepared for this. We have one advantage over psychopaths, they are predictable. Once you become aware of the tactics, you always know they will always behave this way. This is one of their weaknesses, another is bragging on tape!

It would have been interesting to see the violent reaction if the tape of Sam bragging about his purchased credentials at the time he defended them with the psychologist. You think Sam was abusive at the end of the film, it would have been fireworks, just to get the focus away from being caught out!

My high score is due to the fact it exposed how totally stupid psychopaths are, it doesn't make them any less dangerous to the uninformed. It is rare to see this on film, their manipulation usually doesn't allow it. Most of us would have used common and not taken part because we know our lies would be uncovered. The psychopaths ego would over-ride common sense and risk does not phase them, they thrive on it. Great doco!

In the first few minutes of this tripe we're shown a cat idly toying with a petrified mouse. We then see it torture the mouse. We then are shown the mouse collapsed, it's little heart heaving for its final breath. To think a sentient, intelligent being was handed to it's feline torturer & killed in order to illustrate an idea that is so obvious & ubiquitous it doesn't need illustration, for a documentary makes me wonder if the documentary maker knows as much or more about being a psychopath as his subject.

I would expect that "I, Psychopath" will take it's rightful place in the annals of scarumentary (crockumentary?) next to " Reefer Madness" sometime in the coming decade or so.

OK, slightly (ever so) less lurid than the latter. (The score of '5' reflects it's entertainment value only)

But Please. A director incapable of setting limits on his subject? Who is this "documentary" about?

"For months afterwards, bits of Sam's taunts come back to haunt me"?

What actually WAS the point of this 30 minutes-that-I-shall-never-retrieve? (Yes, I DID miss the first 30 minutes, thankfully) But really, is this a "beware, they're out there"?

Or a "they live and they wonder about their life" (If so, we-e-e-ll, has Big Brother not already done this to death?? AND been taken off the airwaves?!)kinda effort?

Or is this a self serving rehash of a-a-all those times that the mean boys were, well, mean, dressed up as a sycophantic attempt to capture a sound byte and be able to essentialise and dismiss as 'pathology' a complex interaction between the aberrant self (cos Vaknin = not a your most stable of tables) as 'self being viewed' by 'self assuming a nonjudgemental-but-nonetheless-emotionally-involved- stance'

And what fresh hell is this?? Espousing the diagnostic test "PCL whatnot" as a definitive measure of Is He a Psychopath? Gaaaah! Strewth, what next, Phrenology as the Next Big Thing?

Ech. Tiresome stuff. Pass me the librium, slap that whinging director, tell that silly man Vaknin "No, not allowed", his wife maybe to get some help with her self esteem issues and shame on you, ABC, for screening this programme without a "park your credulity here" disclaimer.