Dr.

James Fallon Makes Being a

Psychopath Look Like Fun
An interview with a man who lacks empathy.

“Roc, you got me on a good day,” Dr. James Fallon announced. The horses over at
Saratoga racetrack had been running in his favour all morning. It was also the
day that his best friend from college had died. Fallon received the news just four
hours before he met me.

“I’m still waiting for it to hit,” he claimed. I smiled gamely and raised my
eyebrows. He returned the smile and threw in a shrug. We both knew that it
would never hit.

“When I really dissect my behaviour,” the neuroscientist later confided to me,

“everything in a strict sense is a lie. Everything. Even though I think I never lie,
I’m lying all the time. I seem like a nice guy, but I want to be clear – I’m not as
nice as I seem to be.”

In 2006, Fallon was studying the brain scans of psychopathic killers when he
happened to compare them to a scan of his own brain. The characteristic
deactivation of emotional regions was unmistakable. He discovered for himself
what friends and family had been insisting for years: Fallon was a psychopath –
albeit a “pro-social” one, as he likes to say. The 66-year-old father of three is
happily married, highly successful in his field, and has no criminal record.

The aggression, the narcissism, the callousness, the recklessness typical of

psychopaths – he can turn all of them off, he claims. The charm, however, is
always on. At the door of his home in Irvine, California, Fallon greeted me like an
old friend. He was on the phone with his bookie in Jersey – a 1.98-metre, 136-
kilogram former Mafioso by the name of Big Moe. “His actual name is Joey,”
Fallon chuckled. “He thinks it’s still 1965.” Within a minute of ringing his
doorbell, he had me laughing and feeling at ease.

We took our drinks to the backyard where we could watch monarch butterflies
feast on a milkweed garden – one of the scientist’s favourite distractions. He
noted that the seasons elicit very different behaviours from the insects. “When
they’re down in Mexico and up in Monterey hanging in the trees, they’re very
sociable. But, in between, when they’re competing for food and sex – they’re
killers. Two very different behaviours, one animal.”

“You can ask me anything, Roc,” he added through his beard as he spread his
arms wide. “I am restricted somewhat, though. My mother is still alive, and my
wife is still alive.”

“So, we’ll do the follow-up after they pass away?” I teased.

“Sure,” he laughed. “That’ll be quite a different interview.”

VICE: There are many definitions of psychopathy. What are the

critical qualifications?
James Fallon: Core psychopathy is basically lack of empathy and extreme
manipulation of anyone to get what you want. You don’t have to be sadistic like a
lot of people think. You don’t have to be glib, but you often see glibness because
the psychopath doesn’t have to make the loop into the limbic system [the brain’s
emotional center], which slows you down.

Do you ever place pauses in your speaking in order to seem more

authentic?
Sometimes – and, sometimes I’ll make up things so it appears I was wrong. I’ll
insert a red herring, so that I can go back and say, “Gee, I was wrong about that.”
It makes me more approachable, more believable.

You’re very good at building rapport.

But, I’m trying to slow down – trying to say, “Am I really being truthful here?”
The game for me now is: Can I manipulate myself? The challenge is: Can I
astonish somebody with purely the truth?

But you’ve also talked in your book about lying to achieve a certain
effect.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. I’ve lied for some effect, in fact, in the opposite direction. So,
for example, if I caught a 9-kilogram tuna, I’ll say I caught a 6-kilogram tuna, and
somebody will say, “No, it was much bigger than that.” Those are manipulative
techniques. I remember this really funny book called How to Cheat at
Tennis from the 70s. A tennis court is supposed to be a perfect rectangle, but you
can manipulate the court – repaint the lines to make it a parallelogram – screw
with them that way.

So subtly that they won’t realise it.

Exactly. And then, of course, you do the obvious things – early in the match, if
they hit a ball out, you call it in. That way, you can do the reverse later when you
need it. Start lying the other way to set the person up later. I do that. It’s just a
game, in a sense – a practical joke, but it’s still fucking with people. I never
thought of myself as doing it in any malignant way. It was always fun.

Was it fun for the other guy?

Not all the time. It’s kind of intellectually bullying people, I guess – playing with
their heads. There’s a darker side to it. In the past two years, I’ve come to realise
how much I do that. I’ve never taken advantage of underdogs though. You know
what I mean? I’m enough of the sportsman to play a fair game.

Is that a moral stance? It’s hard to imagine morality without empathy.

Where does your sense of morality come from?
You know, growing up Catholic around priests, and nuns, and my parents – I just
never did anything wrong. Lying, cheating, stealing, squeezing girls’ asses, I did
none of that. But, it was part of an obsessive compulsiveness. I thought all
behaviour had to be perfect and in line with the universe. I had to keep
everything in symmetry.

So, the code itself was arbitrary? I mean, if you had been raised under
a different system, would that have become your ideal?
You know, there’s one psychiatrist I spent time with in India. She goes, “Jim,
you’re actually a natural Buddhist. The type of empathy you have is not for
people, but for mankind. That’s very Buddhist.” I think if I had been brought up
in the Buddhist system, it might’ve been even easier.

What made Catholicism sub-optimal?

I had no problem with that strict code. I just went way beyond it. That’s the
problem. You never lie, steal, cheat – all that stuff seemed obvious to me. People
would say, “Geez, Jim. Relax.” The idea of adding the concept of morality to it
was nonsense to me. The obsession with being perfect was just innate. You know,
the first memory I had – and it may be from when I was two or three – is from
when I would be going to sleep, and as I would close my eyes, I would see this…
You ever live in the north?
Aurora borealis?
Right. Now, if you go really far north, and it’s a really good storm, the aurora
borealis is right overhead, so dramatic, and you just feel like an ant on the stage.
These silver curtains come down – whoosh! Well, every time when I closed my
eyes, it was just like that. It wouldn’t have any colour or brightness until it started
to get closer and closer. It would come in like a funnel, faster and faster. And it
would condense into something that felt, every time, like the entire universe was
hitting me right in the forehead. It would go: ping! And, it was light as a feather.
It’s the most exquisite feeling, because it’s infinity and infinitesimal all at once. It
would happen just that way every night. It may have set up some kind of
leitmotif, very early on, that really focused me on the whole universe and
perfection.

When did you lose the morality fixation?

I was 19 or 20 when it suddenly switched. I went from thinking that everything
was a moral issue to thinking that nothing was a moral issue. So, even though I
can bring back the sense of that light, it’s detached from morality completely.

What’s your religious affiliation now?

I’m an agnostic atheist. I will manipulate groups, but I try to do it for ethical
reasons. I don’t think of it so much as a moral issue, but there’s a certain beauty
to it.

You sound almost like the God of the Old Testament – appearing in
order to restore balance.
I’ve never heard it put that way. That’s good. I identify with that personality of
God the Father intervening at the right time to make things right, and he does it
dispassionately. It’s really important that there’s no emotion.

I can imagine that being a benefit in many situations. It seems to be

helping you process the death of your friend.
Yeah, there is no emotional flinching. I remember we had a great time together.
He was an interesting guy, but something about it just doesn’t emotionally
connect with me. You can look at it objectively – I should be upset, and I’m not.

In a way, it sounds freeing. Would you want to have empathy?

No. I’m quite happy with who I am. I really love my life. And, actually,
everybody’s got a little piece of what I have – not everybody, but a lot of people.
They’re not categorical psychopaths, but they have some really nasty
psychopathic behaviours.
They’re on the spectrum?
Definitely. If you took the raw sense of how people feel about the people they’re
interacting with, it would be brutal! You could actually say that these behaviours
are not psychopathic because so many people have them.

Do you think an individual’s behaviour is consistent, or can different

environments bring out morally conflicting behaviours from the same
person? For example, the commandant of Auschwitz would go home
and kiss his wife and kids at the end of the day. Is there a consistency
to that?
Well, that’s why it’s really hard for any psychiatrist to say that Hitler was a real
psychopath, as well as most of the Nazis. They were close to their families. They
had real empathy. They all did. They’re not psychopaths. Hannah Arendt’s
concept about everyone participating a little bit means that they had to believe in
the ethos of what they were doing. I’m sure they convinced themselves that they
were helping the world – like the Norwegian shooter Breivik. If you read his
manifesto, he was quite sane.

Not a psychopath?
Not quite a psychopath. He had empathy, but he had a vision. The problem is,
that’s the equivalent of what Gandhi had, what Mother Teresa had, what Mandela
had. They really believed that they were going to fix the world, even if they had to
walk over people to do it. They knew that it comes with a price. To save the
children of the world, Mother Teresa would walk over people. Gandhi walked
over his family all the time, so did Mandela. To them, what they were doing was
good, even though in a local way they were just doing brutal things – things that
would be considered psychopathic. But it’s just a different kind of empathy.

How does that play out neurologically?

In neuroscientific terms, all behaviours that are reinforced, whatever they are, go
to a little spot in the brain called the dorsal medial notch of the nucleus
accumbens. It’s where everything comes together: all the dopamine, endorphins,
acetylcholine, oxytocin, vasopressin. It’s hedonism central. So any behaviour that
can be reinforced has to go through this tiny little spot. And, people will all pick a
different thing. Some people have a shopping addiction, some have an eating
addiction, some have drug addictions – it just depends on the wiring.

So, essentially, you’re a slave to it?

Exactly. So, if you look at evil behaviours – if it’s going through that little spot, it
basically takes the evil out of it, because it’s driven the same as everybody. I think
a candidate for a truly evil act is unhooking from that. If you can do something
for no other reason than for the pure rationale of what it is – only then could you
start to consider something pure evil.

But if you’re not rewarded, why do it?

Exactly. Why do it? Because, if it all goes through that little spot, it means there is
no evil, and there is no free will. Instead of evil, it’s just behaviour we don’t agree
with. And, that’s a real quandary, because I don’t know how you conduct a
civilised society and have any kind of common ground.

So in order for society to function, we have to participate in the

illusion of free will?
I think so. Participating in the illusion is important. But, it’s funny, you know – I
started treating my wife better as a little experiment. She liked it, and I told her –
because I can really be honest with her – I said, “I don’t mean this. I’m just doing
this as a game.” She said, “I don’t care. You treat me better. Why would I care
why you’re doing it?” That, I don’t understand, because it should be all about
intention.

What are your relationships like with women in general?

I have a lot of female friends. When I go out roaming, they like me, even though I
look like hell. It doesn’t matter, because I act like I don’t care, and I really don’t
care, and they love it.

Why do you think that is?

We have to look at everything in terms of sexual fitness. If you don’t need them, it
means that you can get anybody, therefore they want your genes. You can’t get
me, therefore you want me. It’s a little too glib and slick, but it’s probably true.
And, if I have a conversation like this with my female friends who are really very,
very smart neuroscientists – they have to keep from getting mad, even though
they know there’s some truth to it.

Their emotionality blinds them to it?

I love how my female friends, who are so smart, are fighting their emotions all
the time. They know it, and they actually come asking for it. They want me to
torture them. They want to push up against something. Most guys are always on
the make. They’ll say anything to get laid, but to have a guy push against her, and
say something to her like, “You’re never getting laid tonight,” they go crazy for it.

How do you think the world would be if everyone were like you?
Well, it would be bad for people like us. I think the biggest thought experiment
would be if we got rid of all aggression-related genes, and got rid of some
psychopathic traits – as a species, we’d be screwed. We’d be completely screwed
if everybody becomes Jimmy Carter. Any aggressive person could run the world.
People say that it would be great to have peace and love. Their heaven, to me, is
the end of humanity.

You’ve written about the possible increase of aggressive genes in

places of conflict. Is the reverse true? Is aggression being bred out in
stable Western societies?
I think so. Right here in California – I don’t want to call it the feminisation – but
you have the idea that everybody wins. It’s about getting along so much that you
have no competition. I see it as a very, very negative force, if you care about the
species. But there’s always this dynamic about what’s good for the species and
what’s good for the individual. These are very much at odds with one another. In
a sense, we need psychopathy. We don’t need full-blown psychopath dangerous
fuckers, but having a prevalence of psychopathic traits is associated with
leadership. It’s in presidents, and prime ministers, and in people who take risks.
They do things to protect against aggressors.

So you’re saying that they’re doing it for themselves, but it just so

happens to protect society as well?
That’s why people like Jimmy Carter do not belong in those positions. Obama’s
stuck on this a little bit.

He’s too good?

He’s not psychopathic enough. Almost all the great leaders have high levels of
psychopathic traits. If they took the Psychopathic Personality Inventory, they’d
score pretty high. In the end, this is a broader discussion that I’m not really
qualified to talk about, but you are.

What do you mean?

See, what I did there was manipulative. I really don’t think you are, but I said that
you are. I don’t think you are, and I don’t think I am either.

I wanted to ask about your brain scans. You have zero activity in your
emotional regions in the presence of emotional stimuli, but obviously
those regions are being used for something, right? Do you know what
that might be?
It’s probably being used to inhibit my bad behaviour. I guess there’s a way of
testing that. You’d have to get people like me, and then give them an opportunity
to do something bad and then have them stop themselves and see if that area
turns on. That’s a very good experiment.

Well, I’m sure you wouldn’t have too much trouble finding subjects. I
know you hang out with some rough characters.
That’s true. I get a lot of contacts from really bad guys and girls – people who are
on the edge. I can’t give medical advice, but they see me as somebody who would
understand. So, it’s almost like a brotherhood of psychopaths. They’re usually
very earnest. The ones that aren’t earnest, I can sort out. I’ll say something to
them, and they go fucking crazy. I can find people very quickly – I have my ways.
If somebody’s in hiding and they’re trying to screw with me, I just have ways of
knowing exactly where they are at any time, and showing them that I know where
they are. They hightail it.

What’s your ultimate objective in life?

I’m actually trying to catch myself from trying to manipulate people all the time.
I’m trying to get rid of it all.

Why?
Because, then I can beat myself. I’m my own best opponent. If I can beat myself,
I’ve won.

But then the game is over, isn’t it?

In a way, it’s over. It’s checkmate, but I still make mistakes like I did with you
earlier.

That comment you called yourself out on?

Right, because that wasn’t honest.

And, you didn’t set that up as a red herring?

No, I didn’t. I’m trying to be truthful here. The game for me now is to manipulate
myself. In terms of the checkmate, I think the real prize would be ego death.

The universe tapping you on the forehead?

I think so.

What do you think you’ll find there?

Probably some existential realisation that this is just this. But, that ego-desire is
very strong, to the point of obnoxiousness. So, the game is to try to strip that part
away. If I had my druthers, I would get rid of all the ego, and be able to do
something truly good, just for the sake of goodness. But, the drive is really just to
prove that I can do it – not for the action itself. It loops within itself and becomes
instantly phony. Still, I like it as a target, as a goal. It’s the best game I can think
of.