Lab Notes
How Rare a Lecter?

In its purest form, science fiction is the literature of the possible but not probable. Someone discovers the secret of antigravity while tinkering in her garage. Someone travels back in time, or invents a drug that turns the human memory into a perfect recording instrument. In spite of the vast distances of interstellar space and the apparent scarcity of complex life in the universe, aliens attack. Et cetera. These stories are interesting precisely because they really could happen. In fact, many of them eventually will, although there's no telling how long we might have to wait.

Of course, science fiction is often criticized for being long on technical blah-blah and short on character, whereas in contemporary mainstream fiction, characters like Thomas Harris' Hannibal Lecter are some of the most memorable figures—real or imagined—in our lives. Appearing in four books and five movies—most recently Hannibal Rising—Lecter is so brilliant and so completely evil that even when he's restrained, he can talk people into committing suicide in a sort of murder-by-remote-control. In spite of truly horrific deeds, Lecter sees himself as the enemy mainly of the rude and the coarse—people who, in his opinion, defile the aesthetic experience of the world. In some ways, this makes him a classic antihero, at least by his own standards. However, from the safety of the audience we can see him for what he is: a pure villain. He has no compunctions about killing innocents in terrible ways when it suits his purposes, and he feels no remorse or regret about it afterward. He also eats his victims, which sets him well apart from more ordinary killers.

I hear your objections: Lecter is a character out of modern crime drama, and has nothing to do with science fiction, right? Well, maybe. Maybe not. Several years ago I spoke with a clinical psychologist specializing in criminal offenders, who had personally interacted with thousands of convicted murderers. Tellingly, she said, "I never met anyone like Lecter. I never even heard of anyone like Lecter. "

Chance favors a deranged mind

So what exactly does it mean to be "like Lecter"? Well, in biblical terms he's a sinner exhibiting unusually high levels of pride, gluttony and wrath. Speaking more clinically, he appears to suffer from three specific psychological maladies. The first of these is Narcissistic Personality Disorder, or NPD, which has been characterized as "megalomania" or "malignant self-love." Basically, anyone with this disorder not only has an inflated sense of his or her own importance, but also a vastly reduced sense of the rights of other people. Narcissists put their own desires and ambitions above everything else, including, in serious cases, other people's lives. They also regard themselves as inherently superior to others, and when the evidence seems to contradict this—for example, when they're arrested—they believe they're being singled out for persecution because they are superior. NPD is a worryingly common problem—about one person in a hundred has it—but by itself it can't create a monster like Hannibal.

The second affliction, at least as serious as the first, is Antisocial Personality Disorder, or psychopathy. In the most basic terms, this is quite simply a failure of conscience. Psychopaths know the difference between right and wrong, but don't give a crap. They feel no remorse about lying to, stealing from or otherwise harming other people, and in fact they tend to view people simply as objects to be manipulated, like the icons on a computer screen. They also tend not to feel other emotions—anxiety, fear, love, etc.—in the normal way. Anecdotally, this makes it easier for them to beat the polygraph, and experimentally, it has a measurable effect on their reaction times in certain kinds of psychological tests.

The cruder forms of psychopathy—the ones involving poor impulse control and anger management—also show up on brain scans, as reduced activity in the frontal lobes. Chillingly, though, there are "effective psychopaths" whose frontal lobes are fully engaged. These people are far more likely to plan out their misdeeds, and thus are far less likely to get caught. Still, most psychopaths are not killers. In fact, many are quite charming and have learned to get along in normal society, although they break the rules when no one's looking. About 3.5 percent of the people in the world have ASPD, and the vast majority of them go their whole lives without ever committing a murder. (For this reason, some experts argue that ASPD and psychopathy are in fact different disorders. Definitions vary.)

Fact is, while narcissists and psychopaths are quick to seize opportunities for personal gain, and to punish perceived or imagined wrongs against them, they don't derive any actual pleasure from hurting people. For that we need to turn to a third disorder: sadism. This occurs at clinically significant levels—known as Sadistic Personality Disorder—in about 3 percent of the population.

Now, the chance of any given person having all three problems is around 1 in 95,000. Since these disorders are far more common in men than women, in a town of a 100,000 people, you could expect to find one guy like this. Actually, it's a bit more common than that, because these disorders are similar and tend to cluster together. So the town might have three or four guys like that. It's not hard to imagine them leaving a trail of chaos and suffering in their wake, and being arrested multiple times until the justice system finally gets fed up and throws away the key. But even these guys aren't likely to be serial killers. Statistically speaking, a country the size of the United States should have around 10,000 people fitting this description. But the estimated number of serial killers at large is much smaller: around 30.

That's 30 too many, but it also means that even sadistic, narcissistic psychopaths have only an 0.3 percent chance of becoming serial killers! Clearly, even if the predilection is there it takes some very unusual life experiences to bring it out. The situation is actually worse than that, because only about 2.5 percent of serial killers are cannibals. In rough terms, this says that to get just one of these, you'd need a population of 400 million. Or to put it another way, there are probably no more than 15 such criminals active in the world today, and with luck most of them are already in prison.

A demon in human clothing

Still, Hannibal Lecter also has a genius-level IQ (occurring in less than 1 percent of the general population). He is trained as a medical doctor (0.3 percent) and has practiced as a pathologist, a surgeon and a psychiatrist. In spite of childhood traumas he also enjoyed an aristocratic upbringing (1 percent) that offered significant exposure to fine art, music, cuisine, etc. The result is a potent combination that allows him not only to pass in normal society without suspicion, but to rise to the top even when concealing his identity. Of course, being an M.D. is strongly correlated with being a genius, and also with being rich. Nevertheless, fewer than 1 in 100,000 people are likely to qualify on all three counts.

Importantly, these statistics are not linked with the ones for murder. They're not quite independent—in fact, doctors are significantly less likely to commit murder than are random members of the general public—but even if we ignore that, we get a very interesting result: The odds of finding a wealthy genius doctor who is also a cannibalistic serial killer are approximately 1 in 40 trillion.

It gets worse, because Lecter was born with six fingers on one hand (0.2 percent). He also has an unusually good—almost photographic—memory, and is described in the books as possessing a rather incredible physical strength. He seems to have missed the computer age entirely, but in his day he was a top-notch "phone phreak," able to manipulate the analog telephone system to his advantage. That's a rare skill, too. These traits are not obviously correlated with his mental aberrations, but together they bolster his own sense (common among serial killers) that he is not quite human and can't be judged by human standards or expected to live by human rules. Indeed, in the later books he comes across as something bordering on the supernatural—a sort of demon in human clothing. And there must be some fictional truth in this, because if we expected a person like him to appear by pure statistical chance, we'd have to wait over 8 million years! In the face of such evidence, Occam's razor—the belief that the simplest explanation is usually the correct one—suggests that Hannibal isn't natural at all, and that his presence on Earth is not an accident.

Indeed, history bears out this suspicion: The only real-world character who comes anywhere close to Hannibal is the American serial killer Ted Bundy, who was executed in Florida in 1989. Bundy was intelligent, glib, handsome and personable, and was accepted to law school (although he never completed his degree). And yet, for all his manipulative powers Bundy was a lot sloppier and more cowardly than Lecter, who would literally have him for lunch if the two ever crossed paths.

Of course, given his contempt for anyone who tries to analyze him, Lecter would probably have me for lunch as well. If he could read this, he'd be coldly amused and dismissive, no doubt feeling that I'd missed the point entirely. Which, being a mere human of ordinary tastes and drives, with no training in psychology and no direct experience of the criminal justice system, I probably have.

Sources:

Vaknin, Sam: Malignant Self Love—Narcissism Revisited, 2006, Narcissus Publications, Prague and Skopje

Hare, Robert D.: "Psychopathy and Antisocial Personality Disorder: A Case of Diagnostic Confusion," Psychiatric Times, February 1996

Open Site, anti-social disorders

Mitchell, Edward W.: "The aetiology of serial murder: towards an integrated model," University of Cambridge, 1996

Watson and Hennrikus: "Postaxial Type-B Polydactyly. Prevalence and Treatment," J Bone Joint Surg Am. 1997; 79: 65-8

Wade C. Myers, MD, Roger C. Burket, MD, and David S. Husted, MD: "Sadistic Personality Disorder and Comorbid Mental Illness in Adolescent Psychiatric Inpatients," J Am Acad Psychiatry Law 34:61–71, 2006

Nation Master: "Practicing physicians by country"

Laub, John H. and Travis Hirschi: The Craft of Criminology: Selected Papers, Transaction Publishers, 2002

Strueber, Daniel and Lueck, Monica: "The Violent Brain," Scientific American Mind, December 2006

Wikipedia (en.wikipedia.org): "psychopath," "list of serial killers by country"