Do psychopaths dream?
Sweet dreams
It is a question that is often posed by the victims of psychopaths, by people who have known them, and just by the curious. In fact, when you type “do psychopaths” into Google, the search suggestions are as follows:
- do psychopaths cry?
- do psychopaths feel fear?
- do psychopaths yawn?
- do psychopaths love?
- do psychopaths dream?
The first four are boring questions, and very easy to answer by anyone who ever gave them any thought:
- Rarely
- Yes, but hardly. Fearlessness is one of the main criteria in the PCL-R
- You might as well ask, “do psychopaths need to breathe?” Yes, we yawn when we’re tired, just like you!
- Nah
But the fifth question is interesting. Its answer isn’t immediately obvious a priori and it tries to delve into the inner worlds of psychopaths in a clever way. What’s more, it’s one question to which, despite its popularity among inquisitive souls, is difficult to find a satisfactory answer, amid tedious conversations that go nowhere, and threads where everyone says equally plausible but mutually contradictory things.
Well look no further, because I am a psychopath, and I can confirm that yes, I dream. I don’t dream very often (or at least I don’t often remember my dreams), in fact more often than not I have the stereotypical “death sleep” of a vampire, unburdened by thoughts and concerns from the day. I don’t have sleepless or disturbed nights because of stress, and I don’t lie awake mulling over ‘bad’ things I’ve done. But I do, on occasion, dream. My dreams tend to be fairly weird, though nothing so surreal as to inspire artwork.
One recent dream I had, there was a bird trapped inside my room, beating its wings pointlessly against the closed window. As I walked over to open the window and free it, it seemed to panic and fly at me, so I hit it to stop it pecking me and it fell to the floor, dead. A couple of nights ago, I dreamt the house next door was on fire. The family that lives there has three children and two dogs, and they were also trapped upstairs (noticing a pattern yet?) I dialled for the emergency services, but when the fire brigade arrived, they had brought the police and accused me of setting the fire, which as far as I can recall, I hadn’t. In both dreams, I tried to do the decent thing, but the other ‘characters’ in the dream had other ideas and did their best to throw my help back in my face. I’m not really into dream interpretation, but if anyone wants to have a go at figuring these ones out, be my guest.
Most commonly, I’m not even in my own dreams. Or rather, I’m like a static observer or an omniscient narrator, and the other people in the dream are acting out a story in front of me. Usually they’re not people that I know in real life, just ‘characters’ that inhabit the dream world. Sometimes I can go in and out of different people and take control of them for a while, make them do what I want to do, see the dream from their perspective, and then fly out and go back to watching again. These dreams tend to be violent, and seem to be set predominantly in horror movies or wars, but there’s not really any emotional content to them or consequences for being in them. Like I said, I’m more of a bystander watching things happen. Even when I ‘take over’ the characters, what happens to them doesn’t really end up affecting me. If the person I’m inhabiting gets hacked to death, then I just fly out of them and look down on their mutilated corpse with detached interest.
are made of this
Very occasionally I dream of people close to me dying. In real life, this sort of event doesn’t cause much emotion in me. If I liked the person, I am sorry they’re no longer around for me to enjoy them, but the idea of crying about it is utterly foreign. However, in these dreams, I’m very upset, grief-stricken even, in a way I have never been in my waking life. I seem to imagine myself as an ordinary, empathetic person, crying about the death of someone I love, just like I’ve seen other people be around death, and being really cut up about their loss. Unlike the previous two types of dream, these are closer to what I would think of as a nightmare, in that they’re actually unpleasant to experience. I don’t enjoy feeling those emotions, or at least dreaming that I am feeling them, and I especially don’t enjoy losing control of myself. Then, when I wake up, I’m back to normal. My pillow is sometimes wet; whether with tears or sweat, I don’t know. But I just think “huh, that was weird”, and go about my day.
I have no idea if these dreams bear any resemblance to the sorts of dreams other people have. I’d be interested to hear from you.
Art credit goes to the extremely creative, extremely talented and extremely dead Zdzisław Beksiński.
I wonder if he’s living his dreams now?
BPS, 
James, and 3 others are discussing. 
No Psychos, No Druggies, No Stooges 
nowve666 18:37 on April 28, 2017 Permalink |
When I was a child, I had repetitive dreams. I had dreams of exploring. I dreamed I was on a beach. My favorite dream was I am on a beach and a giant tidal wave comes over the entire beach. There is no way to avoid it. I am swept out to sea. But I can breath under water.
We spent a summer on a farm and there was a cross rooster who scared all the kids. One night, I dreamed I loved the rooster. After that, I wasn’t afraid of him but that same day, they slaughtered him. I cried and cried and swore I would never stop crying. However, later, they served him for dinner and I ate him. He was delicious.
One more childhood dream. I dreamed I turned into a monster. I got very tall, I was all the way up to the ceiling. I knew if my parents saw me, they would know I was a monster and destroy me so I knew I had to kill them. The dream didn’t go any further however.
As an adult, Vicki and I like to watch our favorite movies on our DVD player. I often fall asleep. I watch the DVD from my bed. I enjoy the kind of twilight state of sleeping and intermittently waking to see the screen. I almost always think I’m seeing the window at first. Then I realize it’s the TV. The movie and the dream kind of merge.
As far as emotions in dreams go, I experienced a lot of euphoria, especially when dreaming of the beach. When I was in the nut house, I had a scary dream about a nurse who worked there. In my dream, she was evil and powerful. After I woke up, I still felt creepy about her until I talked to my shrink and we worked out the dream was about feeling unable to communicate. After that, she didn’t bother me.
Oh! And I had a dream after I saw The Exorcist. That is the only movie that ever scared me. In the dream, In saw Regan’s head twisting around like it did in the movie and she had a really evil look on her face. Then I realized I can witness evil without being consumed by it and my fear went away both in the dream and in real life related to the movie.
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James 19:00 on April 28, 2017 Permalink |
You have a better memory for dreams than me. There’s no way I could remember such details from dreams years and years ago. Your subconscious is clearly more creative than mine. Interesting that you have had “scary dreams”. I don’t think I’ve ever been scared by a dream.
Some pisshead just tried to scare me (in real life) by shouting “ALRIGHT, MATE!” at the top of his voice. He and his friend were drinking behind a tree in the shadows, so I hadn’t seen them, but I don’t jump or have any sort of fight / fight response, so I just called back “I’m great. How’s it going with you?” They were drunk enough to just laugh, so I left them to it.
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1jaded1 23:48 on April 28, 2017 Permalink |
Hi James. This is most interesting. The responses to the first 4 questions made me laugh. The response to the 5th…idk and am not a psychologist…iatrist…analyst or anything. Sounds like a battle though. Wanting to help and being pecked…Feeling upset in a dream where you wouldn’t be upset if you were awake.
Since you asked….and not that you may care other than amusement.
My dreams consist of paranormal. Entities want to eat me. They would starve bc I lost my soul at a very early age. Some want to protect.
This week has been a cluster fk of nightmares. Tuesday, I dreamt that a lady wanted to kill me bc it should have been me. When I was allowed to make sense , I should have had my face peeled off at the pinball machine. I elected to use the washroom. Total made up dream. I didn’t see anyone’s face peeled off. Maybe a narcissist mask. Maybe I am one.
The side by sides last night revolved around calls to 911. The leaser of the traumatic had the operator wanting me to verify my date of birth and a newspaper article on the date of me calling… My co-worker passed our.. I asked wtf any purpose that had.
The more disturbing one had my ex who has NPD beating my parents to a pulp. My sister and I called 911 for2 assaults, but they only sent one ambulance. My dad (who is already deceased) told me he was dying and to have the amby take my mom. Then he died in front of me. I woke up traumatised and called my mom. Lol. It is still sticking hence my response. Subconscious is my ex wants to get back into my life and take agression out on family? Who knows? So disturbing . i want nothing more to do with him.
Thank you for your post. TMI in my response? Okay. Question was asked..
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James 11:06 on April 29, 2017 Permalink |
Thank you for reading and for your comment. I wonder, do you feel at all better for having written all that? I got a certain cathartic pleasure from writing my dreams out, though yours seem to be more closely connected to the real world and your fears about things going wrong. Have you any reason to think your ex may be trying to get back into your life?
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1jaded1 20:28 on April 29, 2017 Permalink |
You are welcome. It sometimes helps to release the dreams through writing. My ex is trying to contact me and I am ignoring him.
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James 08:51 on April 30, 2017 Permalink |
That’s a bit unkind of you. Stonewalling, isn’t it? Very cruel 🙂
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1jaded1 12:58 on April 30, 2017 Permalink |
I learn from the very best. Feel free to pop into my mind. 🙂
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James 18:38 on April 30, 2017 Permalink |
In your dreams 😉
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1jaded1 19:56 on April 30, 2017 Permalink |
Ha. I see what you did there. 🙂
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TypicalCritter 14:36 on September 24, 2017 Permalink |
You sure have a remarkable ability to recall your dreams. I’m kind of curious whether you made these little dream stories up as a little experiment, to test if the readers interpretations go in the direction you had hoped, or if you are actually describing your own dreams. Anyways, they are pretty facinating either way.
I’ll do an honest attempt to describe which details I find most interesting. So here we go:
Dream 1: An animal that normally to detects and avoid predators effortlessly has found it’s way into your room, the bird seems to be fairly confused to begin with and has no idea how to get out. It sees you and attacks instead of trying evade you, also unusual behavior for an escape artist. You try to remove a confused fragile little bird but, a small flash of impulsive agression from your part is all it takes to kill it. Maybe you have had previous experiences where you tried to interact with someone experiencing confusion as well as anxiety or fear and they reacted both too quick and unexpected, before you could figure out an appropriate way to respond.
Dream 2: The people next door does not seem to be any more rational than that bird. They are not messing around, they make it very clear that they don’t believe what you say, they are convinced you are the source of their misfortune. If they immediately assume you were the reason their house was on fire, does that mean they have been holding a grudge against you for some time without you being aware of it? Could it be that there are a side to those people you weren’t aware of, could they be using the fire as an oppourtunity to both get rid you and find an excuse to tell the insurance company, covering up their own mistakes? Or does their behavior in some ways reflect your impression of people in panic, do they get both irrational and unpredictable?
Dream 3: These types of dreams sounds like they are more like lucid dreams. You seem to be aware that you are dreaming and you can control, or at least have a strong influence on what happens. I kind of get the impression that they are kind of like a sandbox or videogame where you can interact with the characters and see what happens when you try the different dialogue options. This “sandbox theme” is the only part that sounds more different than what I can relate to personally. The violence part is not particularly psychopathic, even people with the least psychopathic traits can be extremely violent. Non agressive people with no history of violence can have both violent dreams and fantasies, both being a way to maintain behavior.
Dream 4: Not sure if I understand you properly, do you see yourself unvoluntarily behaving as if you were feeling sadness and grief? Because if you do feel any extent of sadness and grief in your dream, then that happens for real, that part of the brain is not very good at telling the difference between dream or not. Since psychopathic brains seem to have an impaired ability to recall memories of those types of emotions, I can imagine those dreams are pretty confusing if you try to recall them. As you probably know, the current theory is that emotions like sadness, fear, guilt and shame occur more like background noise in psychopathic brains, too weak to have any inpact under normal waking consciousness. Apparently they can get amplified enough to be overwhelming during psychosis, believe it or not.
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James 16:38 on September 25, 2017 Permalink |
They were all true dreams, yes. No fake news here 😉 1and 2 were recent dreams (relative to the publication date), while 3 and 4 are recurring.
Your interpretations are intriguing, and I especially like the idea of the hysterical neighbours reflecting my impression of panic. Crises and imminent danger are the absolute worst times to get swept up in panic, but I guess the panickers can’t help themselves.
Just to clarify number 3, most of the violence is committed by other characters in the dream, not by me.
I did not know that current theory; thanks for sharing. It makes sense actually; I’d never claim to have never felt any of those emotions, just that when I did, they didn’t last very long. From what I understand about guilt and shame, they are more effective when they last longer, and really get a chance to turn the thumbscrew on a person’s conscience.
I’m kind of curious about your last sentence. Is it that psychopaths find emotions overwhelming when experiencing psychosis, or everyone?
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TypicalCritter 08:05 on October 6, 2017 Permalink |
Regarding number 3, I wasn’t assuming you were taking part in the violence, it’s more that since you describe it as a recurring theme, I kind wonder if you have some facination with violence in general. Are these types of dreams more vivid than average? Just as an experiment, if you were to compare these types of dreams to somewhat similar experiences of watching people getting badly injured in real life, would that make more of an impression on you, or about the same?
The reason why I’m curious of this is because of a principle explained by Niels Birbaumer, where he states that seeing (for example injury in) other people are more abstract than an intuitive to psychopathic individuals, because (among other things) their ability to form memories of unpleasant bodily experiences is severly impaired. This in turns mess up the developement of an intuitive ability to anticipate painful or unpleasant experiences in both themselves and others, making highly psychopathic individuals in many ways detached from their body (and in a sense, from themselves). So I can imagine feeling vulnerable themselves would be pretty foreign, in childhood this can make (more) careful people pretty confusing to play with. Over time this could be the root cause of an refined ability to spot vulnerability in other people.
Regarding guildt and shame, you could say that it’s the threat of re-experiencing those unpleasant emotions (ability to anticipate them) that makes up the foundations for developing an intuition for what’s ok to do and what’s not.
I was explained by someone working in a mental health ward that psychopaths suffering from for example a drug induced psychosis are in no way having an easier time in that state. I don’t know if there has been done any studies on this, so sorry to dissapoint that it’s second hand anecdotal stuff. As you probably know, psychosis is more or less scrambled reality. Sometimes emotional regulation stay fairly intact in some people, other times not. In psychopathic brains an impaired ability to regulate is balanced out by low emotional impulses. In a drug induced psychosis, what happens if those emotional impulses get amplified? Panic and confusion could suddenly become a real thing.
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James 13:06 on October 7, 2017 Permalink |
I’m not sure what kind of life you think I lead where I’m often encountering people getting badly injured. Can’t say that anything springs to mind as being memorable. Other people’s injuries don’t figure so much, except when those injuries prevent the person doing stuff with me we both enjoyed. Idiot friend fell 12ft off a ladder onto concrete so can’t come hiking with me anymore like we used to, so I haven’t got much use for him anymore. You could say “in childhood this can make (more) careful people pretty confusing to play with.” still applies now, but the confusion is now irritation…
I’m not a “highly psychopathic individual” either. I score 28 on the PCL-R, where the top score is 40 (“highly psychopathic individual”) and the average score among the general population is between 0 and 2. If you’re looking for a real nutter to run experiments on, I’m not your man. We’ve all heard that oft-repeated and possibly made-up anecdote of the psychopathic prisoner being shown pictures of faces exhibiting a variety of emotions. The prisoner performs exceptionally well until shown a fearful face, “Hmm. I’m not sure about this one. I couldn’t put a name to it, but that’s what people look like before I kill them.”
Thanks for the explanation re: psychosis. It’s pretty cool that you have a contact in a mental health ward.
Regarding dreams, my mother coincidentally told me about one she had two nights ago. She dreamt I was a murderer, but that dream-James was blissfully unaware of doing anything wrong; while my family were frantically trying to seek legal advice I was just carrying on as normal (dream logic, eh?). She described it as a nightmare that made her skin crawl and woke up badly shaken and relieved.
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TypicalCritter 16:56 on October 8, 2017 Permalink |
Just clear up a few misunderstandings, you don’t strike me as super psychopathic and I was not assuming you were encountering badly injured people frequently. I mean come on, if you live anywhere with a lot of people the chances are pretty high that you will witness something sooner or later. If it makes an impression on you, it could just as well be because you got curious how it happened. I do anyway, I know that part would stick to my memory a lot more than how I might have felt a little unconfortable. Do I think psychopathic traits make a good predictor for violent behavior? Probably not, environment on the other hand, different story. At least my understanding is that it’s really about how the brain process stimuli differently when it comes to psychopathic traits. That’s why I find it interesting to read about how you describe your dreams. I’m not trying to make them fit with personal biased views. Do you see what I’m getting at, and am I completely off track?
Also I could probably have phrased it differently, better and to my defence I’m not as good at expressing my thinking as you are, lol.
The example you gave was a pretty good one, so thank you for that and also for taking the time to answer my interpretations. Also your mothers dream was very interesting.
Another thing, If I thougth you were highly psychopathic I wouldn’t have bothered attempting to interpret those dreams you described. The reason is that I find mild manered people with threshold psychopathy far more interesting to interact with, they see the world differently and they have figured out how to balance the benefits and drawbacks that come with having psychopathic traits.
Also I find it kind odd that so many people think top politicians or billionares are mostly highly intellegent people with high psychopathic traits and that they are the root cause of everything from wars, finance crises, climate change, capitalism and annoying shitty tv shows. Those theories fail to take into account all the actual dangerous factors in society like ideology, deregulation, structural flaws and the fact that group mentality and shortsighted solutions tend to get the better of us.
Just to clear up some other biases. Do I know psychopathic people? A few and no, they have not made any trouble for me. I don’t see them as dangerous, that category are reserved for the lunatics with bipolar, schizophrenia, major narcissism and/or APD. I personally have the impression that it’s the right combination of high intelligence, sensitivity to reward, a little APD and maybe a bit of narcissism that makes it easier to reach the top positions in society. Those people are willing to cross boundries, are very fluent in manipulation and don’t look back.
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James 19:02 on October 8, 2017 Permalink |
“Also I find it kind odd that so many people think top politicians or billionares are mostly highly intellegent people with high psychopathic traits and that they are the root cause of everything from wars, finance crises, climate change, capitalism and annoying shitty tv shows. Those theories fail to take into account all the actual dangerous factors in society like ideology, deregulation, structural flaws and the fact that group mentality and shortsighted solutions tend to get the better of us.” You, sir, are a fucking godsend to this site. You’ve probably seen some of the painfully unintelligent stuff some of the other contributors have posted. But you have a nuanced view of things backed by an understanding of geopolitics. I like it.
So, who am I talking to? You know a bit about me, it only seems courteous to ask about the man or woman of mystery with friends in crazy places. You evidently have an aptitude for psychiatry; is it just an amateur interest like mine, or something more professional?
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TypicalCritter 08:06 on October 16, 2017 Permalink |
It’s just an amateur interest in neurology, pharmacology and genetics. It does help to have a relative with a high degree of narcissism who suffers from varying degree of delusions and has a history of impulsive violence, parasitic lifestyle and manipulating people.
Just the mix of traits some people mistake for psychopathy, which has reminded me more than a few times how useful it would be if more people would learn to recognise traits in people, acknowledge that they are there, and not get too obsessed with categoric labels like psychopath, narcissistic- or antisocial- personality disorders.
I also have to give credit to books like “Swimming with sharks” by Joris Luyendijk and Kevin Duttons work for giving me a more nuanced view. Destructive culture/ideology can make most people almost blind to what’s really going on. If you want things to change then change rules of the game, don’t hope for every player to regulate themselves.
Also it’s very useful to know a bit about neurology and pharmacology when you have the non-hyperactive/impulsive variation of adhd. Which is a very misundestood diagnosis among a lot of health professionals, they often have a hard time when it comes to being able to tell it apart from other conditions. Also it doesn’t help that most people belive in simplified ridiciluous stereotypes perpetuated by media and quackery.
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James 13:06 on October 16, 2017 Permalink |
It doesn’t help that most people are idiots. You know it to be true.
So, I’m guessing you use your knowledge of neurology and pharmacology to speak to health professionals who really should know better (again, idiots), to convince them of the reality of your condition. Does that save on disagreements, or do people just think you’re trying to do their job for them?
Amateur interests are often the most worthwhile, given that they don’t carry the same possibility of bias as with a professional or academic (having to reflect your employer’s ethos) or self-interest (wanting to keep your job).
Kevin Dutton has (I think – it’s been a while since I read his stuff) proposed that workplaces adapt themselves to work with employees showing psychopathic traits – not bending the rules as such, but by encouraging and rewarding behaviour that is beneficial to the psychopath, which is obviously a must as otherwise nothing productive will get done, and also beneficial to the company / hospital / newspaper / government / whatever.
The much-maligned bankers’ bonuses are one industry-specific example of this, but Dutton evokes a more holistic approach: hiring psychopaths to do the sort of job a psychopath would enjoy and be good at, while using rewards to encourage manipulation and aggression in the ‘right’ way (i.e. what is beneficial for the job) and not in the ‘wrong’ way (stealing from the company, bullying workmates).
None of this will happen without some kind of educational and cultural revolution however. People are currently too ignorant, and too fearful. Kudos to Dutton and his friend Andy McNab for The Good Psychopath’s Guide to Success.
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Not a psycho 13:29 on April 7, 2019 Permalink |
I need a yes or no or a sometimes pls
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BPS 09:29 on April 13, 2021 Permalink |
Came here after taking an empathy test for autism and one of the questions was about how often you dream. I found it quite strange why this would be part of it. I know other personality traits effect dreams. People with low levels of imagination tend to have less surreal dreams for example so it seems plausible people with low empathy would have less developed or fewer characters in their dreams but I don’t see why it would effect frequency of dreams.
I suspect the yawning question is in reference to contagious yawning. Do other people yawning or even talking about yawning make you feel like yawning as well?
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