Café de Nuit

One of the darklords to get listed the most quickly as a psychopath is Ivan Dilisnya. However, I just noticed a little paragraph in Domains of Dread that speaks of the possibility of how he wakes up in the night screaming to his sister Kristina's name, and how his servants dare not speak her name in his presence. That he is screaming to her implies that he misses her and may feel something akin to guilt for murdering her, which would imply emotional capacity beyond what is expected of psychopathy.

Edit: Incidentally, this might make him a good target for the Nightmare Court, perhaps the Ghost Dancer.

You assume two things:

1) That to be a psychopath means to feel exactly zero guilt.
2) That Ivan calls out his sister's name in the night because of guilt.

I'm not sure either of these assumptions is safe.

True, although lack of guilt is characteristic of psychopaths, psychopathy is a range (as far as the psychological construct seems to be understood.) Psychopathy itself is fairly controversial, used in forensics and law enforcement but not by clinical psychology or as a medical term.

As far as Ivan goes, I inferred the guilt (or a similar feeling of regret) because the sources say he specifically calls to her "in terror", which would might suggest nightmares brought on by guilt. (Guilt being the most haunting of emotions). That merely hearing her name puts him in a homicidal rage makes me think he's in a profound state of denial (or at least, avoidance of thinking about something.) What the denial is could be a number of things, from her "betrayal" of him by having children to having guilt over murdering her to even having murdered her. Both nightmares and profound denial seem like guilt could be a very likely cause of them both.

The Lesser Evil wrote:True, although lack of guilt is characteristic of psychopaths, psychopathy is a range (as far as the psychological construct seems to be understood.) Psychopathy itself is fairly controversial, used in forensics and law enforcement but not by clinical psychology or as a medical term.

As far as Ivan goes, I inferred the guilt (or a similar feeling of regret) because the sources say he specifically calls to her "in terror", which would might suggest nightmares brought on by guilt. (Guilt being the most haunting of emotions). That merely hearing her name puts him in a homicidal rage makes me think he's in a profound state of denial (or at least, avoidance of thinking about something.) What the denial is could be a number of things, from her "betrayal" of him by having children to having guilt over murdering her to even having murdered her. Both nightmares and profound denial seem like guilt could be a very likely cause of them both.

He could also be crying out of terror of her haunting/coming after him.

Psychopaths are supposed to have no guilt because some part of their brains don't function properly or at all. Perhaps he was a psychopath when he killed his sister and the Mists have cursed him to have functional part of his brain that allows guilt while he sleeps.

Manofevil wrote:Psychopaths are supposed to have no guilt because some part of their brains don't function properly or at all.

Again, the assumption that psychopaths have "no guilt" is not really accurate. They have "diminished empathy and remorse," according to the textbook definitions, but "diminished" is not the same as "absent." Most real-world psychopaths show some small amount of guilt or remorse, even confined to a few areas. I'd argue that someone who feels guilt over murdering his beloved sister but not for murdering one of his parents (which Ivan also did) or dozens/scores of other people would still qualify as having "diminished remorse."

Moreover, if you insist on defining psychopathy as a complete absence of guilt, then a vast majority of diagnosed psychopaths no longer qualify. Matter of fact, I think you'd be hard pressed to find anyone who expressed exactly zero guilt, ever. Even Ted Bundy admitted he felt a small amount of guilt (although he resented it and deliberately resisted its influence), as did John Wayne Gacy. Westley Allan Dodd tried to write a book for children from prison to help them avoid becoming victims. If your definition is so idealized that it no longer includes such textbook cases as these, then it loses a lot of its usefulness.