Pretty sure Joe Detective noted this earlier, but I'm not sure why people seem to be keen to label BRE as either unintelligent or mediocre. Intelligence is measured across a number of domains, and while there is considered a 'general measure of intelligence', the different domains can certainly be mutually exclusive. It's not uncommon for people to be less strong in one area but particularly strong, even gifted in another. I think we've all met or known people who appear poor at basic every day things, self-care or commonsense, but are quite brilliant at other things, maybe music, art, maths etc. Some intelligent people can of course also be lazy, whether they're bored or things come easily to them, or they simply don't care about some areas of life as their attentions are taken by other things. I think it is misguided to assume any measure of intelligence based on BRE's modest home and yard, or longstanding employment alone, as it risks veering towards judgement. More generally, if we consider there are multiple domains of intelligence, so too are there different types of psychopathy. Psychopathy is essentially a particularly extreme end of the personality continuum within the Antisocial Personality domain, to be diagnosed with APD people usually have to meet the criteria for Conduct Disorder as a youth. These people are generally speaking risk takers, opportunistic, narcissistic, self-entitled and self-serving, and may seem to almost lack a fundamental moral centre, at the more extreme end they may even enjoy taking advantage of others and seek to do so. But they aren't necessarily violent, for instance they may be consistently fraudulent, although many are prone to anger or what has been described as a 'narcissistic rage' when challenged or denied what they want or feel entitled to. There's been research done into APD and psychopathy and it's been suggested that it may arise due to a fundamental absence or significant breach in attachment to a primary caregiver. When a child becomes upset and the mother picks it up and says 'there, there little one' and smiles lovingly into the child's eyes, the child feels safe and regulates its distress in accordance with the mother - they are 'attached'. We all have attachment styles, an internal model of our fundamental internalised rules and understanding about human interpersonal relationships, ranging anywhere from secure to insecure, based on our initial attachments to our primary caregivers. People with APD, or psychopaths, are thought to have not been attuned to well by their primary caregivers; left in the cot crying and having to soothe themselves rather than attuning and regulating through a loving mother and learning how to healthily self-regulate over time. As the brain is going through its key developmental stages these kinds of experiences and ruptures in attachment can leave people developing a 'flat affect' or lack of feeling, and a fundamental lack of empathy from others as they are unable to attune to the emotional states of others. This is why they often say 'monsters are not born, they are made', although there is bound to be genetic predispositions to this too. It is also noted that head injuries can be linked to antisocial behaviour, but that would likely be due to damage done to the prefrontal cortex where our reasoning and higher decision making is performed and would obviously be impaired. Needless to say, if you were to pair a fundamental lack of empathy with a tendency towards risk-taking behaviour, with an aberrant sexual development around sexual pleasure (*advertiser censored* at a young age, peeping, stealing underwear, groping etc.), where those neural pathways could be firmly patterned and continually reinforced into the brain and its cognitive processing, that's a fairly dangerous psychopathology right there.
