Michael Stone: profile of a psychopath and his scale of evil

Michael Stone, forensic psychiatrist and professor at Columbia University, is a reference in the knowledge of the “anatomy of evil.” It was he who developed the evil scale, a tool as curious as it is striking. This scale is intended to be useful to assess the different degrees of aggressiveness or psychopathic drives that the darkest side of the human being can develop.

There are those who define the “scale of evil” as a descent into Dante’s hell.where each circle or each link defines a series of sins, of acts whose perversity ranges from those that we would all justify or understand to those that simply navigate the most abject and incomprehensible reverse of our essence as people.

It should be said first of all that this tool, despite having been developed by a well-known forensic psychiatrist, lacks clinical value when judging a criminal. However, Dr. Stone himself, as well as a good part of the scientific community, alleges that the approach based on detailed analysis of more than 600 criminals is rigorous enough to be that lock from which to understand much better the germ of violence and the key to evil itself.

Perhaps, the skepticism of the legal services themselves and the forensic community regarding this scale of evil stems from its own origin. Between 2006 and 2008, the American channel Discovery broadcast a program called “ “Most Evil”. In it, Dr. Stone analyzed the profiles of several homicides, serial killers and psychopaths. He in turn investigated hundreds of criminal files, addressing methods and motivations.

Likewise, and through numerous interviews with countless criminals in prison, he was able to show the public how and in what way his famous classification tool was articulated.

Nevertheless What many experts saw on this scale was little more than pure sensationalism. However, Michael Stone’s subsequent works denote a meticulous and profound rigor in the field of forensic psychology and exceptional care when trying to explain to us what is in that sinuous and perverse labyrinth of the criminal mind.

Michael Stone and the evil scale

Let’s ask ourselves a simple question. What do we understand by evil? What happens if a man kills another in self-defense? What happens if a woman meticulously plans the murder of her attacker, the person who abused her? Do we consider these acts as reflections of “evil”? Is there perhaps a “border”?

As we have all considered on more than one occasion, there are justifiable facts, others that we can understand but not justify, and quite a few that are incomprehensible to us. All of us have the capacity to be violent and aggressive.We know it, but there are nuances, there are degrees, levels, trends and dynamics that Dr. Michael Stone himself wanted to define.

Thus, what differentiates us from one another, which places a barrier between what is conceivable and what is not our personality, part of our genetics, our education and the social context in which we have grown up.. These and other factors are what Michael Stone used to build his scale of evil with the following 22 levels that we will define.

First group: justified homicide

He level 1 refers to simple self-defense. In this case, there are no traits of psychopathy and Dr. Stone himself concludes that these people simply lack any evil.

Second group: evil due to jealousy and hatred

This second group includes all those profiles that commit murders out of jealousy, those who are motivated by revenge and those who are also capable of acting as accomplices, to the point of collaborating in a violent act. Likewise, it should be noted that although many of these people show narcissistic traits and considerable aggressiveness, they do not present psychopathic traits. Let’s see them in detail.

Level 2: crimes of passion committed by immature or self-centered people.Level 3: A very striking example of this level on Michael Stone’s evil scale is Leslie Van Houten. This woman was a member of Charles Manson’s “family.” A woman she was able to kill because Manson ordered her to.Level 4: they are people who kill in self-defense but who, before, have not hesitated to start the fight or the aggression itselfLevel 5: traumatized people (most of whom suffered abuse) and driven by rage, do not hesitate to carry out effective revenge.Level 6: impulsive murderers who let themselves be carried away by a sudden attack of uncontrolled rage.Level 7: very narcissistic individuals who kill out of jealousy or passion.

Third group: bordering on psychopathy

There is a confusing, complex and chaotic limit where experts have great difficulties when diagnosing the psychopathic profile. This third group brings together all those people, all those violent behaviors that by themselves do not always trace with clear accuracy the psychopathic personality. (although there are specific or temporary features that show this).

Level 8: people who have a high level of repressed anger. They are profiles that only need a small motivator or a certain situation to “break out” and commit a violent act.Level 9: At this level of the evil scale we already have jealous lovers who present certain psychopathic traits.Level 10: here we have the classic “hitmen”, people who kill in cold blood for money or who are capable of taking lives if they get in the way of their objectives. They are egocentric but do not end up forming a psychopathic personality.Level 11: in this case Michael Stone includes in this category the egocentrics with more defined psychopathic traits.Level 12: people who kill when they feel cornered.Level 13: here we already have psychopathic murderers who kill out of rage.Level 14: They are conspiratorial, Machiavellian and self-centered people who kill to obtain a profit.Level 15: This level includes psychopaths who, in a specific attack of rage, can kill dozens of people in cold blood. An example of this was Charles Manson.Level 16: psychopaths who, in addition to killing, commit vicious acts.

Fourth group

In this last degree of the scale of evil we undoubtedly have Dante’s last circle. The most primal and atavistic evil. We are talking about psychopaths incapable of feeling any remorse and for whom the objective of murder is the pleasure that the violent act itself produces.

Level 17: serial killers with sadistic, fetishistic and sexual connotations. An example of this was Ted Bundy.Level 18: murderers who first torture and then commit murder.Level 19: psychopaths who first intimidate, persecute, instilling terror in their victims, and then commit the crime.Level 20: psychotic murderers for whom the only motivation is torture.Level 21: Psychopaths who only seek to torture, not kill.Level 22: At this last level of the scale of evil we have extreme torturers and psychopathic murderers.

Ted Bundy

As we have seen, This journey into the depths of evil presents abundant nuances, so that in some cases it is not easy to place a person in it. murderer or the architect of a violent act. We can agree more or less on it, we can recognize the usefulness of the evil scale or see it as a simple attempt to classify evil with sensationalist overtones.

However, what does emerge from the evil scale is that we increasingly understand the criminal mind and we increasingly have better tools to recognize it. What we would need now is to provide our society with more mechanisms to avoid these acts, which in many cases are born from inequality, lack or uprooting.

Bibliographic references

Stone, Michael (2009). “The anatomy of evil.” Prometheus Books.

Zimbardo, Philip (2012). “The Lucifer effect” Madrid: Paidos.