In this article, Wray Herbert talks about what makes psychopaths so mysterious and incomprehensible and the theories that have evolved to explain how the disorder develops.

A new group of psychological scientists tested their hypothesis that the roots of the disorder may reach deep into the unconscious mind:

The results, reported online in the journal Psychological Science, were clear and provocative. Indeed, they comprise the first evidence ever that kids with psychopathic traits have a significant deficiency in their automatic, unconscious processing of certain cues -- especially fear cues, but also cues for disgust. Fear and disgust are closely related in the primitive mind, and the findings suggest that these troubled kids have a fundamental impairment in recognizing -- "in the blink of an eye" -- any kind of social danger. So perhaps the childhood roots of Hannibal Lecter's murderous personality lay not in fearlessness itself, nor even in his conscious thought processes, but rather in his general social cluelessness. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/wray-h..._b_953703.html

As one who was told by a therapist that I am a social retard, I found the "social cluelessness" to be quite interesting.