A young man diagnosed with psychopathic traits has revealed he refused to jump into a swimming pool to save his drowning sister as a child, admitting he was more concerned about getting his clothes wet than whether she lived or died. 

Loïc De Marie, 26, from Belgium, said he was just six years old when he watched his younger sister struggling in the family’s pool while their mother was inside preparing dinner.

‘She fell into the pool and she was drowning and I looked at her and that was kind of troubling,’ he said during an interview with SBS’s Insight program while visiting Sydney.

‘I didn’t jump into the pool because I didn’t want my clothes to be wet.’

Instead, he used a plastic golf club to pull her towards the pool ladder and save her.

Mr De Marie, who lives in Vancouver, Canada, also recalled feeling unmoved when a classmate was killed in a car crash.

‘A little classmate died in a dramatic car accident when I was six years old… everybody was crying,’ he said.

‘This was the first time I understood that emotions are different with me because the look that the teacher gave me was, ‘Why is this kid not crying?”

Three years ago, Loïc De Marie sought help from a psychologist after years of feeling ‘different’ 

Three years ago, Mr De Marie sought help from a psychologist after years of feeling ‘different’. 

He was later diagnosed with psychopathy, often associated with antisocial personality disorder (ASPD).

While psychopathy is not a formal clinical diagnosis listed in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, the term is commonly used to describe people with traits linked to ASPD, including manipulative behaviour, chronic dishonesty, lack of empathy and disregard for social norms.

Researchers estimate psychopathic traits may be present in around one per cent of men and between 0.3 and 0.7 per cent of women.

Mr De Marie said he struggled to understand other people’s emotions from a young age and viewed human beings much the same way he viewed inanimate objects. 

However, therapy has helped him better understand why he does not experience the emotional responses most people take for granted.

‘When we hear psychopathy we think of Hannibal Lecter,’ he said.

‘We think of cannibals and serial killers, but most of us never kill somebody. I don’t think I was born bad. I was born different.’

Mr De Marie said he knew his behaviour had hurt people in his life and that he had to learn to react appropriately. 

As he got older, Mr De Marie became involved in fights and admitted he was arrested after bringing a baseball bat to school intending to attack a rival student. 

‘A guy was looking me in the eyes, (it was) some rivalry between men… and one day I came to school with a baseball bat,’ he said.

‘I would have smashed his head like a watermelon.’

Mr De Marie said therapy taught him how to respond appropriately in situations where other people expect empathy or compassion.

‘Before therapy I couldn’t change my behaviour, even when someone was crying. I would continue to act that way,’ he said.

‘Sometimes you need to fake it.

‘If you’re in a situation where someone has died, or a dog has just been hit by a car, you might say, “Oh my gosh, this is terrible”. But inside, you’re thinking, “It’s just a dog”.’ 

His father, Philippe, said finally receiving a diagnosis helped explain years of troubling behaviour.

UNSW professor Eva Kimonis said research suggests callous and unemotional traits can be identified as early as two or three years old

‘It was good to put a name on a disorder, and then you understand a lot of things,’ he told SBS.

‘We try to do the best we can to support him with a lot of communication and love.’

Eva Kimonis, a clinical psychologist and professor at the University of New South Wales, said research suggests callous traits can be identified early in childhood. 

‘We’ve done research that found that we can reliably measure callous and unemotional traits from age two or three,’ she told SBS.

‘I think if we can address the problem when empathy is developing and it’s starting to go the wrong way, then I think yes, we can teach empathy.’