Serial Killers and What They Are Behavior is sometimes defined as the response of an individual, group, or species to its environment. Parents, girlfriends, sisters, brothers, and peers can all affect a person's behavior. Not everybody necessarily will have the behavior of a serial killer. In this paper, I will attempt to show the difference between the psychopath and the psychotic. Explain how the environment, upbringing, and treatment of serial killers led them to become who they are today. Most serial killers can be placed in two categories, the psychopath and the psychotic. Psychotics are clearly insane and fail to perceive reality correctly. However, very few serial killers fall into this category. Most serial killers have a thought out scheme, or plan of going about things. They think things through, and evaluate what the situation could bring to them. This comes from a long line of abuse, intolerance, and dysfunction during their early childhood years. Many people may even go so far as to view certain serial killers as geniuses, in the respect that their actions are so well thought out so very carefully planned. These types of serial killers would fall, under the psychopath category. A psychopath, also known as a sociopath, does not suffer from a mental illness, where in their makeup of their DNA have nothing to do with the way they are. A psychopath, rather suffers from a severe brain flaw, or personality, resulting due to the way they were brought up, their environment, and the way they were treated by family, especially that of the parents, or brothers, and sisters. One thing to note about the psychopath is that, the majority of the time, they realize the crime they are committing is wrong. This does not concern them, however, as they feel their need to kill and punish is greater than any rule or law (www.serialkillers.net). Psychopaths are usually very smart, very deceiving, and very normal upon first glance.