Ryomen Sukuna, the "King of Curses" in Jujutsu Kaisen, is a millennia-old predator who crosses the centuries without ever changing at his core: he kills with elegance, humiliates with a smile, and contemplates the suffering of others with the idle curiosity of someone watching an anthill burn. There is no fury in his cruelty, no old wound to avenge; there is something colder and harder to face head-on: the absence of what, in the rest of us, restrains harm. To read him with real criminology, it's worth resisting the easy word —"monster"— and using a precise tool: psychopathy as Robert Hare described it, not as an insult but as a pattern of traits that can be measured, recognized and —this is the uncomfortable part— understood without thereby being excused.
// The theoryPsychopathy is not a monster: it's a pattern
Hare's contribution was to turn a fuzzy intuition into a clinical instrument: the PCL-R (Psychopathy Checklist-Revised), which assesses traits such as superficial charm, egocentric grandiosity, pathological manipulation, predatory impulsivity and, at the core, the absence of empathy and remorse. The conceptual key is that psychopathy is not equivalent to violence or madness: there are psychopaths who never break the law and function in offices, and there are violent criminals who are not psychopaths. It's a trait distributed across the population, not a moral label. The psychopath isn't confused about what he's doing: he knows perfectly well he's causing harm; the harm to others simply doesn't weigh on him. The emotional brake fails, not the knowledge. That's why Hare insists on distinguishing psychopathy —a description of a way of functioning— from moral judgment —what that functioning does in the world—. Sukuna is useful for thinking through the theory because he displays the picture almost by the book: he seduces when it suits him, manipulates effortlessly, knows himself superior to everything, and watches others die without a single emotional muscle contracting.
Instrumental coldness
The heart of psychopathy isn't noisy cruelty, but instrumental coldness: violence used as a tool, without the emotional charge that accompanies it in everyone else. Most people who attack do so in the heat of the moment —fear, rage, jealousy, humiliation—; the psychopath can harm coldly, with the same serenity as moving a chess piece. Sukuna takes it to an aesthetic extreme: he doesn't kill because he's hated or to survive, but because it entertains him, because it asserts his superiority or, quite simply, because he can. His victims aren't enemies: they are an audience, toys or food. This distinction matters criminologically because instrumental violence —cold, planned, remorseless— is precisely what Hare's research associates with high PCL-R scores, and the kind that responds worst to interventions based on awakening guilt or empathy: you can't appeal to a brake that isn't there.
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// The subjectThe hedonist who knows no remorse
Sukuna unfolds each item of the portrait with an unsettling coherence. Charm and grandiosity: he moves with a sovereign confidence, choosing when to be courteous and when to crush, always convinced he stands above any norm or bond. Manipulation: he uses those around him as means, with no real loyalties, discarding them the moment they stop being useful or amusing. Predatory hedonism: his compass is his own pleasure —food, combat, the spectacle of pain—, not an ideological plan or a vendetta. And at the center, the decisive thing: a total absence of empathy and remorse. It's not that he represses guilt; it's that it never appears. Where other villains have a wound, a trauma or a cause to explain their drift, Sukuna offers a smooth void: there was no moral fall because there was never a floor to fall from. That, paradoxically, is the hardest part to dramatize —and the most faithful to what Hare describes—: a being fully lucid, capable, charming when he wants to be, and utterly indifferent to the value of any life that isn't his own.
Ryomen Sukuna
// The crackExplaining the mechanism is not signing an acquittal
Here is the ethical crack of KRIMINIS, and with psychopathy it's sharper than ever. Naming the trait —"he's a psychopath"— can slide into two opposite errors. The first is exculpatory determinism: "if he was born without empathy, he's guilty of nothing, he's a broken machine." The second is demonization: "he's pure evil, there's nothing to understand." Both, curiously, close the conversation. The honest reading holds both truths at once: psychopathy explains the how —why Sukuna harms coldly, without the brake that stops others— but doesn't touch the what —what he does is still destruction, and it's still his—. The absence of remorse describes his inner machinery; it doesn't cancel responsibility for the acts that machinery produces.
Real criminology works with this tension daily: courts recognize that a personality trait can modulate the understanding of a crime without abolishing accountability. A psychopath knows that killing is forbidden and chooses to do it; his deficit is affective, not cognitive. That's why Hare himself was so cautious about the forensic use of his scale: he feared it would become a label that sealed destinies or, conversely, an alibi. Sukuna, a fictional character, lets us rehearse that caution without real cost: to understand that his coldness has a clinical name and that this name doesn't redeem him from a single one of his victims.
Telling the mechanism apart from the excuse
Sukuna matters because he teaches us how to handle one of the most dangerous tools in popular criminology: the word "psychopath." Misused, it becomes an insult that explains nothing or an excuse that exempts everything. Used well —as Hare proposed it— it's a precise description of a way of functioning: that of a lucid person on whom the suffering of others simply doesn't weigh. Recognizing that pattern has real practical value: it helps you not be seduced by the manipulator's superficial charm, not to expect guilt to stop him, to design responses that don't depend on a remorse that will never come. But recognizing it is never the same as excusing it. Psychopathy tells us why the brake failed; responsibility is still measured by what was done with that freedom to harm. Explaining the predator's mechanism is exactly the opposite of signing his acquittal: it's learning to see him coming.
Three key ideas
- Psychopathy, according to Robert Hare and his PCL-R, isn't "being a monster" but a measurable pattern of traits: superficial charm, grandiosity, manipulation, impulsivity and, at the core, an absence of empathy and remorse. It's a trait, not an insult or a diagnosis of madness.
- Sukuna embodies instrumental coldness: he harms coldly, as a tool and for pleasure, treating others as an audience, toys or food. There is no trauma or hatred to explain his drift; there is an affective void, not a moral fall.
- To explain is not to excuse: psychopathy clarifies the HOW (why the emotional brake fails) but not the WHAT (the acts are still destruction and still his). The deficit is affective, not cognitive: he knows he's causing harm and chooses to do it.
Sources · further reading
- Hare, R. D. (2003). Without Conscience: The Disturbing World of the Psychopaths Among Us. Guilford Press.
- Cleckley, H. (1941). The Mask of Sanity. Mosby.
- Blair, R. J. R. (2005). The Psychopath: Emotion and the Brain. Blackwell.
Case-file questionsFrequently asked questions
¿Por qué Ryomen Sukuna (el Rey de las Maldiciones) se convierte en villano?
Ryomen Sukuna and psychopathy: not a "monster," but a measurable trait. The charm that seduces, the cruelty that calculates, and the total absence of remorse in the King of Curses.
¿Qué teoría criminológica explica a Ryomen Sukuna?
El caso de Ryomen Sukuna se analiza desde la Psicopatía. Psychopathy, according to Robert Hare, isn't a synonym for "monster" but a measurable pattern of traits: superficial charm, manipulation, egocentrism and, above all, an absence of empathy and remorse. Ryomen Sukuna, the King of Curses in Jujutsu Kaisen, embodies the clinical portrait taken to the extreme: he kills for aesthetic pleasure, treats others as food or playthings, and never feels guilt. Psychopathy explains the HOW —the instrumental coldness of his cruelty—; it excuses nothing.
