Though research has shown us that psychological disorders have more mundane causes like brain chemistry and stress, most of us are still subtly influenced by generations of superstition. We see people with mental illness as being extremely different from us, and sometimes even as deserving of their problems and the consequences of those problems.

Otherness Alterity, or the concept of Other, is the inability to relate to someone or something we perceive as radically, insurmountably different from ourselves. Most of us have trouble knowing how to react to someone who behaves strangely, or whose behavior or ideas scare us. We say, "He's out of his mind,""He's lost his mind," or "He's acting crazy." Sometimes we even experience parts of ourselves as Other. We look back on choices we've made and try to make sense of them by saying things like "I wasn't myself" or "I don't know why I did it."

The Other appears in two common forms in fiction. In the first, the Other is a part of a character who can't control her behavior, often because she's possessed or mentally ill. In the second, the individual herself is Other, a villain so packed with evil Shadow characteristics that we can feel good about seeing her destroyed.

The Other in Fiction The Other tends to be easy to pick out in fiction, because it usually has one or more of the following three qualities.

1. The Other is a Monster The villain who achieves Monster status has been imbued with so many Shadow qualities that he is no longer viewed as human, redeemable, or even worth saving. Killing him isn't about killing another human being—it's destroying something even God would high-five you for taking down. I argue elsewhere that Monsters are less scary than more complex, empathetic villains, if for no other reason than they're predictable: they're always going to make the "wrong" decision, the one that makes it easy to hate them.

The Monster is a receptacle for the things we hate or fear about ourselves, both individually and as a species, things we'd like to strip out of ourselves and destroy. In action and horror stories, the Monster is often identified by dark clothes, weapons emblazoned with animals or symbols associated with evil (snakes, dragons), and a blas? approach to killing.

2. The Other Has Incredibly Obvious Psychological Problems In many ways, psychosis and Dissociative Identity Disorder (DID, formerly Multiple Personality Disorder or MPD) have replaced stories about possession in the fictional media. Rather than being possessed by demons, we're possessed by personalities or disorders.

In stories about possession, the demon rather than the person is responsible for the horrific acts committed; when the demon is exorcised, the person deserves no punishment and can resume a normal life. In stories about mental illness, love often serves the same purpose, saving the character from her crimes and redeeming her soul.

3. The Other has a Childish, One-Track Mind The Other is usually portrayed as thinking in overly simplistic words and phrases. Sometimes this is because he has an Incredibly Obvious Psychological Problem, and sometimes it's because he's a Monster. In extreme cases, his thought processes echo nothing so much as an elementary school child. The sentences become short and choppy and make the Other sound like he's about to get a cake he's been looking forward to.

Horror films sometimes use this innocence and simplicity to emphasize how awful the atrocities in question are. The idea that Freddy Krueger's mother was a nun shows us how far astray he's gone, and the ominous Nightmare on Elm Street nursery rhyme does the same thing (1, 2, Freddy's coming for you; 3, 4, better lock your door...) A little girl screaming obscenities has shocked generations of Exorcist fans. And in Saw, there's something unsettling about Jigsaw on the tricycle. If you're going to take this approach, just be careful to come up with something original. The tricycle worked because it hadn't been done to death.

The Purpose of the Other This Other serves a purpose, and that purpose is to assure us that we're nothing like it.

Mental illness and Monstrosity are often clumped together for two reasons. First, mental illness can be scary, and we want to believe we would never behave that way, no matter what. Second, we use psychological terms to try to understand cruelty and hatred, and it's much easier for the average person to equate "sociopath" with "monster" than to accept that circumstances contributed to that person's behavior...and could conceivably have done the same to us if we'd shared them.

Research like the Stanford Prison Experiment and Milgram's Obedience Study has shown that circumstance is the most important influence on behavior, especially cruelty. In both studies, average people hurt others (or thought they did) thanks to opportunities and pressures offered by the environment. In the commentary on the 2004 remake of The Amityville Horror, actor Ryan Reynolds remarks how upsetting it was to realize that he was capable of hitting a child—because he spontaneously did it while in character.

There is no excuse for the atrocities committed by men like Hitler, Stalin, and Hussein, but when placed in the context of their lives, their behaviors make some sense and are even predicable. Would you or I do the same things if we'd grown up in exactly the same situations? I certainly hope not, but we might have had a lot more in common with those "monsters" than we'd like to think.

The truth is, in real life nobody is pure Monster, and the Other is a lot less Other than most of us would like to think.

Behind the Disorders Sometimes Associated with the Other Psychosis People who develop psychoses—that is, people who lose contact with the reality most people are experiencing—haven't developed a strange new personality; instead, they've lost the ability to differentiate between the same fantasies and realities we all experience. We all have inner voices that say things like "That was a stupid thing to do" or "Eating all those cookies is going to make you fat!" People who "hear voices" are hearing the exact same thing, but an imbalance in brain chemistry makes it impossible for them to tell these are internal thoughts, not external voices. When they take antipsychotic medications, the drugs re-balance their brain chemicals so their perceptions of reality are more like everyone else's. They still hear the voices, they just know—the same way you and I do—that they're coming from inside.

Most often associated with psychosis are schizophrenia and the manic phase of bipolar I disorder, though some people develop other psychotic disorders or experience psychosis as a result of drug use.

Dissociative Identity Disorder Psychological professionals believe that Dissociative Identity Disorder is caused by trauma so severe that to cope the person dissociates or splinters that experience off from the rest. Splintering protects the birth or core personality from the terrible things that happened. It's the same process that protects us from other painful memories, like those associated with bad car accidents.

Fictional characters with DID usually harbor a savage killer. The truth is, people with DID harbor killers no more than the rest of us. That doesn't mean people with DID never harbor killers, only that "normal" people do, too. Surviving abuse teaches some people to abuse others, but that's true even without a psychological disorder.

In fact, the only psychological disorder that is associated with increased violence is substance use and abuse—drinking and doing drugs. And even people without ongoing substance abuse problems do things they later wish they hadn't when they've been under the influence.

Revisiting the One Track Mind and the Incredibly Obvious Problem Since we've discussed the Monster pretty extensively, let's briefly revisit the other two categories of Other and talk about ways to freshen them up.

The Childish One-Track-Mind Most people don't think like children unless they actually are children. People sometimes regress, or act more child-like when they're overwhelmed, but they always revert to grownup thought processes as the stressors pass or they adapt.

Killers in particular are going to think like grownups. Unless she's incredibly disorganized (in which case she's going to be fairly easy to catch) she has to be clever enough to outwit your hero or heroine. And even people who kill, for whatever reason, think things besides killing. They go to the grocery store. They watch Gray's Anatomy (pun intended). They get the flu, look at mail-order catalogs, and clean their homes. Some better than others.

This normalcy is what makes people who do terrible things scary, because we can relate to everyday behaviors. The less Other the villain is, the scarier he's likely to be. In any case, you're probably not going to be able to pick out someone who kills by their speech patterns (assuming they're not constantly talking about gore), what they buy at the supermarket (assuming they're not buying cement or fertilizer), or how their houses are organized (assuming there aren't any dead people around).

Writers can and do make the One-Track-Mind Other work when they take a unique approach. For example, in the International Financial Assets and the Exchange Rate
Foreign currency is bought and sold to buy or sell foreign assets. U.S. companies and individuals buy foreign assets for much the same reasons as they hold domestic assets – they are balancing expected returns and anticipated risks. For example, some U.S. pension funds include foreign stocks and bonds in their portfolio of assets. U.S. multinational companies purchase factories and office buildings overseas. Pension fund managers and multinational corporate treasurers may think that the returns to foreign assets are higher than the return to U.S. assets, or they may think that the overall risk of their portfolio of assets is reduced by diversifying and including foreign assets. Similarly, foreigners purchase U.S. assets, such as U.S. government securities, real estate in New York or Los Angeles, or factories in Ohio.All of these transactions involve foreign exchange. For example, a Japanese insurance company may decide to purchase an office building in Los Angeles. It deposits funds in yen into an account in a Japanese bank and the bank then arranges to exchange the amount in yen and transfer it into a deposit in a dollar account in a U.S. bank. These funds in dollars are then used to purchase the building. Because international investors require foreign exchange, international buyers and sellers of assets participate in foreign-exchange markets along with importers and exporters of goods and services.Individuals and ining—it's destroying something even God would high-five you for taking down. I argue elsewhere that Monsters are less scary than more complex, empathetic villains, if for no other reason than they're predictable: they're always going to make the "wrong" decision, the one that makes it easy to hate them.

The Monster is a receptacle for the things we hate or fear about ourselves, both individually and as a species, things we'd like to strip out of ourselves and destroy. In action and horror stories, the Monster is often identified by dark clothes, weapons emblazoned with animals or symbols associated with evil (snakes, dragons), and a blas? approach to killing.

2. The Other Has Incredibly Obvious Psychological Problems In many ways, psychosis and Dissociative Identity Disorder (DID, formerly Multiple Personality Disorder or MPD) have replaced stories about possession in the fictional media. Rather than being possessed by demons, we're possessed by personalities or disorders.

In stories about possession, the demon rather than the person is responsible for the horrific acts committed; when the demon is exorcised, the person deserves no punishment and can resume a normal life. In stories about mental illness, love often serves the same purpose, saving the character from her crimes and redeeming her soul.

3. The Other has a Childish, One-Track Mind The Other is usually portrayed as thinking in overly simplistic words and phrases. Sometimes this is because he has an Incredibly Obvious Psychological Problem, and sometimes it's because he's a Monster. In extreme cases, his thought processes echo nothing so much as an elementary school child. The sentences become short and choppy and make the Other sound like he's about to get a cake he's been looking forward to.

Horror films sometimes use this innocence and simplicity to emphasize how awful the atrocities in question are. The idea that Freddy Krueger's mother was a nun shows us how far astray he's gone, and the ominous Nightmare on Elm Street nursery rhyme does the same thing (1, 2, Freddy's coming for you; 3, 4, better lock your door...) A little girl screaming obscenities has shocked generations of Exorcist fans. And in Saw, there's something unsettling about Jigsaw on the tricycle. If you're going to take this approach, just be careful to come up with something original. The tricycle worked because it hadn't been done to death.

The Purpose of the Other This Other serves a purpose, and that purpose is to assure us that we're nothing like it.

Mental illness and Monstrosity are often clumped together for two reasons. First, mental illness can be scary, and we want to believe we would never behave that way, no matter what. Second, we use psychological terms to try to understand cruelty and hatred, and it's much easier for the average person to equate "sociopath" with "monster" than to accept that circumstances contributed to that person's behavior...and could conceivably have done the same to us if we'd shared them.

Research like the Stanford Prison Experiment and Milgram's Obedience Study has shown that circumstance is the most important influence on behavior, especially cruelty. In both studies, average people hurt others (or thought they did) thanks to opportunities and pressures offered by the environment. In the commentary on the 2004 remake of The Amityville Horror, actor Ryan Reynolds remarks how upsetting it was to realize that he was capable of hitting a child—because he spontaneously did it while in character.

There is no excuse for the atrocities committed by men like Hitler, Stalin, and Hussein, but when placed in the context of their lives, their behaviors make some sense and are even predicable. Would you or I do the same things if we'd grown up in exactly the same situations? I certainly hope not, but we might have had a lot more in common with those "monsters" than we'd like to think.

The truth is, in real life nobody is pure Monster, and the Other is a lot less Other than most of us would like to think.

Behind the Disorders Sometimes Associated with the Other Psychosis People who develop psychoses—that is, people who lose contact with the reality most people are experiencing—haven't developed a strange new personality; instead, they've lost the ability to differentiate between the same fantasies and realities we all experience. We all have inner voices that say things like "That was a stupid thing to do" or "Eating all those cookies is going to make you fat!" People who "hear voices" are hearing the exact same thing, but an imbalance in brain chemistry makes it impossible for them to tell these are internal thoughts, not external voices. When they take antipsychotic medications, the drugs re-balance their brain chemicals so their perceptions of reality are more like everyone else's. They still hear the voices, they just know—the same way you and I do—that they're coming from inside.

Most often associated with psychosis are schizophrenia and the manic phase of bipolar I disorder, though some people develop other psychotic disorders or experience psychosis as a result of drug use.

Dissociative Identity Disorder Psychological professionals believe that Dissociative Identity Disorder is caused by trauma so severe that to cope the person dissociates or splinters that experience off from the rest. Splintering protects the birth or core personality from the terrible things that happened. It's the same process that protects us from other painful memories, like those associated with bad car accidents.

Fictional characters with DID usually harbor a savage killer. The truth is, people with DID harbor killers no more than the rest of us. That doesn't mean people with DID never harbor killers, only that "normal" people do, too. Surviving abuse teaches some people to abuse others, but that's true even without a psychological disorder.

In fact, the only psychological disorder that is associated with increased violence is substance use and abuse—drinking and doing drugs. And even people without ongoing substance abuse problems do things they later wish they hadn't when they've been under the influence.

Revisiting the One Track Mind and the Incredibly Obvious Problem Since we've discussed the Monster pretty extensively, let's briefly revisit the other two categories of Other and talk about ways to freshen them up.

The Childish One-Track-Mind Most people don't think like children unless they actually are children. People sometimes regress, or act more child-like when they're overwhelmed, but they always revert to grownup thought processes as the stressors pass or they adapt.

Killers in particular are going to think like grownups. Unless she's incredibly disorganized (in which case she's going to be fairly easy to catch) she has to be clever enough to outwit your hero or heroine. And even people who kill, for whatever reason, think things besides killing. They go to the grocery store. They watch Gray's Anatomy (pun intended). They get the flu, look at mail-order catalogs, and clean their homes. Some better than others.

This normalcy is what makes people who do terrible things scary, because we can relate to everyday behaviors. The less Other the villain is, the scarier he's likely to be. In any case, you're probably not going to be able to pick out someone who kills by their speech patterns (assuming they're not constantly talking about gore), what they buy at the supermarket (assuming they're not buying cement or fertilizer), or how their houses are organized (assuming there aren't any dead people around).

Writers can and do make the One-Track-Mind Other work when they take a unique approach. For example, in the Write E-Mails That Sell: 5 Easy Ways to Improve Your Email
It’s cheap, easy and fast, so e-mail’s a marketing tactic few can (or should) resist. But take care: on any given day, you may be competing against dozens – or maybe hundreds – of other e-mails, plus quick trigger-fingers poised over “delete” keys. Here are a few ways to increase the likelihood that your e- mail gets opened, read and acted upon.Write clear, relevant subject lines. The subject line is the first thing potential readers see as your e-mail is registered in their in-boxes. Anything that smacks of let’s-make-a-deal talk – with words such as “free,” “special,” “act now” and the like – screams “spam!” and is begging for deletion. Instead, identify yourself to remind recipients of your previously established relationship, and speak to the core message immediately, i.e., “Pet HQ’s winter prep tips for dogs”Use a familiar “from” address. People don’t like to open doors, or e-mail, from strangers. It’s best if your mail is sent from a familiar personality. At the very least, it should be from an address with your server/path, i.e., “jsmith@pethq.com.”Make an offer, then make it again. And again. Plan on including a hyperlink to your offer in at least three places in your mail: between the headline and the body; in the middle of the body; and at the end. The whole point of your e-mail is to get respondents to take action, so give ‘em plenty of opportunity to do so. Example one, and the ominous Nightmare on Elm Street nursery rhyme does the same thing (1, 2, Freddy's coming for you; 3, 4, better lock your door...) A little girl screaming obscenities has shocked generations of Exorcist fans. And in Saw, there's something unsettling about Jigsaw on the tricycle. If you're going to take this approach, just be careful to come up with something original. The tricycle worked because it hadn't been done to death.

The Purpose of the Other This Other serves a purpose, and that purpose is to assure us that we're nothing like it.

Mental illness and Monstrosity are often clumped together for two reasons. First, mental illness can be scary, and we want to believe we would never behave that way, no matter what. Second, we use psychological terms to try to understand cruelty and hatred, and it's much easier for the average person to equate "sociopath" with "monster" than to accept that circumstances contributed to that person's behavior...and could conceivably have done the same to us if we'd shared them.

Research like the Stanford Prison Experiment and Milgram's Obedience Study has shown that circumstance is the most important influence on behavior, especially cruelty. In both studies, average people hurt others (or thought they did) thanks to opportunities and pressures offered by the environment. In the commentary on the 2004 remake of The Amityville Horror, actor Ryan Reynolds remarks how upsetting it was to realize that he was capable of hitting a child—because he spontaneously did it while in character.

There is no excuse for the atrocities committed by men like Hitler, Stalin, and Hussein, but when placed in the context of their lives, their behaviors make some sense and are even predicable. Would you or I do the same things if we'd grown up in exactly the same situations? I certainly hope not, but we might have had a lot more in common with those "monsters" than we'd like to think.

The truth is, in real life nobody is pure Monster, and the Other is a lot less Other than most of us would like to think.

Behind the Disorders Sometimes Associated with the Other Psychosis People who develop psychoses—that is, people who lose contact with the reality most people are experiencing—haven't developed a strange new personality; instead, they've lost the ability to differentiate between the same fantasies and realities we all experience. We all have inner voices that say things like "That was a stupid thing to do" or "Eating all those cookies is going to make you fat!" People who "hear voices" are hearing the exact same thing, but an imbalance in brain chemistry makes it impossible for them to tell these are internal thoughts, not external voices. When they take antipsychotic medications, the drugs re-balance their brain chemicals so their perceptions of reality are more like everyone else's. They still hear the voices, they just know—the same way you and I do—that they're coming from inside.

Most often associated with psychosis are schizophrenia and the manic phase of bipolar I disorder, though some people develop other psychotic disorders or experience psychosis as a result of drug use.

Dissociative Identity Disorder Psychological professionals believe that Dissociative Identity Disorder is caused by trauma so severe that to cope the person dissociates or splinters that experience off from the rest. Splintering protects the birth or core personality from the terrible things that happened. It's the same process that protects us from other painful memories, like those associated with bad car accidents.

Fictional characters with DID usually harbor a savage killer. The truth is, people with DID harbor killers no more than the rest of us. That doesn't mean people with DID never harbor killers, only that "normal" people do, too. Surviving abuse teaches some people to abuse others, but that's true even without a psychological disorder.

In fact, the only psychological disorder that is associated with increased violence is substance use and abuse—drinking and doing drugs. And even people without ongoing substance abuse problems do things they later wish they hadn't when they've been under the influence.

Revisiting the One Track Mind and the Incredibly Obvious Problem Since we've discussed the Monster pretty extensively, let's briefly revisit the other two categories of Other and talk about ways to freshen them up.

The Childish One-Track-Mind Most people don't think like children unless they actually are children. People sometimes regress, or act more child-like when they're overwhelmed, but they always revert to grownup thought processes as the stressors pass or they adapt.

Killers in particular are going to think like grownups. Unless she's incredibly disorganized (in which case she's going to be fairly easy to catch) she has to be clever enough to outwit your hero or heroine. And even people who kill, for whatever reason, think things besides killing. They go to the grocery store. They watch Gray's Anatomy (pun intended). They get the flu, look at mail-order catalogs, and clean their homes. Some better than others.

This normalcy is what makes people who do terrible things scary, because we can relate to everyday behaviors. The less Other the villain is, the scarier he's likely to be. In any case, you're probably not going to be able to pick out someone who kills by their speech patterns (assuming they're not constantly talking about gore), what they buy at the supermarket (assuming they're not buying cement or fertilizer), or how their houses are organized (assuming there aren't any dead people around).

Writers can and do make the One-Track-Mind Other work when they take a unique approach. For example, in the How to Stop 10 Minute Mail Squeeze Killing
10 Minute Mail offers email addresses which will self-destruct in 10 minutes. By clicking the link on home page, you will get a temporary email address (like mail131065@10minutemail.com) that you can use for next 10 minutes. All emails sent to that address will be displayed on the web page where you got the address. You can even reply to the emails you receive. After 10 minutes everything is gone!Here is what it has to say about its service,"Why would you use this? Maybe you want to sign up for a site which requires that you provide an e-mail address to send a validation e-mail to. And maybe you don’t want to give up your real e-mail address and end up on a bunch of spam lists. This is nice and disposable. And it’s free. Enjoy!"As it says this will be a nice feature to avoid spam. But what about legitimate business owners? Most online businesses collect email addresses promising something on confirmation which is called Email Squeeze Technique and will this kill it?I don’t think so because this can be easily managed. Usually web forms verify user entered data before processing the request. For an example when you enter your email address, it is checked whether the address is in correct format. This can be done using both JavaScript and PHP which are very popular Client and Server scripting languages used in web forms.So, it is very easy to avoid email addresses from 10 Minute Mail. All you have to dth is, in real life nobody is pure Monster, and the Other is a lot less Other than most of us would like to think.

Behind the Disorders Sometimes Associated with the Other Psychosis People who develop psychoses—that is, people who lose contact with the reality most people are experiencing—haven't developed a strange new personality; instead, they've lost the ability to differentiate between the same fantasies and realities we all experience. We all have inner voices that say things like "That was a stupid thing to do" or "Eating all those cookies is going to make you fat!" People who "hear voices" are hearing the exact same thing, but an imbalance in brain chemistry makes it impossible for them to tell these are internal thoughts, not external voices. When they take antipsychotic medications, the drugs re-balance their brain chemicals so their perceptions of reality are more like everyone else's. They still hear the voices, they just know—the same way you and I do—that they're coming from inside.

Most often associated with psychosis are schizophrenia and the manic phase of bipolar I disorder, though some people develop other psychotic disorders or experience psychosis as a result of drug use.

Dissociative Identity Disorder Psychological professionals believe that Dissociative Identity Disorder is caused by trauma so severe that to cope the person dissociates or splinters that experience off from the rest. Splintering protects the birth or core personality from the terrible things that happened. It's the same process that protects us from other painful memories, like those associated with bad car accidents.

Fictional characters with DID usually harbor a savage killer. The truth is, people with DID harbor killers no more than the rest of us. That doesn't mean people with DID never harbor killers, only that "normal" people do, too. Surviving abuse teaches some people to abuse others, but that's true even without a psychological disorder.

In fact, the only psychological disorder that is associated with increased violence is substance use and abuse—drinking and doing drugs. And even people without ongoing substance abuse problems do things they later wish they hadn't when they've been under the influence.

Revisiting the One Track Mind and the Incredibly Obvious Problem Since we've discussed the Monster pretty extensively, let's briefly revisit the other two categories of Other and talk about ways to freshen them up.

The Childish One-Track-Mind Most people don't think like children unless they actually are children. People sometimes regress, or act more child-like when they're overwhelmed, but they always revert to grownup thought processes as the stressors pass or they adapt.

Killers in particular are going to think like grownups. Unless she's incredibly disorganized (in which case she's going to be fairly easy to catch) she has to be clever enough to outwit your hero or heroine. And even people who kill, for whatever reason, think things besides killing. They go to the grocery store. They watch Gray's Anatomy (pun intended). They get the flu, look at mail-order catalogs, and clean their homes. Some better than others.

This normalcy is what makes people who do terrible things scary, because we can relate to everyday behaviors. The less Other the villain is, the scarier he's likely to be. In any case, you're probably not going to be able to pick out someone who kills by their speech patterns (assuming they're not constantly talking about gore), what they buy at the supermarket (assuming they're not buying cement or fertilizer), or how their houses are organized (assuming there aren't any dead people around).

Writers can and do make the One-Track-Mind Other work when they take a unique approach. For example, in the Basics of Search Engine Optimization
IntroductionSearch engine optimization (SEO) is an online marketing strategy used to increase a Web site's visibility to the millions of people who find information and services on the Internet. Search engine optimization can help position your firm among the top search results for a given query, which can dramatically increase traffic to your Web site and establish a Web presence for your practice. Among other things, SEO involves optimizing the structure of your site and the text that appears on it, as well as obtaining links to your site from other sites, to help its popularity rating with search engines. With the number of Web sites on the Internet increasing at an exponential rate, gaining primary placements in search engine rankings allows you to market your law firm in a very powerful and effective way.Page RankPageRank is in some ways related to link popularity, but the calculation is dependant on the quality and strength of the links, not just the number of links. So, how does one go about building and increasing their Page Rank. It is not as difficult as some may think. Internal linking : also plays a factor in the Page Rank of the pages within a site. The linking structure within the site should follow the themed approach to internal linking, which stresses importance on minimizing linking between 2nd and 3rd level directories and pages. Since the internal linking of your site plateaches some people to abuse others, but that's true even without a psychological disorder.

In fact, the only psychological disorder that is associated with increased violence is substance use and abuse—drinking and doing drugs. And even people without ongoing substance abuse problems do things they later wish they hadn't when they've been under the influence.

Revisiting the One Track Mind and the Incredibly Obvious Problem Since we've discussed the Monster pretty extensively, let's briefly revisit the other two categories of Other and talk about ways to freshen them up.

The Childish One-Track-Mind Most people don't think like children unless they actually are children. People sometimes regress, or act more child-like when they're overwhelmed, but they always revert to grownup thought processes as the stressors pass or they adapt.

Killers in particular are going to think like grownups. Unless she's incredibly disorganized (in which case she's going to be fairly easy to catch) she has to be clever enough to outwit your hero or heroine. And even people who kill, for whatever reason, think things besides killing. They go to the grocery store. They watch Gray's Anatomy (pun intended). They get the flu, look at mail-order catalogs, and clean their homes. Some better than others.

This normalcy is what makes people who do terrible things scary, because we can relate to everyday behaviors. The less Other the villain is, the scarier he's likely to be. In any case, you're probably not going to be able to pick out someone who kills by their speech patterns (assuming they're not constantly talking about gore), what they buy at the supermarket (assuming they're not buying cement or fertilizer), or how their houses are organized (assuming there aren't any dead people around).

Writers can and do make the One-Track-Mind Other work when they take a unique approach. For example, in the Supernatural episode The Benders, one of the brothers is abducted by a weird family that likes to hunt and kill people for sport. The family keeps trophies—like wind chimes made of human bones and jars of teeth—in the house.

Two things really made the episode work. First, it didn't take itself too seriously. Second, the brothers normally hunt supernatural creatures like demons, ghosts, and other monsters; the punch line of the episode is that people can be a lot scarier than monsters. And nobody ever suggested they were mentally ill—just weird.

The Incredibly Obvious Problem Only about 5% or 6% of the general population has a psychological disorder that's obvious enough that you might notice it in the grocery store. And though you might notice a disorder if you were living in the same house or room with it, you'd probably be surprised how many people hide their problems so well that even their families have no idea how bad their symptoms are.

People who have psychological problems are just like anyone else, even the ones who take medications. Some people need to take insulin for diabetes, or use inhalers when they have asthma attacks; likewise, sometimes the delicate balance of chemicals and processes in the brain need a little help from modern medicine.

Full Circle The Other is powerful if you're willing to explore what makes her seem so different from you. What makes someone or something seem Other to you? What's so inconceivable that it would be scary if you knew how to relate?

Got it?

Good. Now go write about it.

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