Without Conscience: The Disturbing World of the Psychopaths Among Us

He will choose you, disarm you with his words, and control you with his presence. He will delight you with his wit and his plans. He will show you a good time but you will always get the bill. He will smile and deceive you, and he will scare you with his eyes. And when he is through with you, and he will be through with you, he will desert you and take with him your innocence and your pride. You will be left much sadder but not a lot wiser, and for a long time you will wonder what happened and what you did wrong. And if another of his kind comes knocking on your door, will you open it? -From an essay signed "A psychopath in prison

The first victim of war is the truth.

Most therapy programs do little more than provide psychopaths with new excuses and rationalizations for their behavior and new insights into human vulnerability. They may learn new and better ways of manipulating other people, but they make little effort to change their own views and attitudes or to understand that other people have needs, feelings, and rights. In particular, attempts to teach psychopaths how to “really feel” remorse or empathy are doomed to failure.

Psychopaths are notorious for not answering the question posed them or for answering in a way that seems unresponsive to the question.

[G]ood people are rarely suspicious: they cannot imagine others doing the things they themselves are incapable of doing; usually they accept the undramatic solution as the correct one, and let matters rest there.

psychopaths are rational and aware of what they are doing and why. Their behavior is the result of choice, freely exercised.

The third point is that some of our efforts to treat psychopaths may be misplaced. The term treatment implies that there is something to treat: illness, subjective distress, maladaprive behaviors, and so forth. But, as far as we can determine, psychopaths are perfectly happy with themselves, and they see no need for treatment, at least in the traditional sense of the term.

…the subject is so important, and with 
such vast implications for society… The damage that psychopaths do to the global economy, and human civilization in general, is incalculable.

Psychopaths have a narcissistic and grossly inflated view of their self-worth and importance, a truly astounding egocentricity and sense of entitlement, and see themselves as the center of the universe, as superior beings who are justified in living according to their own rules.

But isn’t the behavior of psychopaths maladaprive? The answer is that it may be maladaprive for society but it is adaptive for the individuals themselves.

What makes psychopaths different from all others is the remarkable ease with which they lie, the pervasiveness of their deception, and the callousness with which they carry it out.

Lying, deceiving, and manipulation are natural talents for psychopaths.

Psychopaths often come across as arrogant, shameless braggarts—self-assured, opinionated, domineering, and cocky. They love to have power and control over others and seem unable to believe that other people have valid opinions different from theirs. They appear charismatic or “electrifying” to some people.

On a more personal level, it is very likely that at some time in your life you will come into painful contact with a psychopath. For your own physical, psychological, and financial well-being it is crucial that you know how to identify the psychopath, how to protect yourself, and how to minimize the harm done to you.

Guilt?” he remarked in prison. “It’s this mechanism we use to control people. It’s an illusion. It’s a kind of social control mechanism—and it’s very unhealthy. It does terrible things to our bodies. And there are much better ways to control our behavior than that rather extraordinary use of guilt.

A simple analogy here will help. The psychopath is like a color-blind person who sees the world in shades of gray but who has learned how to function in a colored world.

Evidence is emerging to show that victims of early sexual, physical, or emotional abuse frequently become perpetrators of the same as adults.

Psychopaths show a stunning lack of concern for the devastating effects their actions have on others. Often they are completely forthright about the matter, calmly stating that they have no sense of guilt, are not sorry for the pain and destruction they have caused, and that there is no reason for them to be concerned.

This raises an important issue: If their speech is sometimes peculiar, why are psychopaths so believable, so capable of deceiving and manipulating us? Why do we fail to pick up the inconsistencies in what they say? The short answer is, it is difficult to penetrate their mask of normalcy: The oddities in their speech are often too subtle for the casual observer to detect, and they put on a good show. We are sucked in not by what they say but by how they say it and by the emotional buttons they push while saying it.

The interviewer says, “You make it out that you’re the victim of a serial killer, but if you look at the record you’re a serial killer.” Henley replies, “I’m not.” “You’re not a serial killer?” the interviewer asks in disbelief, to which Henley replies, “I’m not a serial killer.” The interviewer then says, “You’re saying you’re not a serial killer now, but you’ve serially killed.” Henley replies, with some exasperation and condescension, “Well, yeah, that’s semantics.

The best strategy is to avoid becoming entangled with a psychopath in the first place.

Millions of men, women, and children daily suffer terror, anxiety, pain, and humiliation at the hands of the psychopaths in their lives.

Are we unknowingly allowing a society to evolve that is the perfect breeding ground, and perhaps even a “killing field,” for psychopaths?

This is a disturbing thought, because it suggests that the cases that come to the public’s attention represent only the tip of a very large iceberg. The rest of the iceberg is to be found nearly everywhere—in business, the home, the professions, the military, the arts, the entertainment industry, the news media, academe, and the blue-collar world. Millions of men, women, and children daily suffer terror, anxiety, pain, and humiliation at the hands of the psychopaths in their lives.

This book confronts psychopathy head-on and presents the disturbing topic for what it is—a dark mystery with staggering implications for society; a mystery that finally is beginning to reveal itself after centuries of speculation and decades of empirical psychological research.

Good people are rarely suspicious: they cannot imagine others doing things they themselves are incapable of doing; usually they accept the undramatic solution as the correct oe, and let matters rest there. Then too, the normal are inclined to visualize the [psychopath] as one who's as monstrous in appearance as he is in mind, whihch is about as far from the truth as one could well get...These monsters of real life usually looked and behaved in a more normal mannerthan their actually normal brothers and sisters; they presented a more convincing picture of virtue than virtue presented of itself--just as the wax rosebud or the plsatic peachseemd more perfect to the eye, more what the mind thought a rosebud or a peach should be, than the imperfect original from which it had been modelled.

We are far more likely to lose our life savings to an oily-tongued swindler than our lives to a steely-eyed killer.