The psychopath preys on others like a spider entrapping its prey in a web. Psychopathy is a serious personality disorder, and people who are psychopaths act and think in a similar way. Preeminent psychopathy researcher Robert Hare depicts the psychopath as a selfish, self-centered, sensation-seeking, shallow individual who poses a real threat to society.1 An absence or defect in conscience underlies psychopathy.
Psychopaths’ conscienceless lifestyle
The psychopathic personality is cold, cunning, clever, and callous, and it is easy to mistake them for other people who may have personality quirks, defects, or flaws but may not be psychopathic. A person could be abusive, ruthless, deceitful, or oddly peculiar and still not be a psychopath.
The psychopath deliberately targets its prey. Their modus operandi is their lifestyle—their way of life on a day-to-day basis. A target can be pushed over by a clever psychopath. The psychopath spins a web of deceit and destruction.
The psychopath at work
Psychopaths use charm to open up doors and win unwarranted jobs. Their glib tongues may rattle off ideas that they memorized from a book. Resumes are beefed up to look like the person they are not. They get you to do their job while they converse with the top brass. Their routine may include coming in late and taking long lunch hours, claiming they were away on business while they leave the workload to you. Meanwhile, your complaints about that person may fall on deaf ears. Instead, what you get is a dismissal notice because the psychopath successfully blamed you for all the problems in the office.
Even worse might happen. To add insult to injury, your pay might be withheld, pending a lawsuit for all the damage the psychopath claims you did. Your friends and co-workers might start avoiding you. While you are out of a job, you learn that your psychopathic co-worker has been given a big promotion. As psychopathy expert Paul Babiak points out in his book, Snakes in Suits, “…[T]hey will not only blame others but also create ‘evidence’ that others are to blame.”2
Psychopaths make targets doubt themselves
Moreover, the psychopath can be so convincing that people are duped by this most persuasive and fluent liar. According to Babiak, “Surprisingly, psychopaths will lie even to people who already know the truth about what they are saying. Amazingly, more often than not, victims will eventually come to doubt their own knowledge of the truth and change their own views to believe what the psychopath tells them rather than what they know to be true.”3
How do they get away with all of this?
Psychopathy expert Martha Stout has written, “One of the more frequently observed of these traits is a glib and superficial charm that allows the true sociopath to seduce other people, figuratively or literally—a kind of glow or charisma that, initially, can make the sociopath seem more charming or more interesting than most of the normal people around him.”4
Confrontation with a psychopath may only make matters worse. Hare warns: “They must be in charge, and they will use charm, intimidation, and violence to ensure their authority.”5
Be careful about psychopathic labels. People overuse the term so much that it loses meaning. To ferret out a psychopath is a time-consuming and complicated task that must be left to those professionals who have been trained to detect this personality disorder.
In the end, a true psychopath, by the time they get caught, if ever, has done an enormous amount of accumulated damage in their lifetime. According to Stout, “The statistics mean … that very few sociopathic crimes are ever brought to the attention of our legal system … .” The damage that they cause is more in line with ongoing “deception and camouflage.”6
Please be aware that you are not alone. According to Hare, “Most psychopaths have lots of victims. It is certain that a psychopath who is causing you grief is also causing grief to others.”7