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It is an awful lot harder, Tony told me, to convince people you’re sane than it is to convince them you’re crazy.
an article by Hare that described psychopaths as ‘predators who use charm, manipulation, intimidation, sex and violence to control others and to satisfy their own selfish needs. Lacking in conscience and empathy, they take what they want and do as they please, violating social norms and expectations without guilt or remorse. What is missing, in other words, are the very qualities that allow a human being to live in social harmony.’
Their conclusions became the basis for his now-famous twenty-point Hare PCL-R Checklist. Which was this: ITEM 1: Glibness/superficial charm ITEM 2: Grandiose sense of self-worth ITEM 3: Need for stimulation/proneness to boredom ITEM 4: Pathological lying ITEM 5: Cunning/manipulative ITEM 6: Lack of remorse or guilt ITEM 7: Shallow affect ITEM 8: Callous/lack of empathy ITEM 9: Parasitic lifestyle ITEM 10: Poor behavioral controls ITEM 11: Promiscuous sexual behavior ITEM 12: Early behavior problems ITEM 13: Lack of realistic long-term goals ITEM 14: Impulsivity ITEM 15:
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Psychopaths get bored easily. They need excitement. They migrate to the big cities.
‘Serial killers ruin families,’ shrugged Bob. ‘Corporate and political and religious psychopaths ruin economies. They ruin societies.’
‘Sociopaths love power. They love winning. If you take loving kindness out of the human brain there’s not much left except the will to win.’
‘If people like you, you can manipulate them to do whatever you want them to do!’
If you want to get away with wielding true, malevolent power, be boring.’
I wondered if sometimes the difference between a psychopath in Broadmoor and a psychopath on Wall Street was the luck of being born into a stable, rich family.
There is no evidence that we’ve been placed on this planet to be especially happy or especially normal. And in fact our unhappiness and our strangeness, our anxieties and compulsions, those least fashionable aspects of our personalities, are quite often what lead us to do rather interesting things.
