Psychopaths view the world in a very different way than the rest of us. They are attracted to possessions and energy, but they thrill at the idea of manipulating others and draining them of whatever they may have. To them it’s like a game, like stealing candy from a baby, only it’s not a baby, it could be you or someone you know that they launch their predatory attack on. They will stop at nothing. They will romance, con, plagiarize, swindle, embezzle or extort anything their mark might have they think they are more deserving of. They would rather rip you off, even take the very coat off your back, shoes off of your feet or meat off of your bones than work an honest hour in exchange for an hourly wage.
What if you’re one of the many victims of psychopaths? What then? Once they’ve drained you of everything you worked hard for and held precious as the fruits of your labors (including anything you may have had set aside for retirement) they simply target another victim whom they will exploit and suck the life and finances from, as they leave them penniless and left for dead. And the cycle continues as their insatiable thirst for the lifeblood of victims for them is a bottomless pit full of prey waiting impatiently for their chance to be slain by the psychopathic beast. People are nothing more than a means to an end, to satisfy their unquenchable thirst for what they believe is rightly theirs.
The victims will be berated and demeaned so that if anyone were inclined to even think about attending their funeral, they would probably not consider it following the psychopathic encounter that left the victim demoralized and demonized.
Sociopaths have been categorized by research to have neurological abnormalities in the frontal lobe of thе brain and fear conditioning can cause an onset of abnormal chemical reactions in this area or the brain. Other causes have been attributed to abnormal growth (maybe genetic), brain illness, or injury as these can be measured and tracked by positron emission tomography (PET) which visually shows the metabolic activity of neurons inside the brain (Sabbatini, 1998).
Concerning brain function, the amygdalae (two small regions near the base of the brain) have long bееn recognized to have an effect on aggression, sexuality and recklessness. Recently, the amygdala has also bееn shown to affect how people interpret the emotions of other people. Even the smallest defect in the amygdalae may explain a great deal of the characteristics of psychopaths, such as difficulty realating to them emotionally. This may explain why they cannot “see” emotions when they are clearly communicated by other people. People considered to have fully functional healthy brains can easily see the emotional content amidst the communication process, while the psychopath and sociopath may be clueless to any emotional communication.
The psychopath is а master manipulator who knows exactly what makes you tick anԁ knows hоw to exploit and manipulate your feelings.
Actors with prolific modeling skills enable psychopaths to persuade others (especially potential victims) that they are completely normal, with the ability to have a wide range of emotions and can communicate emotionally, though only by rote with very little or no human emotion which one might expect from a healthy human being. The psychopath uses these skills to make people falsely believe that he/she has empathy for his respective victims. Detailed storytelling is one of their primary skills which they use to convince their audience they have been hurt or experienced great injustice, loss, or grief; when the truth is, they make their way through life in an emotional vacuum. They are incapable of actually feeling compassion for others even though they have lied and coerced you into thinking they do possess these standard emotional components.
They have a keen sense and/or radar that can easily find someone who is a nice, caring person, who can help to advance their sociological station, or may have resources that they can easily obtain by gaining one’s trust, only to set them up for their unprecedented manipulation and/or thievery. Taking advantage of vulnerable victims is primarily why they might be labeled by victims, law enforcement as well as the therapeutic community as, “evil” while they are left to try to help put together the pieces of broken victims seeking to make sense of their psychopathic encounter.
Psychopaths are psychopathic liars. According to Hare, Lying, deception and manipulation are the natural talents of psychopaths. If they are caught in a lie and/or challenged they create other fictitious stories or change the details, so that they can make it look as though they are not lying. In many cases, their stories are spun with such detail, that even if you know better, you’d think they were telling the truth. The details may be so detailed, broad, varied, lengthy and skillfully interwoven that anyone would be overwhelmed by trying to unravel all the details, which are inconsistent to say the least. Understandably, any normal person who attempts to decipher the confusion details could easily suffer from exhaustion from trying to decipher and make sense of all of it. They will commonly lie for no apparent reason, as if they couldn’t help themselves from lying, if they could.
The goal of the psychopath’s extravagant storytelling will confound investigators and other audiences and cause them to question the victim as a potential culprit, conspirator or evildoer, so as to deflect to focus from themselves as they project a questionable character upon the victim. They masterfully wield their lies in an effort to discredit their accusers and manipulate anyone who might question their integrity.
In a court of law, when confronted with the facts, like finding their footprint at the scene of the crime, they are likely to respond, saying “That’s not my footprint,” and even though anyone listening to his denial knows he was there and did it, might begin to question whether he if he really was there.
The modus operandi of the psychopath is to deny any factual statements or evidence completely. So compelling is their denial, that even the victim’s inner strength and energy resources get depleted, possibly even to the point of having a nervous breakdown, which plays into the psychopath’s hand quite effectively, as they can now claim the victim is not mentally stable and suffers from delusions.
The psychopath is distracted by his or her reflection in the mirror and places a high degree of importance on his/her appearance as well as a self-centered sense of grandiosity. If anything, their narcissism may be their one weakness, which might be able to be exploited in an effort to allow them enough rope to make a mistake or allow sensitive evidence to be uncovered. They tell so many lies, that it’s hard – even for them – to keep track of it all.
If the psychopath is caught in a lie, they will use their skill of detailed recollection to weave a story based on enough fact they can tell a story so convincing even you would believe it. But details that they do not think may be beneficial for them to use in the future are completely wiped clean from their memory banks.
Predatory psychopaths can come across as very arrogant, but when in the process of grooming a potential victim, they know just what to say and how to present their stories to make you feel empathetic towards them as you assume they are a kind person, who may have suffered an injustice, so you will feel sorry for them and you let your guard down. While they may be able to represent themselves as being kind-hearted, they are not.
“They are very talented at appearing a lot significantly more humble than the average individual, nonetheless are hardly so.” – (Guggenbuhl-Craig)
They are likely to play the part of the defender of the underdog, or to be a victim of some unavoidable scheme or traumatic loss to draw you into their manipulative web of deceit. If the psychopath has a family or has weaseled his/her way into a family, the family are not considered as fellow people, more so these individuals are catalogued by the psychopath and sorted by their value as possessions to be used for their means. This also applies to other relationships outside the family, where to them; people are only valued by their ability to use them for whatever psychopathic scheme(s) they have in mind. Once a person is spent, they are discarded as they no longer possess any further value.
It used to be considered that psychopaths were unable to maintain a long term relationship with a pet, but it is coming to light that they are able to tolerate or even care for an animal IF said animal can offer some value to the psychopath. Mostly pets can be used to convince others that the psychopath is a kind person because he acts as if he cares for his animal. In rare instances, a psychopath can use the animal as something to keep them occupied during periodic downtime. Nonetheless, their pets are just like everyone else: Tools.
No matter how much you feel that your psychopath has endearing qualities or is kind and nice to you, know this is just an act he/she is putting on to set you up for their current scheme. You are simply being conned, just like everyone else.
One of the more apparent signs of psychopathy is concerned with how they easily tell stories recounting their bad or deviant behavior in their past, as if it were no big deal. Regardless of “how unsavory…his apparent comfort with his deviant behavior, the ease with which he discuss(es) breaking each and every rule, (is) consistent with ASP (psychopathy).” – (Dr. Black.)
Psychopaths are greedy and power hungry, seeking to destroy or devour everything in site as they drain the financial resources or life forces from their victims leaving very little behind when they are done with them.
Don’t be fooled by the psychopath who claims to be the savior of the downtrodden or victims of abuse. The truth is, these kinds of people with few resources or are otherwise vulnerable can easily be recruited to assist them in the carrying out of their perverse plans, and may even are being set up to take the fall as a perpetrator of a crime in proxy.
It is commonly accepted that psychopaths are born with the particular brain condition and chemistry which dictates psychopathic behavior, though other schools of thought consider that a series of challenging life circumstances may cause their otherwise normal brain condition to deteriorate as well as its chemistry to change, resulting in a later in life onset of psychopathy.
Psychopaths are also referred to as energy vampires, as they suck the energy out of anything they come in contact with, such as people, possessions or financial resources. And if it looks like someone else might be able to acquire someone or something they believe to be rightfully theirs, they would rather destroy it than let someone else have it.
Common among psychopaths is their having been raised in their youth in less than desirable circumstances. According to Dr. Donald Black, a majority of clinically diagnosed psychopaths were, “overwhelmingly white, blue collar, lower middle class, and married, and most had not graduated from high school.”
In spite of Dr. Black’s research, psychopaths can be found to populate any stage or class in society and even though they are predominantly male, female psychopaths also adorn the landscape of all social class, though admittedly they are few in numbers than their male counterparts.
Three professors, David, Derald, and Stanley Sue, in the Sixth Edition of Abnormal Behavior (circa 2000) cite statistics offered by the American Psychiatric Association that three percent of men suffer from psychopathy compared to one percent of women who are psychopaths (Personality Disorders and Impulse Control Disorders, 238). In regard to their lack of feelings, “antisocials (psychopaths) appear to lack а conscience, feeling small or no empathy for the people whose lives they touch…the antisocial easily resists all regulation, unable to see beyond his self-interest or to adopt standards of appropriate versus wrong.”
Psychopaths maintain a high degree of self entitlement and feel that everyone is indebted to them, and they are likely to take it upon themselves to make sure that everyone loses whatever they have to appease their self-endowed sense of superiority.
All psychopaths are not low class losers and/or social outcasts, many of them are highly intelligent, stealthy, and successful. Upper tier psychopaths may have attained influential and powerful positions in corporations, government and other organizations. Many of them are attractive and use everything they’ve got to carry out their predatory schemes.