Claudia Moscovici 
Generally speaking, psychology isn’t a precise science. Human behavior is highly complex and can’t be reduced to scientific explanations. Psychopathy, however, may be the one exception to this rule. Like everyone else, psychopaths come from diverse backgrounds, cultures, upbringings and educations. They exhibit, as do other human beings, a wide range of characteristics and behaviors. They can be intelligent or not. They can be driven, cultured and successful or parasitic failures. They can be handsome or unattractive. They can be exceptionally charming or off-putting. Yet they all share one common denominator, which makes them different from the rest of humanity and very dangerous: a shallowness of emotion that renders all of them incapable of caring about other human beings. This has immense implications for society, which can touch any of us on a personal level. The social cost of psychopathy becomes obvious when we take into account that a high percentage of the criminals who commit violent crimes are psychopathic. In addition, research shows that 80 percent of the homicides of women are perpetrated by their husbands or boyfriends: which is to say, by the men they know and trust. The more psychopathic a criminal is, the more callous and remorseless he is, and therefore the more likely he is to repeat or even intensify his crime spree once he’s freed from jail.
You may object that I’m exaggerating because most psychopaths don’t commit violent crimes and therefore that those individuals aren’t dangerous. If that’s what you’re thinking, then I wish to persuade you that, unfortunately, you’re mistaken. What psychologists call “sub-criminal” psychopaths can be extremely harmful. They may be better camouflaged—better educated and come from wealthier backgrounds—than most criminal psychopaths. But that only makes sub-criminal psychopaths hide better in our midst to prey upon us more easily. They’re the proverbial wolves in sheep’s clothing. They’re the conmen who pretend to be your friends and take away your life’s savings. They’re the lovers, spouses and boyfriends who seduce you, isolate you, abuse you, betray you and then dump you not only remorselessly, but with a sense of satisfaction that they were able to conquer and destroy another human being. They’re the sons and daughters who spend their parents’ financial and emotional resources to save them from their drug addictions, promiscuity, financial scams or whatever misdeeds they may engage in, yet nothing ever rehabilitates them. They’re a curse upon anyone who has the misjudgment of becoming intimately involved with them or the misfortune of being part of their nuclear family.
Perhaps because they’re so dangerous and destructive—the closest approximation to metaphysical evil that human beings can embody—the general public has a morbid fascination with psychopaths. We frequently see them featured on the news. The media seems to be intrigued by men like Scott Peterson and Neil Entwistle, who remorselessly murder their wives so that they can fool around more easily with other women, or by women like Casey Anthony, who (most likely) kill their children so that they can party harder. The public eats up this sordid information. True crime books about psychopathic killers tend to be best sellers. Similarly, biographical works about Hitler and Stalin continue to sell well. Yet, paradoxically, as fascinated as the general public may be with psychopaths and their evil deeds, they’re far less interested in learning about what makes these people tick in order to recognize and avoid them in real life. As mentioned, there are a few highly informative studies of psychopathy, some of which—Stout’s The Sociopath Next Door, Babiak and Hare’s Snakes in Suits and Brown’s Women Who Love Psychopaths—are written for a general audience. These books describe clearly and without unnecessary jargon the psychology of evil individuals. Unfortunately, however, such informative works tend to be less popular than the dramatic news coverage of psychopathic killers or the horror stories we read in true crime and thrillers. Why so?
The first answer I’ll offer is in the form of an analogy. When I (and probably most other people too) shop for a car, I don’t need someone to explain to me in great detail the mechanics behind how the car functions. I may read Consumer Reports online to see how the car’s rated in various relevant categories, such as overall quality, safety and gas mileage. Then I look at it in person, to see if I like it and if it’s the right size to suit my family’s needs. In other words, a superficial knowledge of the car suffices for me. That’s how most people feel about the psychopaths featured on the news, in history or true crime books and in the movies. They grasp the phenomenon superficially: that evil people exist and do horrible things to others. But they don’t feel like they need to understand these people on a deeper psychological level. Which brings me to my second reason. We tend to view psychopaths as a form of titillating, if morbid, entertainment. We may disapprove of their horrific crimes, but their capacity for evil fascinates us. Third, and perhaps most importantly, we hold psychopaths at arm’s length, so to speak, in our own minds. I can’t even count how many times I’ve heard people interviewed on the news about a violent murder say that they can’t believe it happened to their families or in their neighborhood. We believe that the great misfortune of being the victim of a psychopathic killer, rapist, conman, spouse or lover only befalls others. Somehow, we assume that our families and we are immune to such terrible things happening to us. Perhaps we believe that we’re too wise, too well educated and live in too good of a neighborhood to fall into the hands of social predators.
If you think about it rationally, however, you come to realize that this belief rests upon an illusion. It may be true that you and your loved ones are not statistically likely to fall prey to a psychopathic serial killer. Experts estimate that there are only about 50 to 100 serial killers circulating in the country at any given moment. It’s therefore rational not to live your life in the fear that you’ll be attacked by one of them. But it’s not statistically likely that you’ll avoid any intimate involvement with a psychopath for the rest of your life. As mentioned, psychopaths constitute between 1 and 4 percent of the population. This is significant, given the number of lives they touch and the kind of damage they can inflict. Psychopaths are exceedingly sociable, highly promiscuous, have many children, move from location to location and, generally speaking, they get around. Their malady is technically called “antisocial personality disorder” not “asocial personality disorder.” An asocial person avoids human contact. An antisocial person, on the contrary, continually seeks others in order to use, con, deceive, manipulate, betray and ultimately destroy them. That’s what psychopaths do. They feed, like parasites, upon our lives. They live for the thrill of damaging healthier, more productive and more caring human beings.
Dangerous Liaisons/Legături Periculoase, Editura Vremea, www.edituravremea.ro/leg–turi-periculoase–cum-s–recuno–ti-un-psihopat–i-s–scapi-din-mrejele-lui
