DANGEROUS LIAISONS

Cleckley observes, “More often than not, the typical psychopath will seem particularly agreeable and make a distinctly positive impression when he is first encountered. Alert and friendly in his [...]

Close Readings of Hervey Cleckley’s The Mask of Sanity Unlike Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho, psychopaths don’t usually come across as socially awkward, reclusive and bizarre. On the contrary, they [...]

The most dangerous social predators are, unfortunately, also the most common and the best camouflaged. Charismatic psychopaths rely upon their natural trademarks—glibness, magnetism and charm—to [...]

The psychopathic bond resembles any other kind of powerful addiction. Nobody and nothing can save an addict unless she’s willing to save herself. Others can only offer her emotional support, [...]

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 [...]

Has the psychopath a sort of addiction from emotions? Is his obsession for the preys similar to the obsession that a victim experiences toward him? Yes and no. The psychopath is, above all, an [...]

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 [...]

Dangerous Liaisons explains the motivations of psychopathic individuals, which are far more relevant to understanding their evil actions than their so-called motives. Motives are often rational [...]

Hare and Babiak call the psychopath “the perfect invisible predator. Like chameleons, psychopaths can hide who they really are and mask their true intentions from their victims for extended [...]

As a scholar whose writing focuses on totalitarian movements and as someone who’s experienced first-hand, as a child, life under the psychopathic dictator Nicolae Ceausescu in communist Romania, [...]