Pieter Hintjens - The Psychopath Code - Cracking the Predators That Stalk Us

The evolutionary benefits of responding like this are clear. To survive in an abusive family, a child must accept the abuse. To rebel is to starve. More, the child must push the worst of it onto his or her siblings. That means being the most enthusiastic defender, the first to comply.

To provoke the parental abuse response, Mallory pushes Bob towards childishness. When we think like juveniles, we respond like juveniles. We abandon our ledgers and social accounting. We do not negotiate. We submit, or we flee. Mallory has diverse tools to push Bob into this state. I’ll cover them in Attack and Captur .

The parental abuse trigger is the basis for Stockholm Syndrome. That is the affection hostages feel for their kidnappers.

The mechanism at work is one of dominance and submission. When an individual tells us to do favors for them, we have several choices. We can comply or refuse. These are both submissive responses. We can also assert dominance by ignoring or mocking them. We can avoid the question by walking away. We can comply while mocking, which is a mixed response.

If we do comply, we accept dominance and we then feel attachment. It is not just favors. If an individual mistreats us, we again have the same possible responses. Ignore them, mock them, walk away, or accept. If we accept mistreatment, we accept dominance.

The worse the mistreatment, the stronger the dominance trigger, and the stronger the attachment.

Mallory is demanding with everyone she feels is under her spell. She puts on her anger mask at the slightest excuse. The verbal and emotional abuse she heaps on Bob can be astonishing.

Our oldest defense against predators of any species is other people. When we have trouble with someone, our first instinct is often, "discuss with others." When we keep our problems private, from isolation, or fear, it usually gets worse.

It is only through other people that we can understand the world. We may think of ourselves as clever individuals, yet that is self-flattery. We are only clever in groups. It is so easy for Mallory to lure people in. He spins them a fantasy, and sells it with promises, lies, threats, and half-truths. No-one is immune from such attacks, except other psychopaths.

As Mallory blasts Alice with exaggerated triggers, she loses her sense of normality. When she explains her life to others, they will tell her "this is not normal." She may be stubborn, so such advice can wash off. Yet it can be the voice of reason that saves her. It just takes one person who recognizes Mallory’s true character.

So Mallory must separate Alice from the people she trusts and depends on. He does this through a series of "isolation attacks." He creates a bubble environment that he controls. He levers Alice into this environment. He keeps her isolated within it, so she cannot get help.

We see this pattern over and over. It can be one person controlling another. It can be a company asset-stripping its staff. A cult swindling its members. Mallory has many faces.

❂ First, Mallory creates a bubble environment. In a couple, this will be "our new apartment." In a start-up, this will be "the new offices." In a cult, this will be "our new education center." The bubble looks and feels like home. It lacks the critical part of any home: real family.

❂ Next, Mallory convinces Alice to move into the bubble. The further she moves from friends and family, the better for Mallory. The move is Alice’s investment. It makes it harder for her to talk to others.

❂ Now, Mallory starts to cut Alice’s links to other people, one by one. He’ll sow distrust by telling Alice stories of what people said about her. He’ll create conflicts, and make Alice believe everyone hates her. While he is doing this, he will charm her family and friends. No-one will imagine Alice is in trouble.

When Mallory moves to isolate Alice, the stakes have risen high. This is the point where the young person leaves home, into the arms of a child abuser. This is where your brother packs a bag and moves into the cult compound. This is when the young couple announce they are moving in together. This is how the wealthy husband leaves his wife for a younger, prettier woman.

It is always a shock to friends and family. Alice abandons them for an unknown adventure. She uses passionate language. "Destiny!" she says, when people ask "why?" Mallory is discrete, charming, plausible.

If Alice was sober and able to listen, I’d try to warn her. Keep your assets out of the relationship at all costs, I’d say. Define boundaries and protect them with force if you must. Keep your friends and family close. Avoid physical vulnerability. Please don’t trust Mallory, he is not what he seems to be.

Yet when Alice is moving in, it is already too late by months. You cannot treat addicts with logic. If there is a clear example of temporary insanity, this phase is it. Perhaps a dose of Clozapine or some other dopamine blocker [44] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dopamine_antagonist would help.

Reading this, you may ask how to avoid Mallory, and escape if she does decide you look interesting.

Locking yourself in a room is a poor option. People do try this. I do not recommend it. At the same time, if you walk among strangers, you will meet Mallory, over and over. It is as inevitable as day and night.

Another strategy is to become a "grey rock." This means, showing little or no response to anything people do or say. This is a decent strategy for surviving a psychopath in the room. Yet Bob and Alice don’t like this and will avoid you. Grey rocks tend to be lonely, which is not a good thing.

You may ask, would it help to act more like a psychopath? It is a common question. There is this notion that psychopaths are successful, with their charm and social fluency. They do not suffer the bruises of emotions. They seem strong, even invincible. Does acting like Mallory give us immunity? The answer is "yes, except it’s not that simple."

So then we ask: can we just identify the psychopaths, and avoid them? After all, we have checklists and personality tests. In theory, yes. I’ll explore this in Hunting Mallory . In practice, the answer is "most often, no". Mallory has been fooling people since she was a toddler. She fools professionals: psychologists, law enforcement, judges. She fools people who see her every day for years: partners, children, close friends. What makes you special?

Where does this leave us? We cannot distrust everyone, or we become isolated and more vulnerable. We cannot extend blind trust to everyone, or we suffer wound after wound. We cannot tell who we can trust, and who we cannot. It seems like a paradox.

Yet what looks like a paradox is actually a set of false assumptions. First, that we can trust Alice and Bob, and we must distrust Mallory. Second, that we must decide alone, in our own minds. Third is that we must judge each case afresh, on its own merits. When we break down these assumptions, we solve the paradox.

The psychopath manipulates trust. From the first seconds of a meeting to years later, Mallory insists: "trust me!"

So it’s worth looking at trust. Trust is a hypothesis about a person’s future acts towards us. "I trust her" is shorthand for, "my hypothesis is that she will not harm me." Like any hypothesis we cannot prove it is true. We can only try to falsify it, and fail.

To establish any depth of trust, we need opportunity and time. We need chances for the other person to break their trust. We need safe spaces where failures are not harmful. We need time for many such experiments. You need an unbiased observer to collect the data.