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

❂ She is a social climber. She may come from poverty, yet she can end in the highest circles of society. She does this by working your friends, and theirs, over and over.

❂ She is an expert in reading others' emotional states. She knows when someone is lying. She knows what people want to hear. She cannot smell warm bread or clean sheets, yet she can smell fear.

❂ She collects a cloud of followers and admirers. These come and go. People who stay with her for the long term tend to be burnt-out, depressed or suicidal. Her opinion of her admirers is black and white. She does not get in touch with old friends unless they come into money.

❂ She has impeccable taste, yet over time it tends to grotesque. She chases eternal youth with breast implants and stomach reduction. She has her face done. She dresses like a teenager, at forty. She does not ask others for advice, only applause.

❂ She loves to dress others up, particularly her children if she has any. This fits with her main hobbies: shopping, travel, and meeting new people. Her children are accessories. They are quiet and subdued in public, polite and careful.

❂ She may fit the diagnostic criteria for various personality disorders. In particular: borderline, histrionic, schizoid, and narcissistic personality disorders. And, redundantly, anti-social personality disorder. Yet her "disorder" masks the predatory nature of her relationships with family, friends, and therapists.

❂ She cannot laugh at new jokes in the right way. When you tell a joke she either does not get it, or she laughs too soon, too loud, and too long. She is liable to treat humor as literal truth, or a deliberate provocation. It is so annoying that you stop trying to joke with her.

❂ She does not self-regulate her behavior to keep others happy. That means, when others are unhappy she does not consider that she may be to blame. Others' happiness is not her problem. Only if she is up against a wall does she make some gesture of sympathy.

❂ She tends to think on her feet and never move backwards. You rarely see her ponder. This makes her seem clever and resourceful. She rarely ask others for advice. If she appears to do this, it is in fact to recruit allies in some conflict.

❂ She does not learn, over her life. While she appears to be successful, she repeats the same errors of judgment over and over. Depending on context, this may land her in serious trouble.

❂ She promotes herself as supremely moral, and may use religious or social crusades as cover. She is stridently, even violently against "social deviants," whatever that means in a culture.

❂ She is confident in almost all situations. When she does trip up, it can be dramatic. She never expects to get caught. Yet she is solitary and prone to fits of fury. She can make large misjudgments if she is in unfamiliar territory.

Psychopaths do have measurable neurophysical traits. These are not accurate psychopath tests, though. Many people have these traits for other reasons than psychopathy. It is bad science to make a conclusion and then search for data to prove it. Be careful about diagnosing someone you dislike as "psychopath" and then searching for data to prove your point. It is wiser to search for data to disprove a theory.

Keeping this in mind, I’ll explore these traits. They do help us to model and understand psychopathy:

❂ Mallory has a poor sense of smell. Mahmut and Stevenson found that [72] http://www.researchgate.net/publication/258845871_The_Relationship_Between_Psychopathy_and_Olfactory_Tasks_Sensitive_to_Orbitofrontal_Cortex_Function_in_a_Non-criminal_Student_Sample "higher degrees of psychopathy were significantly associated with poorer olfactory discriminative ability." In humans, the sense of smell is handled by the machinery for social emotions. Mallory does not process social emotions and so his poor sense of smell fits the puzzle well.

❂ He has high testosterone levels [73] http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3166523/ . This helps him act dominant. It makes him more attractive to potential sexual partners. It hints that psychopath genes correlate with genes for physical strength and good health.

❂ He is better looking than average. Shackelford and Larsen have shown [74] http://www.toddkshackelford.com/downloads/Shackelford-Larsen-JPSP-1997.pdf that "psychopathic individuals have greater [facial] symmetry." Facial symmetry is a key indicator of good health during embryonic development. That shouts "great genes!" It may be real, or psychopath genes may be regulating facial development. In other words, doing what psychopath genes do, which is to cheat.

❂ His pupils do not shrink when he watches someone who is sad. This effect is called pupil empathy [75] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sadness#Pupil_empathy . It correlates with emotional empathy. When we are sad our pupils shrink. When we watch someone who is sad, we also feel sad.

Do genes cluster together? Indeed they do. At the least they can sit on the same chromosome. They may express in chains, so that genes depend on each other. So one gene can act as the key to unlock a series of other genes.

Perhaps genes for psychopathy cluster with other desirable genes. This would explain some curious data. Such as how we find charming liars of both genders to be sexy. Everyone loves an outlaw and biology is pragmatic. If we meet a potential partner with a package of genes that could give us more successful children and grandchildren, we feel attracted. That happens even if the personal cost of becoming co-parent with Mallory is huge.

Since we’re talking about sex, let’s discuss that slippery slope of sleeping with crazy.

How does Mallory make you feel ? This is an interesting way to look at her. We are often our own best instruments. Mallory effects deep change in us and how we see the world. Those changes are invisible to us at the time. Yet our feelings as we go through the grinder are real, and strong.

A sexual relationship with a psychopath changes you most in the shortest time. So it is easier to see the effect. Here is how it feels to be in a sexual relationship with Mallory:

❂ The first times you meet Mallory, your feelings are of longing and desire. With Alice or Bob, these feelings take time to develop. I’ve spoken of the way Mallory starts to give you signals and triggers. What you feel is the rush as dopamine hits your brain, and the shock as it stops.

❂ After a few dates, you feel euphoric whenever Mallory is around, and nervous and edgy when she is absent. You start to do whatever she asks, to get that euphoria back. There is not even a small part of you that fights this.

❂ Your relationship gets sexual before you know each other. The sex is intense and makes you feel great. Mallory knows what she is doing. Yet it is antagonistic, not affectionate. Mallory uses intimacy as a way to open you up for her next attack. She is selfish in bed. It is about her pleasure.

❂ Mallory is sensitive, jealous, and insecure. She seems to leap on the slightest excuse to start a violent quarrel. These fights always take your relationship to the brink of crisis, and over it. It is always your fault. She makes a dramatic exit. You apologize and grovel. In the end she comes back.

❂ You start to define your world and life goals around getting more Mallory. You are now an addict and this is how the addict sees their drug. Observers cannot believe how fast this happens. You are a careful person. Yet now you are making major commitments, without taking the time to reflect.

❂ You start to invest in Mallory’s projects. You will do anything to make her happy. Yet she rarely is. She flips from intense adoration to sullen silence to loud anger. You never see her just busy and content. You form a miserable and argumentative pair. People tell you to treat her better. You feel guilty, ashamed, and confused.