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

These young men are smart, and curious. Not yet deployed, they’re optimistic and trusting. He tells them sweeping stories of his own foreign adventures. They laugh with excitement. He stops, puts his hand on the table, and states the obvious. "We need women!" One soldier points with his chin. "How about those two?" He turns to see two pretty dark-haired women. They look bored and uncertain. "OK, don’t move!" he tells the men, and gets up.

"Hi ladies, how you doing?" he asks them, not listening to the answer, which is always "fine" or "great." He watches for any signs of irritation. They seem happy to talk to him. "You waiting for someone else?" he asks, and they say no, it’s just the two of them. He frowns, studying their features.

"Where are you from?" he asks. "Guess," says one, laughing. He tries to place them. Dark eyebrows, dark green eyes, pale skin, high cheekbones. Lebanon? Georgia (the country, not the state)? They laugh and shake their heads, "no."

"Won’t you join us? We’ve space," he invites the women with a broad sweep of his arm. They look at the handsome, crew-cut male faces, shrug, and accept. "Sure, why not."

The two women sit beside him, and he chats with them, making more wrong guesses. Russia? Armenia? They laugh. The soldiers buy them drinks. Everyone is happy, it’s a great party. Finally, he admits defeat, and they tell him, "India." He’s shocked, impressed, and fascinated.

"The most beautiful woman I ever met," he says, "was from Georgia. We talked for five minutes, and I wanted to marry her right on the spot. You both have the same features. I was sure you were Georgian! But India, wow… India!"

"Yes, India!" they laugh, flattered and enjoying themselves. They chat through the evening. The bar closes, and the public empties into the car park . His group is last to leave. The soldiers say goodbye and go their way, and the two women stay with him. "Do you want to go somewhere else?" he asks. "My car’s there." He pushes his remote and the lights on his new Mustang convertible flash on and off.

Later, one of the women asks him, "so how long have you known those guys?" He answers, "Oh, I only met them this evening." "What?!" she exclaims, shocked. "We thought you’d known them for years! You were like best friends!"

Psychopaths can exert a fascinating level of power over others. It is like a cult of two. When we meet such people and start to snarl our lives with them, we feel carried by destiny. It is a strange mix of certainty and loss of control. It is like falling in a strong wind. It is the hot fire of religious fanaticism. And it always seems to end in tears.

The question others often ask is "why?" The relationships between psychopaths and other people are so destructive and bitter. "Why" is a good place to start. When we can answer that, then we can start to look at "how" and "who" and other deeper questions.

My stories at the start of each chapter are all about predators of one shape or another. Every psychopath works this way. Psychopaths hunt other humans. They attack and capture them. They feed on their time, resources, power, and energy. They dispose of the remains. And they move on.

The violence is covert. It sometimes ends in self-harm or suicide of victim. More often it ends in depression. Every relationship between a social human and a psychopath follows the same pattern. There seem to be no exceptions, no "nice" psychopaths. To be a psychopath is to be a predator.

This is no metaphor. This is the key to decoding psychopathy. They are predators or parasites who feed off other humans . Without this key, psychopathy is mysterious and baffling. It is like an ancient manuscript filled with symbols and glyphs. A text that affects so many of us, yet is indecipherable. With the key, we can read the stories and we can understand.

While my descriptions are often of individual relationships, the patterns apply in many situations. We see them in cults, abusive businesses, and other predatory organizations.

In the information security business, we sometimes call a hostile attacker "Mallory." Likewise, we call the innocent targets "Alice" and "Bob." I’ll use these names in this book, to make it easier to read and digest.

Mallory can be a man or a woman. I’ll switch between "he" and "she" as it suits. Mallory is an adult, at least 14-16 years old, and under 70. Mallory is a psychopath.

Alice and Bob are altruistic, social people. They are targets of Mallory’s attention.

The first time you meet Mallory, it is an intense, personal, and deep experience. That is, to Alice or Bob. For Mallory it is insignificant, casual, a reflex. When she says "Hello" to a hundred people, 96% will feel affected. It is the smile, the eyes, the depth of that simple greeting. For Mallory, there is no effort, no emotional cost at all.

This is the "charisma" we speak of. It is the projection of joy at meeting someone we care a lot about. Alice and Bob cannot fake this. They show it only for those they cherish. To cherish everyone you meet is an extreme perspective that takes decades to find. Mallory fakes this by reflex, from youth. It does not take learning. It is her first rule of survival: others must adore you .

It’s such a strong effect you can use it to spot psychopaths in the wild. I’ll come back to this in Hunting Mallory . Most who cross paths with Mallory tend to feel little kicks of pleasure. If they are even a little lonely, this lures them back for more conversation. Meanwhile she is scanning for interesting targets. It doesn’t take conversation. She can see vulnerability in people from their body language.

Social humans can learn this skill, with years of practice. Mallory needs no training for this. It is one of her many inborn talents. Forbes Magazine writes [17] http://www.forbes.com/sites/kareanderson/2012/09/11/what-vulnerability-looks-like-to-psychopaths-monks-and-the-rest-of-us/ , "it appears that psychopaths don’t need that meditative practice to be inordinately observant… of weaknesses in others."

Two signs above all show us as vulnerable. One, is to be alone or show solitary body language. Two, is to show fear and insecurity, and especially the signs of past abuse.

Many people believe abuse victims often go on to become abusers. Yet the rate is around 10% [18] http://www.webmd.com/mental-health/news/20030206/do-sexually-abused-kids-become-abusers , unless abused and abuser are in the same family. Then it rises significantly. And one third of these adult abusers were cruel to animals, as children.

I don’t doubt that psychopaths abuse, neglect, and mentally torture their children, and that many of these go on to become psychopaths. It’s a mechanism I’ve observed, and will explain later. Yet the "abuse causes abuse" model misses the 90% of children who are sexually abused and grow up to harm no others. I think it comes from social workers fooled by young psychopaths. "My father abused me, that is why I’m hurting others." Psychopaths never take responsibility for their acts.

In reality, abuse victims tend to be silent witnesses to their own life of traumas. Or, as Joanna Moore writes in The Faces of Narcissism [19] http://facesofnarcissism.com/2015/06/16/if-you-havent-dealt-with-a-narcissist-or-a-sociopath-you-should-know-this/ , "It’s easy to blame the angry victim and support the calm abuser."

Past abuse is a prime predictor of future abuse. Coming from an abusive family stamp us with fear and insecurity. Having an abusive employer, or an abusive partner does the same. Our fear and insecurity flash a neon "Eat Me!" to passing psychopaths.