Without Conscience

Without Conscience: The Disturbing World of the Psychopaths Among Us by Robert D. Hare, Guilford Press, 1999. 

Self Reporting

When trying to diagnose prisoners for psychopathy, he found that earlier tests for psychopathy, which were called personality inventories, suffered from the defect of self-reporting. They were vulnerable to coaching. Prisoners gave answers tailored to convincing the psychologist that either they were not mentally ill, or that they were suffering from a defect other than psychopathy.

Behavior

Hare decided to develop a new method for diagnosing psychopathy, one based on the behavior of the psychopath, rather than on their verbal skills. Hare based his new tool on earlier work of Hervey Cleckley, who had written a book called The Mask of Sanity. Hare called his new instrument the “Psychopathy Checklist”.   Jon Ronson even wrote an amusing book about it called The Psychopath Test.

Con Artists

Only a small percentage of psychopaths are violent; almost none are serial killers. Most psychopaths prefer to use the con. 

Emotions

Psychopaths have an aimless lifestyle, are easily bored and are thrill seeking. Psychopaths are impulsive, live in the present, and don’t plan for the future. Psychopaths lack emotional depth, their suffering is shallow, and they lack fear. Psychopaths have grandiose opinions of themselves. Psychopaths often have charming and even charismatic personalities. Psychopaths are often unresponsive or evasive when asked questions, they change the subject when caught in a lie, and they contradict themselves from one sentence to the next. Psychopaths treat their family members as possessions. Psychopaths have a talent for detecting vulnerabilities in their victims. 

Warning Signs

• He does not invite you to his home.

• He does not invite you to meet his family.

• He keeps secret how he spends his time.

• He gets upset when he does not get his way. 

Vulnerable People

• gullible people,

• lonely people, and

• nurturant women. 

Early Signs of Psychopathy in Children

• deceitful to parents,

• willful defiance of parents,

• throwing tantrums,

• bullying other children,

• petty theft,

• vandalism and

• arson,

• cruelty to animals

Cause

There is no consensus among professionals regarding the relative importance of the various causes of psychopathy. The author favors nature over nurture as the primary cause. He believes that poor child-rearing practices, dysfunctional families, child abuse, neglect, poverty and bad neighborhoods are only secondary factors.

Attachment Theory

He does not believe in the attachment theory which states that mothers cause psychopathy when they fail to bond with their children. Hare believes that the direction of causation is, in fact, the reverse: mothers try but fail to bond with their psychopathic children, because their psychopathic children push them away.