By Personal Growth Counseling| September 16th, 2015

When we think of a psychopath, most of us get an image of a violent killer or an over the top villain. What most people don’t realize is that we are probably dealing with someone or more than one person who demonstrates the criteria for this disorder several times a week.

Psychopaths demonstrate a wide variety of deviant behaviors, the most important being the absence of any sense of conscience, remorse, or guilt. The psychopath’s world is a strikingly skewed one, in which the normal laws of human emotion and interaction do not apply. They are impulsive and destructive. They have no regard for the feelings and welfare of others.

Not only that, but they lie compulsively and feel absolutely no remorse. Apart from the tendency to follow foolish and irresponsible impulses that sometimes get them into trouble; they are coldly rational and usually highly intelligent. They do not need to repress feelings of anxiety and guilt, because they have no such feelings in the first place.

  1. Superficially charming; “silver tongued”
  2. Self-absorbed and egocentric
  3. Easily bored, in need of constant stimulation
  4. Habitual liar
  5. Manipulative
  6. Shows no remorse; rationalizes wrongdoings, says people deserve it
  7. Shallow emotions
  8. Lacks empathy
  9. Exploits the goodwill of others, especially financially
  10. Sexually promiscuous
  11. Impulsive
  12. Behaves recklessly
  13. Accepts no responsibility for actions
  14. Had behavior problems as a child
  15. Lacks inhibitions
  16. Has no long term goals
  17. Has many short term relationships
  18. No respect for authority, including the law
  19. Thinks they are never wrong
  20. May be highly intelligent, but has no conscience

The psychopath does not merely repress feelings of anxiety, guilt, and shame or fail to experience them appropriately; he or she lacks understanding of what these things are. Despite the emotional deficiency, most psychopaths learn to mimic the appearance of normal emotion well enough to fit into society. It usually works for them because most of us think that others have similar feelings to the ones we have.

The majority of these people are not violent criminals. The ones that are those who fail to blend into society. It is a fact that they have a clear advantage in fields such as law, business, and politics. They have higher IQs on average than the general population. They take risks and are not fazed by failures. Furthermore, they know how to charm and manipulate. They are ruthless. Some of the criteria used by large corporations actually select candidates that demonstrate some psychopathic characteristics: characteristics such as charisma, self-centeredness, confidence, and dominance are highly correlated with the psychopathic personality, yet highly sought after as potential leaders.

A lack of empathy does not necessarily mean intent to do harm. Just be aware that psychopaths are interested only in their own gain, and trouble is inevitable when their interests conflict with those of the company.

This is also frequently the cause of marital dissolution and conflicts in other relationships as well. They may be charming and affectionate just long enough to establish intimacy and then suddenly become abusive, unfaithful and manipulative. Unfortunately, the abused partner often blames themselves and come out of the relationship emotionally destroyed.