D. HARE - Without Conscience

Psychopaths are social predators who charm, manipulate, and ruthlessly plow their way through life, leaving a broad trail of broken hearts, shattered expectations, and empty wallets. Completely lacking in conscience and in feelings for others, they selfishly take what they want and do as they please, violating social norms and expectations without the slightest sense of guilt or regret. Their bewildered victims desperately ask, Who are these people? What makes them the way they are? How can we protect ourselves? Although these and related questions have been the focus of clinical speculation and empirical research for over one hundred yearsand of my own work for a quarter-centuryit is primarily within the last few decades that the deadly mystery of the psychopath has begun to reveal itself.

When I agreed to write this book I knew it would be difficult to present hard scientific data and circumspection in a way that the public could understand. I would have been quite comfortable remaining in my academic ivory tower, having esoteric discussions with other researchers and writing technical books and articles. However, in recent years there has been a dramatic upsurge in the publics exposure to the machinations and depredations of psychopaths. The news media are filled with dramatic accounts of violent crime, financial scandals, and violations of the public trust. Countless movies and books tell the stories of serial killers, con artists, and members of organized crime. Although many of these accounts and portrayals are of psychopaths, many others are not, and this important distinction is often lost on the news media, the entertainment industry, and the public. Even those members of the criminal justice systemlawyers, forensic psychiatrists and psychologists, social workers, parole officers, law enforcement officers, correctional staffwhose work daily brings them into contact with psychopaths often have little practical appreciation of the sort of people they are dealing with. This failure to distinguish between offenders who are psychopaths and those who are not has dire consequences for society, as this book makes clear. On a more personal level, it is very likely that at some time in your life you will come into painful contact with a psychopath. For your own physical, psychological, and financial well-being it is crucial that you know how to identify the psychopath, how to protect yourself, and how to minimize the harm done to you.

Much of the scientific literature on psychopathy is technical, abstract, and difficult to follow for those who lack a background in the behavioral sciences. My goal was to translate this literature so that it became accessible, not only to the general public but to members of the criminal justice system and the mental health community. I tried not to oversimplify theoretical issues and research findings or to overstate what we know. I hope that those readers whose interest is piqued will use the chapter notes to delve deeper into the topic.

The scientific slant to this book reflects my background in experimental psychology and cognitive psychophysiology. Some readers may be disappointed to see that I have devoted little space to discussions of psychodynamic issues, such as unconscious processes and conflicts, defense mechanisms, and so forth. Although many books and hundreds of articles on the psychodynamics of psychopathy have been written over the past fifty years, in my opinion they have not greatly advanced our understanding of the disorder. To a large extent, this is because most psychodynamic accounts of psychopathy have an armchair, often circular, quality about them and therefore do not readily lend themselves to empirical study. However, recently there have been some attempts to establish congruence between psychodynamic speculations about psychopathy and the theories and procedures of behavioral science. Some of the results of this work are interesting and, where relevant, are discussed in this book.

Over the years I have been blessed with a steady stream of outstanding graduate students and assistants. Our relationships have always been mutually beneficial: I provide guidance and a nurturing environment and they provide the fresh ideas, creative spark, and enthusiasm for research needed to keep a laboratory vibrant and productive. Their contributions are evident in the frequency with which graduate students are listed as senior authors on publications emanating from my laboratory. I am particularly indebted to Stephen Hart, Adelle Forth, Timothy Harpur, Sherrie Williamson, and Brenda Gillstrom, each of whom played a major role in my thinking and research over the past decade.