Epub Edition ISBN: 9781606235782; Kindle Edition ISBN: 9781462503285
© 1993 by Robert D. Hare, PhD
Published in 1999 by The Guilford Press
A Division of Guilford Publications, Inc.
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Last digit is print number: 19 18 17 16 15 14 13
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Hare, Robert D., 1934-
Without conscience : the disturbing world of the psychopaths among us / Robert D. Hare.
p. cm.
Originally published: New York: Pocket Books, 1995
ISBN-10: 1-57230-451-0 ISBN-13: 978-1-57230-451-2 (pbk.)
1. Antisocial personality disorders. 2. Psychopaths. I. Title.
[RC555.H365 1998]
616.85’82—dc 21
98-51786
CIP
Cover design and chapter opening graphic by Tom McKeveny
Permission for letters appearing in chapter 12 granted by Ann Landers and Creators’ Syndicate
To the memory of my parents, Yvonne
and Henry, my sister, Charmaine,
and my daughter, Cheryl
Contents
Cover
Title
Copyright
Dedication
Author’s Note
Preface and Acknowledgments
Epigraph
Introduction: The Problem
1. “Experiencing” the Psychopath
2. Focusing the Picture
3. The Profile: Feelings and Relationships
4. The Profile: Lifestyle
5. Internal Controls: The Missing Piece
6. Crime: The Logical Choice
7. White-Collar Psychopaths
8. Words from an Overcoat Pocket
9. Flies in the Web
10. The Roots of the Problem
11. The Ethics of Labeling
12. Can Anything Be Done?
13. A Survival Guide
Epilogue
Chapter Notes
About the Publisher
Discover More Guilford Titles
Author’s Note
Psychopathy is a personality disorder defined by a distinctive cluster of behaviors and inferred personality traits, most of which society views as pejorative. It is therefore no light matter to diagnose an individual as a psychopath. Like any psychiatric disorder, diagnosis is based on the accumulation of evidence that an individual satisfies at least the minimal criteria for the disorder. In cases based on my own files the individuals have been carefully diagnosed on the basis of extensive interview and file information. However, I have disguised these individuals by altering details and removing identifying information, without compromising the point I was trying to make.
Although the topic of this book is psychopathy, not everyone described herein is a psychopath. Many of the examples I use are taken from published reports, the news media, and personal communications, and I cannot be sure that the individuals in question are psychopaths, even though they may have been given the label by others. In each case, however, the documented evidence concerning some aspect of the person’s behavior is either consistent with the concept of psychopathy or illustrates a key trait or behavior that is typical of the disorder. These individuals may or may not be psychopaths. But their reported behavior provides a useful vehicle for elaborating the various traits and behaviors that define psychopathy. The reader should not assume that an individual is a psychopath simply because of the context in which he or she is portrayed in this book.
Preface and
Acknowledgments
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 years—and of my own work for a quarter-century—it 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 public’s 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 system—lawyers, forensic psychiatrists and psychologists, social workers, parole officers, law enforcement officers, correctional staff—whose 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 bles
sed 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.
Our research has been supported by grants from the Medical Research Council of Canada, The MacArthur Research Network on Mental Health and the Law, and the British Columbia Health Research Foundation. Most of this research was conducted in institutions run by the Correctional Service of Canada. The cooperation of the inmates and staff of these institutions is gratefully acknowledged. To protect the identities of the inmates who took part in the research I have altered the details of specific cases or combined several cases into composites.
I would like to thank Judith Regan for encouraging me to write this book, and Suzanne Lipsett for showing me how to convert technical material into readable prose.
My view of life has been greatly influenced by the courage, determination, and grace of my daughter, Cheryl, and my sister, Noelle. I owe a special debt to my wife and best friend, Averil, who, in spite of a demanding professional career of her own, somehow found the time and energy to actively support and encourage my work. Her warmth, judgment, and clinical acumen have kept me happy, secure, and sane over the years.
[G]ood people are rarely suspicious: they cannot imagine others doing the things they themselves are incapable of doing; usually they accept the undramatic solution as the correct one, and let matters rest there. Then too, the normal are inclined to visualize the [psychopath] as one who’s as monstrous in appearance as he is in mind, which is about as far from the truth as one could well get.... These monsters of real life usually looked and behaved in a more normal manner than their actually normal brothers and sisters, they presented a more convincing picture of virtue than virtue presented of itself—just as the wax rosebud or the plastic peach seemed more perfect to the eye, more what the mind thought a rosebud or a peach should be, than the imperfect original from which it had been modelled.
—William March, The Bad Seed
Introduction:
The Problem
Several years ago two graduate students and I submitted a paper to a scientific journal. The paper described an experiment in which we had used a biomedical recorder to monitor electrical activity in the brains of several groups of adult men while they performed a language task. This activity was traced on chart paper as a series of waves, referred to as an electroencephalogram (EEG). The editor returned our paper with his apologies. His reason, he told us: “Frankly, we found some of the brain wave patterns depicted in the paper very odd. Those EEGs couldn’t have come from real people.”
Some of the brain wave recordings were indeed odd, but we hadn’t gathered them from aliens and we certainly hadn’t made them up. We had obtained them from a class of individuals found in every race, culture, society, and walk of life. Everybody has met these people, been deceived and manipulated by them, and forced to live with or repair the damage they have wrought. These often charming—but always deadly—individuals have a clinical name: psychopaths. Their hallmark is a stunning lack of conscience; their game is self-gratification at the other person’s expense. Many spend time in prison, but many do not. All take far more than they give.
This book confronts psychopathy head-on and presents the disturbing topic for what it is—a dark mystery with staggering implications for society; a mystery that finally is beginning to reveal itself after centuries of speculation and decades of empirical psychological research.
To give you some idea of the enormity of the problem that faces us, consider that there are at least 2 million psychopaths in North America; the citizens of New York City have as many as 100,000 psychopaths among them. And these are conservative estimates. Far from being an esoteric, isolated problem that affects only a few people, psychopathy touches virtually every one of us.
Consider also that the prevalence of psychopathy in our society is about the same as that of schizophrenia, a devastating mental disorder that brings heart-wrenching distress to patient and family alike. However, the scope of the personal pain and distress associated with schizophrenia is small compared to the extensive personal, social, and economic carnage wrought by psychopaths. They cast a wide net, and nearly everyone is caught in it one way or another.
The most obvious expressions of psychopathy—but by no means the only ones—involve flagrant criminal violation of society’s rules. Not surprisingly, many psychopaths are criminals, but many others remain out of prison, using their charm and chameleonlike abilities to cut a wide swath through society and leaving a wake of ruined lives behind them.
Together, these pieces of the puzzle form an image of a self-centered, callous, and remorseless person profoundly lacking in empathy and the ability to form warm emotional relationships with others, a person who functions without the restraints of conscience. If you think about it, you will realize that what is missing in this picture are the very qualities that allow human beings to live in social harmony.
It is not a pretty picture, and some express doubt that such people exist. To dispel this doubt you need only consider the more dramatic examples of psychopathy that have been increasing in our society in recent years. Dozens of books, movies, and television programs, and hundreds of newspaper articles and headlines, tell the story: Psychopaths make up a significant portion of the people the media describe—serial killers, rapists, thieves, swindlers, con men, wife beaters, white-collar criminals, hype-prone stock promoters and “boiler-room” operators, child abusers, gang members, disbarred lawyers, drug barons, professional gamblers, members of organized crime, doctors who’ve lost their licenses, terrorists, cult leaders, mercenaries, and unscrupulous businesspeople.
Read the newspaper in this light, and the clues to the extent of the problem virtually jump off the page. Most dramatic are the cold-blooded, conscienceless killers who both repel and fascinate the public. Consider this small sampling from the hundreds of accounts available, many of which have been made into movies:
• John Gacy, a Des Plaines, Illinois, contractor and Junior Chamber of Commerce “Man of the Year” who entertained children as “Pogo the Clown,” had his picture taken with President Carter’s wife, Rosalynn, and murdered thirty-two young men in the 1970s, burying most of the bodies in the crawl space under his house.1
• Charles Sobhraj, a French citizen born in Saigon who was described by his father as a “destructor,” became an international confidence man, smuggler, gambler, and murderer who left a trail of empty wallets, bewildered women, drugged tourists, and dead bodies across much of Southeast Asia in the 1970s.2
• Jeffrey MacDonald, a physician with the Green Berets who murdered his wife and two children in 1970, claimed that “acid heads” had committed the crimes, became the focus of a great deal of media attention, and was the subject of the book and movie Fatal Vision.3
• Gary Tison, a convicted murderer who masterfully manipulated the criminal justice system, used his three sons to help him escape from an Arizona prison in 1978, and went on a vicious killing spree that took the lives of six people.4
• Kenneth Bianchi, one of the “Hillside Stranglers” who raped, tortured, and murdered a dozen women in the Los Angeles area in the late 1970s, turned in his cousin and accomplice (Angelo Buono), and fooled some experts into believing that he was a multiple personality and that the crimes had been committed by “Steve.”5
• Richard Ramirez, a Satan-worshipping serial killer known as the “Night Stalker,” who proudly described himself as “evil,” was convicted in 1987 of thirteen murders and thirty other
felonies, including robbery, burglary, rape, sodomy, oral copulation, and attempted murder.6
• Diane Downs, who shot her own children to attract a man who didn’t want children, and portrayed herself as the real victim.7
• Ted Bundy, the “All-American” serial killer who was responsible for the murders of several dozen young women in the mid-1970s, claimed that he had read too much pornography and that a “malignant entity” had taken over his consciousness, and was recently executed in Florida.8
• Clifford Olson, a Canadian serial murderer who persuaded the government to pay him $100,000 to show the authorities where he buried his young victims, does everything he can to remain in the spotlight.9
• Joe Hunt, a fast-talking manipulator who masterminded a rich-kids’ phony investment scheme (popularly known as the Billionaire Boys Club) in Los Angeles in the early 1980s, conned wealthy people into parting with their money, and was involved in two murders.10
• William Bradfield, a smooth-talking classics teacher convicted of killing a colleague and her two children.11
• Ken McElroy, who for years “robbed, raped, burned, shot and maimed the citizens of Skidmore, Missouri, without conscience or remorse” until he was finally shot dead in 1981 as forty-five people watched.12
• Colin Pitchfork, an English “flasher,” rapist, and murderer, was the first killer to be convicted on the basis of DNA evidence.13
• Kenneth Taylor, a philandering New Jersey dentist who abandoned his first wife, tried to kill his second wife, savagely beat his third wife on their honeymoon in 1983, battered her to death the next year, hid her body in the trunk of his car while he visited his parents and his second wife, and later claimed he had killed his wife in self-defense when she attacked him following his “discovery” that she was sexually abusing their infant child.14
Without Conscience Page 1
