Chapter 13
A Survival Guide
The police tell us that a determined burglar can break into even the most secure home. However, they also say that knowledge of how burglars work, common sense, and a good alarm system or an aggressive dog can reduce the risk of being victimized. Similarly, although no one is immune to the devious machinations of the psychopath, there are some things you can do to reduce your vulnerability.
PROTECT YOURSELF
• Know what you are dealing with. This sounds easy but in fact can be very difficult. Although this book should help, all the reading in the world cannot protect you from the devastating effects of psychopaths. Everyone, including the experts, can be taken in, manipulated, conned, and left bewildered by them. A good psychopath can play a concerto on anyone’s heartstrings.
Psychopaths are found in every segment of society, and there is a good chance that eventually you will have a painful or humiliating encounter with one. Your best defense is to understand the nature of these human predators.
• Try not to be influenced by “props.” It is not easy to get beyond the winning smile, the captivating body language, and the fast talk of the typical psychopath, all of which blind us to his or her real intentions. But there are a few things worth trying. For example, don’t pay too much attention to any unusually captivating characteristic of people you meet—dazzling looks, a powerful presence, mesmerizing mannerisms, a soothing voice, a rapidfire verbal pitch, and so forth. Any one of these characteristics can have enormous sleight-of-hand value, serving to distract you from the individual’s real message.
Many people find it difficult to deal with the intense, emotionless, or “predatory” stare of the psychopath. Normal people maintain close eye contact with others for a variety of reasons, but the fixated stare of the psychopath is more a prelude to self-gratification and the exercise of power than simple interest or empathic caring.1
Some people respond to the emotionless stare of the psychopath with considerable discomfort, almost as if they feel like potential prey in the presence of a predator. Others may be completely overwhelmed and intimidated, perhaps even controlled, with little insight into what is happening to them. Whatever the psychological meaning of their gaze, it is clear that intense eye contact is an important factor in the ability of some psychopaths to manipulate and dominate others.
The next time you find yourself dealing with an individual whose nonverbal mannerisms or gimmicks—riveting eye contact, dramatic hand movements, “stage scenery,” and so on—tend to overwhelm you, close your eyes or look away and carefully listen to what the person is saying.
Are the eyes “windows to the soul?” Many people believe that they are. Although the eyes are in fact highly fallible indicators of the inner world of others, they are not entirely devoid of information, particularly when the message they convey to others appears inconsistent with the individual’s facial expressions and verbal behavior. “When the eyes say one thing, and the tongue another, a practiced man relies on the language of the first,” is but one of scores of maxims that could be cited.
An acquaintance told me about her experiences with a “love thug,” a man who had stolen her affections and had then used them to control and batter her emotionally. “I found it difficult to look at his eyes because they confused me. I didn’t know what was behind them and they didn’t tell me what he was thinking or what his intentions were,” she said.
Clinical anecdotes about the “empty” eyes of psychopaths abound, but it is true crime books that offer the most vivid descriptions of how unsettling their gaze can sometimes be. For example, in his book Last Rampage James Clarke had this to say about Gary Tison, a convicted murderer who masterfully manipulated the prison system, escaped from prison with the help of his sons, and went on a killing spree:
But Gary’s most striking physical feature—the thing most people noticed and never forgot—was his deep-set, expressionless ... eyes. It was as if his eyes had no connection with any emotion he expressed. Whatever his mood—whether he was angry, jovial, or anything in between—his eyes remained the same. Empty. It was impossible to tell what Gary was actually thinking or feeling by looking at his eyes.... His stare was riveting, unsettling, with a malign intensity. What people remembered most about Gary were those cold, hard eyes. [p. 4]
Joseph Wambaugh’s book Echoes in the Darkness is about William Bradfield and Jay Smith, two high school teachers convicted (the former in 1983 and the latter in 1986) for killing a fellow teacher and her two children. The book contains numerous references to the eyes of the two men. For example, Wambaugh had this to say about Bradfield:
He had brooding blue eyes.... His gaze was so intense it could transfix, so his blue eyes were variously described as “poetic,” “icy,” or “hypnotic,” depending upon his moods. A colleague reported that “He’d intimidate you with those piercing blue eyes. He was so intense he could sometimes be spooky.” [He] gave his famous stare to Rick Guida (the prosecutor) who’d been told by an FBI agent that the Bradfield stare had once made him fall back two steps. The stare practically demolished Guida. He was literally floored. He sat down and played with [the dog].... When Bradfield tried the stare on a police officer, Jack Holtz, the latter stared back and said, “That bullshit only works on intelligent people.”
Equally interesting was Wambaugh’s description of Jay Smith, recently freed by the Supreme Court of the Common-wealth of Pennsylvania on procedural grounds. Smith’s secretary reportedly said:
You’ve never seen such a pair of eyes in all your life. There was no feeling in them. You might think you’ve known a few people with cold fish eyes, but not like his.
Wambaugh commented that “They were not fish eyes. They were eyes that newspaper editors in later years loved to isolate for effect. They were referred to as ‘reptilian,’ but that was not correct either.” Later he said that all the teachers “had trouble describing the eyes of their principal. ‘Amphibian’ came to mind, but that wasn’t precisely correct either.”
Smith’s secretary finally realized what his eyes resembled, said Wambaugh. “Not fish, not reptiles ... [but] the eyes of a goaf!” ... “That, my friend, is the prince of darkness,” said a teacher, [p. 18]
Can the eyes reveal the devil incarnate, as the teacher’s comment implies? In cases where a real or fictitious serial killer—a Ted Bundy or a Hannibal Lecter—commits unspeakable crimes it may be difficult to believe otherwise. However, it is likely that the behavior of psychopaths—including the few that murder and mutilate—stems more from a total indifference to the feelings or welfare of others than from sure evil. Their eyes are those of an emotionless predator, not those of satan.
But interesting as they are, anecdotes and examples of this sort should not lull us into the false belief that we can reliably spot a psychopath by his or her eyes. It is all too easy to misread the eyes of others and to draw erroneous conclusions about character, intentions, and truthfulness. To believe otherwise is to court disaster.
• Don’t wear blinkers. Enter new relationships with your eyes wide open. Like the rest of us, most psychopathic con artists and “love thieves” initially hide their dark side by “putting their best foot forward.” But they go further to exploit the axiom that social intercourse depends on trust, and that it is impossible for us to pay close and cynical attention to everything they say and do. Accordingly, they typically attempt to overwhelm their victims with flattery, feigned concern and kindness, and phony stories about financial dealings and social status. Cracks may soon begin to appear in the mask they wear, but once you are trapped in their web of deceit and control, it will be difficult to escape financially and emotionally unscathed.
The police and consumer advocates tell us that extra caution is called for whenever someone or something seems too good to be true. This is good advice and, if followed, will help protect you from the psychopath’s potentially deadly snare. At the very least you should take the time to check out any
new acquaintance who appears to have a financial or romantic interest in you. I’m not suggesting that you hire a private investigator every time you meet someone at a party or in a bar, only that you make some reasonable inquiries. Ask the individual about his or her friends, family, relatives, employment, place of residence, plans, and so forth. Psychopaths usually give vague, evasive, or inconsistent replies to queries about their personal lives. Be suspicious of such replies, and try to verify them.
This is sometimes surprisingly easy to do. For example, several years ago a woman I know became romantically involved with a man she’d met at her church. He appeared to be well connected and to have impeccable credentials, and he said he was a graduate in business administration from a well-known eastern university. She considered investing heavily in a business venture he was promoting. When I met him I told him that we were graduates of the same university, but he was evasive about his experiences there, always managing to change the subject. My suspicions aroused, I did some checking and learned that he had never been a student at my university. Further investigation revealed that he was a swindler, wanted in several countries. He skipped town, leaving my friend disillusioned by the experience and angry at me for destroying her fantasy world.
• Keep your guard up in high-risk situations. Some situations are tailor-made for psychopaths: singles’ bars, social clubs, resorts, ship cruises, foreign airports, to name but a few. In each case, the potential victim is lonely, looking for a good time, excitement, or companionship, and there will usually be someone willing to oblige, for a hidden price.
Single travelers are a favorite target of psychopaths, who readily spot them looking lost and forlorn in a foreign airport or tourist spot. For example, I know a professional woman who was weary, lonely, and homesick after several weeks on her own in Europe. She was befriended by a helpful man at the airport in Lisbon. Posing as an undercover agent on the track of a smuggling ring, he managed to win her confidence and to enlist her aid in the operation. In the ensuing weeks the pair traveled all over Europe, running up enormous bills on her credit card. When she finally became suspicious, he dumped her. In retrospect, she said, the whole affair seemed bizarre, but at the time it all made sense. “I was tired, depressed, and he was so understanding and comforting.”
• Know yourself. Psychopaths are skilled at detecting and ruth lessly exploiting your weak spots, at finding the right buttons to press. Your best defense is to understand what your weak spots are and to be extremely wary of anyone who zeros in on them. Judge such people more critically than you do those who do not seem to be aware of, or catering to, your vulnerabilities.
If you are a sucker for flattery it is certain to be written all over you, an engraved invitation to every unscrupulous operator looking around for fresh victims. Basking in flattery, like sitting too long in the sun, can be pleasant at first but painful in the end.
If you have a bit of larceny in your soul you are particularly vulnerable to schemes that are a bit shady. Lonely people with money are extremely easy targets for the psychopath.
Knowing who you are is not always easy. Self-examination, frank discussions with family and friends, and professional consultation may be of help.
DAMAGE CONTROL
Unfortunately, even the most careful precautions are no guarantee that you will be safe from the predation of a determined psychopath. In some cases, the matter may be beyond your control, as it usually is in an “arm’s length” financial relationship with a psychopath. Many frauds and scams are perpetrated against banks, brokerage houses, savings-and-loan institutions, pension funds, and so forth. Individual investors have no say in day-to-day operations, and they can lose their money through no fault of their own. For example, a distraught high-school counselor recently told me about an investment broker who “lost” several million dollars from the teachers’ pension fund the broker had been entrusted to manage. The counselor was out several hundred thousand dollars not because he was careless but because the officials responsible for finding a reputable investment broker had been conned by a slick psychopath.
FORENSIC PSYCHOLOGIST J. Reid Meloy tells of his being snared while interviewing an applicant for a job whose entire resumé eventually turned out to be phony. “The interview went quite smoothly, though,” Meloy said in a telephone interview. “I was really impressed with this guy, couldn’t get over how bright he was. As we talked, he’d drop in a phrase here, a phrase there that really had me standing back and thinking, ‘Wow! This guy is actually brilliant. How do I get him to want the job?’ It took me a while—longer than I’d like to admit—to figure out that he was quoting from several papers I had written and recently published. He was impressing me, yes, but with what? With my own brilliance—ideas of mine I thought a lot of. A normal person might say, ‘I read your paper and thought this and such,’ but this fellow—who turned out to be a complete impostor—had an intuitive grasp on what among all possible things would get me to do what he wanted. For him the interview was a great opportunity to perpetuate a scam.” [personal communication, April 1991]
Perhaps the most heart-wrenching situations are those in which bewildered, frantic parents try to deal with a psychopathic son or daughter. Almost as distressing are those in which someone doggedly searches for a means of coping with a psychopathic spouse. In such cases, as well as those in which a psychopath has managed to enter your romantic life, about all you can do is attempt to exert some sort of damage control. This is not an easy task for most people, but some suggestions may be of help:
• Obtain professional advice. I receive many calls from concerned people who think a husband, wife, child, or friend is a psychopath and who want my advice on what to do about it. I cannot offer advice under such conditions. A proper diagnosis of psychopathy, by a knowledgeable clinician, is time-consuming and requires a good deal of reliable information, including an intensive interview with the individual in question and access to collateral and corroborative information from a variety of sources: employers, family members, friends, business associates, the police, and so on.
Make sure the clinician you consult is familiar with the literature on psychopathy and has had experience in dealing with psychopaths, preferably in the context of family therapy and intervention. If you have the resources, get several opinions. This can be a very frustrating procedure. I can’t count the number of times a telephone caller, usually a wife or parent at wits’ end, has described repeated attempts to get someone—anyone—to understand the problem, or even to recognize that there is a problem.
Typical is a telephone call I received from a woman in Maine who had read a newspaper article about my work and was convinced that her husband perfectly matched the profile of psychopathy outlined in the article. From what she told me about him it appeared that she might very well have been right. For more than ten years she had been trying to get professional help, starting with her family doctor and moving through a succession of psychologists and psychiatrists, all to no avail. The problem was that her husband always put on such a good show that her account of things was seldom believed. None of these clinicians could see beyond the husband’s charming and convincing display. The poor woman began to believe that she was the real problem.
Even after a solid diagnosis has been made, your troubles are far from over. The next steps will depend on your particular situation and should be planned with the aid of a competent professional experienced in dealing with psychopaths. State psychiatric and psychological associations usually have a list of clinicians they can recommend. You might also try local mental health and university counseling centers.
• Don’t blame yourself. Whatever the reasons for your involvement with a psychopath, it is important that you not accept blame for his or her attitudes and behavior. Psychopaths play by the same rules—their rules—with everyone. Of course, your own personality and behavior will have something to do with the specific nature of the interactions that occur. For example, a woman who stands up f
or her rights may be physically abused, whereas a more submissive woman may spend her life wondering about the whereabouts of her philandering husband. A third woman might walk out at the first sign of trouble and never look back. In each case, the basic problem is having a psychopathic husband in the first place.
Similarly, parents of a psychopathic son or daughter continually agonize over their own role in the development of the disorder. It is very difficult to convince these parents that the chances are they did nothing wrong. Again, they may have ameliorated or exacerbated the situation, but there is no evidence that parental behavior causes psychopathy.
• Be aware of who the victim is. Psychopaths often give the im pression that it is they who are suffering and that it is the victims who are to blame for their misery. But they are suffering a lot less than you are, and for different reasons. Don’t waste your sympathy on them; their problems are not in the same league as yours. Theirs stem primarily from not getting what they want, whereas yours result from a physical, emotional, or financial pounding.
• Recognize that you are not alone. Most psychopaths have lots of victims. It is certain that a psychopath who is causing you grief is also causing grief to others. Tracking them down to exchange stories and information could help you deal with the problem, if only to demonstrate that it is not you who are at fault. Everyone is vulnerable to the psychopath, and there is no shame in being victimized. This may be difficult to accept if you have just been conned and are too embarrassed to complain to the police or to testify in court. But you may be surprised by the number of other people in your community who have been taken in.
• Be careful about power struggles. Keep in mind that psychopaths have a strong need for psychological and physical control over others. They must be in charge, and they will use charm, intimidation, and violence to ensure their authority. In a power struggle a psychopath will usually focus on winning. This doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t stand up for your rights, only that it will probably be difficult to do so without risking serious emotional or physical trauma.
Without Conscience Page 23
