tween conceiving an ethnic genocide and, say, guiltlessly ly-
ing to one's boss about a coworker. But the psychological cor-
respondence is not only there; it is chilling. Simple and pro-
found, the link is the absence of the inner mechanism that
beats up on us, emotionally speaking, when we make a choice
we view as immoral, unethical, neglectful, or selfish.
Most of us feel mildly guilty if we eat the last piece of
cake in the kitchen, let alone what we would feel if we inten-
tionally and methodically set about to hurt another person.
Those who have no conscience at all are a group unto
themselves, whether they be homicidal tyrants or merely ruth-
less social snipers.
The presence or absence of conscience is a deep human
division, arguably more significant than intelligence, race, or
even gender.
What differentiates a sociopath who lives off the labors of
others from one who occasionally robs convenience stores, or
from one who is a contemporary robber baron - or what makes
the difference betwen an ordinary bully and a sociopathic
POLITICAL PONEROLOGY
15
murderer - is nothing more than social status, drive, intellect,
blood lust, or simple opportunity.
What distinguishes all of these people from the rest of us is
an utterly empty hole in the psyche, where there should be the
most evolved of all humanizing functions.2
We did not have the advantage of Dr. Stout’s book at the
beginning of our research project. We did, of course, have
Robert Hare and Hervey Cleckley and Guggenbuhl-Craig and
others. But they were only approaching the subject of the pos-
sibly large numbers of psychopaths that live among us who
never get caught breaking laws, who don’t murder – or if they
do, they don’t get caught – and who still do untold damage to
the lives of family, acquaintances, and strangers.
Most mental health experts, for a very long time, have oper-
ated on the premise that psychopaths come from impoverished
backgrounds and have experienced abuse of one sort or another
in childhood, so it is easy to spot them, or at least, they cer-
tainly don’t move in society except as interlopers. This idea
seems to be coming under some serious revision lately. As
!obaczewski points out in this book, there is some confusion
between Psychopathy and Antisocial Personality Disorder and
Sociopathy. As Robert Hare points out, yes, there are many
psychopaths who are also “anti-socials”, but there seem to be
far more of them that would never be classified as anti-social or
sociopathic! In other words, they can be doctors, lawyers,
judges, policemen, congressmen, presidents of corporations
that rob from the poor to give to the rich, and even presidents.
In a recent paper, it is suggested that psychopathy may exist
in ordinary society in even greater numbers than anyone has
thus far considered:
Psychopathy, as originally conceived by Cleckley (1941),
is not limited to engagement in illegal activities, but rather en-
compasses such personality characteristics as manipulative-
ness, insincerity, egocentricity, and lack of guilt - characteris-
tics clearly present in criminals but also in spouses, parents,
bosses, attorneys, politicians, and CEOs, to name but a few.
(Bursten, 1973; Stewart, 1991). Our own examination of the
prevalence of psychopathy within a university population sug-
2 Stout, Martha: The Sociopath Next Door, Broadway. 2005
16
EDITOR’S PREFACE
gested that perhaps 5% or more of this sample might be
deemed psychopathic, although the vast majority of those will
be male (more than 1/10 males versus approximately 1/100
females).
As such, psychopathy may be characterized ... as involving
a tendency towards both dominance and coldness. Wiggins
(1995) in summarizing numerous previous findings... indicates
that such individuals are prone to anger and irritation and are
willing to exploit others. They are arrogant, manipulative,
cynical, exhibitionistic, sensation-seeking, Machiavellian,
vindictive, and out for their own gain. With respect to their
patterns of social exchange (Foa & Foa, 1974), they attribute
love and status to themselves, seeing themselves as highly
worthy and important, but prescribe neither love nor status to
others, seeing them as unworthy and insignificant. This char-
acterization is clearly consistent with the essence of psychopa-
thy as commonly described.
The present investigation sought to answer some basic
questions regarding the construct of psychopathy in non foren-
sic settings... In so doing we have returned to Cleckley’s
(1941) original emphasis on psychopathy as a personality style
not only among criminals, but also among successful indi-
viduals within the community.
What is clear from our findings is that (a) psychopathy
measures have converged on a prototype of psychopathy that
involves a combination of dominant and cold interpersonal
characteristics; (b) psychopathy does occur in the community
and at what might be a higher than expected rate; and (c) psy-
chopathy appears to have little overlap with personality disor-
ders aside from Antisocial Personality Disorder. ...
Clearly, where much more work is needed is in under-
standing what factors differentiate the abiding (although per-
haps not moral-abiding) psychopath from the law-breaking
psychopath; such research surely needs to make greater use of
non forensic samples than has been customary in the past.3
!obaczewski discusses the fact that there are different types
of psychopaths. One type, in particular, is the most deadly of
3 Salekin, Trobst, Krioukova: (2001) “Construct Validity of Psychopathy in a
Community Sample: A Nomological Net Approach” in Journal of Personal-
ity Disorders, 15(5), 425-441.
POLITICAL PONEROLOGY
17
alclass="underline" the Essential Psychopath. He doesn’t give us a “checklist”
but rather discusses what is inside the psychopath. His descrip-
tion meshes very well with items in the paper quoted above.
Martha Stout also discusses the fact that psychopaths, like
anyone else, are born with different basic likes and dislikes and
desires, which is why some of them are doctors and presidents
and others are petty thieves or rapists.
“Likeable”, “Charming”, “Intelligent”, “Alert”, “Impres-
sive”, “Confidence-inspiring,” and “A great success with the
ladies”. This is how Hervey Cleckley described most of his
subjects in The Mask of Sanity. It seems that, in spite of the fact
that their actions prove them to be “irresponsible” and “self-
destructive”, psychopaths seem to have in abundance the very
traits most desired by normal persons. The smooth self-
assurance acts as an almost supernatural magnet to normal
people who have to read self-help books or go to counseling to
be able to interact with others in an untroubled way. The psy-
chopath, on the contrary, never has any neuroses, no self-
doubts, never experiences angst, and is what “normal” people
seek to be. What’s more, even if they aren’t that attractive, they
are “babe magnets”.
Cleckley's seminal hypothesis is that the psychopath suffers