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What You See May Not Be What You See
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unsuspecting insects that make up their diet. They are the perfect
invisible predator. Like chameleons, psychopaths can hide who
they really are and mask their true intentions from their victims for
extended periods. The psychopath is a near-perfect invisible human
predator.
This is not to say that most people can’t be charming, effective,
socially facile communicators, and still be honest—of course they
can. Many people use impression management and manipulation
techniques to influence others to like and trust them, or to get what
they want from people—very often subconsciously, but sometimes as
the result of training, practice, and planning. However, wanting
people to like and respect you (and doing what it takes to achieve
this) is not necessarily dishonest or insincere—the need for approval
and validation from others is normal. Social manipulation begins to
be insincere if you really don’t care about the feelings of others or
you try to take unfair advantage of others. The difference between
the psychopathic approach and the nonpsychopathic approach lies in
motivation to take unfair and callous advantage of people. Psychopaths
simply do not care if what they say and do hurts people as
long as they get what they want, and they are very good at hiding this
fact. Given his or her powerful manipulation skills, it is little wonder
why seeing a “psychopathic” personality beneath someone’s charming,
engaging surface is so difficult.
Not all psychopaths are smooth operators, though. Some do not
have enough social or communicative skill or education to interact
successfully with others, relying instead on threats, coercion, intimidation,
and violence to dominate others and to get what they want.
Typically, such individuals are manifestly aggressive and rather nasty,
and unlikely to charm victims into submission, relying on their bullying
approach instead. This book is less about them than about
those who are capable of and willing to use their “deadly charm” to
con and manipulate others. However, if the charming approach does
not work, psychopaths readily can resort to both covert and overt
intimidation.