Snakes in Suits: When Psychopaths Go to Work (10 page)

Where Was the Emotional Connection?

Many trial watchers came to see Scott Peterson as a manipulative, charming, pathological liar with a grandiose sense of self and an inability to empathize. “The absence of emotion is a hallmark of a psychopath,” forensic psychologist J. Reid Meloy said.

“They don’t have the internal psychological structure to feel and relate to other people. Sometimes they can imitate it, so they can fool other people, but there will come a point when they can’t maintain it.” Even passionate, angry, and accusatory outbursts from the family members Peterson was once close to didn’t appear to faze him. That fits too, Dr. Meloy said—psychopaths can’t form truly intimate bonds with others.

Such an absence of heartfelt emotion “gives the psychopath the ability at times to kill without remorse and to kill for reasons filled with banality,” he explained. “Others’ emotions of grief and rage and fury are like water off a duck’s back.”

That apparent lack of emotion raised investigators’ suspicions in the first place, police and prosecutors said when they
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gave their first news conference after the trial began. “His major concerns weren’t Laci at the beginning of this case,” explained Modesto Detective Al Brocchini. “He is very calm, cool, noncha-lant, polite, arrogant. He thinks he’s smarter than everybody.”

Anne Bird, who desperately wanted to believe her half brother was innocent, thought his behavior was strange when he lived with her family during the investigation of Laci’s disappearance.

“He is the most empty person. Everything he does seems to have been copied from someone else,” said Bird, who last visited Peterson at the San Mateo County Jail in January 2005.

Peterson seemed in utter denial as he talked about getting out of prison and leading a quiet, simple life somewhere, she said. “I was wondering if he really understood the extremity of the whole thing. I think he’s very bright, but he’s kind of soulless.

He’s very empty. Somehow he’s been lost.”

Psychopaths need greater stimulation than most other people in order to feel anything, Meloy said—a phenomenon that struck Bird as particularly true in Peterson’s case. “The drive from Modesto to Redwood City was a really big deal,” she said.

“There were blocked-off streets, lights were going, it was really intense. He actually seemed excited about it. I thought, ‘This is not something to be proud of. This is your life.’ ”

Peterson exhibited similar behavior upon his arrival at San Quentin, where he’ll most likely spend the rest of his life. After arriving at 4 A.M. on Thursday, he told a guard he was “too jazzed” to sleep. “The most intense emotion he’s derived through his whole trial was the excitement he received when he darkened the doors of San Quentin,” Meloy said.

Psychopaths are very effective at masking their true selves from those they wish to manipulate and con. Merely having a mental checklist of the traits that define psychopathy does not guarantee success in spotting the psychopath. In fact, it is not uncommon for well-trained researchers in this field of study to be fooled and manipulated by known psychopaths they have just met.

Your ability to recognize psychopathic manipulation is increased
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if you are not seen as valuable or a threat to the psychopath, and therefore of little interest. Psychopaths invest a lot of mental energy in identifying and manipulating their victims, but they don’t spend much energy trying to uphold a mask for those with little utility to them; the return on investment is just not there for them. Individuals who are ignored can therefore be in a good position to watch psychopathic individuals manipulate others. With the knowledge of how it is done, they may be able to get glimpses behind the mask.

People learning about psychopaths for the first time sometimes begin to see psychopathic traits in some people that they know. Former bosses, ex-spouses, public officials, teachers, family members, and friends often become suspects if they happen to display behaviors that are on Hare’s list of psychopathic traits. Others new to the field will begin to see psychopathic traits in themselves, much like doctors in training who sometimes think they’re experiencing the symptoms of the diseases they are studying. Being aware of one’s own tendency to attribute psychopathy to those displaying some of its features, including oneself, is important in honing one’s skill in spotting the real thing.

Personality: The Three Faces of You
Many books have been written about personality and the complex ways in which it influences our interactions with others. There are theories of how personality develops, how it differs from person to person, and how it reveals itself in one’s behavior. However, regardless of the particular theory of personality you follow, there are three common ways that each person’s personality can be experienced. All are relevant to understanding psychopathic manipulation, because many psychopaths are astute students of human nature and, unlike most people, are willing to use what they have learned for their own selfish purposes. They may not all have textbook learning about personality theory, but they have an intuitive feel that they put to good
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use. They use their knowledge of personality to control your view of them and ultimately to control you.

To recognize how psychopaths control the opinions others have of them, it is important to understand the differences among three points of view. First, there is the internal or private personality—the

“me” that we experience inside ourselves. Second, there is the projected or public personality, sometimes called the persona—the “me”

that we want others to see, the “self” that we present to others when we are in public. And, third, there is the attributed personality or reputation—the view, based on what we say and do, that others form of our personality.

Our private or inner personality is complex and made up of our thoughts, attitudes, perceptions, judgments, drives, needs, preferences, values, and emotions. Our private self also includes the products of our imagination, including fantasies, hopes, and ambitions, all of which are idealized visions of who we are and who we want to be. In many people, the private self consists of positive traits and characteristics, and we believe that these positive self-perceptions represent who we are. We want others to appreciate these traits, and we can get very upset if someone suggests they are not true. For example, if you believe that you are a loyal, compassionate person, then you would be concerned by anything someone said about you that suggested otherwise.

Our private self also includes personal characteristics we don’t like, which, typically, we don’t want others to see. While we may try to improve some of these characteristics, we would just prefer to ignore some others altogether. These unpleasant or darker traits include harmful things we do to people, illicit or violent thoughts and fantasies we have, and our general insecurity, greed, and illusions about ourselves and our place in the world. Getting angry and losing control, being excessively rude or annoying to others, acting coarsely to those around us, and being depressed or despondent are examples of things we might do that reflect the darker (but normal) side of our personality. During a typical day, we spend quite a lot of
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mental and emotional energy building up and enhancing the positive or bright side of our private self and minimizing or controlling the dark side. In fact, to preserve our internal emotional balance and to avoid excessive anxiety, we need to believe that our positive self-evaluations are accurate, and we will invest energy in fighting doubts as they arise.

The goal for much of the therapy, coaching, and counseling that people seek is to resolve the internal psychological conflicts between the bright and dark sides of the personality. Well-developed and researched psychological tests can help shed some light on our hidden traits. A competent mental health professional can facilitate explor-ing these parts of the psyche, while providing insights that help us integrate the parts into a unified whole. As long as our self-image is mostly positive, and we can accept the less positive side of ourselves as a normal part of being human, we will value our individual “self”

and conclude that we are okay people. Feeling all right about oneself comes across as self-confidence and inner strength, two traits valued in our society.

Your public self, or persona, on the other hand, is how you want those around you to see “you.” Your persona is a subset of your private self—a carefully edited version, to be sure, of your private personality that you reveal to others in order to influence how they see (and judge) you. Anyone who has ever tried to make a positive impression on another—perhaps on a date or during a job interview—

understands how difficult it can be to maximize the positives and minimize the negatives of your personality. Despite our best efforts to control what we reveal to others, we do unintentionally reveal private personality traits to others on occasion, but, overall, our persona reflects the personality we want others to see.

This brings us to the third view of personality; how others view and describe us. This is the reputation others assign to us based on what they see, hear, and experience when interacting with us. Unfortunately, despite our best efforts to present a positive persona, people will form their own opinions, both correct and mistaken, based on
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what we do, how we look, the clothes we choose to wear, and whether they agree with our values and beliefs as filtered through their own biases, stereotypes, likes, and dislikes. The filters other people use to evaluate us can, to varying degrees, distort the picture folks get of who we really are.

The problem is that all of us form first impressions of others very quickly, perhaps during the first seconds of meeting someone for the first time. Once formed, people solidify their first impressions by filtering out new information that contradicts their early impressions, and preferentially let in information that is supportive. The people we like right off become even more likable, and those we don’t care for remain so. For example, you may feel an affinity for those of a similar religion or political party and generalize this to other aspects of their makeup. Feeling affinity for someone makes us more accepting of the things we like about him or her, and more forgiving of those things that we might dislike. Consistency between a person’s words and deeds also plays an important role in reinforcing his or her reputation. Consistency leads us to see people as honest—

even if we don’t totally agree with their views—while inconsistencies we notice may leave us wondering about them. All of these filtered perceptions can cause problems, of course, if we misjudged the persona of a person when forming a first impression.

To summarize our model of personality so far: We have a private self made up of positive traits we value and want others to appreciate, and a collection of negative traits and characteristics we prefer to keep to ourselves. When we interact with others, we present a carefully crafted persona or public self comprised of a selection of traits and characteristics from our private self that we want others to see.

Sometimes we may exaggerate a few of our positives just to make an impression or to exert influence on others. Occasionally, material from our private, dark side slips into the public view without our being aware; at other times, we may be aware of traits that slip through, and we feel embarrassed or guilty. Finally, our reputation is the “personality” by which others come to know us. Ideally, our reputations
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accurately reflect the psychological traits we want to show, but, in fact, observers filter what we present through their personal biases, prejudices, and preconceptions. This may cause them to form an in-correct impression of our personality.

Using What You Have

If they happen to be intelligent, “well bred,” and physically attractive, psychopaths can have a devastating impact on the people they meet.

For example, Caroline is a very attractive and intelligent thirty-year-old British woman. Her father was a barrister and her mother a successful stage actress. Caroline went to several of the best schools but seldom stayed at any one of them for very long. She got into some minor difficulties on occasion—for example, she was unable to account for some missing money during her volunteer work for a charitable organization—but was always bailed out by her parents. She moved in fashionable circles, where she had many brief affairs.

For several years, Caroline was involved with a pseudo-religious cult, and her “direct line to the saints” helped her to manipulate elderly people into “buying their own little piece of heaven.” Later, she met an international smuggler and this led to her first prison term, a three-year sentence for diamond smuggling. She is a delightful conversationalist, exuding an engaging charm and wit that keeps you captivated for hours. Her description of her current circumstances and the events that led up to it has an almost romantic quality. Caroline likes the fast life and loves excitement. For the past four years, she has been combining those interests as a diamond smuggler, making regular runs between Johannesburg, New York, Tel Aviv, and Amsterdam, and packing thousands of dollars’ worth of diamonds on each trip.

Caroline’s unusual occupation—simply the latest in a long string of successful scams and cons—rewarded her in two ways: it provided her with a substantial income to support her lavish
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lifestyle, and simultaneously was a constant source of excitement. Caroline stated that walking through an airport with thousands of dollars’ worth of smuggled diamonds was a tremendous thrill, “an incomparable rush.” When she was first caught, by a married customs agent, she was able to convince him not to turn her in and ended up having a brief affair with him. She later turned him in as part of a plea bargain when she was caught a second time. Although he lost his family, his job, and his reputation, she was unmoved: “He had a good time; now the party’s over.”