What It’s Like Living As a Diagnosed Psychopath
&gt;Do you think it’s something that people suspect about you? Or do you think people’s perceptions are so off that they wouldn’t really know what psychopathy looks like?<p>&gt;No. Psychopaths use what we call a ‘mask.’ It’s basically an entire affectation of being like everyone else. We learn at a really young age that if we respond to things the way that we naturally respond to things, people don’t like that. So you just learn how to affect the behavior and how to appear like everyone else, and that’s just what you have to do.<p>Psychopaths always believe this to be true, and to their “credit,” it does deceive many people. But it’s also symptomatic of their narcissistic delusions.<p>It’s been my experience that people who have had the misfortune of spending a lot of time around a psychopath can quite quickly identify others. It’s hard to describe exactly, but psychopaths are very deterministic in their behavior patterns. It’s as if the dulled emotions and fear response subtract some of the randomness that makes people without this pathology actually unpredictable. They can still be surprising in the moral thresholds and social boundaries they’ll cross without hesitation, but in terms of what they pursue (opportunities to deceive and manipulate, power over others), they’re dully predictable.<p>So, many do actually see completely through them, it’s just that this knowledge isn’t very useful. Social hierarchies and asymmetries of power do more to preserve their capacity to cause damage than anything else, so without the opportunity to fundamentally change the context you’re navigating, there’s not much you can do. Your boss will, in most cases, still be your boss, even if they’re transparently psychopathic. And their power to harm you is inherent to their title, not the specifics of their personality.<p>This is why if you ever read a book about dealing with psychopaths, the first thing they’ll almost all tell you is that nothing is gained by confronting them and your best recourse is to disengage as completely as possible. It’s a realpolitik approach to social dynamics, because only in rare and limited circumstances does a deep understanding of the psychopathic mind allow you to transcend them.