Psychopaths and Duplicity by Lisa Jean

A cool crisp autumn afternoon and I’m lounging around the house recovering from a severe cough that has left me too weak to do much else. Doing some channel surfing I come across a movie with Clive Owen and Julia Roberts called Duplicity. While watching it I am reminded of how duplicitous a psychopath is. [...]

Psychopaths and Pathological Lying: Why Do Psychopaths Lie?

Psychopaths enjoy lying both because of the power it gives them over others and because of the risk of getting caught. The problem remains, of course, that the risk is always minimal and therefore never quite thrilling enough. To take a real risk in life, one has to value something or someone, so that one fears losing that thing or that person. Psychopaths can’t value anything but their immediate appetites and anyone but themselves. If they lose their jobs, there’s always another one just as good (even when there isn’t). If they lose their money, they can always mooch off or scam someone else. If they alienate their partner, there’s lots of other fish in the sea. Since the stakes are always so low for psychopaths, their thrills are also very fleeting.

Claudia Moscovici, from my upcoming book, “Dangerous Liaisons: How to Identify and Escape from Psychopathic Seduction”