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”

See no Evil: Why is there so little Psychopathy Awareness?

Statistically speaking, there are decent chances that you have a psychopath in your extended family. There are even better odds that at some point you ran across one or will encounter one in your life. Perhaps it was a boyfriend who seemed perfect at first but turned out to be an abusive sex addict. It may be a difficult boss who makes work unbearable for his employees. Or maybe it was a manipulative professor who became a minor despot in the department. Perhaps it was a teacher who got too chummy with his students and even seduced some of them. Or perhaps it was a friend who appeared to be kind and loving, only to repeatedly backstab you. Maybe it was a conartist who took your elderly mother’s life savings, or a portion of her hard-earned money, and vanished into thin air. Moreover, any psychopath can cause you physical harm and endanger your life. It doesn’t have to be one predisposed to rape and murder. Scott Peterson and Neil Entwistle were not sadistic serial killers. They were your garden variety charismatic psychopaths who found marriage a bit too inconvenient and incompatible with the new, wilder paths they wanted to pursue in life. Their incapacity to regard others as fellow human beings renders all psychopaths extremely dangerous.
Claudia Moscovici, pschopathyawareness

Social Predators: With Friends Like These Who Needs Enemies?

Sometimes truth can be stranger than fiction. Consider the following true story, which sounds so fantastic that it could have been lifted off the pages of an Agatha Christie mystery. One October evening 1998, a despondent Englishman named John Allan rushes into the hotel lobby of the New Winter Palace Hotel in Luxor, Egypt. He appears to be very distressed. He announces in a panic-stricken voice that his wife is dying in their hotel room. Pamela Black, a guest who happens to be trained in administering first aid, goes with him to try to help his wife. She finds Cheryl Lewis sprawled out naked on the bed. A ring of sweat surrounds her limp body. She’s also frothing at the mouth. Unwilling to risk her own life for a stranger, Black tells Allan that she’ll instruct him on how to give his dying wife mouth-to-mouth. Strangely, the man refuses to help. He paces back and forth by the foot of the bed while his partner is dying. To make matters worse, the doctor called to the scene also refuses to aid the sick woman, claiming that she’s a foreigner. The hospital staff can’t save her either. Cheryl Lewis, a seemingly healthy woman, expires at the age of 43.
Claudia Moscovici

Why Sociopaths Win By Losing

In The Sociopath Next Door, Martha Stout raises the following excellent question: “If sociopaths are so focused on their goals and so driven to win, then why do they not win all the time?” She goes on to explain that, basically, sociopaths are losers: “For they do not [win or succeed in life]. Instead, most [...]

Investigating Psychopaths

Since psychopaths are pathological liars and their every interaction with others is self-serving and strategic, even seasoned investigators and forensic psychologists have great difficulty dealing with them. Basically, they’re always faced with the liar’s paradox yet still need to get useful and true information from them. Katherine Ramsland (from trutv.com) wrote an excellent article about [...]

Natalee Holloway’s Mom Visits Joran van der Sloot in Prison: Psychopaths and Pathological Lying

On Wednesday Beth Twitty, the mother of Natalee Holloway, entered a maximum security prison in Peru to confront her daughter’s suspected killer, Joran van der Sloot, face to face. He refused to speak to her, so there was no interview. But even if there had been, Twitty wouldn’t have gotten closer to the truth regarding her daughter’s murder. For psychopaths, the concept of truth doesn’t exist, just as the notion of love doesn’t exist either. For such pathological individuals, truth is only a means to an end: whatever gets them whatever they want at the moment or helps them continue to play malicious cat and mouse games with others. Joran van der Sloot has been playing such sadistic games with the police and with Natalee’s mother for years. Any opportunity to speak to him would be an occasion to continue the deception. In his groundbreaking work on psychopathy, The Mask of Sanity, Hervey Cleckley states that the most significant symptoms of psychopathy are “untruthfulness and insincerity.” Psychopaths are pathological liars. They not only lie profusely to others, but also their whole identity is an elaborate ruse.

What is a Psychopath? The Case of Joran van der Sloot

There has been some debate in the media recently about whether or not Joran van der Sloot–the young man suspected of killing Nataee Holloway in 2005 and charged with the murder of Stephany Tatiana Flores Ramirez five years later–is a serial killer, similar to Ted Bundy. What is becoming obviously clear, however, is that he is a textbook case psychopath.