The Psychopath Code by Peter Hintjens

The Psychopath Code

• An abusive relationship is disguised in lies, the ones your abuser tells you, and the ones you tell yourself. That makes it hard to see clearly.
• If you are facing a psychopath, it can be impossible to see their real nature. You must look sideways, and by reflection off other people.
• The law tends to ignore psychological abuse between adults. Most psychopaths are careful to leave no evidence. The police and courts tend to be cynical about "he said, she said" accusations. And no matter what you say, a psychopath will always have a better lie. This is how cults operate in broad daylight.
• When it comes to wars of words, psychopaths are powerful. Instead, be patient and collect material evidence.
• There are ways to provoke a psychopath into doing and saying self-destructive things.
• When you confront a psychopath, or even change your behavior slightly, the response is usually more abuse.
• From experience we see that most threats are bluff and bluster. Predators are fragile. They cannot survive exposure. They will snarl and bully, yet confronted with real resistance and the risk of wider sanctions, they mostly back off.
• And here is your superpower: other people. When you talk to others you'll find that many have similar experiences. When you get evidence of abusive behavior you can publish it and file police complaints. Your abuser can only hide when others excuse and forget his or her behavior.
• Abusers choose their victims, not the other way around.
• We dream of peace and stability. Yet throughout history the most ambitious leaps forward have arisen from conflict and chaos.
• Humans are not good, or evil. We are survivors. We do whatever it takes to reproduce and make sure our children flourish. Most of us succeed by hard work. A few of us live as parasites, taking from others, like vampires.
• A clearly expressed idea is easier to critique. We can never reach truth, only discover better approximations to it.
• I'd estimate 10% to 20% of people are in abusive relationships at any point in time.
• When you come to the decision, "I am the victim of an abusive psychopath," then you are halfway to the door.
• Some researchers have suggested that psychopathy is an adaption, rather than a disorder.
• Predators deceive their prey as a core strategy. Human predators cheat their victims as a core strategy. It is the same thing.
• Animal models are essential to understanding and predicting human behavior.
• We survived disaster after disaster by working together. We developed the ability to pass knowledge down the generations. We evolved altruism, the spreading of risk through tribes and generations.
• For every social instinct we evolved, we evolved talents for cheating others.
• Psychopathy is a consistent feature of humanity across the world. It is a human universal.
• Two specialists able to trade can always do better than two generalists.
• Our most distinctive human feature is our over-sized brain.
• When populations consist of small, isolated families, cheating is a poor strategy. It is easy to detect and punish cheats. Predators need a certain population density. They must be able to move on after exhausting a given territory.
• Our brains are chock full of psychopathic talents and psychopath detectors.
• One [psychopath detector] is our sens of humor.
• We instinctively trust people who can make us laugh. We distrust those who don't like our jokes, or seem to lack a sense of humor.
• Such a precise thing, the humor protocol. This is not random or accidental.
• What we have evolved with humor is an empathy detector.
• Another of those "uniquely human" talents is art.
• The talent to create is so widespread that it plays on every street corner for pennies. Yet we respect it and, it seems, our species has done so for a long time.
• Psychopaths have many curious traits, which I will come to in the book. One is their lack of interest in creative acts.
• Art is a precious thing. It is a universal human language. As with comedy, we reward originality more than technical brilliance. As with comedy, we enjoy art more in company than alone. And as with comedians, we praise and respect artists, though the talent has no survival value.
• I'm certain creativity is another secret language of empathy.
• A creative act is a message of empathy.
• The predator model does more than explain psychopaths. It also explains the evolution of the human mind, as the result of an ancient arms race between cheaters and altruists.
• Psychopaths can exert a fascinating level of power over others. It is like a cult of two.
• Psychopaths hunt other humans. They attack and capture them. They feed on their time, resources, power, and energy. They dispose of the remains. And they move on.
• To be a psychopath is to be a predator.
• This is no metaphor. This is the key to decoding psychopathy. They are predators or parasites who feed off other humans.
• Two signs above all show us as vulnerable. One, is to be alone or show solitary body language. Two, is to show fear and insecurity, and especially the signs of past abuse.
• Psychopaths never take responsibility for their acts.
• In reality, abuse victims tend to be silent witnesses to their own life traumas.
• Past abuse is a prime predictor of future abuse.
• Fear of others shows in our body language.
• The triggers for instinctive responses are usually simple caricatures. Evolution is lazy like that.
• Isolate and amplify the trigger, and you can amplify the response. There is no ceiling to high.
• This escalating response to concentrated triggering is a known phenomenon, called "super-normal stimuli".
• Predators and parasites are specialists at using super-normal stimuli on their prey. They force behavior that is self-penalizing and illogical until you understand the trigger mechanism.
• We see that super-normal stimuli can produce insane behavior from well-evolved instincts. It is a evolutionary loophole many predators and parasites exploit. It is one human psychopaths often use to manipulate their targets into position.
• The "anti-social" part of psychopathy does not mean "not wanting the company of others". It means "not respecting social norms and customers". Psychopaths tend to be hyper-social, and obsessed with making new friends. It goes with the territory.
• Humans respond like any lifeforms to triggers and super-normal stimuli. Women looking to attract men invest in amplifying the relevant triggers.
• There are those who distort the truth, and then there are professional liars.
• Most women compete to be the most beautiful, the youngest looking. The competition may be veiled and subconscious. Yet it is omnipresent, because that is what men respond to.
• men compete for power and its proxy, money.
• Male power takes many forms. It can be physical, intellectual, economic. Even men who explicitly do not compete are making a statement.
• There appear to be two main themes to male attractiveness. One is dominance: height, deep voice, confidence, visible facial hair, and competitiveness. [...] The other theme is personality, which expresses itself as "is intelligent", "has a good sense of humor", and "is kind".
• Instinctively, when we meet strangers, even crossing in the street, we asses them.
• Male power means ability to dominate other men (and women, yet mainly men). This can be subtle and indirect, going far beyond physical dominance.
• No matter how large or rich or confident, a man alone is nothing. Male dominance is all about other men.
• Men and women both trade power and knowledge, and build structures. Yet there is a distinct gender split. Men talk to exchange technical knowledge and organize with other men into power structures. Women talk to trade social knowledge and organize with other woman into rather different structures. Our language reflects these two models.
• A large predatory business is indistinguishable from a cult.
• Male psychopaths can and do work at the personal level. Yet is is dust compared to the industrial-scale male psychopath of many organizations.
• Humans seem to organize in two specific, and contrasting ways. These are the "living system" and the "power pyramid".
• A living system is a loose economic network of inter-independent actors or pieces. These pieces trade resources such as knowledge, work, or money. These resources flow through the system in different directions and at their own rhythm. Living systems have no obvious power structure. They have no identifiable owners and no central authority. They have no central decision making or planning.
• A power pyramid is an explicit structure, with a name, purpose, and leadership hierarchy. Decisions and planning move down, and profits move up. The entire pyramid is the property of those at the top. It is a clear hierarchy where position defined status, and status defines position.
• Successful living systems are fair to all participants (that is, ethical) by virtue of the need to be efficient.
• Power pyramids specialize in getting clients, suppliers, and workers to give more for less.
• If you turn a power pyramid upside down, it looks like a feeding funnel.
• Survival defines morality, in the short term. In the long term, morality defines survival. That is, living systems tend to beat power pyramids.
• The worse the product, the heavier the marketing.
• Power pyramids communicate in lies wrapped around elements of truth. Their core values are profits and survival, no more or less.
• Conformity is a test.
• What male psychopaths want above all is power over others. It is rarely about money.
• A "follow me" promise of future rewards from an older man is a trigger. The bigger the promise, the bigger the response. It does not have to be logical or sane. Indeed, insane propositions are often more attractive than sane ones. A sane proposition requires hard work and patience. An insane one just needs suspension of disbelief.
• Male relationships tend to be cheap, loud, and public. [...] Female relationships are by contrast secretive and deep.
• The female protocol shows as conversation between two women who have met before. The two women talk about people and events. The talk is not random. It is an exchange, a trade. The dialog continues until both women have what they want, and then it ends.
• You might think as we get older, we develop more resistance to con artists. Yet it's not so. The asset-stripping of the elderly is almost an industry. It's not because the aged have dementia. Nor are they stupider than average. It is because psychopaths are good at this. To be alone is to be vulnerable.
• Families tolerate significant imbalances of power.
• The core of the psychopathic relationship is an "idealize-devalue-discard" (IDD) cycle.
• A person who enjoys talking to you will go with the flow, no matter what you talk about. The ability to play with conversation in random directions is a white flag.
• Most of us are expert in reading people, though we may not realize it. Yet our brains interpret what we see as emotional signals and emphatic reactions.
• The best lies are plausible and colorful. They tend to be easy to disprove, yet few people do. Our minds evolved to agree with those in authority. We will accept obvious lies when they come from someone who acts superior to us.
• Primates and birds have social instincts for copying the behavior of others. There seem to be three main mechanisms in humans: convergence, mirroring, and mimicking. Each mechanism has its evolutionary reasons. Each is a tool in the hands of a psychopath.
• As a social species, our identity lives in the groups we are part of.
• A natural leader treats and protects the group like family.
• To force a consistent dress, language, and behavior is a form of abuse. It breaks the individual's identity and self-image. This is a pure psychopathic trait, in individuals and organizations.
• Mirroring is a cloak of invisibility, a mask that triggers trust and relaxation. It is a core talent of psychopaths.
• Mimicking is a powerful tool that works on most people, most of the time.
• It takes conscious and deliberate effort to see our own lies and step aside from them.
• Is [love bombing] is a well known tactic to break resistance. Love bombing is a super-normal stimulus. It triggers a rush of dopamine in the brain that overwhelms.
• Human social instincts are not perfect. There are at least three vulnerabilities in the bonding mechanism. [...] They are: sunk costs, future promises, and parental abuse.
• Evolution doesn't try to make everyone happy. It plays the averages. If 10% suffer so 90% can thrive, so be it.
• As Mark Twain observed, the more someone invests in us, the less we value them. A visible effort by the other person diminishes them in our eyes.
• Our oldest defense against predators of any species is other people. When we have trouble with someone, our first instinct is often, "discuss with others". When we keep our problems private, from isolation, or fear, it usually gets worse.
• It is only through other people that we can understand the world. We may think of ourselves as clever individuals, yet that is self-flattery. We are only clever in groups.
• The psychopath manipulates trust. From the first seconds of a meeting to years later, Mallory insists: "trust me!"
• To establish any depth of trust, we need opportunity and time. We need chances for the other person to break their trust. We need safe spaces where failures are not harmful. We need time for many such experiments. You need an unbiased observer to collect the data.
• One of the core techniques to learn is emotional control. This is essential to escaping a relationship with a psychopath. It is also a useful skill in a broader social and professional context.
• As a social human, we cannot control how our emotions display. If we feel an emotion, it shows. This is their value as social signals: they are honest. To fake or suppress an emotion takes training, or psychopathic talent.
• The best defenses against a psychopath are proactive. It is easier to keep Mallory away, than to fight her off once she is part of your life.
• Take away real problems, or remove freedom, and the adult mind weakens and shrivels.
• If you give people full freedom and responsibility, then their adult minds get stronger. This can make them rebellious, if you are a tyrant. What it also does is unleash self-controlled creativity.
• Organizations tend to take on the characters of their founders.
• Every cult and police state does the same cheap trick: "they hate us for our freedoms!"
• An isolated individual is much easier to manipulate.
• Our relationships are rarely strong enough to survive deliberate attack.
• There are so many ways to create conflict between people, no matter how close. Psychopaths excel in doing this, if they can see both parties and get a sens of each.
•  At the heart of every psychopathic relationship is a Sisyphean Mountain. The victim or victims push their heavy rocks up this mountain. The rocks always slip and roll back to the bottom.
• Pyramid schemes are a classic psychopath construction.
• In fact a business entity is a one-way trapdoor. It stops debt moving back onto investors.
• So the core of modern business law is an anti-psychopath defense.
• You should be free to walk away from any relationship, at any time. This includes personal, business, and social relationships.
• Since humans are territorial, the lack of any private space damages our self-confidence.
• In a world of chaos, we regress to juvenile acceptance of authority. This reaction is well known to propagandists, who depend on it. Keep your public on a steady diet of shock and horror chaos. They won't question the corruption and repression.
• Our superpower, as a species, is to think together about large problems. We do this by building theories of the world. We refine these over time, and we teach them to younger generations. Our minds collect observations and use them to test our theories. We do this from our first to our last breath.
• [Karl] Popper argued that there are two kinds of theory. There are scientific theories, which we can falsify with data or observations. And there are magical theories, which we cannot. To put this another way: you cannot ever prove that a theory is true. Absolute true is unreachable, like an irrational number. When you remove all that is wrong, what remains is a closer approximated to the truth.
• A magical theory has no solution, and can absorb infinite amount of thought. That disrupts logical thinking. In the software security business we call this a "denial of service attack".
• Every cult and religion grows around magical theories.
• Magical theories tend to develop their own secret languages, jargons, and idioms. Invented words often carry magical meanings that the listener cannot negotiate.
• Complex and arbitrary rules are a staple of religious cults and other psychopathic organizations.
• There are three types of anger: sudden anger, passive anger, and aggressive anger.
• Serial killers are of course real, yet rare. The FBI estimates 35-50 active in the USA at any time.
• So the change that nay given adult American is a psychopath is 1 in 25. Whereas the chance that any given psychopath is a serial killer is 1 in 200,000.
• Serial killers are so scary and fascinating because they epitomize the psychopath's predator traits.
• If you know someone who is in an abusive relationship, it is likely one of the two is a psychopath. You must take real care before making a conclusion. Psychopaths like. They will often claim to be the victim. They will often look exactly as you'd expect a victim to look. Most often there is no visible violence. As I explained, the real victims do not like to talk about their experiences.
• The right way to identify a possible psychopath in a group is to start with damage and pain. Then, rule out suspects until one person remains.
• The number one talent of a psychopath is to look "normal", as I keep repeating. The number two talent is to trick the observer into forgetting what "normal" means.
• The bulk of successful psychopaths are rarely violent. Their aggression lives under the surface. They rarely punch or kick. They smile, and they whisper.
• Above all, a psychopath's violence is pragmatic and targeted.
• Evolutionary psychology aims to explain our mind and behavior as adaptions. It is a solid theory: we are the products of natural and sexual selection, no more or less.
• Emotions have two general goals. First, they prepare our mind and body for some action. They speed up certain systems and slow down others. Second, emotions display our mental and physical state to others.
• [This] is a common pattern in product marketing, aimed at men:
• Step one: show beautiful women who display interest.
• Step two: cut to desirable products.
• Marketing aimed at women used another route:
• Step one is to show thin young female shapes.
• Then, cut to desirable products.
• Emotions fade away when you analyze them.
• Some damage is forever. Yet some damage is fixable.
• A main goal of every abuser is to teach the victim that there is no abuse.
• If you worry that you may be a psychopath, then the chances are low. A psychopath knows they're different, yet never sees this as their problem.