Snakes in Suits—When Psychopaths Go to Work is a new book published by Dr. Robert Hare, the international expert on psychopaths, and Dr. Paul Babiak, an industrial-organizational psychologist. Although the book is primarily about psychopaths in the corporate world, it contains important information for anyone who is dealing with one of these predators.
Chapters 3 and 4 explain how psychopaths manipulate their victims, and it’s absolutely chilling.
Hare and Babiak describe a three-phase process psychopaths use in their parasitic approach to life. This isn’t a process psychopaths have to plan, they do it naturally. Here’s how it goes, according to the authors:
- First, they assess the value of individuals to their needs, and identify their psychological strengths and weaknesses.
- Second, they manipulate the individuals (now potential victims) by feeding them carefully crafted messages, while constantly using feedback from them to build and maintain control. Not only is this an effective approach to take with most people, it also allows psychopaths to talk their way around and out of any difficulty quickly and effectively if confronted or challenged.
- Third, they leave the drained and bewildered victims when they are bored or otherwise through with them.
Psychological game
As a result of the manipulation, the psychopath establishes a “psychopathic bond” with the victim. Here’s how Hare and Babiak summarize the manipulation:
The psychopath’s psychological game involves analyzing the individual’s expectations and desires, and then reflecting them in a psychological mask that is so convincing the person bonds with him or her. This bonding can take place very quickly, even during the space of one cross-country airplane ride. There are two payoffs: the psychopath wins the immediate game by gaining the person’s trust, and the victim, now in the grip of the psychopath’s power, will soon give up whatever the psychopath requests or demands.
If you’ve been victimized by a psychopath, you’re probably trying to figure out how it happened. Read Snakes in Suits, especially chapters 3 and 4.You’ll find your answers.
Lovefraud mention
Snakes in Suits includes a sidebar about Lovefraud.com in the chapter about personal self-defense. I greatly appreciate the reference.
Another note—although I draw on the work of Dr. Robert Hare in Lovefraud.com, I’ve chosen to use the term “sociopath” in place of his use of the word “psychopath.” The reason is that most people assume a psychopath is a deranged serial killer, which may prevent them from realizing that the spouse, relative or coworker who is making them miserable may have the personality disorder. My purpose is simply to enhance communication.
Rereading your blog tonight and don’t know HOW I missed this post. Just the bit you posted from Hare’s new book gave me a knot in my stomach.
You may have seen this post on my site:
http://cyberpaths.blogspot.com/2006/07/nlp-mind-control-and-seduction.html
That said, I know some sociopaths STUDY this mental manipulation stuff. But – what of those who don’t? What’s your theory on how these people know how to do this? Is it brain chemistry or years of interpersonal exploitation? Would be very interested to hear your take on this, Donna.
Hmmm, an old but good article. My S specifically did things to meet my needs/desires and enhance my life i.e., instant hot water (so kids didn’t fight) and landscaping the back yard. He also built me a waterfall, which I had always wanted (everything he did was grandoise, i.e., sending me 3 dozen roses instead of 1 dozen). When I told him that embarassed me, and please just send me a dozen roses from Safeway for $11.99, he ceased sending flowers at all. His game was to get me to invest with him (he played for 3 years) and when he finally figured I wasn’t going to, he turned into the most cruel, heartless, aggressive and hostile person I have ever encountered. He’s now onto a victim who HAS invested with him (silly woman, she’ll lose it all). He’s big into life insurance, and I’m actually afraid that when he gets bored with the new victim, she might just go ‘bye bye’ as his ex-wife had “accidents” but luckily they did not kill her. It is absolutely chilling and frightening to contemplate.
Furthermore, when he had an affair, he actually DID meet a woman on a coast-to-coast airplane ride. He evidently did bond with her, because he had plans (waylaid by her husband eventually) to move her, her car, and all of her possessions across country, plus give her $10k (which of course he got from fraudulent activities).
So, the bonding can be fast and intense.
I will be forever grateful to Dr. Hare and his book “Without Conscience” which was sent to me by a dear friend who had a P son.
My personal copy of Dr. Hare’s book is liberally highlighted with yellow marker and marginal notes. At the time, I only applied this to information to my P-bio-father, but it applies in spade to every P I have known personally.
I will order a copy of the “Sharks” book as well. Maybe I am OCD about learning more about P’s, but at the same time I wonder if my “interest” isn’t like the person who has been shot by someone else, and they buy a gun and go to the range to learn to shoot so that they become enough of an expert shot that they won’t be caught off guard again and shot. I’m not sure if that is a good analogy or not, but I think that the more I know, the more I can grasp, the easier it will be for me to spot the next one in time to not be victimized again.
Maybe if I had been bitten by a snake I would be learning as much as I could about reptiles and their habits and habitats so that I could more easily spot them before I stepped on one.
I just saw this post- It is a really great post- I don’t know how I missed it- It goes along well with Steve Becker’s recent post about psuedo-insightfulness and psuedo-sensitivity. I”m going to read those chapters in “Snakes In Suits”.
Great article and so true about how they manage to manipulate us – they gain our trust by at first appearing trustworthy and saying all the right things and then start the awful abuse. I spent ten years with my Pex and wonder when I look back why I wasn’t able to get out sooner – but of course there was that ‘bond’ – from my side it was real and sincere but from his side it was just a show so he could bleed me some more.
Oxy I understand that need to learn everything you can about them – I am the same. I never want to be in that position ever again and if I ever spot another one I will be off running so fast that I won’t be seen for dust. The experience was horrific on a scale I had never experienced before – every day was mental torture and of course all blamed on me. I am now reading and learning as much as I can to heal from this and each day I get stronger and further away from it but I will never forget it.
it’s disgusting that they are so good at grooming us for the bonding. It’s like being a trusted friend to someone innocent so you can damage them later usually through slow torture affecting every sense in the body.
I pray for everyone affected that they have the strength to get to a safe place so they can begin to heal.
I did get a copy of “Sharks” and read it and read it, it describes most of my workikng life, not all attacks were aimed at me,, but I saw attacks on others, on whole institutions, on clients, etc. It is a GREAT BOOK and I have currently loaned it to a retired attorney friend of mine who DOES get it, and does volunteer work with the as an advocate for foster kids with the courts.
We have to KNOW about them, and how they “appear” when we meet them. The FIRST thing I do when I meet someone and they start to come on to me immediately STRONGLY is to BACK OFF a bit—Borderlines and Psychopaths usually start their “grooming” early on with filing an “application to be your best friend, you’re so wonderful”–and Yes, I AM WONDERFUL but the thing is when someone you just met starts to act like they have NEVER BEFORE MET A SUPERSTAR and YOU are this superstar, WHAT IS A RED FLAG ABOUT THIS?
In the past, I fell for some of this crap, this wooing. It was wonderful to have someone I just met be soooooo enthralled by my jokes, my wit, my beauty, my intelligence—gosh HOW PERCEPTIVE THEY WERE! They just couldn’t DO enhough for me, or be around me enough! Or tell me how wonderful I was enough!
RED FLAG!!!!! Flying high. Friendships are formed slowly over a period of time. So when someone “fills out an application” to be my BEST FRIEND I back off. In fact, once this gal who rented one of our houses started doing that kind of thing, and in talking to her over the phone she admitted to me that she had been diagnosed ASPD…..
That’s another RED FLAG too, is many of the Ps don’t have many/any friends, so they are always having to find new ones to replace the ones they have screwed over and lost. So they are EAGER to be your friend, and if you latch on to them, or let them latch on to you, they will distance you from all your other friends so they have complete control.
Another sign to me that is a red flag, too is if the person is either from a much higher or much lower socio-economic level. Now I’m not a money snob, but I know I don’t have the resources to hang around people who have huge incomes and to go do the things they do, and I also have no desire to hang around with street people either, we just don’t have a lot in common. I don’t hang out with the alcoholic or druggie crowd, or people with criminal records.
Many Ps can blend in with just about “any crowd” like a camellion almost, but the one thing I see is that they TURN THE CHARM ON QUICKLY and you start feeling that they SEE The real you, the WONDERFUL you and when I get that GLOW of their appreciation of all my wonderful qualities—I PUT THE BRAKES ON, BACK UP, AND LOOK, LISTEN AND FEEL. WHAT IS WRONG WITH THIS PICTURE.
Sure, I love it when people tell me how wonderful I am! I love it when people say I am smart and savy and lots of my wonderful qualities—(hanging head in mock humility here) but, you know, I think only psychopaths are “intuitive enough” to recognize those qualities in me within 5 minutes of first meeting me. LOL I think that may be one reason I let the jerks get to me is that they made me FEEL SOOOOOO GOOD at least for a while till the abuse set in!
Oxy, I have had a female freind just like that! It appears it’s not just male socio’s I have suckered me in.
She was a good decade older than me and acted like a mentor in a way..it wasn’t long before I was not only working with her but also ferriting her teenager around, looking after her baby on my days off and basically at her beck and call 24/7. She was one of those high energy people who seemed to live off nervous energy. Highly manipulative, she managed to get a fellow colleague laid off.
Looking back on my life I really have come across so many “cluster B’s” in so many forms, all so different in terms of levels of success or even which side of the law they’re on, but all leaching off others in one way or another.
I’ll stick to nice people in future!
Yea, Rosie,
Friends do DO THINGS FOR each other, but it shouldn’t be so one-sided that one becomes a servant to the other. It is up to US though to set boundaries and say “NO! I can’t do that!” Instead we feel bad and resentful about doing for and doing for them instead of taking care of ourselves.
If someone asks me to do something I no longer say YES when I want to say NO. If I want to say NO I say NO and do not feel guilty about it. By the same token, I do not want my friends to say “Yes” when they don’t mean it. HONESTY is the BEST POLICY and I am honest to the core! I expect it from my friends too!
My sociopath said all the right things and promised that he would be the ONE who would never hurt or lie to me and I am so ashamed and humiliated that I was able to just toss aside my morality about not being with someone who belonged to someone else. He had me hooked right away and promised that he had never stepped out on HER-ever. He was just”so in love with me and he had never felt for her what he felt for me”. I found out later that it was true that they were NOT intimate and had a “friendship” type marriage. He couldn’t toss her out because she had been there with him through his medical training. She said that he refused her sexually and after he had open heart surgery, told her that he was impotent. He could get it up with her. He was afraid of needing viagra to satisfy me but never had to take it. Our sex was phenomenal and he had NO trouble at all and had much more stamina than I thought for someone 16 years older than me. After SHE found out about us, it came out that he had done this to three other women who were way younger than him. He preyed on the fact that my self esteem was low, I was very empathetic, nurturing, lonely and a genuine honest nice person. I took the target quiz on here and I am apparently the sociopath’s ultimate target. He built up my self esteem so high and then tore the rug out from under me by discarding/devaluing me because I became wise to his lies and he had to guard his reputation with his life. What is wrong with a wife who would completely take him back so many times? She has to be TOTALLY OUTSIDE OF HER MIND. I don’t even get why it took her two weeks short of a year to figure out that he had done it again. I am terrified of this happening to me again. A friend tried to get me together with a guy recently and I had a full blown panic attack. I think I have PTSD. I work with two doctors at my new job who are his friends. I think that they have tried to make me look bad with my new co-workers. He and I have NC. I have changed my phone #, e-mail and moved twice since the breakup. I am so ashamed that I fell for it and that I was with someone else
s husband. I am so humiliated and sometimes I feel like I can’t breathe for missing him SO much and at the same time, I want to see him in massive amounts of pain. I want to put his picture on a billboard in the middle of downtown to warn other women.