Psychopaths lie all the time and it’s perplexing to us.  Dr. Morgan Scott Peck titled his book on human evil, People of the Lie, because one of the most common traits of a psychopath is that they lie.  They seem to be compulsive liars. Why do they lie so much? They lie about important things and about unimportant things. They will lie about what they had for lunch. They will lie about their names, where they live and what happened when they went into the 7-11 to buy cigarettes. They lie when the truth would actually seem to serve them better. Why lie about innocuous details such as what they had for lunch? Actually there is a method to their madness. The psychopath’s lies are usually 180 degrees the opposite of the truth. These lies serve the purpose of misdirection.

Covert Sabotage

Psychopaths know how to destroy a person by covertly sabotaging every aspect of their lives. Their goal is to make their victim perceive life as hopeless and unfair.  The victim had the audacity to be happy and the psychopath intends to change that.  Toward this end, psychopaths will learn all of your vulnerabilities, all of your values, everything you care about, all the things which bring pleasure to your daily life and everything that you feel an emotional attachment to. Then the psychopath will surreptitiously sabotage those things.

It might be your favorite TV show, he will make sure you never get to watch it. It might be getting the garbage out to the curb each week, she will make sure you forget by calling to distract you. Your favorite food will be poisoned and you begin to think you’ve developed a food allergy to it. Your favorite cat will get killed after you prayed to God to always keep him safe because you loved him so much. If you think your car is safe because you keep it well maintained, he will cut your brake lines. You will never get that promotion, instead you will quit or be fired because you are too sick from being poisoned to actually make it to work. If you’ve always been good with managing your money, he will arrange emergencies that cost you more than you can afford. Your friends and family may abandon you after he spreads lies about you to them, then you become isolated except for the ever present psychopath. In other words, the psychopath will make sure you never feel secure, you never feel blessed, and you never get what you hoped for.

This covert aggression forms the backdrop of your life. It builds a level of constant stress in your body so that the psychopath’s other machinations will be even more effective. Against this back drop of perpetual disappointment, the psychopath’s small acts of kindness stand out in stark relief, it’s what you look forward to daily. You begin to rely on him to make your life feel meaningful. He becomes your anchor in the storm. But he alternates kindness with cruelty. The psychopath giveth and the psychopath taketh away. Now he has control over your reality. His craving for complete power over life and death has only just begun to be satisfied. In the end, he wants to know if he can manipulate you into the despair that makes you consider taking your own life.

Disinformation : 180 Degrees the Opposite of the Truth

Because they use every single bit of information they learn about us, to control us, they assume that everyone else, is doing that same thing. They think we would poison their favorite food and cut their brake lines. After all, if they think that way, doesn’t everyone? When psychopaths lie, they are protecting themselves from being known and being vulnerable.   All psychopaths are paranoid.  One psychopath I know, fears and hates Google  with a passion. He knows Google is collecting information on him. I can’t imagine what he thinks Google is planning to do to him! Instead of Google, he uses Duckduckgo as his search engine. In addition to using Duckduckgo, psychopaths handle their paranoia by giving disinformation at every opportunity. That disinformation will generally point in the 180 degree opposite direction to the truth and it creates their mask. There is only one thing that a psychopath really values and that is, his or her mask.  Because most people can’t imagine lying about everything that they are, this mask enables psychopaths to con and manipulate, to cheat and to steal, even to kill and get away with it because nobody ever imagined what they were really like. They view life as a game to win and they want to win by lying, cheating and manipulating.

Slime

There are times when a psychopath lies and it’s painfully obvious. You might think that they would feel shame to be caught in a lie.  They don’t. Instead, we  feel embarrassed for them.  When we’re faced with their naked lies, we avert our eyes to avoid being slimed with their shame.  The psychopath doesn’t care, as long as we don’t question their version of reality.

Turning the Table on the Psychopath

It’s ironic that empathic people trust the psychopath because we can’t imagine being so duplicitous. Yet the psychopath, who relies on our trust and naivety, still feels paranoia, thinking that we will do unto them as they would do unto us.  The psychopath actually has good reason to feel this way. He or she, knows that you might find out what they really are. You might realize that everything they’ve ever presented to you was a malicious lie. They believe that people will want revenge or will try to hold them responsible for their evil deeds. For psychopaths, that’s a very good reason to keep their identities, locations , “friends” and habits, secret from you.

In the past, psychopaths have gotten away with evil by playing this game of lies, deceit and manipulation. Most of us observed some aspects of it, but didn’t know what it meant. Now the tide is turning. As knowledge of psychopaths and their machinations becomes more common, the 180 degree lies that once hid these abusers, now reveal them. I wonder where they will hide next?

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