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Without Conscience: The Disturbing World of the Psychopaths Among Us 1st Edition
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- ISBN-109781572304512
- ISBN-13978-1572304512
- Edition1st
- PublisherThe Guilford Press
- Publication dateJanuary 8, 1999
- LanguageEnglish
- Dimensions5.5 x 0.75 x 8.75 inches
- Print length236 pages
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Editorial Reviews
Review
"Fascinating, chilling, and accurate....The world's most renowned psychopathy researcher has leavened sharp scientific insights with page-turning case descriptions in a rare publishing feat: a book that is both highly readable and highly reputable." --John Monahan, PhD
"A fascinating, if terrifying, look at psychopaths....Hare makes a strong case for the view that psychopaths are born, not made....A chilling, eye-opening reportand a call to action." ― Kirkus Reviews Published On: 1999-01-10
From the Back Cover
About the Author
Robert D. Hare, PhD, considered one of the world’s foremost experts on psychopathy, is Professor Emeritus of Psychology at the University of British Columbia, Canada. Dr. Hare is the developer of one of the most widely used tools for assessing psychopathy and the author of over 100 scientific articles and several books. He has received numerous awards for his distinguished contributions to psychology and criminology.
Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
Without Conscience
The Disturbing World of the Psychopaths Among Us
By Robert D. HareThe Guilford Press
Copyright © 1993 Robert D. Hare, PhDAll rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-57230-451-2
Contents
Cover,Title,
Copyright,
Dedication,
Author's Note,
Preface and Acknowledgments,
Epigraph,
Introduction: The Problem,
1. "Experiencing" the Psychopath,
2. Focusing the Picture,
3. The Profile: Feelings and Relationships,
4. The Profile: Lifestyle,
5. Internal Controls: The Missing Piece,
6. Crime: The Logical Choice,
7. White-Collar Psychopaths,
8. Words from an Overcoat Pocket,
9. Flies in the Web,
10. The Roots of the Problem,
11. The Ethics of Labeling,
12. Can Anything Be Done?,
13. A Survival Guide,
Epilogue,
Chapter Notes,
About the Publisher,
Discover More Guilford Titles,
CHAPTER 1
"Experiencing" the Psychopath
I could see the dark blood from Halmea's mouth trickling down the sheet toward the part of her that was under Hud. I didn't move or blink, but then Hud was standing up grinning at me; he was buckling his ruby belt buckle. "Ain't she a sweet patootie?" he said. He whistled and began to tuck his pant legs into the tops of his red suede boots. Halmea had curled toward the wall....
—Larry McMurty, Horseman, Pass By
Over the years I've become accustomed to the following experience. In response to a courteous question by a dinner acquaintance about my work, I briefly sketch the distinguishing characteristics of a psychopath. Invariably, someone at the table suddenly looks thoughtful and then exclaims, "Good lord—I think So-and-So must have been." or, "You know, I never realized it before, but the person you're describing is my brother-in-law."
These thoughtful, troubled responses aren't limited to the social realm. Routinely, people who have read of my work call my laboratory to describe a husband, a child, an employer, or an acquaintance whose inexplicable behavior has been causing them grief and pain for years.
Nothing is more convincing of the need for clarity and reflection on psychopathy than these real-life stories of disappointment and despair. The three that make up this chapter provide a way of easing into this strange and fascinating subject by conveying that characteristic sense that "something's wrong here but I can't quite put my finger on it."
One of the accounts is drawn from a prison population, where most of the studies of psychopathy take place (for the practical reasons that there are a lot of psychopaths in prisons and the information needed to diagnose them is readily available).
The two other accounts are drawn from everyday life, for psychopaths are found not only in prison populations. Parents, children, spouses, lovers, co-workers, and unlucky victims everywhere are at this moment attempting to cope with the personal chaos and confusion psychopaths cause and to understand what drives them. Many of you will find an uneasy resemblance between the individuals in these examples and people who have made you think you were living in hell.
RAY
After I received my master's degree in psychology in the early 1960s, I looked for a job to help support my wife and infant daughter and to pay for the next stage of my education. Without having been inside a prison before, I found myself employed as the sole psychologist at the British Columbia Penitentiary.
I had no practical work experience as a psychologist and no particular interest in clinical psychology or criminological issues. The maximum-security penitentiary near Vancouver was a formidable institution housing the kinds of criminals I had only heard about through the media. To say I was on unfamiliar ground is an understatement.
I started work completely cold—with no training program or sage mentor to hint at how one went about being a prison psychologist. On the first day I met the warden and his administrative staff, all of whom wore uniforms and some of whom wore sidearms. The prison was run along military lines, and accordingly I was expected to wear a "uniform" consisting of a blue blazer, gray flannel trousers, and black shoes. I convinced the warden that the outfit was unnecessary, but he nevertheless insisted that one at least be made for me by the prison shop, and I was sent down to be measured.
The result was an early sign that all was not as orderly as the place appeared: The jacket sleeves were far too short, the trousers legs were of hilariously discrepant length, and the shoes differed from each other by two sizes. I found the latter particularly perplexing, because the inmate who had measured my feet had been extremely meticulous in tracing them out on a sheet of brown paper. How he could have produced two entirely different-sized shoes, even after several complaints on my part, was difficult to imagine. I could only assume that he was giving me a message of some sort.
My first workday was quite eventful. I was shown to my office, an immense area on the top floor of the prison, far different from the intimate, trust-inspiring burrow I had hoped for. I was isolated from the rest of the institution and had to pass through several sets of locked doors to reach my office. On the wall above my desk was a highly conspicuous red button. A guard who had no idea what a psychologist was supposed to do in a prison—an ignorance I shared—told me that the button was for an emergency, but that if I ever need to press it, I should not expect help to arrive immediately.
The psychologist who was my predecessor had left a small library in the office. It consisted mainly of books on psychological tests, such as the Rorschach Ink Blot Test and the Thematic Apperception Test. I knew something about such tests but had never used them, so the books—among the few objects in the prison that seemed familiar—only reinforced my sense that I was in for a difficult time.
I wasn't in my office for more than an hour when my first "client" arrived. He was a tall, slim, dark-haired man in his thirties. The air around him seemed to buzz, and the eye contact he made with me was so direct and intense that I wondered if I had ever really looked anybody in the eye before. That stare was unrelenting—he didn't indulge in the brief glances away that most people use to soften the force of their gaze.
Without waiting for an introduction, the inmate—I'll call him Ray—opened the conversation: "Hey, Doc, how's it going? Look, I've got a problem. I need your help. I'd really like to talk to you about this."
Eager to begin work as a genuine psychotherapist, I asked him to tell me about it. In response, he pulled out a knife and waved it in front of my nose, all the while smiling and maintaining that intense eye contact. My first thought was to push the red button behind me, which was in Ray's plain view and the purpose of which was unmistakable. Perhaps because I sensed that he was only testing me, or perhaps because I knew that pushing the button would do no good if he really intended to harm me, I refrained.
Once he determined that I wasn't going to push the button, he explained that he intended to use the knife not on me but on another inmate who had been making overtures to his "protégé," a prison term for the more passive member of a homosexual pairing. Just why he was telling me this was not immediately clear, but I soon suspected that he was checking me out, trying to determine what sort of a prison employee I was. If I said nothing about the incident to the administration, I would be violating a strict prison rule that required staff to report possession of a weapon of any sort. On the other hand, I knew that if I did report him, word would get around that I was not an inmate-oriented psychologist, and my job would be even more difficult than it was promising to be. Following our session, in which he described his "problem" not once or twice but many times, I kept quiet about the knife. To my relief, he didn't stab the other inmate, but it soon became evident that Ray had caught me in his trap: I had shown myself to be a soft touch who would overlook clear violations of fundamental prison rules in order to develop "professional" rapport with the inmates.
From that first meeting on, Ray managed to make my eight-month stint at the prison miserable. His constant demands on my time and his attempts to manipulate me into doing things for him were unending. On one occasion, he convinced me that he would make a good cook—he felt he had a natural bent for cooking, he thought he would become a chef when he was released, this was a great opportunity to try out some of his ideas to make institutional food preparation more efficient, etc.—and I supported his request for a transfer from the machine shop (where he had apparently made the knife). What I didn't consider was that the kitchen was a source of sugar, potatoes, fruit, and other ingredients that could be turned into alcohol. Several months after I had recommended the transfer, there was a mighty eruption below the floorboards directly under the warden's table. When the commotion died down, we found an elaborate system for distilling alcohol below the floor. Something had gone wrong and one of the pots had exploded. There was nothing unusual about the presence of a still in a maximum-security prison, but the audacity of placing one under the warden's seat shook up a lot of people. When it was discovered that Ray was brains behind the bootleg operation, he spent some time in solitary confinement.
Once out of "the hole," Ray appeared in my office as if nothing had happened and asked for a transfer from the kitchen to the auto shop—he really felt he had a knack, he saw the need to prepare himself for the outside world, if he only had the time to practice he could have his own body shop on the outside ... I was still feeling the sting of having arranged the first transfer, but eventually he wore me down.
Soon afterward I decided to leave the prison to pursue a Ph.D. in psychology, and about a month before I left Ray almost persuaded me to ask my father, a roofing contractor, to offer him a job as part of an application for parole. When I mentioned this to some of the prison staff, they found it hard to stop laughing. They knew Ray well, they'd all been taken in by his schemes and plans for reform, and one by one they had resolved to adopt a skeptical approach to him. Jaded? I thought so at the time. But the fact was that their picture of Ray was clearer than mine—despite my job description. Theirs had been brought into focus by years of experience with people like him.
Ray had an incredible ability to con not just me but everybody. He could talk, and lie, with a smoothness and a directness that sometimes momentarily disarmed even the most experienced and cynical of the prison staff. When I met him he had a long criminal record behind him (and, as it turned out, ahead of him); about half his adult life had been spent in prison, and many of his crimes had been violent. Yet he convinced me, and others more experienced than I, of his readiness to reform, that his interest in crime had been completely overshadowed by a driving passion in—well, cooking, mechanics, you name it. He lied endlessly, lazily, about everything, and it disturbed him not a whit whenever I pointed out something in his file that contradicted one of his lies. He would simply change the subject and spin off in a different direction. Finally convinced that he might not make the perfect job candidate in my father's firm, I turned down Ray's request—and was shaken by his nastiness at my refusal.
Before I left the prison for the university, I was still making payments on a 1958 Ford that I could not really afford. One of the officers there, later to become warden, offered to trade his 1950 Morris Minor for my Ford and to take over my payments. I agreed, and because the Morris wasn't in very good shape I took advantage of the prison policy of letting staff have their cars repaired in the institution's auto shop—where Ray still worked, thanks (he would have said no thanks) to me. The car received a beautiful paint job and the motor and drivetrain were reconditioned.
With all our possessions on top of the car and our baby in a plywood bed in the backseat, my wife and I headed for Ontario. The first problems appeared soon after we left Vancouver, when the motor seemed a bit rough. Later, when we encountered some moderate inclines, the radiator boiled over. A garage mechanic discovered ball bearings in the carburetor's float chamber; he also pointed out where one of the hoses to the radiator had clearly been tampered with. These problems were repaired easily enough, but the next one, which arose while we were going down a long hill, was more serious. The brake pedal became very spongy and then simply dropped to the floor—no brakes, and it was a long hill. Fortunately, we made it to a service station, where we found that the brake line had been cut so that a slow leak would occur. Perhaps it was a coincidence that Ray was working in the auto shop when the car was being tuned up, but I had no doubt that the prison "telegraph" had informed him of the new owner of the car.
At the university, I prepared to write my dissertation on the effects of punishment on human learning and performance. In my research for the project I encountered for the first time the literature on psychopathy. I'm not sure I thought of Ray at the time, but circumstances conspired to bring him to mind.
My first job after receiving my Ph.D. was at the University of British Columbia, not far from the penitentiary where I had worked several years before. During registration week in that precomputer age, I sat behind a table with several colleagues to register long lines of students for their fall classes. As I was dealing with a student my ears pricked up at the mention of my name. "Yes, I worked as Dr. Hare's assistant at the penitentiary the whole time he was there, a year or so, I would say it was. Did all his paperwork for him, filled him in on prison life. Sure, he used to talk over hard cases with me. We worked great together." It was Ray, standing at the head of the next line.
My assistant! I broke into the easy flow of his remarks with, "Oh, really?" expecting to disconcert him. "Hey, Doc, how's it going?" he called without losing a beat. Then he simply jumped back into his conversation and took off in another direction. Later, when I checked his application forms, it became apparent that his transcript of previous university courses was fraudulent. To his credit, he had not attempted to register in one of my courses.
Perhaps what fascinated me most was that Ray remained absolutely unflappable even after his deceit was revealed—and that my colleague was clearly going along for the ride. What, in his psychological makeup, gave Ray the power to override reality, apparently without compunction or concern? As it turned out, I would spend the next twenty-five years doing empirical research to answer that question.
The story of Ray has its amusing side now, after so many years. Less amusing are the case studies of the hundreds of psychopaths that I have studied since then.
ELSA AND DAN
She met him in a laundromat in London, where she was taking a year off from teaching after a stormy and exhausting divorce. She'd seen him around the neighborhood, and when they finally started to talk she felt as if she knew him. He was open and friendly and they hit it off right away. From the start she thought he was hilarious.
She'd been lonely. The weather was grim and sleety, she'd already seen every movie and play in the city, and she didn't know a soul east of the Atlantic.
"Ah, traveler's loneliness," Dan crooned sympathetically over dinner. "It's the worst."
After dessert he was embarrassed to discover he'd come out without his wallet. Elsa was more than happy to pay for dinner, more than happy to sit through the double feature she had seen earlier in the week. At the pub, over drinks, he told her he was a translator for the United Nations. He traveled the globe. He was, at the moment, between assignments.
They saw each other four times that week, five the week after. Dan lived in a flat at the top of a house somewhere in Hampstead, he told her, but it wasn't long before he had all but moved in with Elsa. To her amazement, she loved the arrangement. It was against her nature, she wasn't even sure how it had happened, but after her long stint of loneliness she was having the time of her life.
Still, there were details, unexplained, undiscussed, that she shoved out of her mind. He never invited her to his home; she never met his friends. One night he brought over a carton filled with tape recorders—plastic-wrapped straight from the factory, unopened; a few days later they were gone. Once Elsa came home to find three televisions stacked in the corner. "Storing them for a friend," was all he told her. When she pressed for more, he merely shrugged.
The first time Dan failed to show up at a prearranged place, she was frantic that he'd been hurt in traffic—he was always darting across the street in the middle of the block.
He stayed away for three days and was asleep on the bed when she came home in midmorning. The odor of rancid perfume and stale beer nearly made her sick, and her fear for his life was replaced with something new for her: awful, wild, uncontrollable jealousy. "Where have you been?" she cried. "I've been so worried. Where were you?"
He looked sour as he woke up. "Don't ever ask me that," he snapped. "I won't have it."
"What—?"
"Where I go, what I do, who I do it with—it doesn't concern you, Elsa. Don't ask."
He was like a different person. But then he seemed to pull himself together, shook the sleep off, and reached out to her. "I know it hurts you," he said in his old gentle way, "but think of jealousy as a flu, and wait to get over it. And you will, baby, you will." Like a mother cat licking her kitten, he groomed her back into trusting him. And yet she thought what he'd said about jealousy was so odd. It made her sure that he had never felt anything like the pain of a broken trust.
One night she asked him lightly if he felt like stepping out to the corner and bringing her an ice cream. He didn't reply, and when she glanced up she found him glaring at her furiously. "Always got everything you wanted, didn't you," he said in a strange, snide way. "Any little thing little Elsa wanted, somebody always jumped up and ran out and bought it for her, didn't they?"
"Are you kidding? I'm not like that. What are you talking about?"
He got up from the chair and walked out. She never saw him again.
(Continues...)Excerpted from Without Conscience by Robert D. Hare. Copyright © 1993 Robert D. Hare, PhD. Excerpted by permission of The Guilford Press.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.
Product details
- ASIN : 1572304510
- Publisher : The Guilford Press; 1st edition (January 8, 1999)
- Language : English
- Paperback : 236 pages
- ISBN-10 : 9781572304512
- ISBN-13 : 978-1572304512
- Item Weight : 10.2 ounces
- Dimensions : 5.5 x 0.75 x 8.75 inches
- Best Sellers Rank: #54,830 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #29 in Medical Mental Illness
- #109 in Medical Psychology Pathologies
- #235 in Popular Psychology Pathologies
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About the author

Robert D. Hare, Ph.D., is the author of Without Conscience and the creator of the standard tool for diagnosing psychopathy. He is an emeritus professor of psychology at the University of British Columbia, and president of Darkstone Research Group, a forensic research and consulting firm. He has won numerous awards for his research, lectures widely on psychopathy, and consults with law enforcement organizations, including the FBI. He lives in Vancouver, British Columbia, with his wife.
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What you need to be aware of when reading this, or any other book about psychopathy is that much like your first semester in a biology or anatomy and physiology class, you'll start diagnosing everything around you as X or Y until you've managed to wrap your brain around the material and it's implications. The problem here is that there is no teacher for you to defer your questions to, you must answer them yourself through either filling in the blanks as best you can with your imagination, or turning to google. Neither of which is good practice with this kind of material. So don't be so quick to start calling people around you psychopaths after getting half way through. As Hare points out, all sorts of people can be cold, callous, parasitic, manipulative and violent, "evil" is not endemic to the psychopathic personality; they're self serving folk, but many never commit a major or serious crime.
I digress, this is the first book anyone should read on the subject. I highly suggest "Snakes in Suites" afterwards, accompanied by Dr. Scott Peck's engaging page turner "People of the lie". Between these three you will develop a sincere appreciation for the varied and subtle methods of predatory and manipulative people and it will be a very good understanding given that many who will read these books are not students of criminal psychology or the behavioral sciences in general; but where instead drawn here by any number of other accessory stimuli from TV to personal experience.
Dr. Hare's stories provided in this book are all about actual psychopaths, you will not find the discrepancies present in other works on the topic such as "the sociopath next door" where the Author takes no issue with simply applying the mantle of socio/psychopath to all sorts of individuals, some of whom she's never even met by her own admission. A distasteful practice in and of itself, akin to labeling someone a racist just because you heard a story from some guy about another guy he used to work with who said he didn't really want his daughter dating black guys. In the field of psychology we do not look at issues like this through the black and white filter so many lay-folk do. First off, how do we know the story is true, second, how do we know this comment wasn't coerced out of the man by the person in question, third in what context was the comment uttered... You get the point. Dr. Hare sticks with this and gives you highly detailed notes on his encounters. Information you can use.
I think my favorite part, because it shows just how skilled the intelligent psychopath is has to be where Dr. Hare admits even he himself was swindled by one of these con-men, even after spending a night with the man and talking over drinks, yet still he he never saw it coming. The psychopath is far more often NOT the serial killer, the mass murderer, the rapist, the pedophile, they are not your lazy brother-in-law that won't get a job... What they are, generally speaking, are men and women who have no conscience, no empathy, no moral compass and they maneuver through life using any means available and necessary to achieve comfort and power in spite of the hard work us honest folk put into getting there. They are the boyfriend from your childhood that really creeped you out when he said "if you ever leave I'll kill your parents and burn you alive" then laughed about it, they're the politician you see on TV caught using taxpayer money for drugs and prostitutes, the high powered criminal defense attorney that defends genuinely bad people with a lustrous zeal, because it's the thrill that gets him off. They're also that soldier with 25 confirmed kills that "bravely" stood his ground when his comrades fled an incoming gang of troops, you know, the guy with the medals we call a war hero but you see something dangerous in his eyes... They're everywhere, they're not aliens, they're not monsters, they're apes like the rest of us on the outside, but research shows neurologically they just don't have that "human factor" that keeps the rest of us in line.
I don't always write research papers on psychopaths, but when I do, I use a lot of citations from this particular book. Stay vigilant my friends. :)
Now, my only issue with the Kindle version is that it is steeped with typos, which drive me nuts because I'm a pedantic personality and small things derail my reading rhythm.
That aside, I cannot suggest this book highly enough.
This book had me shaking! Because its REAL! I can read your crazy killers, your inbred monsters, even your zombies but throw a true story in my face and I really see the horror. The horror that someone else experienced and that someone right now is experiencing as I write this review. The most horrible monster on the planet is us humans. How we treat each other, our planet, our animals and how egotistical and money hungry we really are. And this book covers a certain type of these people that fill up at least one quarter of the prison society. Psychopaths.
The book has some unbelievable true accounts (yes, well aware of the use of language there in that paradox) as they honestly would be unbelievable if not coming from someone who has been in this industry for the last few decades. This man helped invent the test that determines if you have a psychopath on your hands or not. Beginning his career in British Columbia, Vancouver, Canada, he started in prisons. He then moved up the chain and became a leader in the field. Also known as sociopaths, as many believe that social factors create these emotionally void people, he writes a easy to follow, filled with studies and interviews book on the subject.
Some terrifying accounts I read were that of prisoners that tampered with his car, making it so these things would gradually give out with every intention to kill the driver inside at the time. Luckily, they didn't. The book has the mothers that kill their children and their careless words after the incident that shows you that they couldn't care less. Of how people manipulate and lie, even when caught out, they continue to lie or worse still, deny the lie ever came out of them. They don't care if they are busted, they don't care if they are put away and they don't care if they are stealing your grandfather's only present to you before he died. They simply only care about their next rush, their next free ticket, their next manipulation. They don't make friends, they make acquaintances to use up and spit out like pawns. Because they don't know how to get attached to anyone.
The book is filled with the bastard next door, the men that feed of lonely hearts, how they get into your home, your mind, how they suck people dry and how the innocent people are often not believed at all as these people seem to delightful, so normal, so wonderful to be around. They are so good at playing the part that they are quite often not even noticed until it is too late and they have already stung you and fled the scene. Fraud artists, criminals, rapists, animal and child abusers, murderers, and even arsonists may fall into the category, with testing and diagnosis, the scariest thing about all this, is that you cannot do anything about it but just stay away from them. The law often sets them free and the youngest of them, the children, are often protected by parents, only to grow into stronger, more dangerous psychopaths that are set free into society to burn more bridges and break more hearts. The book does its best to help warn you what to look out for but at the same time, it explains how good these people are at pretending they are something they are not so that even himself has been fooled by one before!
A fascinating read about a certain group of people that are more common and more in your life than you think. They may not be as drastic as murderers or child abusers but they are there, waiting for their opportunity to have some fun, get a fill of entertainment, use someone up or even score a few bucks to make their lives easier. I loved the book and although the later chapters weren't as interesting as it focused more on origins and causes which are so hard to determine, I still feel better knowing that sometimes it isn't just me when I really feel that someone is emotionally retarded. They very well may be someone that is incapable of it and sadly, their numbers are rising. Awesome book, check it out if you love true crime and psychology. I cannot recommend it enough.
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L'ouvrage s'ouvre sur le récit de son premier stage en prison, durant lequel il a été confronté à un psychopathe qui a voulu l'utiliser, le manipuler et sans doute, mais l'auteur n'a pas de preuve, essayé de le tuer en sabotant sa voiture qu'il avait laissé à l'atelier mécanique de la prison, où ledit psychopathe travaillait en tant que détenu. Ce récit permet de rentrer de plein pied avec le regard de celui qui n'a pas conscience de cet autre monde et ne sait pas se protéger.
Le profil psychologique du psychopathe est décrit de manière très précise et on sent que l'auteur connait son sujet. Il s'agit là de vraie vulgarisation : pas d'une description superficielle par quelqu'un qui masque son ignorance, ou son manque de maîtrise du sujet. L'auteur est un scientifique qui sait de quoi il parle, et si son propos est toujours accessible, il donne des références et fait des remarques qui permettent d'approfondir et nourrir sa réflexion. Il met d'ailleurs en garde contre un diagnostic rapide et abusif porté par un non professionnel. Cet ouvrage change des livres qui trainent un peu partout sur les pervers narcissiques, les harceleurs, les manipulateurs, etc. mais qui ne définissent pas objectivement et précisément de quoi ils parlent et font des amalgames très critiquables laissant penser au lecteur qu'il est simple et facile de cerner ce type de profil et les repérer dans son entourage. Ce n'est pas le cas.
Un psychopathe est une personne qui présente plusieurs traits de personnalités, et un seul ne suffit pas. Cet appel à la prudence est important car la tentation est grande de traiter de psychopathe toute personne avec qui nous avons des problèmes relationnels. Les traits de la psychopathie se déploient sur deux axes complémentaires : émotions et relations. Sur le plan émotionnel un psychopathe est : baratineur et superficiel, égocentrique et grandiose, sans remords ni culpabilité, trompeur et manipulateur, vide d'émotions. Sur le plan relationnel les symptômes sont : impulsivité, faibles contrôles du comportement, besoin d'excitation, absence de responsabilité, problèmes de comportement tôt, un comportement antisocial à l'age adulte.
L'auteur prend le temps de détailler, expliquer chacun des traits avec beaucoup de sérieux et de rigueur. Il émaille ses définitions d'exemples tirés d'interviews menées par lui et son équipe, d'extraits de journaux ou procès, d'extraits de romans. Cette alternance de théorie et cas concrets est particulièrement réussie. Les interviews de tueurs en série font parfois froid dans le dos, et je me suis surpris à éclater de rire tant les propos semblent décalés et d'un autre monde que le mien. Le rire est un mécanisme de défense, j'ai pu le constater à la lecture de l'ouvrage.
Hare analyse les causes possibles qui sont selon lui un mélange de biologie et d'environnement. En tout état de cause, ce n'est clairement pas un problème d'éducation même si des environnements favorisent la psychopathie. Là encore, sa prudence et sa rigueur scientifiques font plaisir à lire. Il pose la question des traitements possibles tout en restant pessimiste et finit par des conseils sur la meilleure façon de gérer de telles personnes que nous sommes tous amenés à rencontrer un jour ou l'autre dans notre vie. En effet, les cas de tueurs en série sont la partie émergée de l'iceberg et tous les psychopathes ne sont pas des tueurs, ils sévissent parfois dans les grandes entreprises, la politique, les associations et font des ravages.
Un livre fascinant et très riche, passionnant tant par ses apports théoriques que par les témoignages qu'il réunit.
This was a great introduction to the topic. This book makes most sense to read once you’ve met a psychopath, it would have been hard for me to really get it a couple of years ago. Unfortunately this makes its preventative value quite low. Ironically, this is one of the main points of the book: avoiding them until it’s too late is hard and often impossible.
I picked up this book to try and make sense of what was going on with some recent social interactions, and it was an eye opener. I have fallen into the trap outlined in the very first pages: the belief that people like that don’t really exist, and failing to understand the psychopath’s mental makeup. It’s great to have all this insight at your fingertips. People are endlessly fascinating and while most of us are quite similar (thank god!), pretty much anything CAN happen in the brain, and the consequences are severe.
I think there’s a danger of identifying everyone and their dog as psychopaths after reading this book if you haven’t really met one, so please, chill out. If you think you know 10 people that are psychopaths, you probably haven’t met a single one yet.
Research has most certainly moved on since Hare wrote this book in 1993 but it is still relevant, and a great place to build a base-level knowledge of the subject. For further, more recent reading, I highly recommend The Psychopath Inside: A Neuroscientist's Personal Journey Into the Dark Side of the Brain and The Psychopath Whisperer: Inside the Minds of Those Without a Conscience .
Whilst Hare, creator of the PCL-R (Psychopathy Checklist - Revised), has been criticised for his research, in particular because it is based predominantly on criminal and violent psychopaths, he does not profess to have a wide understanding of non-criminal/violent psychopaths, and in fact admits that little research is available in this area because where there is an abundance of the disorder in prisons, it is less easy to spot a psychopath living happily amongst the rest of the 'normal' population - a fair point I'd say.
Without Conscience takes the reader through the history of Hare's work, including some funny anecdotes and precarious situations to keep a heavy subject readable. It's not a hefty read at 220 pages (not including chapter notes and references) and it was so fascinating I read it in two sittings. Hare is excellent at recommending further reading; I finished the book with a full page of notes and web links pointing to additional research.
Ultimately, I finished the book feeling educated and ready to learn more, and with a broad understanding of psychopath both as a disorder and the effects it can have on others.
This book is not a coping mechanism for those affected by psychopaths, but is an excellent research or academic resource, but doubles as a recreational read - rare in a book.
Like most authors on the subject of psychopathy, Hare is fairly deterministic in his theories, but less so than those that lean more towards the biological explanations for the disorder, so you will receive a relatively balanced theory.
If psychopathy is a topic of interest to you, then this book is vital to your reading - having built on the work of Hervey Cleckley, often referred to as the father of psychopathy, this book will fill in the missing pieces of the puzzle.
Highly recommended - an excellent piece of work.
Without Conscience est un ouvrage destiné au grand public et traite avant tout de la psychopathie au sens originel et restreint, sujet des recherches de l'auteur et c'est une référence en la matière par manque d'ouvrages sérieux, universels et actualisés sur le sujet, pourtant convainquant. L'essentiel des avancées, mis à part les ouvrages que j'ai cités, ne se trouve que dans des articles de revues scientifiques.
On s'étonne - sans vraiment s'étonner à la réflexion - qu'aucun éditeur n'ait osé en proposer une traduction française.
Quoiqu'on puisse penser de l'auteur qui effectivement cite peu ses prédécesseurs (le génial Cleckley en particulier) et ses successeurs - certains pourtant déjà actifs à l'époque où l'ouvrage a été écrit -, Without Conscience ne se limite pas à une publicité pour son PCL-R et toutes les versions qui ont suivi, et mérite mieux que d'être rejeté en raison de certaines motivations mercantiles de son auteur. On peut toutefois regretter que le sujet ne soit qu'introduit et peu approfondi, mais mieux vaut se résoudre à faire avec ce qu'on nous propose que de passer à côté de ce vaste sujet...











