Sections:

• Psychopathic Seduction
• Emotional Rape
• Giving to Takers
• Life After Psychopathic Abuse
• A Legend in His Own Mind

Psychopathic Seduction

From its seemingly ideal beginning, to its invariably bitter end.

The psychopathic bond typically includes three stages:

Idealize. Devalue. Discard.
 

If he wants the stimulation and diversion of an affair, he may stay with you for as long as you excite him. Despite the differences in timeline, what remains constant is this: eventually, sooner or later, you'll be discarded (or be led by the psychopath's bad behavior to discard him) as soon as you no longer serve his needs. (or if he keeps you around in order to keep your mouth shut about the REAL him.)

Although psychopaths are highly manipulative, the process of idealize, devalue and discard is a natural outgrowth of their personalities. In other words, it's not always necessarily calculated at every moment in the relationship. Overall however, whether consciously or not, psychopaths assess and drain the use-value out of their romantic partners.

During the assessment phase, psychopaths interact closely with their targets to see what makes them tick. They ask probing questions, to discover their unfulfilled needs and weaknesses.

They also commonly lure their targets with promises to offer them whatever's been missing from their lives.. If you're recovering from a recent divorce, they offer you friendship and an exciting new romantic relationship. If you've suffered a death in the family, they appear to be sympathetic friends. If you're going through financial difficulties, they lend you money to seem generous.

During the manipulation phase psychopaths construct the "psychopathic fiction." They pour on the charm to hook their victims emotionally and gain their trust. They present themselves as kind-hearted individuals. Of course, in order to do so, psychopaths resort to outrageous lies since, in reality, they're just the opposite.

In romantic relationships in particular, they depict themselves as not only compatible with you, but also as your soul mate.

While seeming your complement, they also present themselves as your mirror image. They claim to share your interests and sensibilities.

"This psychological bond capitalizes on your inner personality, holding out the promise of greater depth and intimacy, and offering a relationship that is special, unique, equal -forever."

Because psychopaths are great manipulators and convincing liars, as we've seen, many of their victims don't heed the warning signals. 

During the early phases of a romantic relationship, people in general tend to be too blinded by the euphoria of falling in love to focus on noticing red flags.

Also, during this period, the psychopaths themselves are on their best behavior. Yet, generally speaking, they get bored too easily to be able to maintain their mask of sanity consistently for very long.

The honeymoon phase of the relationship usually lasts until the psychopath intuitively senses that he's got you on the hook or until he's gotten bored by the relationship and moved on to other targets.

Once psychopaths have drained all the value from a victim-that is, when the victim is no longer useful-they abandon the victim and move on to someone else.

He shows his true colors when he's got no incentive left to pretend anymore.
 

Which leads to the following question…

Why do psychopaths invest so much effort, time and energy into giving the illusion of intimacy and meaning in a relationship, given that they never really bond with other human beings in the first place?

One obvious response would be that they do it for the sport of it.
 

They enjoy both the chase and the kill; the seduction and the betrayal.
 

They relish creating the illusion that they're something they're not.
 

They also enjoy observing how they dupe others into believing this fiction.
 

Moreover, whenever a psychopath expresses admiration, flattery or enthusiasm for someone, it's always because he wants something from that person.

A broader explanation, which would include both kinds of psychopaths, looks something like this:
 

When they want something- or someone- they pursue that goal with all their might. They concentrate all of their energies upon it. When that goal is your money or a job or something outside of yourself, their pursuit may appear somewhat fake.

As research confirms, all psychopaths suffer from a shallowness of emotion that makes their bonding ephemeral and superficial, at best.

You're a means to an end.

You were never idealized for yourself, but for something else. But when their goal is actually you-seducing you or even marrying you-then their pursuit feels like an idealization.

Temporarily, you represent the object of their desire, the answer to their needs, the love of their life and the key to their happiness. But this feeling of euphoria doesn't last long because it's empty to the core.

As we've observed, once psychopaths feel they have you in their grasp-once your identity, hopes and expectations are pinned on them-they get bored with you and move on to new sources of pleasure and diversion.

We've also seen in Cleckley's study that the same logic applies to their other goals as well. Psychopaths tire rather quickly of their jobs, their geographic location, their hobbies and their educational endeavors. But it hurts so much more, and it feels so much more personal, when what they get tired of is you, yourself.

Their loss of interest appears as a devaluation. 

From being the center of their life, you suddenly become just an obstacle to their next pursuit.

Since psychopaths are intuitively skilled at "dosing," or giving you just enough validation and attention to keep you on the hook, you may not immediately notice the devaluation.

It's as if the psychopath intuitively knows when to be charming again (in order not to lose you) and when to push your boundaries, further and lower. Your devaluation occurs gradually yet steadily.

One day you finally notice it and wonder how you have allowed yourself to sink so low.

Occasionally, he throws you a bone-takes you out, plans a romantic evening, says kind and loving things-to lead you to dismiss your healthy intuitions that you're being mistreated.

If the psychopath allows himself to treat you worse and worse it's not only because you're much less exciting in his eyes. It's also because he's conditioned you to think less highly of yourself and to accept his dubious behavior.

You want to hold on to the fantasy of the ideal relationship he cultivated, so you go into denial.

You accept his implausible excuses.

You put up with your growing fears and doubts.

You rationalize his inexplicable absences, his increasingly frequent emotional withdrawals, his curt and icy replies, his petty and mean-spirited ways of "punishing" you for asserting your needs or for not bending to his will.

Then at some point, when he sinks to a new low or when you catch him in yet another lie, you slip out of the willful denial which has been your way of adjusting to the toxic relationship.

Because he has lowered your self-esteem, you ask yourself why this has happened and what you did wrong.

If he cheated on you, you blame the other woman or women involved.

The psychopath encourages you to pursue such false leads. In fact, he encourages anything that deflects attention from his responsibility in whatever goes wrong with your relationship.

He leads you to blame yourself. He also inculpates the other women. He implies that you were not good enough for him. He claims that the other women tempted or pursued him. But that's only a diversionary tactic.

You have flaws and you made mistakes, but at least you were honest and real.

The other women involved may have been decent human beings, the scum of the Earth or anything in between. 

Think about it. Does it really matter who and what they were? You are not involved with the other women. They are not your life partners, your spouses, your lovers or your friends.

What matters to you most is how your own partner behaves. He is primarily accountable for his actions. Not you, not the other women. 

Also, keep in mind that psychopaths twist the truth to fit their momentary goals and to play mind games.

When you actually pay attention to what they say instead of being impressed by how sincere they may appear, their narratives often sound inconsistent and implausible.

What they say about other women, both past and present, is most likely a distortion too. Psychopaths commonly project their own flaws upon others.

If they tell you they were seduced, it was most likely the other way around. If they tell you that their previous girlfriends mistreated them, cheated on them, got bored with them, abandoned them, listen carefully, since that's probably what they did to those women.

Their lies serve a dual function.

They help establish credibility with you as well as giving them the extra thrill of deceiving you yet again.

So why were you discarded?

You were devalued and discarded because you were never really valued for yourself.

As we've seen, for psychopaths relationships are temporary deals, or rather, scams. Analogously, for them, other human beings represent objects of diversion and control.

The most flattering and pleasant phase of their control, the only one that feels euphoric and magical, is the seduction/idealization phase. 

That's when they pour on the charm and do everything they possibly can to convince you that you are the only one for them and that they're perfect for you. It's very easy to mistake this phase for true love or passion. However, what inevitably follows in any intimate relationship with a psychopath is neither pleasant nor flattering.

Once they get bored with you because the spell of the initial conquest has worn off, the way they maintain control of you is through deception, isolation, abuse, gaslighting and undermining your self-confidence. That's when you realize that the devaluation phase has set in.

You do whatever you can to regain privileged status. You try to recapture the excitement and sweetness of the idealization phase. You want to reclaim your rightful throne as the queen you thought you were in his eyes. But that's an impossible goal, an ever-receding horizon.

Every women's shelter tells victims of domestic violence that abuse usually gets worse, not better, over time.

For abusers, power is addictive. It works like a drug. The dosage needs to be constantly increased to achieve the same effect.

Control over others, gives psychopaths pleasure and meaning in life.

To get the same rush from controlling you, over time, they need to tighten the screws.

Increase the domination.
  

Increase the manipulation.
 

Isolate you further from those who care about you.
 

Undermine your confidence and boundaries more, so that you're left weaker and less prepared to stand up for yourself.
 

The more you struggle to meet a psychopath's demands, the more he'll ask of you. Until you have nothing left to give.
 

Because you have pushed your moral boundaries as low as they can go. You have alienated your family and friends, at the psychopath's subtle manipulation or overt urging.
 

You have done everything you could to satisfy him. Yet, after the initial idealization phase, nothing you did was ever good enough for him. 

It turns out that he's completely forgotten about the qualities he once saw in you.

If and when he talks about you to others, it's as if he were ashamed of you. That's not only because he lost interest in you. It's also the instinctive yet strategic move of a predator.

They initially depict your relationship as privileged and better than the ordinary love bonds normal people form. This is of course always a fiction. In fact, the opposite holds true.

Such a relationship is necessarily one-sided and distorted. It's a sham on both sides. Being a consummate narcissist, he loves no one but himself and cares about nothing but his selfish desires.
 

An intimate relationship with a psychopath is far inferior to any normal human relationship, where both people care about each other. If and when he does something nice, it's always instrumental: a means to his ends or to bolster his artificial good image. Dr. Jekyll is, in fact, always Mr. Hyde on the inside.

And even though you may be capable of love, you're not in love with the real him-the cheater, the liar, the manipulator, the player, the hollow, heartless being that he is-but with the charming illusion he created, which you initially believed but which becomes increasingly implausible over time.

From beginning to end, all this phony relationship can offer you is a toxic combination of fake love and real abuse.

- He constructs the psychopathic bond through deception and manipulation.

- You maintain it through self-sacrifice and denial.

But pretty soon, when you find yourself alone with the psychopath, you see it's not us versus them, your couple above and against everyone else. It's him versus you.

He will act like your worst enemy, which is what he really is, not as the best friend and adoring partner he claimed to be.

If he criticizes you to others-or, more subtly, fosters antagonisms between you and family members and friends-it's to further wear you down and undermine your social bonds.

Once he tires of you, he induces others to see you the same way that he does: as someone not worthy of him; as someone to use, demean and discard.
 

• Before you were beautiful and no woman could compare to you. Now you're at best plain in his eyes.

• Before you were cultured and intelligent. Now you're the dupe who got played by him.

• Before you were dignified and confident. Now you're isolated and abject.

In fact, right at the point when you feel that you should be rewarded for your sacrifice of your values, needs, desires and human bonds-all for him- the psychopath discards you.
 

He's had enough.
 

He's gotten everything he wanted out of you.
 

Bent you out of shape.
 

Taken away, demand by demand, concession by concession, your dignity and happiness.
 

As it turns out, the reward you get for all your devotion and efforts is being nearly destroyed by him. 

Ignoring your own needs and fulfilling only his-or fulfilling yours to gain his approval-has transformed you into a mere shadow of the lively, confident human being you once were.
 

He uses your weaknesses against you.
 

He also turns your qualities into faults:

• If you are faithful, he sees your fidelity as a weakness, a sign you weren't desirable enough to cheat. Nobody else really wanted you.

• If you are virtuous, he exploits your honesty while he lies and cheats on you.

• If you are passionate, he uses your sensuality to seduce you, to entrap you through your own desires, emotions, hopes and dreams.

• If you are reserved and modest, he describes you as asocial and cold-blooded.

• If you are confident and outgoing, he views you as flirtatious and untrustworthy.

• If you are hard working, unless he depends on your money, he depicts you as a workhorse exploited by your boss.

• If you are artistic and cultured, he undermines your merit. He makes you feel like everything you create is worthless and cannot possibly interest others. You're lucky that it ever interested him.

After the idealization phase is over, there's no way to please a psychopath. 

Heads you lose, tails he wins.
 

But remember that his criticisms are even less true than his initial exaggerated flattery. When all is said and done, the only truth that remain is that the whole relationship was a fraud.
 

The process of the psychopathic bond is programmatic. It's astonishingly elegant and simple given the complexity of human behavior. 

Idealize, devalue and discard.
 

Each step makes sense once you grasp the psychological profile of a psychopath, of an (in)human being who lives for the pleasure of controlling and harming others.

1) Idealize: Not you, but whatever he wanted from you and only for however long he wanted it.

2) Devalue: Once he has you in his clutches, the boredom sets in and he loses interest.

3) Discard: After he's gotten everything he wanted from you and has probably secured other targets.
 

FOR YOU,

this process is excruciatingly personal. It may have cost you your time, your heart, your friends, your family, your self-esteem or your finances. You may have put everything you had and given everything you could to that relationship. It may have become your entire life.

FOR THE PSYCHOPATH,

however, the whole process isn't really personal. He could have done the same thing to just about anyone who allowed him into her intimate life. He will do it again and again to everyone he seduces. It's not about you. It's not about the other woman or women who were set against you to compete for him, to validate his ego, to give him pleasure, to meet his fickle needs.
 

He wasn't with them because they're superior to you. He was with them for the same reason that he was with you. To use them, perhaps for different purposes than he used you, but with the same devastating effect.
 

He will invariably treat others in a similar way to how he treated you. Idealize, devalue and discard.

Rinse and repeat.
 

This process was, is and will always be only about the psychopath for as long as you stay with him.

https://www.factinate.com/things/41-startling-facts-psychology-psychopaths/ https://abusesanctuary.blogspot.com/2011/02/relationship-cycle.html 

Emotional Rape

These were never normal relationships that started with love and then just went wrong. Far from it. The psychopath is a predator who completely hides his or her true identity and true motives.
 

A psychopath may target a victim with the intent of using them and causing harm, or they may initially experience genuine attraction. Even if they do, their inability to love or to form an attachment guarantees that things will end badly.
 

Whatever their motivation, their goals are to manipulate, dominate and control, and they will end up devaluing and abusing their victim.
 

In a profound act of betrayal, he or she only pretends to love (even if they start out with genuine attraction, since psychopaths don't have the ability to love) - and does a convincing job of it - in order to gain your love and trust, which is what makes carrying out their manipulative agenda possible.
 

They gain power and control through manipulation and use their victim for whatever they desire without any remorse, while creating an ever-worsening emotional hell.
 

Their grandiosity swells as they watch their victim try in vain to save the relationship they truly believed was the best one of their lives.
 

The predator gets bored and devalues and abuses the victim, and needs the thrill of someone new. 
 

The psychopath must act out this manipulative cycle repetitively and compulsively in order to experience feelings of exhilaration and contempt (contemptuous delight), which perpetuate his or her feeling of grandiosity, according to Dr. Reid Moloy, a respected psychopathy researcher. 
 

The psychopath often ends the relationship with a stunning and completely abnormal display of contempt, coldness or indifference.
 

If he or she is using the relationship to provide an illusion of normalcy, they may stick around long-term. If the victim ends the relationship, the psychopath's grandiosity will suffer and they may attempt to return. Often, they restore their grandiosity by moving on to someone new, without looking back. 
 

The victim is devastated as he or she comes to realize the psychopath's love was never real and that they were heartlessly abused and betrayed. 
 

If they don't realize it - and many victims don't understand what really happened until years later, if ever - they continue blaming themselves for the demise of what once seemed to be an ideal relationship, which makes real healing difficult or even impossible. Either way, we are left with a heart, soul, and psyche ravaged by a predator.
 

The aftermath of emotional rape often includes rage, obsessive thoughts, lost self-esteem, fear, anxiety, the inability to love or trust, use of alcohol or drugs, physical illness, and irrational and extreme behavior such as total isolation and withdrawal or even suicide.
 

A lack of support from friends and family makes things much worse. Some will blame the victim for choosing to have a relationship with a "jerk," because they don't know or can't believe he was a predator capable of hiding his true identity. 

Some blame her for staying with him when she knew it was going bad, because they are unaware or unwilling to believe she was controlled by systematic manipulation. 

Others who fell for the psychopath's charisma and powers of persuasion may blame the victim for losing a "good catch." 

Whatever the case, no one realizes how severely traumatized the victim truly is. 
 

The trauma can indeed be severe, and if it is, you should pursue professional psychological help from a therapist who is familiar with disorders involving a lack of empathy (psychopathy, narcissism, etc.), and abusive relationships and the trauma they cause.
 

"Sadly, some victims of psychopaths attempt suicide as a result of hopelessness, helplessness and the belief there is no way out. Some have reported to us that psychopaths have actually encouraged them to take their own lives or have indicated that they would put them through so much turmoil that their only recourse would be suicide," according to Aftermath: Surviving Psychopathy, a website founded by David Kosson, Ph.D., professor of psychology and psychopathy researcher, which aims to provide help as well as education to those whose lives have been impacted by psychopathic individuals.

If you feel hopeless now, don't give up. Many people have recovered from psychopathic abuse, even after believing it wasn't possible. If you are feeling suicidal, please get help right away. 

National Suicide Prevention Lifeline: 1-800-273-TALK (8255)

Source:  https://psychopathsandlove.com/emotional-rape/

Life After Psychopathic Abuse

Anyone who has been through psychopathic abuse will confirm what a horrendous experience it can be.
 

Psychopaths do not have any remorse or conscience regarding the damage they cause in the lives of others and victims are often left with problems which take a long time to resolve.
 

The issue of important lessons to take out of the experience for people to make sure it doesn't happen again. 

It is important to extract whatever good we can out of what is usually a horrible and traumatic experience. How can we do this?
 

In summary it basically involves spotting what you missed before in terms of character traits and being more observant and selective in general about who you allow into your life. 

It also means learning to respond to toxic people and situations in a way that better serves you in the long run, and also building a life where you cannot be under the control of psychopathic people ever again.
 

To generalize even more, recovering from psychopathic abuse ideally teaches a person to be more aware and observant; aware of their own moment to moment experience, aware of emotional signs and clues from inside themselves, aware of behaviors of people around them.
 

It also teaches us to trust our gut feel and intuition more and follow these cues when they are telling us something is off.
 

Mindfulness is often a practice that can further help with this and is always a useful skill for anyone to develop in life. Let's look at some crucial general lessons to take out of the experience below.

Observe Character Traits in People More Closely

One thing a psychopathic relationship will instill in you is the need to more carefully screen and vet people you are working or living with to spot for character traits, both positive and negative. We also learn to do this over a prolonged period of time and not be taken in a by a superficial initial charm or "funny guy" act.
 

Psychopaths are brilliant at taking people in with this initial charm or charisma. Initially they will just seem like the funniest or wittiest guy who says all the right things and has everything going for them. This is just an act to get people to lower their guard and we learn not to be fooled by first impressions.
 

Incidentally, the opposite can also happen where someone we dislike initially turns out to be someone we later grow to respect and admire. 
 

Psychopaths may lure people in with this initial marsipan topping but will also reveal their true nature over a period of time. Certain unpleasant character traits will become apparent over time and will "leak out" despite the psychopath's best efforts to keep them concealed. We need to watch out for these giveaways and know what the red flags are. 
  

Our Checklist page has some good general pointers to look out for which suggest psychopathic traits. The more common characteristics to look out for include:

• Superficial charm and charisma which takes people in easily.
   
• Shallowness and superficial character incapable of really connecting with people.
   
• Lack of ability to empathize.
   
• No compassion or care for the problems of others or the world. 
   
• No vocational traits. 
   
• Purely on the level of ego, power, and control over others.
   
• Manipulative, deceitful and dishonest behavior.
   
• Lack of integrity, constant scheming and bitching against others.
   
• Chronically suspicious of others.
   
• Never accepts blame or responsibility for anything. Constantly blame shifts.
   

This list is not exhaustive but is a good starter pointer for some key negative character traits to watch out for. Of course we may already know this in some sense after dealing with a psychopath, in which case it is more about trusting your judgement and acting accordingly once you spot these traits in someone. It also still helps to have some kind of checklist.
 

Conversely, observing a lack of these traits is also a useful thing, since it is usually an indication of the sort of person you do want to be allowing into your life and trusting. Let's look in more detail at the kind of people survivors of psychopathic abuse should be seeking out and aligning themselves with.
 

Only Allow High Quality People Into Your Life

The corollary to the issue of the types of traits and people to avoid is the types of people to seek out. We maintain that people recovering from psychopathic abuse be uncompromising about this and only allow high quality people into their trust and confidence. Average and lower quality people will not do, even if they are not psychopathic.
 

The reason we argue this is because average and lower quality people often collude in the psychopathic abuse process by not standing up for the high quality, empathic person. 
 

The so called apaths or "in between" people who are not psychopaths but not strong or moral either allow the psychopath to get away with abusing good people because they do not come to the empath's defense and sometimes even side with the psychopath against them. 
 

This process has been well illustrated in the book The Empathy Trap, available on Amazon, where they go into detail about the Sociopath-Empath-Apath Traid, where the sociopath actively enlists the help of the apath in shifting blame and negative attention into the empath for something the sociopath themself has done.
 

It is for this reason that we argue that these "in the middle" people are not reliable as they too lack strong empathy and integrity and are too easily manipulated by psychopaths and other toxic characters. 
 

Too often these people are taken in by the psychopath and let down the empath when they try to confront the psychopath on their behavior. 
 

Rather it is far better to be demanding on this and only surround yourself with strong, moral, supportive, empathic people; people who would have stood up for you had they been there when the psychopath was targeting you. 
 

Here is a quick checklist of positive traits to actively seek out in people when recovering from psychopathic abuse:

• Empathic
   
• Loyal
   
• Stands up for others
   
• "Light Triad" traits - Clarity, Maturity, Stability
   
• Has a clear sense of right and wrong
   
• Values people for themselves and will say what traits they value in someone.
   
• Non manipulative
   
• Non political
   
• Straightforward
   
• Honest
   
• Integrity
   
• Vocational aspects to their life and identity
   
• People who plainly say they like you and enjoy your company
   

A useful way to look at this issue is that there are 7 billion people in this world, so why waste any time associating with toxic people, or even any sort of person who leaves you guessing as to their motives, intentions and character? 
 

It is much better to be uncompromising and only seek out high quality, empathic people who with whom you know clearly where you stand.

Do Not Stay Around Toxic People

Another absolutely crucial lesson to take out of the psychopathic experience is to respond correctly if you find yourself in the same position again. In most cases this simply means realizing what is happening sooner and getting away from the psychopath as quickly as possible. Escape and evade is the best tactic in most cases.
 

It can be a trap that someone falls into where they stubbornly stay and try to fight and resist the psychopath, especially in work scenarios. They rightly think that they shouldn't be forced to change their job or where they live because of one toxic person. This response is totally understandable but often counterproductive. If this is what you did the first time it is almost certainly not the way to respond if it happens again.
 

The reason for this is simply that they often don't understand what they are going up against the first time it happens.
 

They do not fully comprehend that psychopaths have no conscience or empathy and so will go to any lengths to undermine and destroy a target psychologically.
 

They will just keep going until they get the result they want.
 

It is very difficult to win with these people because they are so ruthless and do not follow the rules of humanity and decency like the rest of us do, who feel and empathize and grasp the emotional consequences of our actions on others. 
 

Psychopaths don't have these fail-safe mechanisms and are relentless in their targeting of someone. 
 

Therefore the best approach in almost all cases is to back out of any situation where you are involved with a psychopath and seek another environment. If that means finding another job then it is best to accept it and move on. It shouldn't have to be this way in an ideal world but it simply isn't worth it for the damage a psychopath can cause, especially if you have been through the experience before and know what it is like.
 

Being fully aware of just how mentally twisted and evil these people are will help you make a choice that better serves you in the long run.

https://psychopathsinlife.com/learning-from-psychopathic-abuse/

A Legend in His Own Mind

"Choices that are the product of deception are generally viewed to be incompatible with autonomy. When people lie to obtain money, we call it theft. When they lie to enter private property, we call it trespass. When they lie to obtain sex . .we have no idea what to call it."   - Luis E. Chies
 

The psychopath is a legend in his own mind. 

Grandiosity is not clinically measured by an individual's self-confidence, but by the disparity between his view of himself and the facts of his life. It is maintained, moreover, through the behavioral devaluation of others (Meloy, 1988). The grandiosity of the psychopath leaves its sexual mark through his control and deception of the sex object. Deception serves his grandiosity because it demonstrates to the psychopath, once again, that he is brighter, more clever, and trickier than his victim. A series of sexual liaisons unknown to his spouse or partner, is felt as a sense of expansive delight.

The psychopath believes he is entitled to take from others whenever he wants. There is a complete absence of reciprocal altruism (Trivers, 1985), the stitching that maintains our social fabric. Entitlement and grandiosity­ an attitude and a fantasy, respectively ­may feed off each other. They often defend against feelings of envy, an emotion which is managed through devaluation. If the sex object is sufficiently 'damaged', she was not worth having in the first place.

Psychopaths engage in more frequent predatory (planned, purposeful, emotionless) and affective (reactive, emotional) violence (Cornell et al., 1996; Hare & McPherson, 1984). Their sexual exploitations are served by a number of psychopathic traits: low levels of anxiety, chronic emotional detachment, sensation-seeking, fearlessness, orientation to threats, and shallow affect.

 
Psychopaths typically show a callous disregard for the rights and feelings of others (Hare, 1991). The extreme of callousness is sadism, wherein indifference toward others has become pleasure at their suffering, submission, and loss of control. Given the degree to which psychopaths attempt to dominate their objects, rather than affectionately relate to them, it is not surprising that there is a strong and positive relationship between sadism and psychopathy.’