Hare, R. (1999) | References | Narcissus and the Child

What This Research Found

Robert Hare's Without Conscience synthesises decades of research into psychopathy, presenting both a clinical portrait and a public warning. Drawing on his extensive work with criminal populations and his development of the Psychopathy Checklist-Revised (PCL-R), Hare provides the most comprehensive and empirically grounded account of psychopathy available to general readers.

The core deficit is emotional, not cognitive. Psychopaths understand the difference between right and wrong—they simply do not feel it. Hare demonstrates that the psychopath's intelligence is typically intact; many are above average. What is missing is the emotional substrate that gives moral knowledge its motivating force. When you or I contemplate harming someone, we feel anticipatory discomfort—guilt, anxiety, empathy for the potential victim. Psychopaths experience none of this. They can describe what emotions others feel, but they do not share those feelings. This creates what Hare calls "knowing the words but not the music" of emotional life.

The emotional poverty is pervasive, not selective. It is not simply that psychopaths lack empathy—they show a general shallowness of all emotional experience. Their displays of emotion are theatrical performances learned through observation, not genuine felt states. Hare describes psychopaths who can coolly discuss horrific crimes they committed because those events carry no emotional weight for them. Fear, love, attachment, guilt, shame—all are attenuated or absent. This emotional impoverishment explains why punishment and reward have limited effect: the emotional consequences that would deter most people simply do not register.

The interpersonal style is predatory. Hare characterises the psychopath's approach to relationships as fundamentally predatory—others are objects to be used, not people to be related to. This manifests in the charm that disarms victims, the lies that manipulate them, the callousness that discards them when they are no longer useful. Psychopaths view human connection instrumentally: What can this person provide? How can I extract it? The apparent intimacy they offer is strategic, designed to create trauma bonds that serve their purposes. When the victim is depleted or resistant, they move on without remorse.

Psychopathy exists on a spectrum and pervades society. While severe psychopathy is relatively rare (Hare estimates 1% of the general population meets full criteria), psychopathic traits exist on a continuum. Many more individuals show partial features—limited empathy, superficial charm, manipulativeness, lack of remorse—without meeting full diagnostic criteria. These individuals populate every profession and social stratum. Hare's subsequent work with Paul Babiak (Snakes in Suits) documented that corporate environments may actually select for psychopathic traits: the charm that enables networking, the ruthlessness that enables tough decisions, the lack of anxiety that enables risk-taking. The psychopath in a business suit may be more common and more damaging than the psychopath in a prison cell.

How This Research Is Used in the Book

Hare's research appears in Narcissus and the Child to illuminate the relationship between psychopathy and narcissism, particularly regarding empathy deficits and their consequences. In Chapter 18: Can Narcissus Be Healed, the book addresses why narcissistic traits resist treatment:

"Robert Hare's work on psychopathy revealed similar dynamics—many psychopathic individuals function successfully in business and politics precisely because their lack of empathy enables ruthless decision-making."

This citation supports the book's argument that the very traits making narcissism harmful—the inability to feel others' pain, the willingness to exploit—often produce worldly success that removes motivation for change. The narcissist or psychopath who rises to corporate leadership or political power receives reinforcement for their pathology, not consequences.

In Chapter 2: The Cluster B Conundrum, Hare's work (via the PCL-R) helps distinguish narcissistic from antisocial presentations:

"Their emotional palettes differ too. Narcissists experience shame. It may be defended against through grandiosity, and alongside envy and longing form a distorted range of emotion, but at least it is a range."

Here, the book uses Hare's framework to clarify that while narcissists have a restricted but present emotional life (shame defended against, envy felt acutely), those toward the psychopathic end show genuine emotional poverty—less of everything except perhaps animal anger. This distinction has practical implications for survivors trying to understand what they experienced and for clinicians assessing dangerousness.

Why This Matters for Survivors

If you have survived a relationship with someone who seemed to feel nothing when they hurt you, Hare's research provides both validation and clarity.

Your experience of their emotional absence was accurate. Many survivors describe the chilling moment when they realised their abuser genuinely did not care about the pain they caused. Perhaps you saw them lie without any physiological sign of deception, or hurt you and then calmly go about their day, or describe causing harm with the affect of someone discussing the weather. Hare's research confirms that this is real, not your imagination. Some people genuinely do not experience guilt, remorse, or empathic distress. Your perception was not distorted; their emotional landscape is fundamentally different from yours.

The charm was part of the pathology, not separate from it. The person who love-bombed you with attention and apparent affection was not a separate "good version" who sometimes appeared. The charm, the flattery, the intense focus on you—these were tools of predation, not genuine connection. Hare describes how psychopaths study others to identify vulnerabilities and deploy precisely calibrated appeals. If they seemed to understand you perfectly, it was because they were analysing you, not connecting with you. This does not mean your feelings were not real; it means their feelings were never what they appeared to be.

Waiting for genuine remorse is futile. Survivors often remain stuck hoping for acknowledgment—a real apology, genuine understanding of the harm caused. Hare's research suggests this may never come, at least not authentically. Psychopaths can learn to say the right words, but the emotional substrate that gives apology meaning is absent. They might apologise strategically, when it serves them, but the words emerge from calculation, not feeling. Your healing cannot depend on their transformation because that transformation may be neurobiologically impossible. You must grieve the acknowledgment you deserve but may never receive.

You can trust your instincts now. Many survivors report sensing something "off" early in the relationship but overriding their intuition—perhaps because the person seemed so charming, or because friends and family saw nothing wrong, or because the abuser gaslit them into doubting their perceptions. Hare's work validates that the unease you felt was appropriate. The human capacity to detect deception evolved precisely because predators exist among us. Your nervous system registered danger signals that your conscious mind was persuaded to ignore. Healing includes learning to trust those signals again.

Clinical Implications

For psychiatrists, psychologists, and trauma-informed practitioners, Hare's research has direct implications for both assessment and treatment.

Assess for psychopathic features, not just antisocial behaviour. The DSM's antisocial personality disorder diagnosis emphasises behavioural criteria (criminal history, irresponsibility) and underweights the interpersonal and affective features central to psychopathy. Hare's PCL-R captures dimensions that antisocial personality disorder misses: superficial charm, grandiosity, pathological lying, lack of remorse, shallow affect, callousness. A patient may meet antisocial personality disorder criteria without psychopathic features (a persistently criminal lifestyle without the interpersonal predation), or may have psychopathic features without antisocial personality disorder criteria (the successful corporate psychopath who has never been arrested). The PCL-R or its screening versions help distinguish these presentations.

Traditional therapy may be contraindicated. Hare found that standard therapeutic approaches—building rapport, exploring childhood, facilitating insight—often made psychopaths more dangerous rather than less. They learned the language of feelings without developing the feelings, acquiring new tools for manipulation. Group therapy was particularly problematic, as psychopaths used it to identify vulnerable members and practice manipulation techniques. Clinicians working with patients showing significant psychopathic features should avoid approaches that assume good faith engagement. Structure, clear boundaries, and behavioural contingencies are more appropriate than relational warmth and interpretive exploration.

Protect yourself from manipulation. Hare warns that mental health professionals are not immune to manipulation—indeed, their empathy and desire to help can make them particularly vulnerable. Psychopathic patients may attempt to split treatment teams, flatter individual clinicians, manufacture crises that demand special attention, or play on helpers' rescue fantasies. Clinicians should maintain firm boundaries, document interactions carefully, consult with colleagues regularly, and notice when they find themselves making exceptions for a particular patient. The countertransference experience of feeling special or unusually skilled should be a warning sign, not a confirmation of therapeutic progress.

Understand the impact on victims. Survivors of psychopathic abuse present with distinct clinical features. The trauma bond may be particularly severe because the intermittent reinforcement was calculated, not accidental. The gaslighting may have been more systematic because the abuser had no internal discomfort with lying. The damage to self-trust may be profound because the victim's reality was deliberately and consistently denied. These patients need validation that what they experienced was real and was not their fault. They need psychoeducation about psychopathic dynamics. And they need support in grieving the genuine connection they thought they had but never did.

Consider forensic and safety implications. Psychopathic features are the strongest predictor of violent recidivism, more predictive than criminal history alone. Clinicians involved in risk assessment—for parole boards, custody evaluations, or threat assessment—should be trained in psychopathy assessment. In therapeutic contexts, psychopathic features should inform safety planning: these patients are more likely to escalate when their control is threatened, more likely to stalk former partners, and more likely to use children as instruments of coercive control. The patient's apparent calm should not be mistaken for safety.

Broader Implications

Hare's research extends far beyond individual clinical encounters. Understanding psychopathy illuminates patterns across institutions, politics, and society.

The Intergenerational Transmission of Harm

Children raised by psychopathic parents face a devastating developmental environment. The parent cannot form genuine attachment, cannot model emotional regulation, cannot provide the attuned mirroring essential for healthy self-development. Worse, the psychopathic parent may actively enjoy the child's distress, use the child as a tool for manipulating others, or see the child only as an extension of themselves to be controlled. These children are at elevated risk for developing personality pathology themselves—not because psychopathy is purely genetic (though there is a heritable component) but because the developmental environment is so profoundly distorted. Breaking this cycle requires identifying these families early and providing alternative attachment relationships for children at risk.

Corporate and Political Environments

Hare's work, extended with Paul Babiak in Snakes in Suits, documents that corporate environments may select for psychopathic traits. The charm that enables networking, the superficiality that enables rapid relationship formation, the ruthlessness that enables difficult decisions, the lack of anxiety that enables risk-taking—these traits can produce short-term success that obscures long-term damage. Organisations that promote based on charisma and results without examining how results were achieved may inadvertently advance psychopathic individuals to positions of power. The consequences—toxic work environments, ethical violations, damaged subordinates—accumulate while the individual responsible moves on to their next conquest.

Legal and Criminal Justice Systems

Hare's research has transformed criminal justice approaches to psychopathy. The PCL-R is now used in parole decisions, sentencing recommendations, and risk assessment across North America and beyond. Understanding that psychopathic offenders show different patterns—more calculated offending, higher recidivism, resistance to rehabilitation—enables more appropriate decisions about detention and release. However, this raises ethical questions about using a personality assessment to determine someone's future dangerousness. The justice system must balance public protection against the risk of indefinite detention based on who someone is rather than what they have done.

Family Court and Custody Decisions

Custody evaluators regularly encounter psychopathic parents, often in high-conflict divorces. These parents may present convincingly in brief evaluations—their charm and apparent reasonableness contrasting with an ex-spouse who appears emotional or hostile. Hare's research helps evaluators look beyond surface presentation to underlying patterns: Does this parent show genuine concern for the child's wellbeing or use the child as a weapon? Does their account of the marriage match the documented history? Do they show appropriate emotional response when discussing harm to their children, or flat affect that suggests the distress is performed? Custody arrangements that give significant control to a psychopathic parent enable ongoing abuse of both children and the protective parent.

Mental Health Training and Public Education

Despite psychopathy's prevalence and impact, many mental health professionals receive little training in its recognition and management. Graduate programmes may spend more time on conditions they will rarely see than on the personality pathology they will encounter repeatedly. Hare's work has contributed to efforts to improve this training, but gaps remain. Public education is equally important: if potential victims understood the warning signs—superficial charm combined with inconsistent stories, boundary violations that escalate gradually, the pattern of idealisation and devaluation—they might exit dangerous relationships earlier. This is not victim-blaming; it is empowerment through information.

Evolutionary and Neurobiological Research

Hare's work has stimulated extensive research into the neurobiological basis of psychopathy. Brain imaging studies show reduced amygdala responsiveness to fearful faces, decreased connectivity between emotional and decision-making brain regions, and altered prefrontal cortex functioning. Some researchers propose that psychopathy represents an alternative evolutionary strategy—a frequency-dependent adaptation that succeeds when psychopaths are rare enough to exploit the trusting majority but fails when too common. Understanding the neurobiological substrate does not excuse behaviour but opens possibilities for early identification and potentially for intervention before pathological patterns consolidate.

Limitations and Considerations

Hare's influential work has important limitations that warrant acknowledgment.

The research base is primarily criminal populations. Most psychopathy research, including Hare's, has been conducted with incarcerated samples. These represent the "unsuccessful" psychopaths—those who were caught. The "successful" psychopaths who navigate corporate boardrooms and political offices without ever encountering the criminal justice system are less well understood. The PCL-R items that work well in forensic settings (criminal versatility, poor behavioural controls) may be less relevant for non-criminal psychopaths, potentially causing underestimation in general population samples.

The line between description and determinism is unclear. Identifying someone as psychopathic can become a self-fulfilling prophecy. If we assume psychopaths cannot change, we may not offer treatment; without treatment, they do not change; this confirms our assumption. Hare has been criticised for what some see as pessimism that forecloses rehabilitation efforts. While his caution about standard therapy is empirically grounded, the question of whether novel interventions might succeed remains open.

Gender bias in conceptualisation. Psychopathy research has focused predominantly on males, and the PCL-R may not capture female presentations equally well. Some researchers suggest female psychopaths manifest relational aggression, sexual manipulation, and pathological caretaking more than the criminal versatility and impulsive violence that the PCL-R emphasises. Hare's work acknowledges gender differences but the research base remains skewed.

Cultural considerations. What constitutes "superficial charm" or "grandiose sense of self-worth" may vary across cultures. The PCL-R was developed and validated primarily in North American and European samples. Its applicability to other cultural contexts requires ongoing investigation. The very concept of psychopathy may reflect Western assumptions about normal emotional experience and interpersonal behaviour.

Historical Context

Without Conscience emerged from a research tradition stretching back to Hervey Cleckley's The Mask of Sanity (1941), which first described the clinical picture of psychopathy in detail. Cleckley documented patients who presented with apparent normalcy—intelligence, charm, social skill—while showing a pervasive pattern of irresponsibility, lack of remorse, and disregard for others. His vivid case studies made psychopathy recognisable but lacked a systematic assessment approach.

Hare built on Cleckley's clinical descriptions by developing the Psychopathy Checklist (PCL) in 1980 and refining it into the PCL-R by 1991. This provided the field with a reliable, validated instrument that could be used consistently across clinicians and settings. The PCL-R enabled research that was impossible with purely clinical judgement: studies could now compare findings knowing they were measuring the same construct.

When Without Conscience appeared in 1993, it brought this accumulated research to public attention. The book succeeded in part because it combined scientific rigour with accessible writing and vivid case examples. Readers could recognise patterns from their own lives while understanding them through an empirical framework.

The 1999 revised edition incorporated additional research and addressed emerging topics including corporate psychopathy and the neurobiological basis of the condition. The book has remained continuously in print and continues to shape public understanding of psychopathy over three decades later.

Hare's subsequent collaboration with Paul Babiak extended the research beyond criminal populations, documenting psychopathic behaviour in corporate settings and introducing the B-Scan 360 for assessing psychopathic features in workplace contexts. This work brought the implications of psychopathy research to organisational psychology and business ethics.

Without Conscience: The Disturbing World of the Psychopaths Among Us

APA Citation