Contrary to the popular portrayal of Psychopaths (sociologists prefer the term Sociopath) in the media as knife wielding maniacs the truth is often far removed. Robert D. Hare, Ph. D., is considered one of the world’s foremost experts in the area of psychopathy and he is the author of the popular book Without Conscience. He lists these as the top 20 common traits of the successful psychopath. “Although he deliberately cheats others and is quite conscious of his lies, he appears unable to distinguish adequately between his own pseudointentions, pseudoremorse, pseudolove, and the genuine responses of a normal person. ”

1. Glibness/superficial charm
2. Grandiose sense of self-worth
3. Need for stimulation/proneness to boredom
4. Pathological lying
5. Conning/manipulative
6. Lack of remorse or guilt
7. Shallow affect
8. Callous/lack of empathy
9. Parasitic lifestyle
10. Poor behavioural controls
11. Promiscuous sexual behaviour
12. Early behaviour problems
13. Lack of realistic, long-term plans
14. Impulsivity
15. Irresponsibility
16. Failure to accept responsibility for own actions
17. Many short-term relationships
18. Juvenile delinquency
19. Revocation of conditional release
20. Criminal versatility

Any of the above sound familiar?. Lets take Iraq, no WMD’s, dodgy intelligence, Blairs response is to completely ignore these facts and insist with messianic zeal that he invaded Iraq because he thought, “it was the right thing to do”. To any normal person the recent election result would be read as ok I’ve lost over 100 seats perhaps it’s time to listen and take a less radical approach, but not Blair, lets push on with the relentless “New” Labour agenda regardless. According to Dr John Clark, Author of “Working with Monsters” the fundamental traits of the corporate psycho are an absolute lack of remorse or guilt for their behaviour, pathological lying, manipulative, callous, egotistical, very kind of self centred individual, glib and superficial charm. Should they be confronted with evidence that contradict their ideas, they simply ignore it, attack its credibility or demonise the messenger. According to Tom Utley in the Telegraph to call him a liar is too simplistic. He does not set out to mislead us, but to steer everyone towards the conclusion that he believes in all honesty to be right. With all the logic of the sociopath, he believes that if he believes something it must be true.