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Let me tell you about a man, but there are women who also fit his description.

This is a man who knows you. A man who in some way is involved in your life. And you know him too.

Or at least, you think that you know him. But you don't. Really, you don't.

He has no conscience. No feelings of guilt or remorse for anything that he does. He is totally unscrupulous. He has no sense of concern for the well-being of strangers, friends or even family members. He even enjoys seeing you suffer.

And you are more likely to fall victim to him if you are vulnerable or disenfranchised.

He only cares about himself. He is totally self-centered, totally self-absorbed, being the ultimate Narcissist.

He has little interest in consequences and little fear or concern about the future, because he feels that he can deal with whatever comes.

And his way of dealing with things is to lie, and to manipulate you, in his quest for money, material goods or power. That is the key to his efforts and successes.

He is a master at conning you, at getting you to feel sorry for him, to empathize with him, to side with him, and even to compromise and prostitute your intellectual, moral, ethical and spiritual integrity for him.

And he gets through all too often because of your firm belief in the inherent goodness of mankind. Not for a moment do you suspect that, unlike you, he has no conscience.

Or sometimes, having realized that you are compromised by him, you surrender and choose to continue under his 'spell', because you see yourself benefiting in some way or other and you do not have the energy or desire to risk that benefit for uncertainty.

Perhaps, even worse, you may find out that he is conning you, and still go along with it, because you may not want to admit that you were weak and allowed yourself to be conned by him in the first place.

And when you try to expose him, the psychopath is a master at painting you as the real culprit.

With all of that, he takes responsibility for nothing. Never!

Credit, yes, but responsibility is a burden for you, not for him, to carry.

He has the remarkable ability to conceal from you the fact that his psychological makeup is radically different from yours.

He has ice water running through his veins and an eight-inch cement block for a heart, and you don't know that he does.

Having no conscience to keep him in check, the psychopath therefore feels completely un-handicapped, completely free of internal restraints, and he believes that he can do as he pleases.

Subject, of course, to the other aspects of his personality, and also on to his intellectual, social, economic and, yes, political resources.

The psychopath is a destructive person. He destroys families, organizations, businesses, communities and nations.

And there is little or no difference in character between the psychopath who hustles drugs and the one who robs you on the street corner, or the one who breaks into your house, or the one who lives off the your labour, or the one who governs a large organization or a nation.

Martha Stout, Ph.D., in a work entitled The Sociopath Next Door, refers to the psychopath (the term is interchangeable with the term "sociopath") as a person who has "an utterly empty hole in his (or her) psyche".

Notwithstanding, the psychopath sees no flaws in his psyche and no need for change. He loves himself the way he is, and he celebrates the fact that you are the way you are, because that is what gives him his advantage over you.

But there is more that you need to know about him. He seems to possess traits that you would like to possess.

For example, he is very likeable, very charming, and very charismatic. Often, he is inspiring, persuasive, successful with the ladies, and so on. He will tell you how he feels your pain, how his pillows are flooded with tears when he is in bed at night thinking of your suffering, etc. And he is very convincing with it. But he does not mean a word of it. He lie! He lie bad!!

In addition, he has the ability to give his undivided, intense, and, if you will, predatory attention to anything that interests him. He is a formidable force, indeed. And, as you will find out later, he is not alone. He is a member of an army. He may even be its leader.

He could be an athlete, a truck driver, a banker, a businessman, a teacher, a doctor, an entertainer, a guidance counsellor, a therapist, a preacher, a politician, a gangster, or anything else. The psychopath fits into every niche known to mankind. Of course, when he is a public figure, he is at his most dangerous.

Dr. Hervey Checkley's book The Mask of Sanity, available in PDF format on the internet, is very instructive.

In the book, Dr. Checkley makes the point that what to you would be an emotional disaster is nothing more than a mere, trifling inconvenience to the psychopath.

He states that the psychopath's "hidden life" is sometimes not very well hidden and that he has a "regular need to vacation into filth and degradation" the same way normal people like you may take a vacation at a resort where you enjoy beautiful surroundings and culture.

Dr. Checkley's argument is that it is stressful for the psychopath, who after all, is more of a soul-less machine, to continue acting human without taking a break.

He can be a brilliant scholar, author, orator, public figure, etc., but sooner or later he will have to take that "vacation" and show his true colours, showing that his words do not match his action.

But you have to be watchful of him in order to read him, especially if you were not trained to observe his condition.

There is the "unsuccessful psychopath" who does not get away with his behaviour and ends up doing time in jail, and the "successful psychopath" who copes better and even dominates certain aspects of social and economic life, even to the point of becoming the leader of a country.

Much of the learning suggests that the psychopath is born, not made. And he cannot be fixed.

The early signs can be seen in the child who wants always to have his way, either by being extra sweet or by throwing tantrums.

But those signs are often not seen for what they are (remember, the parents are not trained to observe or even objective enough to do so, and there is no psychological testing in our school system), with the result that the psychopath is wreaking great havoc in our society.

And do not for a moment think that I am exaggerating.

In the USA, anorexics make up 3.4% of the national population, and anorexia is regarded as an epidemic in that country. Meanwhile, psychopaths make up 4% of the US population, but little attention is paid to that frightening statistic.

And while our data in St. Kitts & Nevis might not reflect such a high number of anorexics, it could well be that 4% of our population are psychopaths.

Can there be any other earthly explanation for the explosion of antisocial behaviour, juvenile crime, adult perversion, and corruption in the country?

Can there be a more plausible explanation for the staggeringly widespread disrespect for law and order? Or for the atmosphere of near chaos that characterizes our streets?

Although we have a trained physician as the leader of our country, the psychopath nevertheless flourishes. Why is that? Our leader must understand what a psychopath is and what dangers the psychopath poses to a society.

He must understand the importance of identifying the psychopath and bringing him under control.

So why has he done nothing about this dangerous problem for the nearly sixteen years that he has been our nation's leader?

Or should I ask: Can he do anything about it?