Are all psychopaths murderers? NO. Most people think that psychopaths are murderers, but while it is true that some murderers are psychopaths, not all psychopaths are murderers.

To begin to understand the complexity of psychopathy, we will begin by classifying them into two large groups. On the one hand, there are the criminal psychopaths who commit criminal acts and who are usually in prison. On the other hand, we have the so-called integrated psychopaths, which we will focus on in this article.

We could define them as "invisible evildoers", they are people who live in our environment perfectly integrated into society and who can even hold positions of success and power. Given their personality characteristics, they usually have a high socio-economic and professional status. The integrated psychopath can be your boss, your father, mother, sister, brother, neighbour, friend or partner.

Some of the characteristics of the psychopathic personality are:

The reality is that behind this brightly coloured mask lies the emptiness of darkness and a being devoid of emotions and incapable of love. They exercise the so-called "invisible violence", a type of mainly psychological and emotional violence that basically consists of objectifying the victim through deception and manipulation, with the aim of destabilising and annulling her and enjoying it. It is a complex process of emotional abuse, since when the reality is discovered, the abuser will present himself as the victim of the situation, initiating a campaign to defame and discredit the real victim.

What do people who have experienced this type of partner abuse report?

Going "crazy", in fact, in relationships, psychopaths define their exes as "crazy/jealous". Psychological abuse is a continuum, as they enjoy seeing their "prey" annihilated, they lack empathy and any sense of guilt or remorse and, ultimately, humanity.

Who do these beings choose? It is not random, the victim is perfectly studied in order to know their weaknesses and act like a chameleon presenting themselves as a "saviour" who will cover their affective needs, however, they will always look for an interest and take advantage, be it money, status... They use intermittent reinforcement (now I give you love, now I take it away and then I give it again) to create a kind of addiction that makes it difficult for the victim to get out of this circle of deceit. Envy is an intrinsic part of them, they do not tolerate having a person by their side who shines for qualities that they naturally lack.

Vicente Garrido defines them as "stupid if we evaluate their emotional intelligence". For this great expert, psychopaths "represent a metaphor for evil in their actions and in their contempt for the feelings of all people".

What figures do we know? We don't really know exact figures, but experts in this field such as Iñaki Piñuel indicate that 1 in every 100 people are psychopaths, with 2-3% being pure psychopaths and 10-12% integrated psychopaths. According to Piñuel "The real pandemic in our society is that of narcissists and psychopaths". To go deeper into this subject I recommend you to read the books of this author "Amor zero" and "Familia zero".

Finally, we have to clarify something important, psychological therapy does not work with them, it is on the contrary used to learn new ways of manipulation. They are NOT going to change, therefore, my advice is that if you have this type of personality close to you: "Run away, stay away, contact zero, darkness envies light, don't let anyone steal it from you, you are light".