Predatory Aggressive Personalities (i.e., psychopaths or sociopaths) consider themselves superior to the rest of the human race. They view individuals with inhibitions rooted in emotional bonding to others as inferior creatures and, therefore, their rightful prey.

Aggressive Personalities include the Unbridled Aggressive, who is frequently in conflict with the law; the Channeled-Aggressive, who generally limits ruthlessness to non-criminal activity; the Covert-Aggressive, who cloaks their cruelty under a veneer of civility and manipulates others in the process; and the Sadistic Aggressive, whose principal aim is to demean and injure others:

But by far the most pathological aggressive personality is the one I prefer to label the Predatory Aggressive Personality. All of the aggressive personalities are among the most seriously disturbed in character of the various personality types, and the Predatory Aggressive Personality is the most seriously character disordered.

Many labels have been given in the past to the personality type I call the Predatory Aggressive. The term psychopath was used in the early 20th century but was later more commonly replaced with the term sociopath. Recently, the term psychopath has regained popularity. But because I think personality is best define by an individual’s “style” of relating to others, I think the term predatory most accurately describes the interpersonal modus operandi of these individuals.

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Through the years, several opinions have been offered about what lies at the core of this most serious personality disturbance. Cleckley noted that their extraordinary difference in makeup from most people, especially with respect to matters of conscience or qualities long thought to comprise the “soul” of humanity bordered on an almost psychotic level of difference. Hare points out that their lack of capacity to feel emotionally connected to or bonded with the rest of humanity is at the root of their “callous, senseless, and remorseless use and abuse of others.”

No doubt these individuals are radically different creatures from most human beings. Neurotic denial of this reality has been the doing in of many victims of psychopaths. But in my opinion, at the root of their pathology is not so much their very different wiring, but their extraordinarily positive appraisal of their difference from the rest of us. In a most malevolent example of malignant narcissism to the extreme, these individuals consider themselves beings superior to the rest of the human race. They view individuals with inhibitions rooted in emotional bonding to others as inferior creatures and, therefore, their rightful prey. This is the justification they use for their pattern of predatory engagement with others.

If it weren’t bad enough that some individuals are in very neurotic denial about the uniquely abnormal makeup of predatory aggressive personalities, many are also easily taken in by their manipulative skill. Predatory aggressives know human nature perhaps better than anyone. Most have made a study of it. They know every human vulnerability, shortcoming, yearning, need, etc. And they know how to mimic just about everything that is human, from emotion to empathy. But it’s all part of the unrelenting con game of taking advantage of those perceived to be at heart an inferior species.

I recently answered an inquiry from a man who wondered if his therapist had advised him correctly that psychopaths are “unable” to tell right from wrong, much in the same way as someone who suffers from an active psychosis. I responded to him that these individuals understand extremely well what other people consider to be necessary standards for civil human relations. They could, if they so chose, conform their conduct to such standards. However, they see these standards as just another example of a deficient species restraining itself from self-advancement. And, because they consider it a mark of their superiority not to be encumbered by such concerns, they choose not to abide by any law other than the law of personal gain.

A lot of folks who have read my book In Sheep’s Clothing [Amazon-US | Amazon-UK](?) have commented to me that there are many similarities between the very manipulative people I describe in the book and those generally referred to these days as psychopaths. But I make clear in the book that not all covert-aggressive personalities are as devoid of conscience and as disturbed in character as the predatory aggressive personality, despite the fact that these individuals have generally refined their manipulative skill to nearly an art form. The reason, however, that such personalities are so successful in their predation is more insidious. The fact is that humanistic-leaning counselors and positive-minded people in general find it hard if not impossible to believe that there are predators among us who are so cold-heartedly dangerous not so much because of what dire circumstances life might have meted out to them, but rather because of how differently they are wired as organisms. In the end, that’s what enables them to be victimized by the predators they encounter. They don’t trust their gut feelings in the presence of the predator and allow themselves to be duped by their tactics, believing all the while that their victimizer simply couldn’t be as callously, senselessly, heartlessly, and remorselessly abusive and exploitative (and most especially, as unlike themselves) as their intuition suspected.