Mallory’s anger display is loud and explosive yet not authentic. She does not feel sudden anger, and does not lose control. Instead she puts on an anger mask taken from people she’s watched in the past. She may have several anger masks, taken from parents, siblings, or close relatives. When Mallory believes she faces a real threat, she does not display anger. She strikes, at once and without hesitation, or she turns and leaves.
Mallory’s volcanic anger display provokes the fight or flight response[51] in Bob. No matter how he responds, he is in trouble. If he responds with anger, Mallory mocks and insults him and provokes him further. She does not back down, nor apologize. If Bob walks away or does not respond, she mocks him and insults him. She chases after him and threatens him with violence if he returns. If Bob gets violent, he will be accused of criminal assault.
It is how Internet trolls behave, getting people to argue, to humiliate them. If Bob accepts the violent language and anger, he takes a large burden of stress with him. It will consume him for hours, even days. If Bob fights back, he may feel better, yet he is losing control, and Mallory will use that.
So Bob learns to absorb the insults and anger in silence. This is how abusive relationships run. The outsider sees, if anything, violent arguments. One person tends to start the fights, and the other tends to take the blows.
There are, according to Wikipedia[52], three types of anger. There is sudden anger, which Mallory mimics to build that atmosphere of fear. There is passive anger, which she doesn’t seem to experience at all. And then there is aggressive anger[53].
The symptoms for aggressive anger are a checklist for the late phases of a relationship with a psychopath. The accuracy of the list shocked me when I first read it. I’m going to quote it completely, in case someone edits it out of Wikipedia:
"The symptoms of aggressive anger are:
❂ Bullying, such as threatening people directly, persecuting, pushing or shoving, using power to oppress, shouting, driving someone off the road, playing on people’s weaknesses.
❂ Destructiveness, such as destroying objects as in vandalism, harming animals, destroying a relationship, reckless driving, substance abuse.
❂ Grandiosity, such as showing off, expressing mistrust, not delegating, being a sore loser, wanting center stage all the time, not listening, talking over people’s heads, expecting kiss and make-up sessions to solve problems.
❂ Hurtfulness, such as violence, including sexual abuse and rape, verbal abuse, biased or vulgar jokes, breaking confidence, using foul language, ignoring people’s feelings, willfully discriminating, blaming, punishing people for unwarranted deeds, labeling others.
❂ Manic behavior, such as speaking too fast, walking too fast, working too much and expecting others to fit in, driving too fast, reckless spending.
❂ Selfishness, such as ignoring others' needs, not responding to requests for help, queue jumping.
❂ Threats, such as frightening people by saying how one could harm them, their property or their prospects, finger pointing, fist shaking, wearing clothes or symbols associated with violent behavior, tailgating, excessively blowing a car horn, slamming doors.
❂ Unjust blaming, such as accusing other people for one’s own mistakes, blaming people for your own feelings, making general accusations.
❂ Unpredictability, such as explosive rages over minor frustrations, attacking indiscriminately, dispensing unjust punishment, inflicting harm on others for the sake of it, using alcohol and drugs, illogical arguments.
❂ Vengeance, such as being over-punitive. This differs from retributive justice, as vengeance is personal, and possibly unlimited in scale."
I’ve no clue how the author captured the psychopathic relationship so well. It would be a big coincidence. Perhaps the author lived with a psychopath.
Mallory slams Alice with sudden anger displays, and long term aggressive anger. The effect on Alice is corrosive. Her mental state suffers. She becomes sick with unusual stress-related diseases. She lives on the verge of depression and suicide for months, even years. She may start to use drugs and alcohol to self-medicate.
The one thing she won’t do is ask, "is this normal?" She is too busy fighting for her sanity.
You Can’t Beat Me
When you read about psychopaths on line you hit a lot of theories about what makes a Mallory. Evolutionary psychologists like Steven Pinker have dismantled the old nature-versus-nurture argument. Yet it still confuses many.
Pinker explained this well in his 2002 book "The Blank Slate." Human nature is the product of genes, expressing through our environment. Everything we are is the result of genetic potential, shaped by environment and use. There is no choice between nature and nurture. You need 100% of both.
The theory of our genes as static blueprints is also falling to a better model. That is, our genes express over our lifetimes. In other words, they switch on and off all the time, to produce different proteins. They work in cascades, so that one gene may control dozens or hundreds of others. And this happens in every cell of our body.
Look again at Mallory. We see a set of talents that switch on and develop depending on the environment. At least some adults can become temporary psychopaths, if conditions are right.
I’ll use the term "secondary psychopath" to mean a social human who has turned to psychopathy. Some people still explain this phenomenon using the nature-versus-nurture model[54]. Remember that gene expression is itself an evolved mechanism. No-one becomes a psychopath just through trauma. It is always about survival.
I don’t think you can be a little bit psychopathic. Whether you play the social game, or the cheater game, you must play to win. Mallory is competing with other psychopaths, and Bob with other Bobs.
So we can model psychopathy using game theory. People are bundles of talent that are either expressing, or latent. It depends on the playing field. Depending on our age, that expression influences our mental and physical development. Many can learn to play music, yet the best musicians start young and focus on just that.
Mallory controls the playing field. If she sees the potential in Bob, she can try to turn him. If this works she gets a long-term helper, much like a master vampire. To create the necessary playing field, Mallory must:
❂ Break Bob’s empathy. She makes him witness violence towards others, and forces him to take part. For the greatest effect, the violence happens to Alice, who Bob cares about.
❂ Maintain the climate of fear, so that Bob lives in constant fear of punishment. Mallory will punish Bob enough to teach him who is in charge.
❂ Offer Bob an escape from the constant threat of pain and violence. He just has to help Mallory by being violent to Alice.
❂ Maintain the threat of expulsion. At any point, Mallory may kick Bob back into the cell with Alice, or expel him into the unknown.
Mallory creates a "them or us" dichotomy. She forces Bob to choose sides. She makes it more and more expensive and painful to stay with Alice. If Mallory judged Bob well, he takes the path of least pain. He rationalizes it by accepting Mallory’s doctrines.