It has been a year, and he’s changed. His ex-wife sued for divorce and won a good settlement. The house went back on the market. It sold with a loss. He didn’t care. Just money. They are fighting every day. She flips all the time. One minute, exuberant joy. The next, dark brooding anger. He can’t control her and he can’t predict her. He’s drinking too much, and not taking care of himself.
One day his boss calls him in. "Mark," he says, "I’m letting you go. Your department is not working. You’re in charge and I’m holding you responsible. We’re shutting it down. Your people will go to Bill. Please take your personal belongings. You’ll get a month of severance." Two men from security escort him out, to his office, and then out of the building.
He picks up the phone and calls his ex-wife. He needs someone to tell him it will be OK. Anyone. The calm voice says "the number you have dialed is no longer in service." He stares at the dirty wall of the small room. He reaches for the bottle of vodka. The bedroom door opens, and it’s Florence, suitcases in hands. "I’m leaving you, it’s over," she says, "don’t call me and don’t text me. You’ve done enough damage already."
On the Track of Unknown Animals
I’ve explained how Mallory hides, hunts, attacks, feeds, and buries her corpses. Your next question is likely to be: "how can I tell if someone is a psychopath?" Once you realize psychopaths walk among us, things change. You start to wonder how many shape-shifting predators you know, or knew. You start to look at the people you meet, and ask, "you too?" The question may become an obsession. Yet it is the wrong question.
Or rather, it is only half the question. It is almost impossible to tell if a given person is a psychopath or not, without time to see how they interact with others. You need more than good observational skills. You need more than the awareness I described in The Feeding. You must actually get entangled, then analyze them as they attack you. If they attack you. And if you even realize that is what is happening. This is not an experiment I would recommend.
So a better question is, "how can I tell if a psychopath is active in my circles?" This is a valid question, and a necessary one. It is a question with solid answers. Psychopathy is like a disease that causes long-term mental damage in the entangled. This damage is Mallory’s impact crater. You can see that impact crater if you search for it. Look at yourself, other individuals, families, businesses, and other organizations.
It takes time and study. You look for pain, damage, trauma, and burnout. You look for depression and anxiety. You look for problems at school and work. For alcohol and drug abuse. Self-harm, and suicide attempts. If you see these, without other causes, chances are you’re seeing Mallory’s work.
Once you see an impact crater, then you can ask the question "who is Mallory?" Now you can pull out your checklists and narrow down the list of suspects. Start with the crime, then follow the trail. Someone is making a profit from that pain. When you have eliminated all other suspects, the last person left is Mallory.
So this chapter is about hunting Mallory. Yes, we are going on a safari. We will track, and maybe trap, the most dangerous animal of them all.
A hunter must know the terrain. I’ve already explained how Mallory hunts. Apart from meetings between strangers, there are three main contexts where Mallory hunts. Each has their dynamics defined by the depth and duration of relationships. These are: the project group, the workplace, and the family.
The Project Group
The project group is an informal social group with some goal. Project groups exist in culture, non-profit, arts, technology. A classic project group has a small set of organizers, and a larger set of members. The organizers set the rules and manage the group. Members join and leave at will, driven by their own schedule. Members may pay a fee, and their work is not compensated. Members who stay longer may become organizers. The group has clear goals, and regular meetings.
Project groups are vulnerable to bad actors by default. Their founders must take explicit steps to protect the group. Otherwise, Mallory can waltz in on a cloud of charisma and chaos.
Mallory loves project groups because they give him good cover. Project groups are rarely wealthy, yet individual members may well be. Members come and go often, and most groups do not vet new members. This gives Mallory the means, motive and opportunity.
What Mallory is looking for depends on gender, as I explained in The Hunt. There will be sexual seduction and deception. There will be fuzzy business deals, loans, and gifts. If the group has funds that Mallory can get control over, they will become chaotic. Money will disappear.
You can measure how resistant a project group is to attack by bad actors. A resistant group has formal defenses that survive people coming and going. A vulnerable group has none. It depends on the goodwill of its members and organizers. You can just ask the organizers, "how do you stop bad actors joining your group?" If they have no answer, that means they are relying on trust.
Classic defenses against walk-in psychopaths are:
❂ Careful vetting of new members. There may be a formal process to filter out bad actors before they can do damage.
❂ Rules and structure that discourage bad actors from taking part. Mallory prefers vague, unwritten, or chaotic rules.
❂ Isolation of assets. Money on the table is psychopath bait. Mallory finds an empty table to be discouraging.
If a group has assets and no defenses, it is inevitable that Mallory will invade the group. There is no "if" here. Indeed, you may see several psychopaths striving for advantage.
The symptoms of infection are clear and easy to see, once you know what you are looking for:
❂ A healthy group makes its members happy, secure, and strong. An infected group makes its members miserable, anxious, and weak.
❂ A healthy group is successful with its projects, and grows over time. An infected group tends to avoid risk, and shrink over time.
❂ A healthy group spends little time on decision making. Its members have high independence. They tend to do first, talk second. There is little or no argument. An infected group struggles to get consensus. Its members argue over irrelevant details. Even the smallest project takes huge planning, and stresses everyone.
You cannot fix such groups. I have tried many times. Groups grow around founders and rules. You cannot change the rules after the fact unless you are the founder. And to keep out bad actors, you must have the right rules. It doesn’t help to identify Mallory and chase him out. That just makes space for a new Mallory to come in.
You could start a new group with a healthier structure, and offer it as an alternative. You may then find yourself at the sharp end of a campaign to discredit you. If you become a plausible threat to a group, they will rally around even the worst leaders.
So an idealistic approach can make things worse. You cannot save a dysfunctional project group from its founders. You cannot recreate it without risking a lot of conflict. What you can do, though, is:
❂ Use it to study Mallory in a real environment. In the science of human behavior, you are your own best instrument. You can join the group, talk to people, try to be a good member. See where it hurts. Ask others what hurts them. This is useful data which can be hard to get any other way.