They are charming, they are suave, they are eloquent, they are well educated, are highly skilled, they have great hair, and nerdy eyeglasses. They are the con artists.
Why do people become scammers, swindlers? Why do they choose to avoid a thriving, flourishing career, accomplishments which are widely recognized and socially acceptable, why do they gravitate to the dark side when they are fully equipped to rise to the top of society and become pillars of the community?
Why do they relish and cherish breaking the law, or at the very least, skirting it? Why are they so proud of their exploits? Why are they considered when they should be, by all accounts, ashamed, contrite, repentant. And why do they do all this and capture our attention and sometimes hidden admiration?
What is this incestuous relationship between the con artist and his victims and society at large? The media.
Today I'm going to discuss the motivation behind becoming a swindler or a con artist.
And who am I?
My name is Sam Vaknin. I'm a professor of clinical psychology and the author of Malignant Self-Love: Narcissism Revisited. And if I created any paranoid ideation after this introduction, just go to Amazon and you will find my book.
Okay, victims and victims let us discuss swindling, con artistry and other exceedingly fun and entertaining things as they come.
As I said, most con artists are actually highly endowed. Some of them are even gifted.
They could have been anything, anywhere, at any any time they could have had a career path they could have risen to the top they could have made a name for themselves they could have established a family fitted into a community they could have become leaders and, they choose to adopt a way of life.
They make decisions which waylay them, cast them to the outer fringes of society, deny them the benefits and perks of fitting in, conforming, belonging, being accepted, admired even.
Why do they do that? And why don't they find any of this disturbing or egodystonic why are they basically happy go lucky why do they smile and giggle on camera when they are being interviewed and so on so forth.
Con artists and swindlers regard their actions as an elevated art form. They are artists.
Indeed, this is why they are called con artists, artists of confidence.
In this sense, they are close cousins of psychologists. They manipulate the human mind and the human psyche in order to yield and extract favorable outcomes.
Highly self-efficacious, they're experts at creating paracosms. Fantasies which somehow seamlessly integrate with reality and are very believable and credible.
Fantasies that incorporate emotional elements which the Swindler himself lacks in order to manipulate people in a Machiavellian way to act in highly predictable ways in other words swindling or con artistry is a form of behavior modification which involves highly sophisticated levels of brainwashing and training.
Okay, but what drives these people?
Why do they find themselves there rather than, for example, as professors in a university or politicians or, you know, judges or something? why do they deny their capacity for self-actualization and squander and waste the gifts given to them by whoever their parents, their talents, their skills are subjected and become subservient to their proclivities and predisposition.
Is there an element of sadism in this? We'll talk about it.
But let's start by delineating the psychological and emotional landscape of the con artist.
The core feature of the con artist is defiance.
The con artist defies you in your face.
The defiance is not only a grandiose gesture. It is a philosophy of life. It is an ideology. It is the belief that individuality and uniqueness critically depend on the rejection of society and of life itself, as Harvey Cleckley observed in the 1940s.
This rejection is the core of the con artist. It's about rejecting everything that other people or society at large have to offer.
There's a rejection of love. There is a rejection of stability, of routine, of a life well lived, of self-actualization, of self-realization, of dreams come true. There's a rejection of a career path, climbing the corporate ladder, working in teams.
It's all about rejection, rejection that is replete with elements of defiance and contumaciousness, hatred of authority, opposition to authority.
In other words, swindlers and con artists are rebels.
But they're not rebels without a cause. They're goal-oriented rebels.
And if this sounds familiar, it's because it's a great description and encapsulation of psychopathy.
Most con artists and swindlers, especially the wine-guzzling ones, are psychopaths.
Number two, con artists and swindlers are entitled, but not entitled the way a narcissist is.
The narcissist's entitlement is grounded in a fantasy. And his fantasy has to do with his over inflated, fantastic self-image.
The narcissist's reality testing is shot and impaired.
So within this fantasy, which comprises the false self, the narcissist believes that he is so special and so unique, that he deserves, for example, special treatment, or outcomes and accomplishments which are in commensurate with effort and study and hard work.
So the narcissist entitlement is a form of magical thinking.
The narcissist's existence, very existence, is enchanted. And by virtue of his existence and nothing else he deserves everything.
That's not the kind of entitlement typical of a swindler or a con artist.
Swindler and con artists are very hard workers with a very strong work ethic and a moral code that is self-imputed and self-created, idiosyncratic, but still there.
Swindlers and con artists create credible, believable environments, which are sometimes fantastic, but they never fall in their own trap.
They never begin to believe their own lies and the fantasies that they espouse and sell to others or sell others on.
The sales speech is never confused for reality and so the swindler or the con artist or the scammer they are not in this sense narcissistic they don't believe that they are entitled to the fruits of their labor without any labor.
They are not indolent.
However, they do believe in shortcuts.
They think that the socially prescribed way of going from A to B is stupid, dumb, too long, ill-informed.
They have a better way of reaching point B without having to traverse point A. They just get there directly.
And this belief in shortcuts, in shortcutting the process, in eliminating the intermediation, in disintermediation, in getting directly to the point, in extreme goal orientation. This is again psychopathic.
So already we find two psychopathic elements, defiance, contumaciousness, and a goal orientation, which is so extreme that it eliminates the need to go through stages, to adopt procedures, to traverse a path, to engage in a journey.
It is the goal that matters.
And so no indolence, laziness on the very contrary very hard work very dedicated very committed very invested there's a lot of cathexis going on and a lot of pride professional pride this work ethic as I said but there's a belief which essentially amounts also to a kind of magical thinking that you can get to the goal without having to go through all the preceding stages the antecedents short-cutting.
Number three I keep mentioning magical thinking and fantasy. These are integral elements in the scammers and swindlers and corner artists work. Integral elements.
But in his case, these are instruments. Tools of the trade, it's a toolkit.
As I said, the swindler or the con artist never falls for his own confabulations and lies, whereas the narcissist does not gaslight. Well, the narcissist never future fakes, because the narcissist believes in his own inane fantasies and crazy promises.
The con artist and the swindler maintain very strict, I would even say hyper-reality testing, a reality testing that is even sharper and more accurate than most people.
Because they are engaged in a game of confidence, because they have to create an alternative reality, a virtual reality and introduce their victims into this, into this alternate universe, they have at all times to maintain a strict, delineated, demarcated boundary between reality or fantasy, lest they fall into the abyss that they are creating.
And so they're very, very vigilant in this sense.
They keep asking themselves, is this real or is this part of the story, the narrative that I'm concocting in order to trap or to entrap my victims.
A little like a spider. A spider spins a web, but is never caught in it. It's very rare, I think it never happens when a spider gets caught in his own web.
Similarly, a con artist or a swindler rarely get caught in their own storyline, in the movie, they rarely become actors or directors, they are the directors, but they never become actors in the movie that they are staging.
And this ability to maintain a strict separation between reality and fantasy is the hallmark of the con artist.
Of course, one can flip the scenario easily.
By creating a semblance of reality, one can trick the con artist into the con artist's own fantasy in other words there is a possibility to manipulate the con artist's reality because he is engaged in a game of illusion and because he fosters delusions and because he has entered this hall of mirrors, this carnival, because he has entered it he is much more susceptible and vulnerable to manipulation.
The mirrors could be redirected so as to reflect the con artist and the swindler rather than the victim.
And this is what law enforcement usually does.
Police, intelligence agencies, and so on and forth, they play with this fact that when your stock in trade is illusions and delusions, it's very difficult sometimes to tell reality apart from fantasy or apart from a narrative and so law enforcement plays with this and traps or ends up incarcerating con artists.
Next I mentioned repeatedly that con artists are proud, haughty and considered. They are.
All psychopaths are grandiose. They are not narcissists.
Self-styled experts online who tell you that all psychopaths are narcissists are charlatans, ignorant charlatans.
But it is true that the vast majority of psychopaths, especially factor one psychopaths, are grandiose. They feel, as I said, entitled and their grandiosity consists of essentially two elements.
Number one, I am much more intelligent than my victims, partly because I'm privy to privileged information. I have information that my victims don't possess.
But also I'm naturally endowed. I'm much more intelligent than my victims. I can pull the wool of people's eyes. I can deceive them. I sound credible. I sound believable. I appear to be normal. I can sell them on any story that I want. I'm a storyteller, a charmed, enchanted storyteller.
And so, there's this element of grandiosity, and the second element is, I'm self-sufficient, I'm self-contained, I don't need anyone, I don't need anything, I'm my own master, and I manipulate the elements of the universe as I see fit.
In other words, I'm godlike.
There's an element of creation. In every con there's an element of creation, in every swindle, in every scam. There's a whole universe being created with its own rules, with its own laws, with its own inexorable processes, with its own narratives and story-like.
This act of creation endows the swindler and the con artist with a feeling that he or she is godlike.
So this is the grandiosity. I'm much more intelligent than other people and I'm a creator, I'm a creative type and because I'm a creator I'mgodlike, and because I'm godlike, I'm self-sufficient and self-contained and don't need anyone or anything.
And finally, a very powerful element in the con artist's psychological makeup is contempt.
Con artists and swindlers and scammers hold their victims in utter, unmitigated, often ostentatious, public, visible contempt. They think the victims had it coming. The victims are stupid, the gullible, the naive. They were, and so they had it coming.
They should have been more vigilant. They should have been more careful. They should have read the fine print. They should have checked and cross-checked. They should have studied and they should have done their own research. They should have.
And if they hadn't, then they deserve their punishment.
The con artist and the swindler therefore perceive themselves as godlike not only in the sense that they are creating new universes, but also in the sense that they have the right to punish people.
They are penalizers. They are like agents or messengers of the Darwinian law of the jungle. They are like the bailiffs and the judges of the law of the jungle. They're the law enforcement, the law of the jungle enforcement agency.
So they have the right, the moral right, to inflict harm on people. They regarded this kind of tough love, an educational effort.
You know, they don't feel bad about it at all. They're not egodystonic. They're egosyntonic. They're egosyntonic.
This guy or this person, this victim, ended up losing a lot of money or ended up being hurt, but they've learned a valuable lesson. They owe me this. They actually owe me, the con artist says.
The swindler is proud of this process of edifying and enlightening people.
The con, the swindle, the scam is a school, an educational establishment, an introduction to life.
The victims' eyes are opened. They're less innocent, less naive, and now they're better able to cope with life.
It's a parental role.
The corner artist and the swindler regard themselves as kind of tough love parents, father figures maybe.
And so this is the psychological makeup of the con artist and swindler, and that is why it's extremely difficult to change anything or reverse their thinking or cure them or heal them.
They see nothing wrong with anything they're doing. On the very contrary, they see merit, including social merit in what they're doing.
They're social agents and they're agents of change. And they should be lauded. In many ways they should be lauded for what they're doing because they induce transformation in their victims, in society at large, and so forth.
And they're defiant and they're contumacious because society and people and the authorities are getting it wrong. They have this super intelligence and they're able to see miles into the distance and centuries into the future.
And they're trying to bring the benefits of their acumen and insight to other people.
Granted, they do it by hurting other people, granted. They do it by hurting other people and by harming other people, but ultimately it's all for the better, for the greater good in a way.
And they're hard at work. They're hard workers. They're moral. They have a work ethic. They're creative. they're inventive, they're imaginative.
And for a while, the victims feel wonderful, embedded in the fantasy of the con artist, or the swindler, or the scammer.
There's a period of a few years or a few months or a few days that the victims feel the best they've ever felt. It's a gift. It's a vacation from life. It's an escape.
And this only enhances the corner artist's grandiosity and the sense of entitlement.
Because they give their victims a way out. They allow their victims to experience a dream, wish fulfillment, a fantastic space or landscape which the victims can roam and wander and feel wonderful for a little while.
Of course, there's no free lunch. Everything comes at a cost.
So the Swindler feels that it's a fair deal. It's a fair shake. It's a level playing field.
The con artist or the Swindler gives you a fantasy and you give them your money.
Isn't this a fair trade? Isn't this what tourist agencies do? They give you a fantasy abroad called tourism and you give them their money.
Con artists don't see any difference between their activities and many other economic enterprises and branches of the economy.
Everyone is trading in fantasy. Politics, for example, is 100% fantasy, show business, entertainment industry, the internet, influencers, and everyone is dealing in fantasy.
Everything is a con. Everything is a swindle and everything is a scam as far as the con artist is concerned.
And so the only difference is the efficacy of the scam, how successful the con is.
And whether the con artistry or the scam or the swindling is socially acceptable, codified and monopolized by the state or by some professionals.
Therapies are scam they think for example and it's monopolized by therapists and psychologists and condoned by the state, certified, licensed. They don't see anything wrong, they're not doing anything wrong, they're pioneers, they should be thanked.
Which explains where they're so shaken and indignant when they're finally handcuffed and taken to the place where they belong, a prison.