Psycho parasites lurk in most surprising spots

The word psychopath usually evokes terrifying images of axe-murderers, serial rapists, and criminals who commit horrifying crimes against humanity.

But according to Australian psychological profiler John Clarke, the majority of psychopaths are your colleagues, neighbours and the people you pass on the street.

Clarke has written a book called Working with Monsters (published by Random House Australia) where he describes workplace psychopaths as people who are intimidating, manipulative, and cunning. As well as very, very charming.

They target victims for public humiliation, take credit for other people's work, are sexually promiscuous to gain power over their workmates, are prolific liars and will make outrageous promises they inevitably cannot fulfil.

What makes them stand out is that they not only feel no remorse for the pain they cause to those around them, but they often take pleasure from making people miserable.

Fortunately, in his book, Mr Clarke writes how we can identify these people before they destroy our lives with their behaviour.

According to Mr Clarke, between 1 and 3 per cent of adult males and between 0.5 and 1 per cent of adult females are psychopaths.

That means in a region the size of Auckland, there could be up to 15,000 male and 6000 female psychopaths.

"I would go so far as to say that every major company - certainly in Australia - would have one of these people working for them," he said.

Mr Clarke became interested in workplace psychopaths after giving lectures about violent criminal psychopaths.

"Students would come up to me afterwards and say they knew people with those same characteristics.

"So I started looking into it further, and I've been into a whole range of companies now and psychopathy is the best clinical disorder to describe lots of these people."

He said bullies often regretted what they did, but psychopaths "couldn't care less". He described the psychopath as unethical, immoral and completely self-centred. But he warned they are also smart enough to disguise those behaviours within the confines of the technical aspects of the law.

Once a person had developed into a psychopath, which cannot be diagnosed until they are 18 years old, rehabilitation is no longer an option, Mr Clarke said.

He said workplace psychopaths were far less in numbers than the victims they left in their wake.

"It's a small proportion of the population, but the damage they do is out of all proportion to how many there are."

Office 'psychopaths'

* Do everything they can to increase their position at work, at the expense of their colleagues.

* Have an unshakeable belief that it is a dog-eat-dog world, which they need to conquer.

* Can be found in between 1 and 3 per cent of adult males and between 0.5 and 1 per cent of adult females, according to psychological profiler John Clarke.