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The Sociopath Next Door Hardcover – February 8, 2005
| Martha Stout (Author) Find all the books, read about the author, and more. See search results for this author |
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Who is the devil you know?
Is it your lying, cheating ex-husband?
Your sadistic high school gym teacher?
Your boss who loves to humiliate people in meetings?
The colleague who stole your idea and passed it off as her own?
In the pages of The Sociopath Next Door, you will realize that your ex was not just misunderstood. He’s a sociopath. And your boss, teacher, and colleague? They may be sociopaths too.
We are accustomed to think of sociopaths as violent criminals, but in The Sociopath Next Door, Harvard psychologist Martha Stout reveals that a shocking 4 percent of ordinary people—one in twenty-five—has an often undetected mental disorder, the chief symptom of which is that that person possesses no conscience. He or she has no ability whatsoever to feel shame, guilt, or remorse. One in twenty-five everyday Americans, therefore, is secretly a sociopath. They could be your colleague, your neighbor, even family. And they can do literally anything at all and feel absolutely no guilt.
How do we recognize the remorseless? One of their chief characteristics is a kind of glow or charisma that makes sociopaths more charming or interesting than the other people around them. They’re more spontaneous, more intense, more complex, or even sexier than everyone else, making them tricky to identify and leaving us easily seduced. Fundamentally, sociopaths are different because they cannot love. Sociopaths learn early on to show sham emotion, but underneath they are indifferent to others’ suffering. They live to dominate and thrill to win.
The fact is, we all almost certainly know at least one or more sociopaths already. Part of the urgency in reading The Sociopath Next Door is the moment when we suddenly recognize that someone we know—someone we worked for, or were involved with, or voted for—is a sociopath. But what do we do with that knowledge? To arm us against the sociopath, Dr. Stout teaches us to question authority, suspect flattery, and beware the pity play. Above all, she writes, when a sociopath is beckoning, do not join the game.
It is the ruthless versus the rest of us, and The Sociopath Next Door will show you how to recognize and defeat the devil you know.
- Print length256 pages
- LanguageEnglish
- PublisherBroadway Books
- Publication dateFebruary 8, 2005
- Dimensions6.36 x 0.86 x 9.52 inches
- ISBN-10076791581X
- ISBN-13978-0767915816
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Editorial Reviews
From Publishers Weekly
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
Review
—Harold S. Kushner, author of When Bad Things Happen to Good People
“The Sociopath Next Door is a chillingly accurate portrayal of evil--the decent person’s guide to indecency.”
—Jonathan Kellerman
“A remarkable philosophical examination of the phenomenon of sociopathy and its everyday manifestations…Stout’s portraits make a striking impact and readers with unpleasant neighbors or colleagues may find themselves paying close attention to her sociopathic-behavior checklist and suggested coping strategies. Deeply thought-provoking and unexpectedly lyrical.”
—Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
“A chilling portrait of human beings who lack scruples the way someone born blind lacks eyesight…Stout describes respected professionals who tell outrageous lies simply to confuse colleagues… authority figures who deceive, seduce and even murder just to relieve the boredom that is the usual state of the sociopathic mind. A useful—if appalling—guide to help you recognize conscienceless individuals.. [and] a heartening affirmation of the empathic mindset that comes naturally to the vast majority of humans.”
—Martha Beck, O Magazine
“The Sociopath Next Door is a chillingly accurate portrayal of evil– the decent person’s guide to indecency. Martha Stout draws upon sound scientific data and clinical experience and her writing is graceful and compelling.”
—Jonathan Kellerman, author of Therapy, When the Bough Breaks, and Monster.
“[Stout] provides provocative discussion about the role of conscience in the ‘normal’ world. Highly recommend.”
—Library Journal (starred review)
“One in 25 Americans is a sociopath– no conscience, no guilt. It could be your mean boss or your crazy ex. [The Sociopath Next Door] is an easy-to-follow guide for spotting them.”
—Newsweek
“I recommend this book, especially to those who think they may be vulnerable to sociopaths. It contains good stories, useful advice and clinical and scientific nuggets.”
—Washington Post
Winner of the 2005 Books for a Better Life Award
From the Inside Flap
Is it your lying, cheating ex-husband?
Your sadistic high school gym teacher?
Your boss who loves to humiliate people in meetings?
The colleague who stole your idea and passed it off as her own?
In the pages of "The Sociopath Next Door, you will realize that your ex was not just misunderstood. He's a sociopath. And your boss, teacher, and colleague? They may be sociopaths too.
We are accustomed to think of sociopaths as violent criminals, but in "The Sociopath Next Door, Harvard psychologist Martha Stout reveals that a shocking 4 percent of ordinary people--one in twenty-five--has an often undetected mental disorder, the chief symptom of which is that that person possesses no conscience. He or she has no ability whatsoever to feel shame, guilt, or remorse. One in twenty-five everyday Americans, therefore, is secretly a sociopath. They could be your colleague, your neighbor, even family. And they can do literally anything at all and feel absolutely no guilt."
How do we recognize the remorseless? One of their chief characteristics is a kind of glow or charisma that makes sociopaths more charming or interesting than the other people around them. They're more spontaneous, more intense, more complex, or even sexier than everyone else, making them tricky to identify and leaving us easily seduced. Fundamentally, sociopaths are different because they cannot love. Sociopaths learn early on to show sham emotion, but underneath they are indifferent to others' suffering. They live to dominate and thrill to win.
The fact is, we all almost certainly know at least one or more sociopaths already. Part of the urgency in reading "TheSociopath Next Door is the moment when we suddenly recognize that someone we know--someone we worked for, or were involved with, or voted for--is a sociopath. But what do we do with that knowledge? To arm us against the sociopath, Dr. Stout teaches us to question authority, suspect flattery, and beware the pity play. Above all, she writes, when a sociopath is beckoning, do not join the game.
It is the ruthless versus the rest of us, and "The Sociopath Next Door will show you how to recognize and defeat the devil you know.
About the Author
Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
Minds differ still more than faces.
--Voltaire
Imagine--if you can--not having a conscience, none at all, no feelings of guilt or remorse no matter what you do, no limiting sense of concern for the well-being of strangers, friends, or even family members. Imagine no struggles with shame, not a single one in your whole life, no matter what kind of selfish, lazy, harmful, or immoral action you had taken. And pretend that the concept of responsibility is unknown to you, except as a burden others seem to accept without question, like gullible fools. Now add to this strange fantasy the ability to conceal from other people that your psychological makeup is radically different from theirs. Since everyone simply assumes that conscience is universal among human beings, hiding the fact that you are conscience-free is nearly effortless. You are not held back from any of your desires by guilt or shame, and you are never confronted by others for your cold-bloodedness. The ice water in your veins is so bizarre, so completely outside of their personal experience, that they seldom even guess at your condition.
In other words, you are completely free of internal restraints, and your unhampered liberty to do just as you please, with no pangs of conscience, is conveniently invisible to the world. You can do anything at all, and still your strange advantage over the majority of people, who are kept in line by their consciences, will most likely remain undiscovered.
How will you live your life? What will you do with your huge and secret advantage, and with the corresponding handicap of other people (conscience)? The answer will depend largely on just what your desires happen to be, because people are not all the same. Even the profoundly unscrupulous are not all the same. Some people-- whether they have a conscience or not-- favor the ease of inertia, while others are filled with dreams and wild ambitions. Some human beings are brilliant and talented, some are dull-witted, and most, conscience or not, are somewhere in between. There are violent people and nonviolent ones, individuals who are motivated by bloodlust and those who have no such appetites.
Maybe you are someone who craves money and power, and though you have no vestige of conscience, you do have a magnificent IQ. You have the driving nature and the intellectual capacity to pursue tremendous wealth and influence, and you are in no way moved by the nagging voice of conscience that prevents other people from doing everything and anything they have to do to succeed. You choose business, politics, the law, banking, international development, or any of a broad array of other power professions, and you pursue your career with a cold passion that tolerates none of the usual moral or legal incumbrances. When it is expedient, you doctor the accounting and shred the evidence, you stab your employees and your clients (or your constituency) in the back, marry for money, tell lethal premeditated lies to people who trust you, attempt to ruin colleagues who are powerful or eloquent, and simply steam-roll over groups who are dependent and voiceless. And all of this you do with the exquisite freedom that results from having no conscience whatsoever.
You become unimaginably, unassailably, and maybe even globally successful. Why not? With your big brain, and no conscience to rein in your schemes, you can do anything at all.
Or no--let us say you are not quite such a person. You are ambitious, yes, and in the name of success you are willing to do all manner of things that people with conscience would never consider, but you are not an intellectually gifted individual. Your intelligence is above average perhaps, and people think of you as smart, maybe even very smart. But you know in your heart of hearts that you do not have the cognitive wherewithal, or the creativity, to reach the careening heights of power you secretly dream about, and this makes you resentful of the world at large, and envious of the people around you.
As this sort of person, you ensconce yourself in a niche, or maybe a series of niches, in which you can have some amount of control over small numbers of people. These situations satisfy a little of your desire for power, although you are chronically aggravated at not having more. It chafes to be so free of the ridiculous inner voice that inhibits others from achieving great power, without having enough talent to pursue the ultimate successes yourself. Sometimes you fall into sulky, rageful moods caused by a frustration that no one but you understands.
But you do enjoy jobs that afford you a certain undersupervised control over a few individuals or small groups, preferably people and groups who are relatively helpless or in some way vulnerable. You are a teacher or a psychotherapist, a divorce lawyer or a high school coach. Or maybe you are a consultant of some kind, a broker or a gallery owner or a human services director. Or maybe you do not have a paid position, and are instead the president of your condominium association, or a volunteer hospital worker, or a parent. Whatever your job, you manipulate and bully the people who are under your thumb, as often and as outrageously as you can without getting fired or held accountable. You do this for its own sake, even when it serves no purpose except to give you a thrill. Making people jump means you have power-- or this is the way you see it-- and bullying provides you with an adrenaline rush. It is fun.
Maybe you cannot be the CEO of a multinational corporation, but you can frighten a few people, or cause them to scurry around like chickens, or steal from them, or--maybe best of all--create situations that cause them to feel bad about themselves. And this is power, especially when the people you manipulate are superior to you in some way. Most invigorating of all is to bring down people who are smarter or more accomplished than you, or perhaps classier, more attractive or popular or morally admirable. This is not only good fun--it is existential vengeance. And without a conscience, it is amazingly easy to do. You quietly lie to the boss or to the boss’s boss, cry some crocodile tears, or sabotage a coworker’s project, or gaslight a patient (or a child), bait people with promises, or provide a little misinformation that will never be traced back to you.
Or now let us say you are a person who has a proclivity for violence or for seeing violence done. You can simply murder your coworker, or have her murdered--or your boss, or your ex-spouse, or your wealthy lover’s spouse, or anyone else who bothers you. You have to be careful, because if you slip up you may be caught and punished by the system. But you will never be confronted by your conscience, because you have no conscience. If you decide to kill, the only difficulties will be the external ones. Nothing inside of you will ever protest.
Provided you are not forcibly stopped, you can do anything at all. If you are born at the right time, with some access to family fortune, and you have a special talent for whipping up other people’s hatred and sense of deprivation, you can arrange to kill large numbers of unsuspecting people. With enough money, you can accomplish this from far away, and you can sit back safely and watch in satisfaction. In fact, terrorism (done from a distance) is the ideal occupation for a person who is possessed of bloodlust and no conscience, because if you do it just right, you may be able to make a whole nation jump. And if that is not power, what is?
Or let us imagine the opposite extreme--you have no interest in power. To the contrary, you are the sort of person who really does not want much of anything. Your only real ambition is not to have to exert yourself to get by. You do not want to work like everyone else does. Without a conscience, you can nap or pursue your hobbies or watch television or just hang out somewhere all day long. Living a bit on the fringes, and with some handouts from relatives and friends, you can do this indefinitely. People may whisper to each other that you are an underachiever, or that you are depressed, a sad case, or in contrast, if they get angry, they may grumble that you are lazy. When they get to know you better, and get really angry, they may scream at you and call you a loser, a bum. But it will never occur to them that you literally do not have a conscience, that in such a fundamental way, your very mind is not the same as theirs.
The panicked feeling of a guilty conscience never squeezes at your heart or wakes you in the middle of the night. Despite your lifestyle, you never feel irresponsible, neglectful, or so much as embarrassed, although for the sake of appearances, sometimes you pretend that you do. For example, if you are a decent observer of people and what they react to, you may adopt a lifeless facial expression, say how ashamed of your life you are, and talk about how rotten you feel. This you do only because it is more convenient to have people think you are depressed than it is to have them shouting at you all the time, or insisting that you get a job.
You notice that people who do have a conscience feel guilty when they harangue someone they believe to be “depressed” or “troubled.” As a matter of fact, to your further advantage, they often feel obliged to take care of such a person. If, despite your relative poverty, you can manage to get yourself into a sexual relationship with someone, this person--who does not suspect what you are really like--may feel particularly obligated. And since all you want is not to have to work, your financier does not have to be especially rich, just reliably conscience-bound.
I trust that imagining yourself as any of these people feels insane to you, because such people are insane, dangerously so. Insane but real--they even have a label. Many mental health professionals refer to the condition of little or no conscience as “antisocial personality disorder,” a noncorrectable disfigurement of character that is now thought to be present in about four percent of the population--that is to say, one in twenty-five people. This condition of missing conscience is called by other names too, most often “sociopathy,” or the somewhat more familiar term, “psychopathy.” Guiltlessness was in fact the first personality disorder to be recognized by psychiatry, and terms that have been used at times over the past century include “manie sans délire,” “psychopathic inferiority,” “moral insanity,” and “moral imbecility.”
According to the current bible of psychiatric labels, the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders IV of the American Psychiatric Association, the clinical diagnosis of “antisocial personality disorder” should be considered when an individual possesses at least three of the following seven characteristics: (1) failure to conform to social norms; (2) deceitfulness, manipulativeness; (3) impulsivity, failure to plan ahead; (4) irritability, aggressiveness; (5) reckless disregard for the safety of self or others; (6) consistent irresponsibility; (7) lack of remorse after having hurt, mistreated, or stolen from another person. The presence in an individual of any three of these “symptoms,” taken together, is enough to make many psychiatrists suspect the disorder.
Other researchers and clinicians, many of whom think the APA’s definition describes simple “criminality” better than true “psychopathy” or “sociopathy,” point to additional documented characteristics of sociopaths as a group. One of the more frequently observed of these traits is a glib and superficial charm that allows the true sociopath to seduce other people, figuratively or literally--a kind of glow or charisma that, initially, can make the sociopath seem more charming or more interesting than most of the normal people around him. He or she is more spontaneous, or more intense, or somehow more “complex,” or sexier, or more entertaining than everyone else. Sometimes this “sociopathic charisma” is accompanied by a grandiose sense of self-worth that may be compelling at first, but upon closer inspection may seem odd or perhaps laughable. (“Someday the world will realize how special I am,” or “You know that after me, no other lover will do.”)
In addition, sociopaths have a greater than normal need for stimulation, which results in their taking frequent social, physical, financial, or legal risks. Characteristically, they can charm others into attempting dangerous ventures with them, and as a group they are known for their pathological lying and conning, and their parasitic relationships with “friends.” Regardless of how educated or highly placed as adults, they may have a history of early behavior problems, sometimes including drug use or recorded juvenile delinquency, and always including a failure to acknowledge responsibility for any problems that occurred.
And sociopaths are noted especially for their shallowness of emotion, the hollow and transient nature of any affectionate feelings they may claim to have, a certain breathtaking callousness. They have no trace of empathy and no genuine interest in bonding emotionally with a mate. Once the surface charm is scraped off, their marriages are loveless, one-sided, and almost always short-term. If a marriage partner has any value to the sociopath, it is because the partner is viewed as a possession, one that the sociopath may feel angry to lose, but never sad or accountable.
All of these characteristics, along with the “symptoms” listed by the American Psychiatric Association, are the behavioral manifestations of what is for most of us an unfathomable psychological condition, the absence of our essential seventh sense-- conscience.
Crazy, and frightening-- and real, in about four percent of the population.
Product details
- Publisher : Broadway Books; 1st Edition (February 8, 2005)
- Language : English
- Hardcover : 256 pages
- ISBN-10 : 076791581X
- ISBN-13 : 978-0767915816
- Item Weight : 1.08 pounds
- Dimensions : 6.36 x 0.86 x 9.52 inches
- Best Sellers Rank: #347,654 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #602 in Medical Psychology Pathologies
- #839 in Popular Psychology Pathologies
- #884 in Popular Psychology Personality Study
- Customer Reviews:
About the author

Martha Stout, Ph.D., a clinical psychologist in private practice, served on the faculty in psychology in the department of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School for twenty-five years. She is also the author of "The Myth of Sanity" and "The Paranoia Switch." She lives on Cape Ann in Massachusetts.
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Stout writes: “Many mental health professionals refer to the condition of little or no conscience as “antisocial personality disorder,” a [non-correctable] disfigurement of character that is now thought to be present in about 4 percent of the population—that is to say, one in twenty-five people. This condition of missing conscience is called by other names, too, most often “sociopathy,” or the somewhat more familiar term, psychopathy.
the clinical diagnosis of “antisocial personality disorder” should be considered when an individual possesses at least three of … seven [specific] characteristics:
The author goes on to write: “One of the more frequently observed of these traits is a glib and superficial charm that allows the true sociopath to seduce other people, figuratively or literally—a kind of glow or charisma that, initially, can make the sociopath seem more charming or more interesting than most of the normal people around him. … In addition, sociopaths have a greater than normal need for stimulation, which results in their taking frequent social, physical, financial, or legal risks. Characteristically, they can charm others into attempting dangerous ventures with them, and as a group they are known for their pathological lying and conning, and their parasitic relationships with “friends.” Regardless of how educated or highly placed as adults, they may have a history of early behavior problems … including a failure to acknowledge responsibility for any problems that occurred. And sociopaths are noted especially for their shallowness of emotion, the hollow and transient nature of any affectionate feelings they may claim to have, a certain breathtaking callousness… have no trace of empathy and no genuine interest in bonding emotionally with a mate... If a marriage partner has any value to the sociopath, it is because the partner is viewed as a possession, one that the sociopath may feel angry to lose, but never sad or accountable… is not that this group fails to grasp the difference between good and bad; it is that the distinction fails to limit their behavior…The high incidence of sociopathy in human society has a profound effect on the rest of …Sociopathy stands alone as a “disease” that causes no disease for the person who has it, no subjective discomfort. Sociopaths are often quite satisfied with themselves and with their lives, and perhaps for this very reason there is no effective “treatment.””
Stout writes: “at the beginning of the twentieth century, conscience itself underwent a fundamental transformation, due to … Sigmund Freud [who] proposed that in the normal course of development, young children’s minds acquired an internalized authority figure, called a superego, that would in time replace the actual external authority … With his writings on the superego, Freud imparted to an awakening scientific world that our usual respect for law and order was not simply imposed on us from the outside. We obey the rules, we honor the virtues, primarily from an internal need that begins in infancy and early childhood to preserve and remain embraced by our families and the larger human society in which we live.”
Stout writes: “even a normal person’s conscience does not operate on the same level all of the time. One of the simplest reasons for this changeability is the fundamental circumstances of living inside a fallible, need-driven human body. When our bodies are exhausted, sick, or injured, all of our emotional functions, including conscience, can be temporarily compromised…Very simply, we are programmed to obey authority even against our own consciences.”
Of one experiment, Stout writes: “The aim of the experiment was to discover how long the subjects (the teachers in this experiment) would take to disobey Milgram’s authority when presented with a clear moral imperative. How much electric shock would they administer to a pleading, screaming stranger merely because an authority figure told them to do so? …Thirty-four of Milgram’s original forty subjects continue to shock the learner, whom they believe to be strapped to a chair, even after he asks to be released from the experiment. In fact …62.5 percent of the total group—never disobey the experimenter at any point …” Moreover, the author writes: “Studies … were repeated … and soon involved more than a thousand subjects of both genders and from many walks of life. The results remained essentially the same.” Going on Stout writes: “Because its essence is killing, war is the ultimate contest between conscience and authority. Our seventh sense demands that we not take life, and when authority overrules conscience and a soldier is induced to kill in combat, he is very likely to suffer post-traumatic stress disorder [PTSD] immediately and for the remainder of his life, along with the depression, divorces, addictions, ulcers, and heart disease that attend traumatic memory…research involving Vietnam veterans has shown that soldiers who are not placed in situations where they are forced to kill are no more likely to develop the symptoms of PTSD than are those who spend their entire enlistment at home.”
About sociopaths in various populations, Stout writes: “According to Robert Hare [et al.] who test convicts, on average only about 20 percent of prison inmates in the United States are sociopaths. Hare and others are careful to note that this 20 percent of the prison population accounts for more than 50 percent of the “most serious crimes” (extortion, armed robbery, kidnapping, murder) and crimes against the state (treason, espionage, terrorism), but the actual sociopathic head count in prisons, for both men and women, is only about two in ten. … The result is that most sociopaths … are out here in the world with you and me.” She goes on to warn: “We try … to judge a person’s character by his or her appearance, but this book-by-its-cover strategy is ineffective in nearly all cases. … Sociopaths, people with no intervening sense of obligation based in attachments to others, typically devote their lives to interpersonal games, to “winning,” to domination for the sake of domination.”
About the odds, Stout writes: “When it comes to trusting other people, we all make mistakes…The bad news is that there truly are individuals who have no conscience, and these individuals are not to be trusted at all. Perhaps an average of four people in a random group of one hundred are limited in this way...the very good news—is that at least ninety-six people out of a hundred are bound by the constraints of conscience, and can therefore be counted on to behave according to a reasonably high baseline of decency and responsibility...”
On who to trust, Stout writes: “Albert Einstein once said, “The world is a dangerous place to live, not because of the people who are evil, but because of the people who don’t do anything about it.” … Deciding whether or not someone is trustworthy usually requires knowing that person well for a long time, and in the case of identifying a sociopath, much better and longer than one would have allowed …” And goes on to write: “The most reliable sign, the most universal behavior of unscrupulous people is not directed, as one might imagine, at our fearfulness. It is, perversely, an appeal to our sympathy… Perhaps the most easily recognized example is the battered wife whose sociopathic husband beats her routinely and then sits at the kitchen table, head in his hands, moaning that he cannot control himself and that he is a poor wretch whom she must find it in her heart to forgive … When deciding whom to trust, bear in mind that the combination of consistently bad or egregiously inadequate behavior with frequent plays for your pity is as close to a warning mark…as you will ever be given.”
On the topic of what makes individuals be what they are, the author writes: “Like so many human characteristics, both physical and psychological, the primary question is that of nature versus nurture. Is the characteristic born in the blood, or is it created by the environment? For most complex psychological features, the answer is, very probably, both. In other words, a predisposition for the characteristic is present at conception, but the environment regulates how it is expressed.” And as to one particular study, Stout writes: “The Texas Adoption Project reports that, where scores on the Pd scale are concerned, individuals resemble their birth mothers, whom they have never met, significantly more than they do the adoptive parents who raised them. From this research, a heritability estimate of 54 percent can be derived, and interestingly, this “Psychopathic Deviate” figure is consistent with the heritability estimates—35 to 50 percent—generally found in studies of other, more neutral personality characteristics (extraversion, empathy, and so forth)… Overall in these studies, identical twins are twice or more as likely to have similar scores on the Pd scale as are fraternal twins, strongly suggesting at least some genetic role in the “Psychopathic Deviate” pattern… They are, in descending order of theoretical heritability: “fails to conform to social norms,” “aggressive,” “reckless,” “impulsive,” “fails to honor financial obligations,” “inconsistent work,” “never monogamous,” and “lacks remorse.” Still other studies have found that sociopaths have low “agreeableness,” low “conscientiousness,” and low “harm avoidance,” all of which personality dimensions have a genetic component.”
The author writes: “In terms of reaction time and evoked potentials in the cortex, sociopathic subjects in these experiments respond to emotionally charged words no differently from neutral words. In sociopaths, the evoked potential for sob or kiss is no larger than the one for sat or list, very much as if emotional words were no more meaningful, or deeply coded by their brains, than any other words... Sociopathy is the inability to process emotional experience, including love and caring, except when such experience can be calculated as a coldly intellectual task.”
The author writes: “In addition to genetic factors, there are environmental variables that affect the condition of being without conscience … in the United States in the ultrahygienic orphanages of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, infants who are not touched at all, for purposes of antiseptic perfection, are prone to die quite literally…nearly all of the untouched babies in these orphanages perished…In 1989, when the Communist regime in Romania fell, horrifying photographs were released to the rest of the world of the hundreds of orphanages that had been kept secret by the psychopathic dictator Nicolae Ceauşescu. Under his regime, Romania was a nation of nearly unsurvivable poverty, and yet Ceauşescu had prohibited both abortion and birth control. Hundreds of thousands of starving children resulted, and nearly 100,000 orphaned children ended up in state-run institutions... except for being given enough food to keep most of them alive, the babies and children were ignored… Well-meaning Western Europeans and North Americans brought Romanian babies into their homes and lovingly tried to nurse them to health. And then a couple in Paris would discover that their beautiful ten-month-old Romanian daughter was inconsolable, and only screamed louder when they tried to hold her…Western Europe and North America had imported an attachment disorder nightmare created by a sadistic Romanian sociopath...”
Delving deeper, Stout writes: “Unlike sociopaths, …a narcissist looks for help, one of the underlying issues is usually that, unbeknownst to him, he is alienating his relationships on account of his lack of empathy with others, and is feeling confused, abandoned, and lonely. He misses the people he loves, and is ill-equipped to get them back. Sociopaths, in contrast, do not care about other people, and so do not miss them when they are alienated or gone…Heritability studies tell us that for sociopathy in particular, biology is half of the story at most. In addition to genetic factors, there are environmental variables that affect the condition …”
As to offering a reason why sociopaths exist in a society, the author writes: “people who have no conscience make excellent, unambivalent warriors. And nearly all societies—Buddhist, Shinto, Christian, or purely capitalist—make war …To some extent, we can think of sociopaths as being shaped and maintained by society because nations so often require cold-blooded killers, from anonymous foot soldiers to the conquerors who have made, and continue to make, human history. Sociopaths are fearless and superior warriors, snipers, undercover assassins, special operatives, vigilantes, and hand-to-hand specialists, because they experience no horror while killing (or while ordering killing) and no guilt after the deed is done.
Stout writes: “Since Darwin published The Origin of Species, in 1859, much of scientific theorizing has considered that all living things, including human beings, have evolved according to the law of natural selection. According to this law, known more popularly as “the law of the jungle,” any characteristic that enhances survival and reproduction (and therefore the continuance of its own genetic components) will tend to remain in the population. If a physical trait or a behavioral tendency bestows this felicitous survival advantage on individuals for countless generations, in many situations and across habitats, it may, incrementally and in the course of time immemorial, become part of the standard genetic blueprint for the species. … When it comes to surviving, clearly there is a certain conflict of interest between the individual and the herd/ community/ flock, and arguments concerning the origin of what evolutionary psychologists call “altruistic behaviors” have generally centered around the unit of selection in evolution. Does natural selection “choose” only individuals for survival, or can selection perhaps operate at the level of groups, thus favoring the survival of whole populations over others? … But if the unit of selection is the group as a whole, then a certain amount of altruism can be explained. Quite simply, a group composed of individuals who cooperate and take care of one another is much more likely to survive as a group than a collective of individuals who can only compete with or ignore one another. In terms of survival, the successful group will be the one that is operating to some extent as an entity, rather than the group in which every single individual is looking out for number one, to the exclusion of everyone else. … Group selection, and all it implies about our true nature, has been an extremely controversial idea among evolutionists, reflecting the fact that the theory of evolution itself is still evolving…Kin selection means that pieces of the individual’s genetic blueprint (the only biological aspect of the individual that stands a chance of being “immortal,” so to speak) will fare better if the individual guards not only his own survival and reproduction odds but also those of other individuals who share some of his genetic makeup. If he behaves generously and protectively toward his blood relatives, their enhanced survival and reproduction rate will increase the numbers of his own genes in future generations, since his relatives and he have many genes in common…For example, if I share my fruit [my relatives], my individual life may be shortened, but on average, the odds that my genes will continue in the population have actually been multiplied, because my genes are shared in part by each of my cousins. And the genes that I have donated to the gene pool by lengthening the lives of my cousins may well include the genes that cause me to feel emotional attachments.”
Moreover, Stout writes: “Furthermore, kin selection explains why we nurture and protect our children despite the fact that doing so lessens our own energies and our individual survival resources. From this vantage point, conscience is the genetically programmed mechanism that makes sure we do not ignore the extra little packages of our genetic material that just happen to be walking around on feet other than ours.” And goes on to write: “As for our genetically designed sense of conscience toward the aforementioned distant relatives and strangers—gene-centered evolutionists propose that their version of natural selection would have favored genes that resulted in “reciprocal altruism,” or non-zero-sum (win-win) behaviors such as the division of labor, friend seeking, cooperation, and the avoidance of conflict. These behaviors would be mediated by emotions such as gratitude, compassion, and conscience, and so emotions such as these would have had an advantage where the natural selection of genes was concerned.”
Stout writes: “Naturalist Gould reexamines the evidence from paleontology and maintains that natural selection operates on multiple levels, from the gene to the individual to the group, and even—or especially—the species. …the absence of conscience may sometimes be even more adaptive for survival. In this way, nature would constantly be fostering conscience in most of us, while, at a different level, continually supporting a smaller percentage of individuals who thrive without the neurobiological underpinnings of emotional attachment and conscience.”
As to one generalized difference between men and women, Stout writes: “Gilligan believed that Kohlberg had derived only an “ethic of justice” because he had interviewed only males, and that if women were interviewed, a very different system of ideals would emerge. She interviewed women who were making momentous decisions in their lives and discovered that these women were thinking about the caring thing to do, rather than pondering “the rules.” Women, decided Gilligan, reasoned morally according to an “ethic of care,” rather than a male “ethic of justice.” … Thanks to Carol Gilligan, psychologists and educators now understand that moral reasoning has more than one dimension and that people develop morally in much more complex ways than we first believed.”
Stout writes: “And as of the time I write these words, virtually identical Y chromosomes are carried by almost 8 percent of the men living in the region of the former Mongol Empire, 16 million of them. Geneticists believe this means that some 16 million people living in the twenty-first century are stamped with Genghis Khan’s thirteenth-century legacy of genocide and rape. Genghis Khan was exceptional among sociopathic tyrants in that he did not die a violent or an ignominious death. Instead, he fell off a horse during a hunt, in 1227 … And sociopathy is almost always a solo routine, another strategy that may sometimes work temporarily but not often in the long run. For the obvious reason of unremitting self-interest, people without conscience make lousy team players. … a person without conscience, even a smart one, tends to be a shortsighted and surprisingly naïve individual who eventually expires of boredom, financial ruin, or a bullet.”
The author provides “Thirteen Rules for Dealing with Sociopaths in Everyday Life”
Author: Dr. Martha Stout, Ph.D.
Rating: 4 stars
My Review
I said I might review a non-fiction tome next and so I have.
The Sociopath Next Door was recommended to me by several folks I know. I grew intrigued as they told me about it, partially because I believe myself to be unusually aware of sociopaths as a group (or a mental illness, if you prefer) and partially because I was interested in what a true expert would have to say about them. Generally speaking, I was very impressed and mostly pretty entertained.
Let me say before I begin that Dr. Stout is a very highly credentialed and respected psychologist working and instructing at the Department of Psychiatry at the Harvard Medical School. The lady knows her stuff...
What I Liked
This is the true story of a psychologist who has become personally frustrated by the damage done to others by one specific group of mentally ill people: sociopaths.
To begin, let's clear up what a sociopath is by definition. Lots of people get mental illnesses all mixed up due to popular portrayals or mislabeling by the ill-informed. For example, people use the term "schizophrenic" when they actually mean "multiple personality disorder". (Not similar at all!) The same is often true of sociopathy. They assume it is the same as psychotic, and refers to those individuals so evil that they don't understand right and wrong and are the most extreme of killers...also not always true.
What the author points out are two very important things:
1.) Sociopathy falls under personality disorders and it boils down to one distinct characteristic - the person has no conscience. He/She knows right from wrong but feels no sense of remorse whatsoever from doing harm to others, and in fact, may derive his/her only real pleasure from harming others; and
2.) Sociopaths are much more common than people think.
She goes on, using real-life examples (confidential, of course) from her practice that will chill you to the bone. No, not all sociopaths are serial killers, but ALL do harm, few are caught, and most are basically incurable.
You can tell as she goes on that this is a manifesto of sorts for her, a "What do we do about this problem?" kind of battle cry. She even addresses the issue of what causes sociopathy, exploring genetic, evolutionary and cultural factors in her attempt to find purchase on the slippery slope for a "cure" to a condition that is both harmful and intractable.
And having concluded that, for now at least, we don't have an easy cure, she resigned herself to giving us non-sociopaths the best "warning signs" she can for how to detect and avoid "the relentless".
So what do I think? The book is very good. I've read a lot of these science crossover books that attempt to teach non-science buffs about scientific topics, but in an entertaining enough fashion to keep the audience interested. I think she does this well without sensationalizing her topic. To the contrary, rather than focusing on the well-known serial killers, she's focused on the more subtle, camouflaged sociopath that may be damaging you right at this very minute, hence the title.
The other reason this book is good is because it is TRUE and we do need to be warned. I have known several sociopaths in my life and have gotten so mixed up by them at times that though I knew something was wrong in my gut, I started to think I was crazy! (This is known as Gaslighting after the old movie.)
These individuals are dangerous because they are master manipulators and they DO NOT HAVE A CONSCIENCE. It's true and it's chilling. No matter what they say, how they act, or what you'd like to believe, a sociopath does NOT care about you or anyone else. What's important to understand, Dr. Stout points out, is that this is true even if he/she is a family member or close friend. She tells an important story using just such an example. It hurts when the person realizes it, but the best thing the doctor can recommend is that her patient stay the heck away from him/her!
If you don't believe me then you MUST read this book so you can learn for yourself. If you do believe me then you've probably recognized a sociopath in your life along the way whether you knew how to label him/her or not.
If you are compassionate, you will feel for this person without the capacity to love and connect with others. But if you are smart you will stay the heck away (repeated for emphasis) because they can't be cured, they won't change, and you don't want to be one of their victims.
I recommend this book highly because of her "warning signs" list and details that will teach you how to spot these individuals. She nails the most important one, the "Pity Play," dead freaking CENTER! Because I've known several of these people, I learned to spot and combat the Pity Play, but man, is it hard to ignore.
If you would like a sensational version of the sociopath and the Pity Play, take Jody Arias. Now, in choosing her for this example I AM playing armchair psychologist. Perhaps a real doc would say I was wrong, but based on what I've seen, if it looks like a duck and quacks like a duck...well, you know. I am going out on a limb identifying her as a sociopath, but it seemed too likely an example to ignore.
Jody Arias is all about the Pity Play. She could have pled temporary insanity, but instead she chose to say that her victim had been mistreating her and deserved to be stabbed a bunch of times and shot in the face while in the shower.
And now that she's been convicted, she's done media interviews saying she feels betrayed by the jury, even pulling out her "Survivor" t-shirt in defiance of all seemingly normal behavior. She wants us to pity her. What!?!?!
In this case the Pity Play seems eye-poppingly bizarre, but she's no doubt been doing this to get out of trouble her whole life. Note the way her own parents don't really defend her. That's because they know...shhhhhh...they know something is wrong with Jody.
And that is the shame of it. That some of us are so scared, so greedy (that's how con men get you, many of whom are sociopaths), or so gullible that we are not only taken in, but if we figure it out we keep it secret, allowing the individual to move on to harm others.
(I kid you not, in Florida they had to write it into law that no one could fire a teacher or administrator for sexual misconduct and then keep it confidential so that the person might be hired in other districts. THAT'S how much we're afraid to confront misconduct and abuse head-on. We have to force people to report it.)
This book will discourage hiding behavior as well. Only by standing up to the behavior of these individuals early can we hope to mitigate their swath of destruction.
What Was Just Ok
The only drawback to the book? She repeats herself rather dramatically at times, particularly about the fact that sociopaths have no conscience. i think this is because she's afraid you won't believe her enough unless she does, that you won't take precautions. But if you believe her or already know she's right, it will seem like overmuch on the convincing side.
Also the science may get dry at times, particularly in the end when she drags a bit through evolutionary theory and the purpose of having a conscience. I love this kind of thing personally due to my Eco/Evo past, but it feels like her personal, more academic musings and may not be for everyone.
You could get what you needed from this book by reading the beginning in detaIl, the example stories in detail, and the warning signs in detail. The rest is the science if you want to contemplate larger implications...
Summary
If you don't know what a sociopath is or how to spot one, get this book! If you wanna be creeped out by real life creepiness, get this book. If you already know about sociopaths but want the science or the "warning signs" list, get this book. It's a fast, crazy read, if I may make light of something so dark.
Top reviews from other countries
I couldn't understand the purpose or reason for the repeated attacks, on my property by the person, as we had never had any confrontation or dispute . After reading "The Sociopath Next Door", it became clear these people have no conscience, it is a game they are winning. Disrupting and causing chaos in normal people's lives feeds their ego and boosts their self esteem. They also like to make out you are the crazy one imagining everything. Of course normal people with a conscience can't believe anyone could behave in such a wicked way and do such things. My personal research has shown a problem with retired male pensioners with no hobbies or friends.
For me, this book just wasn't what I was hoping for, or expecting. If you are looking for a more intelligently written, examined book about this particular branch of psychology, I am guessing that there are other books out there which would be far better.
I recommend it to many of my patients who have a psychopath in their lives.
Excellent, great case studies, could not put it down. I had a major problem with a psychopath at work this really helped me to understand that even therapists can be psychopaths.












