The Devil Wore J.Crew
Monday, November 5th, 2007There is an excellent reprint of a review in Salon.com of a book published in 2005 by Martha Stout Ph.D. called “The Sociopath Next Door: The Ruthless Versus the Rest of Us.”
I have had at least one co-worker, and a few others, not many, but a few others in my life who have absolutely left me befuddled. Sometimes they made me question myself. Some made me very angry and defensive. Some have charmed my socks off leaving me to realize I’d been had. And maybe you have too. Maybe this is why.
The Devil Wore J. Crew
Salon.com
By Sara Eckel
“A new book says that sociopaths aren’t just Scott Peterson and BTK. They are your neighbors, bosses — even therapists.
Mar 22, 2005 | It sounds like a treatment for a creepy psychological thriller: a world in which one in every 25 people walks through life without a drop of human compassion. On the outside, these creatures appear perfectly normal. They get married, buy homes, hold down jobs. But on the inside, they’re morally bankrupt and completely unrestricted by conscience. They can do absolutely anything — lie, steal, sabotage — without feeling a shred of guilt or remorse.
Harvard psychologist Martha Stout, Ph.D., says this is not science fiction. In her controversial new book, “The Sociopath Next Door: The Ruthless Versus the Rest of Us,” Stout claims that 4 percent of the population are sociopaths who have no capacity to love or empathize. Using composites pooled from her research to illustrate her points, Stout details the havoc sociopaths wreak on unsuspecting individuals — marrying for money, backstabbing co-workers, or simply messing with people for the fun of it. The fact that most of us never suspect our friends and neighbors of sociopathy only makes the transgressions easier to pull off.
Stout, who is also the author of “The Myth of Sanity,” an analysis of forgotten childhood trauma and dissociated mental states, spoke to Salon from her home in Rockport, Mass., about serial killers, bad boyfriends and how to know if your boss is a sociopath or just a jerk.
This idea of ordinary people with no conscience is pretty radical and kind of terrifying. Why are so few of us aware of it?
[read on]
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