• Complain

Amazon.com. - The sociopath next door: the ruthless versus the rest of us

Here you can read online Amazon.com. - The sociopath next door: the ruthless versus the rest of us full text of the book (entire story) in english for free. Download pdf and epub, get meaning, cover and reviews about this ebook. City: New York, year: 2004;2005, publisher: Broadway Books;Harmony Books LLC, genre: Home and family. Description of the work, (preface) as well as reviews are available. Best literature library LitArk.com created for fans of good reading and offers a wide selection of genres:

Romance novel Science fiction Adventure Detective Science History Home and family Prose Art Politics Computer Non-fiction Religion Business Children Humor

Choose a favorite category and find really read worthwhile books. Enjoy immersion in the world of imagination, feel the emotions of the characters or learn something new for yourself, make an fascinating discovery.

Amazon.com. The sociopath next door: the ruthless versus the rest of us

The sociopath next door: the ruthless versus the rest of us: summary, description and annotation

We offer to read an annotation, description, summary or preface (depends on what the author of the book "The sociopath next door: the ruthless versus the rest of us" wrote himself). If you haven't found the necessary information about the book — write in the comments, we will try to find it.

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. Hes 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 peopleone in twenty-fivehas 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. Theyre 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 knowsomeone we worked for, or were involved with, or voted foris 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.

Amazon.com.: author's other books


Who wrote The sociopath next door: the ruthless versus the rest of us? Find out the surname, the name of the author of the book and a list of all author's works by series.

The sociopath next door: the ruthless versus the rest of us — read online for free the complete book (whole text) full work

Below is the text of the book, divided by pages. System saving the place of the last page read, allows you to conveniently read the book "The sociopath next door: the ruthless versus the rest of us" online for free, without having to search again every time where you left off. Put a bookmark, and you can go to the page where you finished reading at any time.

Light

Font size:

Reset

Interval:

Bookmark:

Make
TheSociopathNextDoor The Sociopath Next Door Martha Stout PhDBroadway - photo 1
The_Sociopath_Next_Door

The Sociopath Next Door

Martha Stout, Ph.D.Broadway BooksOEB2004-11-02Psychology0767920201enCopyright 2005 by Martha Stout

The_Sociopath_Next_Door
contents

ONE

The Seventh Sense

TWO

Ice People: The Sociopaths

THREE

When Normal Conscience Sleeps

FOUR

The Nicest Person in the World

FIVE

Why Conscience Is Partially Blind

SIX

How to Recognize the Remorseless

SEVEN

The Etiology of Guiltlessness:

What Causes Sociopathy?

EIGHT

The Sociopath Next Door

NINE

The Origins of Conscience

TEN

Bernie's Choice: Why Conscience

Is Better

ELEVEN

Groundhog Day

TWELVE

Conscience in Its Purest Form:

Science Votes for Morality

The_Sociopath_Next_Door
For Steve Stout,

my brother and the person I think of first

when I think of strength of character

The_Sociopath_Next_Door
The conscience of a people is their power.

John Dryden

The_Sociopath_Next_Door
acknowledgments

Much of the time, the absorbing task of writing a book feels less like authoring and more like channeling, through your fingers and a keyboard, the lessons and inspiration of countless other people, wise friends known over many years and teachers disguised as students, patients, and colleagues. I wish I could go back in time and thank them all, and I take delight in this chance to thank the people who most helped and supported me during the year I wrote The Sociopath Next Door.

For her commentary and utter indispensability, and her patience, I thank my friend and colleague Carol Kauffman, she of the legendary creativity at solving problems, whose generosity never skipped a beat, even though she was in the middle of writing Pivot Points.

Because none of this would have been possible without her moving commitment to her mission, and for her having been always a deep well of grace, comprehension, and heart in a wide desert, I thank my agent and treasured friend, Susan Lee Cohen.

If I had attempted to design the world's most superb editor, I could not have done nearly so well as Kristine Puopolo at Broadway Books, and I thank her for her intelligence, her precision, and her extraordinary ability to be quietly right, always, without ever being intrusive.

I thank Diane Wemyss for her caring and her organizing, and for having suggested one of the events I write about, and Elizabeth Haymaker for her charm across the miles.

I thank Steve Stout and Darcy Wakefield, for making me believe in love again.

Once againand alwaysI thank my remarkable parents, Eva Deaton Stout and Adrian Phillip Stout, for showing me just how much love and light two people of surpassing conscience can bring to the world.

And with awe, and more love than I could have imagined before I knew her, I would like to thank my daughter, Amanda, my first reader and my most insightful one. She has taught me, among so many other things, that kindness and integrity come with the soul.

The_Sociopath_Next_Door
author's note

The descriptions in The Sociopath Next Door do not identify individuals. At the very heart of psychotherapy is the precept of confidentiality, and as usual I have taken the most exacting measures to preserve the privacy of all real persons. All names are fictitious, and all other recognizable features have been changed. Some individuals who appear in the book willingly gave their consent to be anonymously portrayed. In these cases, no information has been included that might in any way identify them.

The story in the chapter entitled Groundhog Day is fiction. Otherwise, the people, events, and conversations presented here are taken from my twenty-five-year practice of psychology. However, because of my commitment to confidentiality, the people and circumstances portrayed in these pages are composite in nature; that is to say, each case represents a great many individuals whose characteristics and experiences have been adopted conceptually, carefully altered in their specifics, and combined to form an illustrative character. Any resemblance of such a composite character to any actual person is entirely coincidental.

The_Sociopath_Next_Door
INTRODUCTION

imagine

Minds differ still more than faces.

Voltaire

Imagineif you cannot 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 peoplewhether they have a conscience or notfavor 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 blood lust 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, or 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 steamroll over groups who are dependent and voiceless. And all of this you do with the exquisite freedom that results from having no conscience whatsoever.

Next page
Light

Font size:

Reset

Interval:

Bookmark:

Make

Similar books «The sociopath next door: the ruthless versus the rest of us»

Look at similar books to The sociopath next door: the ruthless versus the rest of us. We have selected literature similar in name and meaning in the hope of providing readers with more options to find new, interesting, not yet read works.


Reviews about «The sociopath next door: the ruthless versus the rest of us»

Discussion, reviews of the book The sociopath next door: the ruthless versus the rest of us and just readers' own opinions. Leave your comments, write what you think about the work, its meaning or the main characters. Specify what exactly you liked and what you didn't like, and why you think so.