Instaread - The Sociopath Next Door: by Martha Stout

Guide to

Martha Stouts

The Sociopath Next Door

by

Instaread

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This is a companion to the original book.

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Table of Contents

Sociopaths comprise an alarming four percent of the population; that is, one in every 25 people is a sociopath. But this mental disorder is not well understood and many people fail to recognize it in others, which makes sociopaths difficult to identify and potentially very dangerous. It is urgent that people understand what a sociopath is and learn to recognize their revealing traits in order to protect themselves against these individuals who otherwise blend into the general population.

Fundamentally, sociopaths have no conscience, no feelings of guilt or remorse, and no sense of shame or responsibility toward others. This is because they do not experience emotions the way the vast majority of humans do. Above all, they cannot love. For sociopaths, relationships are empty and other people are just pawns in a game, a means to achieve an endnot human lives to value or respect. Because they are indifferent to the suffering of others, sociopaths feel free to act however they please, and because they cannot derive meaning from relationships, they live by dominating others and pursuing their own objectives.

Though sociopaths share these traits, they vary significantly in terms of other factors such as intelligence, ambition, and bloodlust. For this reason, they can range from the merely deceptive to backstabbing coworkers and cruel, selfish spouses. Some are rapists and murderers. But there are certain key traits that sociopaths share across the board, and it is important to look for these signs in order to identify the sociopaths among us. These include a tendency to charm others with flattery, to lie frequently and without remorse, and to try to weaken the defenses of others by arousing their pity.

Martha Stout: Martha Stout is a practicing clinical psychologist and a clinical instructor in the Department of Psychiatry at Harvard Medical School. Stout holds a PhD from Stony Brook University and is the author of several nonfiction books on psychology, including The Myth of Sanity and The Paranoia Switch.

Sigismund Sigmund Schlomo Freud (1856-1939): Sigmund Freud was an Austrian physiologist and psychologist. He is most well known as founder of psychoanalysis. Freuds theories concerning the development of adult mental disorders from childhood attachments to parents are discussed (and partially clarified) in the book.

Charles Robert Darwin (1809-1882): Charles Darwin, the great English naturalist, is most well known for his book On the Origin of Species. Stout discusses his theories of natural selection and evolution in relation to human psychological development.

1. Four percent of the general population possesses antisocial personality disorder, what we generally call sociopathy. This means that sociopaths are far more common than we tend to think.
2. The key trait of sociopaths is that they have no conscience. They do not experience guilt, which means they feel unconstrained and free to do whatever they want.
3. Conscience is not about behavior; rather, it exists in the realm of emotion and affect. It has to do with our emotional relationships and attachments to others.
4. It is very difficult for most people to imagine living without a conscience. This puts us in danger, because we dont suspect how sociopaths think or behave in ways that might harm us; instead, we try to find ways to excuse their behavior instead of recognizing it for what it is.
5. Another common trait of sociopaths is a slippery, superficial charm, which allows them to easily seduce their victims and win their trust.
6. Typically, sociopaths are obsessed with domination and winning. This is one of the only sources of interpersonal meaning that they understand.
7. One important way to guard against sociopaths is to question authority. People tend to obey those who look and seem legitimate or respectable, but appearance can be deceiving and sociopaths know how to exploit this to their advantage.
8. Another telltale sign of sociopaths is their play for pity. Instead of caring for other people, they try to make others feel sorry for them in order to get away with their manipulative acts.
9. Sociopathy is partially genetic and partially shaped by an individuals environment. A predisposition for the sociopathy gene exists at conception, but culture shapes how it manifests.
10. The existence of conscience in the vast majority of the human population suggests that altruism plays an important role in the survival of the species, even if selfishness sometimes ensures the survival of the individual. This means that nature supports and perpetuates both tendencies simultaneously.
11. Sociopaths often lead empty, unfulfilling, and unsatisfying lives, despite whatever superficial successes they achieve. It is better to experience life with a conscience, which brings love, meaning, and emotional connection.

Four percent of the general population possesses antisocial personality disorder, what we generally call sociopathy. This means that sociopaths are far more common than we tend to think.

Analysis

People tend to think that sociopaths are rare, exceptional freaks of nature that most of us encounter only on television shows about serial murders. In fact, sociopaths make up a much larger part of the general public. Most people know someone who is a sociopath, even if they dont realize it. In fact, sociopaths are far more common than people who suffer from disorders like anorexia or health problems like colon cancer, which are much more prominently understood and discussed.

The fact that sociopaths are more numerous than people realize makes non-sociopathic people extremely vulnerable to the deceptions and manipulations of this small but significant minority. Most people do not know how to recognize sociopaths; they do not know that sociopaths are capable of passing undetected among us; and because they are not aware of this segment of the population, they often fail to guard themselves against the harm that sociopaths inflict on unsuspecting people. But if sociopaths have existed for as long as the human species as we know itand Stout suggests that people as far back as Genghis Khan were probably sociopathshow is it that we know so little about them and are so bad at recognizing these individuals?

The suggestion that much of our thinking about sociopaths is shaped by movie and television depictions also signals how much our understanding about abnormal psychology and deviant behavior is shaped by popular culture. No doubt, these depictions are powerful and important in the sense that they alert us to the existence of dangerous humans in our midst. But by largely limiting depictions of sociopaths to the extreme, murderous types, popular culture can also play a problematic role in limiting and distorting our knowledge.