Excellent Examples and Explanation | The Sociopath Next Door

Great insight for someone dealing with a sociopath... | The Sociopath Next Door | Martha Stout

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	• The Sociopath Next Door Martha Stout Broadway, 2006 - 256 pages average customer review:based on 285 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

I worked for one for several years...RUN!

This books was very cathartic and helped me understand what had happened. Beyond that it was an enjoyable read. I have recommended it to others who also have enjoyed it.

Excellent Examples and Explanation

I bought the audio version which turned out to be one of the things I will consider doing as often as possible in the future. I was able to do things like wash the dishes while I was listening to the audio. It was excellent. It was full of competent, complete information and the examples were excellent as well. If you are in the treatment end or believe you know or even might live with someone who could be a Sociopath, this is a must read (or listen). The information and knowledge I gleened from this audio was invaluable in my personal life.

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Great insight for someone dealing with a sociopath...

and how they can affect others. I highly recommend this book to anyone that is involved with a person who has the classic symptoms of being a sociopath.

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A must read for anyone interested in the nuances of human nature

This was an informative and easy read. An enjoyable read for anyone but especially those who've been touched by or believe they've been touched by a sociopath.....

Informative and useful, but I had a few issues, too.

Psychology has always interested me, but like many people, I can't always get the technical books on the subject and read them - so I find books like this one information-rich reading. It explained a lot to me. I've always heard of "sociopathic" people, and this book helped me clarify it. After reading this book, I'm still no expert in identifying sociopaths, but it has helped me to understand some people whom I've met who have at least shown some of the symptoms she's mentioned.

Her "Thirteen Rules for Dealing With Sociopaths in Everyday Life" are worth the price of the whole book. They can help us to take care of ourselves when we feel uneasy about a particular person. They also save us the burden of having to decide whether or not a person is a genuine sociopath - which most of us aren't not qualified to do. I'll leave the final diagnosis to the experts, and use these "rules" to cope with people I'm not too sure about.

She also mentions Dawkins' book THE SELFISH GENE. Since then Charles Foster has written a book called THE SELFLESS GENE. I have already reviewed this one - and I have a hunch that many of Foster's insights might support what she believes.

However, it irritates me when the author mentions that Asian cultures (she zeroes in on China and Japan) have less sociopathic tendencies. Now understand me - I don't believe the American culture is superior. I respect the East; I am a practicing Christian who has read the Tao Te Ching several times. But I have a hard time trying to blame our "individualism" as a possible cause. First of all, even though individualism can be abused, so can group-oriented cultures. The same dynamic that causes individuals to take advantage of the group can make groups squash the individual. Secondly, I bristled at our country being compared to China - a country with a notorious history for killing baby girls. They practiced infanticide in the past and are aborting them by the droves in the present now that they have ultrasound. Was this caused by sociopathic behavior? I don't know, but they're still doing it. It's been going on for centuries, if not millennia, and it doesn't seem to be stopping. If we want to cut down on sociopathic behavior, let's not turn to cultures where there are 1000 men to every 850 women (give-or-take statistics I've read on the Internet) and where young men can't find brides to marry because they've been aborted or killed as infants. Having said that, I can't say that China is more or less sociopathic than our country. Can we scientifically measure this? Maybe. Maybe not.

However, having said this, the book is has good information, especially for people like me who are interested in the subject and what to know what sociopathic behavior is like. I have not checked all of her statistical sources, but I do appreciate the ease of reading and the presentation of facts that I didn't know about and some that I had a feeling were right, but wasn't quite sure.

Reading it was a worthwhile experience for me.

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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.

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