"The Sociopath Next Door" by Martha Stout

[whataboutbob]

The Sociopath Next Door. Martha identifies what George Simon called "covert aggression" and the more suble forms of abuse with great case studies.

[Osmot]

... I can really recommend this book. Martha Stout has been working with Cluster B personality types and their abused victims for years, so the book has a lot of very good case studies.

A lot of books on antisocial abuse are very provocative or work with vocabulary that really tells you the authors have never experienced this first hand.

If you want to delve into the different forms of antisocial abuse, Martha Stouts book is perfect.

Its main point, which really helped me a lot, is arguing that people who exhibit antisocial traits simply lack conscience. It is neurologically based. They do know right from wrong, they just don`t care.

Although this book had some major triggers for me, its message really is compelling. It really helps letting go - because the reader really do gets the point that you just can`t talk conscience into people who don`t have any TO BEGIN WITH ...

[Latchkey]

The Sociopath Next Door
by Martha Stout


Paperback: 256 pages
Publisher: Harmony; 1 edition (March 14, 2006)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0767915828
ISBN-13: 978-0767915823


Summary from Amazon:
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.

Review:

I read this book after whataboutbob endorsed it in a few posts. It was so good. The first book to give you the huge red flag for sociopathy. Reading this book was a major light bulb moment for me. It was popular a  few years back and my friends that I have mentioned it to say they have heard of it--  so others - outside of the forum-- may know it as well and it is easy to read. Another one to offer for your teens or kids read as they go off into the world. Also recommend after reading this to read The Sociopath at the Breakfast Table: Recognizing and Dealing With Antisocial and Manipulative People


-Latchkey

[whataboutbob]

Latchkey: I've read about ten of the best books on this issue and Stout's book still rests in my mind as the best. Her comments about abrasive and covetous psychopaths has been very enlightening for me. Remember Hannibal Lector's comments about Buffalo Bill? Hannibal said that Buffalo Bill "covets". Martha also said that the covetous sociopath feels that life has dealt them a bad deal and therefore they will pick successful targets to destroy. Life deals the psychopaths a bad deal because of their horrific bad karma. They think that life happens to them and are absolutely clueless about the natural consequences of their behaviors. Committing unforgivable behaviors and destroying people's lives just doesn't produce any good outcomes. The covetous sociopaths get the reinforcement that life is a bad deal because nothing divine or good comes their way after they commit another mortal sin. Martha's work is good information.

[HoldingStrong]

Wow sounds just like my PDH! He always played the victim, how he had a hard life, everyone had help & no one wanted to help him etc. His favorite saying ' if I didn't have bad luck, I would have no luck at all'! Would yell at GOD to 'stop picking on him' & the no conscience, yup, totally him! Putting it on my Xmas list!

[whataboutbob]

Holding Strong: Stout says, and this has been the most important thing I've learned in this life, that she interviewed a psychopath when she was in graduate school and she asked him "what is the most important thing to you"? The psychopath (all of the PD thing is lack of executive functioning and the defense mechanisms to cover up that proverbial Homer Simpson dohs that they do :-). The psychopath in the prison interview said "the most important thing to me is pity". The victim stance give the wolves in sheep's clothing permission to continue to the get a sick buzz from abusing others. We tolerate the suffering (real and manufactured) patiently. The PDs, psychopathic deviants, exploit our compassion and empathy.

The down side is that real victims get ignored when we become callous to the proverbial boy crying wolf in the village.

We are on the edge of what I call The Rise of the Cluster Clan. With the NPDs on TV and young folks idolizing the narcissists and psychopaths (like Dexter and Walter White) it is going to get worse. In China they call the little males "little emperors". One male child at the expense of respect for the female.

We are attracted to these undeveloped human beings to learn a lesson but not to idolize them. Now, in my opinion, it is our objective to get involved with another "non". A "non" other. :-) to accomplish a purpose or mission. The mission love and be loved. Escape freely HoldingStrong.

[HoldingStrong]

Thanks whataboutbob! I only realized the 'playing the victim' was a BIG part of the illness once I discovered PDs, the last year we were together! It was one of the things that REALLY pissed me off! He had been doing this throughout our relationship! It got worse & worse in the end. I often told him that one day he would actually be hurt, actually have a heart attack etc & NO ONE would believe him because he was ALWAYS crying wolf!

He was always 'dying' saying he KNEW there was something really wrong with him. If it wasn't cancer, it was his heart or his crippling arthritis. Yup, he's been at death's door for at least 20 yrs. . . Funny thing is, the doctors never find anything wrong with him  Just to let you know, I left his pathetic ass 6 mths ago & don't even miss him!

[Rainstorm]

I'm in the middle of reading this book and have found it very interesting. It's also unsettling to me because it has made me wonder about my own husband. It also explains why they like playing the victim and gaining sympathy.

[tommom]

Fantastic book. I found both my husband and my ex BIL in it. Sent it to my sister, who nearly flipped out when she read it. I mean, two of the people described in it were very, very, very like them. It was an important read for me...VERY important.

I would recommend it to anyone involved in a relationship with anyone with a Cluster B PD.

[snoflinga]

I read this a couple of months ago and really disliked it. No slam on those who did, but I found it to be very "pop psychology." It also disturbed me how the author guides readers to look for sociopaths all around them, using very vague diagnostic criteria (Has the person ever lied? Have they ever tried to get out of a problem?) It also blames crime rates on sociopathy and makes unfounded claims about historical figures being sociopaths. I think that's reckless. Sure, we on this board all know all too well that sociopaths are real and more common than you might think. But urging people to diagnose anyone they disagree with as a sociopath is not cool. It makes it so much harder for those of us who have really been victims of one to get adequate understanding and support if everyone else also thinks they have "survived" a sociopath just because their neighbor glared at them or they got fired or whatever else.

[leapsand bounds]

https://archive.org/stream/TheSociopathNextDoor/The%20Sociopath%20Next%20Door_djvu.txt

This isn't a review, it's the whole book.  It has some typos and the formatting is awful, but it is still easy to read. 

This is a controversial topic.  Experts are not in agreement.  The book is the opinion of one expert -  Dr Martha Stout of Harvard Medical School.

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.

[mdana]

Thanks!  Great book! I didn't know you could download a book like that!

M

[notrightinthehead]

An interesting book. However I find it light on how to recognize the sociopath next door faster and easier. It pushes the no conscience point a lot instead.

[Muggins]

I've read this book twice and the only thing I still remember is her advice that the number one thing you can look out for is the attempt to enlist your pity.

[SaltwareS]

I read this a few years ago and I think it is outdated. Modern research has shed more light on people who are covertly aggressive, less empathetic in certain situations, etc.

"Sociopath" seems like an old-fashioned term and today, we have more specific subcategories to describe these people.

PDs in my opinion stem from attachment issues early in life.