The Sociopath Next Door: Summary and book reviews of The Sociopath Next Door by Martha Stout, plus links to an excerpt from The Sociopath Next Door and a biography of Martha Stout.

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.

BookBrowse

I hope that this book gets the very wide audience it deserves because what it has to say is of relevance to virtually all of us as individuals, and takes on even great significance when one adds in the fact that (according to well-documented and much repeated research, first performed by Stanley Milgram in the 1960s) about two-thirds of the general population will follow the orders of somebody in authority, even if it is to inflict significant harm on others. You only have to look at the harm inflicted by the followers of such renowned sociopaths as Hitler, Stalin and Pol Pot to see where that can lead.  (Reviewed by BookBrowse Review Team).

Full Review (118 words).

Media Reviews

Publishers Weekly Dramatic as these tales are, they are composites, and while Stout is a good writer and her exploration of sociopaths can be arresting, this book occasionally appeals to readers' paranoia, as the book's title and its guidelines for dealing with sociopaths indicate.   Library Journal - Lynne F Maxwell Stout (clinical psychiatry, Harvard Medical Sch.; The Myth of Sanity Divided Consciousness and the Promise of Awareness) offers a novel perspective on sociopaths, i.e., people who have no conscience. Not only does she provide case studies and references to standard literature like Hervey Cleckley's The Mask of Sanity, but she also fashions the book in self-help mode.... Highly recommended for all public libraries and for university libraries with large psychology collections.   Kirkus Reviews ...a remarkable philosophical examination of the phenomenon of sociopathy and its everyday manifestations. Readers eager for a tabloid-ready survey of serial killers, however, will be disappointed. Instead, Stout (Psychiatry/Harvard Medical School) busies herself with exploring the workaday lives and motivations of those garden-variety sociopaths who are content with inflicting petty tyrannies and small miseries.....Deeply thought-provoking and unexpectedly lyrical. Harold S. Kushner, author of When Bad Things Happen to Good People A fascinating, important book about what makes good people good and bad people bad, and how good people can protect themselves from those others.

Recent Reader Reviews

Rated of 5 by Audrey
The Sociopath Next Door
My major problem with this book is that the writer claims that (1 in 25 ) or 4 percent of the population are sociopaths. This simply is not true. The correct stats are as follows: 2 percent of the population displays antisocial behaviour & of...   Read More

Rated of 5 by J. Dunlap
She Lives Next Door to Me
I live next door to a Sociopath. I have know she was one for years so I stayed away from her. I bought this book to be sure I wasn't judging my neighbor wrongly. This book is wonderful! It proved that the Sociopath next door to me is a pure...   Read More

Rated of 5 by Mariah Haley
Good.
Really interesting to read! Enjoyed it and the mini scenarios were helpful :)

Rated of 5 by Jeannie
A must read for all
I, too, was in a marriage for over 25 years with a "sociopath next door." I have a psychology background. Yet I would never think my husband was a sociopath because he wasn't mass killing people like Ted Bundy. He had a very high...   Read More

Rated of 5 by Notloh
Read this book!!!!
This book seems to be written out of a sincere wish to warn the world about the human predators among us. While it is true that some things are repeated that seems to me to be done in order to hammer the point home rather than to fill up...   Read More

Rated of 5 by Lissa
Junk psychology for the uneducated
This is typical junk psychology. The author makes the same point again and again, citing different anecdotes from chapter to chapter. She attempts to elevate the fear factor and reader's interest by dramatizing the term "sociopath." The...   Read More

...34 More Reader Reviews

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