The Wisdom of Psychopaths

I know what you're thinking.

"The Wisdom of Psychopaths, how does that make sense?"

Well let me tell you, it makes SO MUCH sense.

So my senior year I took a Social Psycho-Physiology class.

Reading this book made me reminisce about all the things I learned in that class and how grateful I am to have been able to follow along with books like this without being weighed down by the technicality of it all.

The Wisdom of Psychopaths is based on the idea that maybe we are all capable of having psychopathic traits, it's just a matter of context. How we use these traits are a definitive aspect of our personality. Dr. Kevin Dutton write about how many people of power have the same traits as many career criminals. The idea is that their endgame is the same, but how they carry themselves and get to that point is what truly differentiates a psychopathic inmate from a successful CEO.

The way I learned to think of these traits is by imagining it as a switchboard. We have ability to either flip the switch on or off depending on the situation and Dr. Dutton discusses that immensely in this book. He also uses image of a mixing board to describe psychopathic traits. He explains it as psychopathy being turned up louder than other traits, such as empathy. By using this description, he allows us to see psychopathy in a new way, one that shows how these traits can be beneficial in some careers. 

Overall, this was an incredibly interesting read. 

Huge shout out to my friend Tommy for loaning me his copy of The Wisdom of Psychopaths!