Because I Just Can't Read Enough About Sociopaths

    Reading The Psychopath Test whetted my appetite for another book on the same topic, so I’ve picked up The Science of Evil: On Empathy and the Origins of Cruelty, by Simon Baron-Cohen (Borat’s cousin!).  Since Baron-Cohen is a professor of developmental psychopathology at Cambridge, this book is more academic and serious than Ronson’s.  Nevertheless, I find it to be equally engrossing.  What do psychopaths, borderline personalities, narcissists and autistics have in common?  A lack of empathy.  What causes it, and why is this condition dangerous in some types but not in others?  Baron-Cohen discusses the neurological basis of what people call “evil.”  The appendix has some handy tools, like how to gauge your, or your child’s, EQ (empathy quotient), and how to spot narcissists and borderline personalities.

After reading the chilling profiles of psychopaths and borderline personalities in these books, I’ve been wondering if I’ve ever met any myself.  Sure, I’ve known plenty of narcissists (even dated one for awhile) and garden variety crazy people, but what about true sociopaths?  (Like Ronson I am using the term interchangeably with psychopaths.)  If psychopaths make up about 1% of the general population, then it seems likely I would’ve encountered one before, whether I knew it or not.  Then again, psychopaths are overrepresented in prisons, and (according to Jon Ronson) in the halls of power - not exactly my peer groups.  So psychopaths may be under-represented in my humble, middle-class environment.  (One hopes.)  Still, I racked my brains and couldn’t think of any people I’ve met who were likely sociopaths, which made me feel relieved and grateful.