The Sociopath Next Door

- Interview Magazineby Martha Stout(8 total)

The ultimate manipulation is to kill someone, and sociopathy is murderous in a psychological sense—there’s a kind of soul-murder going on.

— Martha Stout, interviewmagazine.com

sociopaths Conscience Controlling Others manipulation Wolves in Sheep's Clothing

Most of us have some kind of positive goal in mind when we think of winning. A sociopath thinks in terms of successfully manipulating someone into doing something that he or she would not have done otherwise. That can be a small thing or a tremendous thing, but the point for the sociopath is to win,…

— Martha Stout, interviewmagazine.com

sociopaths Conscience Controlling Others manipulation Wolves in Sheep's Clothing

Well, the perfect victim, from the sociopath’s point of view, is the person who is smart enough and capable enough to do him some good in the world and who is also fun to manipulate. How much fun is it to manipulate someone who is stupid and incompetent? Another good person to manipulate is someone…

— Martha Stout, interviewmagazine.com

sociopaths Conscience Controlling Others manipulation Pathological Lying

Another lynchpin is dishonesty. Lying for the sake of lying. Lying just to see whether you can trick people. And sometimes telling larger lies to get larger effects. The other thing that needs to be stressed is that sociopaths are often extremely charming. They are people who are better than you and…

— Martha Stout, interviewmagazine.com

sociopaths Conscience Controlling Others manipulation Pathological Lying

A typical sociopath never kills anybody and doesn’t look like Charles Manson—they look like you and me and everybody else. You’re not looking for someone who’s recognizably evil or scary-looking, but rather someone who looks normal.

— Martha Stout, interviewmagazine.com

sociopaths Conscience Controlling Others manipulation Behind the Facade

Sociopaths are just like everybody else in that some of them are really brilliant, some of them are really stupid, and most of them are somewhere in between.

— Martha Stout, interviewmagazine.com

sociopaths Conscience Controlling Others manipulation Provoking Others

So if you don’t have a conscience, what is your behavior like? Apparently, if you don’t have a conscience, if you don’t really . . . love, then the only thing that’s left for you is the game—it’s about controlling things.

— Martha Stout, interviewmagazine.com

sociopaths Conscience Controlling Others manipulation Provoking Others

Okay, the central trait of sociopathy is a complete lack of conscience, which is very difficult for most people to get their heads around, because those of us who do have a conscience can’t really imagine what it would be like if we didn’t. Most people think that deep down everybody has a conscience…

— Martha Stout, interviewmagazine.com

sociopaths Conscience

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