Authors: Kevin Dutton and Andy McNab
The Good Psychopath’s Guide to Success: How to Use Your Inner Psychopath to Get the Most Out of Life is a manual that basically teaches people how to dig into their psychopathic traits to improve their lives. The starting point is that nobody is purely good or purely bad, and whilst the authors recognise that psychopaths have a medical issue (e.g., amygdala or the brain’s emotional control tower, which is not there for psychopaths), they also argue that psychopathy is a spectrum, and we can also tend towards psychopathy at least a little bit. So, the authors say, do it, dig into your psychopathy and improve your life.
What particularly stood out to me is the advice to say no to excessive workload and a case study of a woman who never said no, so she ended up with performance issues (due to excessive workload) and eventually had to change her job to get rid of the workload. This is so true with people who always say yes (I am included in these), and who also tend to volunteer to help (me in the past, but not anymore), and these also tend to be women, who, interestingly, according to another book I read (The Psychopath Whisperer), are also less likely to be psychopaths. Then women end up overworked and underperforming because they can’t make it, or they make mistakes, and shambolic situations and job losses happen. So, this advice was good, albeit I stopped volunteering when I took advice from HR scholars and practitioners who consistently argue that work will not love anyone back. That resonated with me very well, and I quite prefer it over psychopathy, but whatever works because indeed, work will not love anyone back, and no appreciation or pay rise can make up for rest time lost.
The authors also argue that there is a difference between psychopaths who kill and those who do not, and whose characteristics can then be constructive, e.g., saying no at work, as already mentioned, but also caring less about things. The authors make a good point about some professions that attract psychopaths, such as lawyers who make victims of crime cry in court with their brutal examination, then go home and have a peaceful dinner with their families, and also – this is not new to me – bankers and politicians who are known as being focused and ruthless. Bob Hare, the father of the psychopathy checklist, wrote a book, Snake in Suits, particularly studying the corporate world, which is on my reading list (I’ll get to it soon).
Psychopaths are also portrayed in this book as aliens who study humans but never understand them, which is how they often report feeling. That includes one of the authors of the book, McNab, who is also a psychopath and who co-authored the book with Dutton, a psychology professor at author, who also suggests that nobody is entirely good or bad, and that being a psychopath is not just about the amygdala but also about other people, social context, predisposition to violence, levels of intelligence, and society at large. This corresponds with the view of the American Psychiatric Association and their definition of antisocial personality disorder, popularly known as sociopathy, so this was interesting. I could not agree more with the importance of social context, and I would add early socialisation and upbringing, i.e., if children are not shown sufficient empathy, then it is reasonable to believe that they can develop psychopathic character traits. I don’t think the authors make a sufficient distinction between psychopathy as a brain issue and sociopathy or antisocial personality disorder as an environmental and social issue, but it is not that kind of book. This is more about popular writing, and it is based on experiences from research to aid the guide.
The book also uses popular culture as examples and thus labels Dexter Morgan and James Bond as good psychopaths. I was particularly interested in Dexter Morgan examples because I am a big fan of that series. Hannibal Lecter, on the other hand, would be an example of a bad killer psychopath.
Overall, this is an interesting book, particularly for those who have never read anything about psychopathy before. The book has a lot of information and also personal stories from Dutton’s research, as well as personal examples from McNab’s life, which makes for compelling reading. Indeed, if you have psychopathic traits, be a good psychopath and remember, work will not love you back!
Thank you for reading!