The Sociopath Next Door

By: Martha Stout

Narrated by: Shelly Frasier

Length: 7 hrs and 26 mins

Publisher's summary

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 25, 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 25 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.

©2005 Martha Stout (P)2005 Tantor Media, Inc.

Critic reviews

"Stout is a good writer and her exploration of sociopaths can be arresting." (Publishers Weekly)
"A remarkable philosophical examination of the phenomenon of sociopathy and its everyday manifestations....Stout's portraits make a striking impact and readers with unpleasant neighbors or colleagues may find themselves paying close attention to her sociopathic-behavior checklist and suggested coping strategies. Deeply thought-provoking and unexpectedly lyrical." (Kirkus)

Fantastic and horrifying

I really enjoyed this book. So helpful and frightening. My only complaint is the section on attachment style. After just completing a book on that before reading this one, I felt that section put an inordinate amount of blame on attachment when so many people (more than 4% have insecure attachment styles). Otherwise, the book was great. I want to learn more.

Your Life Will Never Be the Same

Why wasn’t this taught to us in elementary school? Why are good people so good they believe others couldn’t dare be good also? This book should be mandatory reading for life survival period. I’m not being dramatic. There’s multiple people I can recall from coworkers to family members that didn’t seem quite “right”. Little did I know they were a sociopath and if I would’ve know that from the start it would’ve save countless hours of my life from thinking they need help or fixing to realizing I should’ve cut them out a long time ago. This book will save your life.

Starts out strong, finishes weak

Shelly Frasier does a wonderful job of reading the book, in almost a deadpan style. I wish I could hear more books narrated in this fashion.

The book itself though was lacking. It starts out strong, giving scenarios and making you think about each story. Toward the final 3 or 4 chapters, it trails off and kind of leaves you wondering what the point to the book was. You do get an understanding of “potential” thought patterns of sociopaths, but much of the latter part of the book is conjecture and “what-if” scenarios. (Reminds me of the one psychology class I took in college.)

Enlightening and enjoyable

The author does a great job of weaving story telling and psychology together as well as finding hopefulness within the darkness. The woman narrating also does an excellent job in reading this!

Narration is annoying.

Please have as a narrator a person with a mature voice. This overly delicate, soft voice vitiates the seriousness of this topic. Garbled pronunciations also deter problem free comprehension.

Content is probably good, but I can’t endure the narration to find out.

Must read!

As a therapist who works with people in toxic relationships, domestic violence relationships or relationships with narcissistic, this book takes it a step further to understand those who do hurtful things we cannot understand.

Enlightening

Wow, did I love this book. It was well written and well narrated. Not really at all technical, per se, it uses real life stories to illustrate the various characteristics of sociopaths. I have read in reviews that the reviewers saw the book as self-help. I would characterize it more as self-defense. Once upon a time, I had a colleague who was a complete scoundrel and who had hurt many people. I commented to one of my closest friends that what I could not understand was that I actually liked this scoundrel. My friend commented that amoral people often have that effect on us. This book helps us to identify those people. The book often reads more like one written by a science reporter than by one written by a social scientist. I am not complaining. On the contrary, it makes the book that much more readable. I think that the book helped me to understand the seemingly unfathomable why of what bad people sometimes do. Why are people sometimes totally insensitive to the feelings and needs of others. Why would one hurt another being for no apparent reason at all... not even for their own apparent personal gain.

Highly recommended.

Gripping! A fascinating/scary look at human nature

I debated on this one but gave it a shot, and I could barely break from it several hours later. This narrator does an excellent job of making this book as enticing as a suspenseful murder mystery. The material is excellent, and well arranged. The author uses sample cases to explain points and a finer understanding of details. She says 1 in 25 people are sociopaths, and then she describes them as they appear to themselves, to us, and their existence and effect on society as both the weirdo on the corner and the ruthless "successful" people in many walks of life that have left large marks on the history of humanity throughout time. Definitely worth the listen.

Uh Oh...

This book may be "chilling" and "informative" to the mainstream reader, but it is neither scientific, nor objective, and should be read for its entertainment value, and not as a course study on the broad field of psychopathy/sociopathy (for which there is no consensus regarding the symptom criteria, no sanctioned diagnosis, no official diagnostic term). While entertaining in a pedestrian way, every time a book like this is published, it produces another crop of arm-chair psychologists--that may be more dangerous than the sociopath, as defined by Stout. Bottomline: It is a chilling subject; the book is informative and entertaining on a very basic level; and clinicians will most likely be unimpressed. Definitely don't bother if you are looking for a constructive way to cope with a loved one with an antisocial personality disorder (sociopath-psychopath).

Reinforces what you have already known

I enjoyed the first half of this book. I found it very helpful in reinforcing what I already knew about sociopaths and learned a few things I wasnt aware of. As an RN for 33 yrs and just being alive for 53 yrs I have dealt with many who fit the bill and now understand them much better and feel better about my reactions to them. I ignored the political opinions - my husband is a General in the Army and I can't say there are any more sociopaths in his profession than my own.