The Sociopath Next Door by Martha Stout
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

The Solipsistic Gap

[There is a terminological issue in this book’s title that might be disciplinary in origin. The author is a clinical psychologist and considers sociopathy the equivalent to ‘anti-social personality disorder’ as per the definition in the the manual of the American Psychiatric Association. But sociopathy is not a diagnostic category for mental disease in that manual, while psychopathy is. So with due deference to the author’s professionalism, I have chosen to use the term psychopath rather than sociopath in my comments. The modifier ‘narcissistic’ seems redundant in use with either term since it is implied by both. I don’t think my change in terminology significantly affects the authors conclusions... or mine. But apologies to her for any resulting infelicities]

Psychopaths are living solipsisms. Not in the sense that they don’t believe other minds exist - they are acutely aware they do exist, if only as inferior to their own. They are solipsistic because the rest of us believe that psychopaths have minds similar to our own. They don’t. They wear the “Mask of Sanity” which hides a significant absence of human wetware. Specifically, they lack conscience, that component of mind/spirit/humanness which limits the pursuit of one’s own will.

The non-psychopath cannot really conceive of the existence of this mental state. It is almost beyond comprehension to allow the idea of a flesh and blood robot to exist outside of science fiction or horror fantasy. The existence of such an actual entity brings into question the very definition of the category ‘human’. And indeed, there is a species-like gap between psychopaths and the mere neurotics of the world. And psychopaths know how to exploit that gap for fun and profit.

As Martha Stout points out, “your very mind is not the same as theirs.” And psychopaths are right, their. minds are in fact superior in a very specific, if unfortunate, way. They experience no guilt, remorse, regret, or responsibility. But because they look like other human beings, they pass unnoticed. As Stout explains “Since everyone simply assumes that conscience is universal among human beings, hiding the fact that you are conscience-free is nearly effortless.”

Consequently psychopaths are the natural winners in evolutionary competition. They have a “huge and secret advantage, [coupled] with the corresponding handicap of other people.” So just as wealth tends to attract more wealth, psychopaths attract (and indeed create) other psychopaths in their quest for domination at every level of society. In short, the amorality of psychopathology ‘works’ quite well for the afflicted individual.

But unfortunately “Such people are insane, dangerously so,” as Stout says. What she has found through her own practise is that when it comes to other people, “the damage caused by the sociopaths among us is deep and lasting, often tragically lethal, and startlingly common.” It seems likely that only a few of the most unfortunate psychopaths ever get nicked. Even so they may constitute up to a quarter of the prison population.

And unlike your average neurotic who might be helped by drugs or psychotherapy, the psychopath has a “noncorrectable disfigurement of character” They might consume an endless supply of pharmacological and psychiatric resources, but they will remain unchanged. They have no mind to repair. In fact they will attempt to exploit the professional attention directed toward them in the same way that they attempt to exploit the rest of the population.

Psychopaths are what Scott Peck almost forty years ago called the “People of the Lie”. Both his book and Stout’s consist mainly of case studies about the same phenomena. Peck found psychopathology comparatively rarely in his psychiatric practice. But either because he was lucky or because the world has changed for the worse, that rarity is no more. Psychopaths are everywhere. Literally. Stout quotes studies unavailable in Peck’s era which estimate that psychopaths constitute 4% of the population (other research, however, shows two or three times that level). Psychopaths are also multi-talented:

“What differentiates a sociopath who lives off the labors of others from one who occasionally robs convenience stores, or from one who is a contemporary robber baron—or what makes the difference between an ordinary bully and a sociopathic murderer—is nothing more than social status, drive, intellect, blood lust, or simple opportunity.”

The details of Stout’s case studies are frightening and commensurately varied. Obviously they are evidence of an important public health issue. But psychopaths also constitute a philosophical and moral issue which I have tried to summarise in the title to this piece. They are not just qualitatively different, they are truly alien. How should any society deal with those who are constitutionally committed to destroying as much as they can within it? There is no way to close the solipsistic gap. Can this gap somehow be institutionally recognised? If so, it would go a long way toward improving live on earth.

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