The devil wore J. Crew

A new book says that sociopaths aren't just Scott Peterson and BTK. They are your neighbors, bosses -- even therapists.

By Sara Eckel

Read more: Life

March 22, 2005 | It sounds like a treatment for a creepy psychological thriller: a world in which one in every 25 people walks through life without a drop of human compassion. On the outside, these creatures appear perfectly normal. They get married, buy homes, hold down jobs. But on the inside, they're morally bankrupt and completely unrestricted by conscience. They can do absolutely anything -- lie, steal, sabotage -- without feeling a shred of guilt or remorse.

Harvard psychologist Martha Stout, Ph.D., says this is not science fiction. In her controversial new book, "The Sociopath Next Door: The Ruthless Versus the Rest of Us," Stout claims that 4 percent of the population are sociopaths who have no capacity to love or empathize. Using composites pooled from her research to illustrate her points, Stout details the havoc sociopaths wreak on unsuspecting individuals -- marrying for money, backstabbing co-workers, or simply messing with people for the fun of it. The fact that most of us never suspect our friends and neighbors of sociopathy only makes the transgressions easier to pull off.

Stout, who is also the author of "The Myth of Sanity," an analysis of forgotten childhood trauma and dissociated mental states, spoke to Salon from her home in Rockport, Mass., about serial killers, bad boyfriends and how to know if your boss is a sociopath or just a jerk.

This idea of ordinary people with no conscience is pretty radical and kind of terrifying. Why are so few of us aware of it?

Because we aren't looking for it. We don't imagine that there are human beings that exist without a conscience. And when we encounter it, we reinterpret it in all kinds of ways. Because who is going to believe you when you say that your psychotherapist lied to you in order to make you end up in restraints? Or that your colleague stole your briefcase to make you look bad? Or that a high-ranking political figure broke his secretary's arm? It's the sort of thing that makes people feel crazy, rather than making them feel like the other person is crazy.

How did you first become aware of these people?

I've been a therapist for trauma survivors for 25 years. I would listen to story after story, and I began to wonder about these people who were hurting my patients. They sounded so different from the rest of humanity. We have this feeling that if one person is capable of doing something, then under certain circumstances we would all be capable of doing the same thing. I no longer think that's true. I think that 4 percent of us can do anything at all without guilt or remorse. And I do mean anything.

How did you arrive at the 4 percent figure? Most of what I've read about conscienceless people puts the rate at about 1 percent.

It is confusing. It's confusing even if you know about psychological studies and how to compare them. Most of the data that we have still has to do with incarcerated felons -- usually men who have been violent. There is very little data on non-incarcerated nonviolent sociopaths, and even less data on women than men. But we are increasingly finding that sociopathy is as common among women as it is among men.

I looked at it all, and given the increasing data about women, I came to the conclusion that it was approximately 4 percent.

Next page: Sociopaths don't love anyone, not even their own children