I'm so glad to read the article "The Devil Wore J. Crew" about the sociopaths around us. While it may not seem like something to celebrate, the article clearly describes the problems with my dad. My brother and I have talked for years about why he lies constantly, how he never feels guilty for his cruelty, how much he has trapped our mother. I've often referred to him as having no good in him, as being simply a bad man. Being able to put some kind of clinical label on him, calling him a sociopath, helps I guess, gives me a reason to explain how awful he has been to us, even though never violent. His cruelty has a name, and it proves to me even more why he seems inhuman. Almost every detail in the article, from his surface charm to the point of small children being afraid of him, applies to him.
-- Stephen Potts
While reading Sara Eckel's article, "The Devil Wore J. Crew," on the new book by psychologist Martha Stout, Ph.D., "The Sociopath Next Door: The Ruthless Versus the Rest of Us," I was reminded of other articles and books about people without a conscience or compassion.
In an article in In These Times on Jan. 27, 2003, Kurt Vonnegut talks about "psychopathic personalities" described in "The Mask of Sanity" by Dr. Hervey Cleckley. His descriptions sound very similar to Dr. Stout's sociopaths. What Vonnegut makes abundantly clear is that many of our leaders seem to fit that diagnosis, especially George W. Bush, with his inability to feel anyone's pain and his lifelong history of ridiculing others. In a Rolling Stone article in August 2004, Garry Trudeau remembers Bush: "He could also make you feel extremely uncomfortable ... He was extremely skilled at controlling people and outcomes in that way. Little bits of perfectly placed humiliation." And let's not forget the oft-repeated tales of GWB blowing up frogs. Cruelty to animals as a child is a strong indicator that the child will grow up to be a sociopath, without any compassion for others. We should also remember how Bush mocked Karla Faye Tucker, one of the many people executed in Texas (more than any other governor) during Bush's regime, by sarcastically saying, "Please don't kill me."
I think Dr. Stout's new book has more to offer the nation than she may realize.
-- Kathleen Cunningham
I am appalled by a book claiming that 4 percent of the population are conscienceless, based on an individual estimate by a therapist. "How to Lie With Statistics" captures my main criticism quite neatly: "A psychiatrist reported once that practically everybody is neurotic. Whom has the psychiatrist been observing? It turns out he has reached this edifying conclusion from studying his patients, who are a long, long way from being a sample of the population. If a man were normal, our psychiatrist would never meet him." Stout studies her patients and prison inmates and assumes they are representative?
How can a clinician also claim things like "50 percent ... accounted for by heredity" with a straight face? I don't know any twin studies of sociopathy, let alone the implication that someone who lies to you three times is a sociopath. No wonder she finds so many! God forbid someone should tell her a white lie for purposes of politeness!
As a research psychologist and someone who evidently lives in a very different world, I am offended by the scary, paranoia-inducing nature of this book and this author.
-- Steve Kelner
I'm sure you will be deluged with letters from people like me, who've suffered at the hands of a sociopath. I'll refrain, but would like to add one more observation I suspect the author would agree with:
Sociopaths repel not only small children but animals. The sociopath formerly in my life would complain, genuinely, like a wounded lover, that her cat and dog "were mean to her" but nice to everyone else in the family. She acted as if they had had some complicated falling out (which might have involved the fact that she never fed them). My sweet cat, who swatted and hissed at her a couple of years ago, was similarly "a bad cat." I wish I had listened to my cat.
-- Name withheld by request
I have a small bone to pick with Sara Eckel's article "The Devil Wore J. Crew." The subheading of the article states, "A new book says that sociopaths aren't just Scott Peterson and BTK. They are your neighbors, bosses -- even therapists." I would like to point out that this is a poor juxtaposition because Scott Peterson and the BTK killer were neighbors, were seemingly ordinary folk living among the rest of us. Now, take Theodore Kaczynski -- sure, there's a guy we would all label a "sociopath" if we met him without knowing he was the Unabomber. But Peterson and BTK are obviously cases that illustrate Dr. Stout's thesis. Come on, Salon editors, stay on your toes!
-- Amy Barnes
Next page: Nobody wants to hear someone else's "drunkalogue" or "drugalogue"