The Wisdom of Psychopaths. By: Dr.Kevin Dutton

Time spent reading: 9 Hours

The Title was one of the main reasons why I picked up this book to read. I had just finished reading a good fictional book and thought something in this genre is right for the next read. I have never given psychopaths much thought, I have never wondered how their minds work. The second part of the title piqued my interest “What saints, spies and serial killers can teach about success”. This sealed the deal for me, and I immediately resolved to read the book.

Dr.Kevin has said that he wrote The Wisdom of Psychopaths "as an attempt to figure out his dad"; his father worked on a market stall and was "ruthless, fearless and also extremely charming"

Short Summary

Dr. Dutton is a postdoctoral researcher at the Department of Experimental Psychology, University of Oxford, and a member of the Oxford Centre for Emotions and Affective Neuroscience (OCEAN) research group and says, "I divide my time between lab-based research and popular writing." He is a research fellow at the University of Cambridge, and Visiting Professor for the Public Engagement with Psychological Science at the University of Essex. He gained his Ph.D. from the University of Essex in 2000 with the thesis title "Minorities as symbols of uniqueness: a break from the norm".

This book is a culmination of his lab-based research, through this book he has presented us the research and findings of a bunch of egg heads and broken it down from research papers and stats to simple text which is easy to follow. Through the book he presents to us how the mind of a Psychopath works and how a tiny bit of it exists in all of us. He shows us through experiments and examples, how professionals in high pressure and critical jobs benefit from thinking and acting like Psychopath. He shows us through example what Surgeons, CEO’s and special units of military have in common with cold blooded murders and other criminals.

Some accounts of his visits to high security prisons to meet with the most vicious criminals will send shivers down your spine, yet you will be relieved when you find the same mannerism and lack of emotions in you neurosurgeon

My Review

Dr. Kevin is a learned man, they don’t give away P.H.D’s willy-nilly just yet. What is also is true that he knows his subject well enough to breaks down complex research matter and explain them so that the common man can understand it. The writing is simple enough but since it is the book about one of the sciences, it is littered with a lot of technical terms and theories that warrant a turn of page backwards to see what exactly was written. I also found myself googling the names and experiments of various other scientists. The timeline of 9 hours mentioned hence should be taken with a pinch of salt.

Dr. Kevin has very well explained all the positives from his stories and interviews with some of the most dangerous people in America and Europe. He himself got a good of living with a psychopath he reckoned, in his personal life thanks to his father, a smooth talking, no fearing salesman, who would charm his way into your bank account or sell refrigerators to eskimos.

The book is broken down 7 chapters, it is filled with a lot of wisdom. Through this book we can understand how we can learn from Psychopaths and incorporate some of their characteristics in our personalities with good effect. There are Psychopathic tendencies in all of but at different degrees, all of us have the capacity to murder or commit a crime but the REAL Psychopath s have these qualities to an extreme degree. Let me leave bring to your notice a few key traits associated with psychopath y. as I read through them I am sure you can picture in front of you someone who has many of these traits . Fearlessness, Reduced Empathy, Antisocial Behavior, Impulsiveness, Superficial Claim, Grandiose self-worth, Pathological lying, Cunning / manipulative, Lack of remorse, Behavior problem in early life, Sexual Promiscuity, Short Marriages.

Its is universally acceptable that having some of these traits like not having fear, not caring enough of what people think are considered to be good in general, society needs people who have these psychopathic tendency in some degrees…you need your firefighters, police men and military personal for example to be fearless in their duty, you want your CEO’s and scientist to not care too much about what other people think of them. For society to function we need a populous with the balance of the above-mentioned trait. We all fear the future, we spend time thinking about the past and what we have done wrong, we also care of what people think of us, willingly applying some of these psychopathic tendencies to our daily life will make us happier and more productive. Throughout the book Dr. Kevin shares great insight on how to spot a Psychopath, how to quickly recognize danger from them and how to stay alert. He also gives great examples of how to develop and utilize these tendencies to your advantage in daily life and at your workplace.

Psychology though a clinical subject, has been presented very well by Dr.Kevin. The book is not a dry read in fact it is filled with anecdotes from various interviews and situations the author faces during the course of writing this book. I can vouch for the usefulness of this book through my personal experience. During the time I was reading this book, I had a very tough situation at my workplace. There had been a new hiring of a girl to work directly under supervision…though I did not hire her. After joining work just barely 10 days into the job, I was ordered to fire her. I did not find any faults with her work, there were no complaints from other colleagues. The management which had made the decision to hire her then gave me the orders to fire her. There was a cause of worry in her conduct but nothing so alarming as to be fired. Through no fault of my own I was given the unappetizing work. I reminded myself about the few pages that had read in the morning and steadied my nerves to get on with the job in hand. I kept emotions out of the whole ordeal, stuck to my point, reminded myself to be steady, unrelenting and treat the case like a surgeon removing an appendix clinically, with method precision and a lack of attachment.