2013 Book Review #61: Confessions of a Sociopath

[jethrien]

Title: Confessions of a Sociopath: A Life Spent Hidden in Plain Sight
Author: M.E. Thomas
Genre: Autobiography
Thingummies: 3

Synopsis: A self-described sociopath talks about her life and what it's like to basically not have a moral sense.

Thoughts: While Thomas had a fairly tragic childhood (self-absorbed, neglectful parents with bouts of verbal and physical abuse), this is actually fairly low drama for what it is. Thomas is a fairly functional sociopath--she has a good career, she has friends, she does seem to care about her siblings and their children, she hasn't murdered anyone or really committed any crimes at all. She points out that she's not stupid--she figured out relatively early on that, even if she doesn't feel guilty, generally following social rules means that her life is easier and more pleasant.

So there are no strangled puppies or anything here. (Which is just as well--if the jacket flap had implied strangled puppies, I wouldn't have read the book.) What there is is an in-depth description by an intelligent and self-aware woman of how the mind of a sociopath works. It's pretty interesting stuff, actually--it's a skewed perspective on the world. She's clearly come to value "normal" people, who she calls "empaths", despite finding them as baffling as we find her.

Comments

[ivy03.livejournal.com]

That sounds really interesting. And also, in a way...yeah, it's logical to conclude life is more pleasant if you follow the rules. Makes you wonder if the sociopaths we hear about or only a small minority of the sociopaths out there.

[jethrien.livejournal.com]

That's pretty much her conclusion.

That doesn't mean she doesn't play all kinds of nasty power games at work and in relationships. But there are plenty of non-sociopaths doing that, too. I don't think I'd actually want to cross her path, but her point is that most sociopaths figure out after awhile that egregious breaches mean your toys get taken away.

[ivy03.livejournal.com]

Given that kids don't develop empathy until they're quite old, the "don't do this cause mommy will send you to your room" form of morality is pretty effective before that. Of course that means that if there's a reason to be confident you will not be caught, there's no reason not to do it if you have no other moral sense, but then that's kind of true of everybody. I just finished Smartest Guys in the Room. I don't think everyone that worked there, or at Arthur Anderson, or at the banks, was a sociopath, but the why-not-no one-will-know-everyone's-doing-it impulse works well enough on people who should know better.

[ivy03.livejournal.com]

And I do think Andy Fastow was a sociopath. The comments about him make that seem likely. The problem is, they put him in a position of power then didn't check on anything he was doing.