The Wisdom of Psychopaths

What Saints, Spies and Serial Killers Can Teach Us About Success

De: Kevin Dutton

Narrado por: Erik Bergmann

Psychopath. The word conjures up images of serial killers, rapists, suicide bombers, gangsters. But think again: you could probably benefit from being a little more psychopathic yourself.

Psychologist Kevin Dutton has made a speciality of psychopathy, and is on first-name terms with many notorious killers. But unlike those incarcerated psychopaths, and all those depicted in movies and crime fiction, most are not violent, he explains. In fact, says Prof Dutton, they have a lot of good things going for them. Psychopaths are fearless, confident, charismatic and focused—qualities tailor-made for success in today's society.

The Wisdom of Psychopaths is an intellectual rollercoaster ride that combines lightning-hot science with unprecedented access to secret monasteries, Special Forces training camps, and high-security hospitals. In it, you will meet serial killers, war heroes, financiers, movie stars and attorneys—and discover that beneath the hype and popular characterization, psychopaths have something to teach us.

Like the knobs on a mixing deck, psychopathy is graded. And finding the right combination of psychopathic traits, sampled and mixed at carefully calibrated volumes, can put us ahead of the game.

©2012 Kevin Dutton (P)2025 Anchor Canada

Reseñas de la Crítica

• "In many environments, psychopaths can prove more altruistic than the rest of us. Therein lies the tension that drives Dutton's book, and might actually help explain our strange attraction to such rebels without causes. It's also why a grown-up treatment of this incredible set of mental qualities makes for such absorbing reading."—The Daily Beast