Outsmarting the Sociopath Next Door

How to Protect Yourself Against a Ruthless Manipulator

By: Martha Stout Ph.D.

Narrated by: Cassandra Campbell

From Dr. Martha Stout’s influential work The Sociopath Next Door, we learned how to identify a sociopath. Now she tells us what we actually can do about it.

“Mandatory reading on how to effectively deal with sociopaths before you get hurt.”—Joe Navarro, former FBI special agent and the author of Dangerous Personalities

While the best way to deal with a sociopath is to avoid him or her entirely, sometimes circumstance doesn't allow for that. What happens when the time comes to defend yourself against your own child, a ruthless ex-spouse, a boss, or another person in power? Using the many emails and letters she has received over the years, Dr. Martha Stout uncovers the psychology behind the sociopath’s methods and provides concrete guidelines to help navigate these dangerous interactions.

Organized around categories such as destructive narcissism, violent sociopaths, sociopathic coworkers, sociopathy in business and government, and the sociopath in your family, Outsmarting the Sociopath Next Door contains detailed explanation and commentary on how best to react to keep the sociopath at bay. Uniting these categories is a discussion of changing psychological theories of personality and sociopathy and the enduring triumph of conscience over those who operate without empathy or concern for others. By understanding the person you’re dealing with, you’ll be able to gain the upper hand and escape the sociopath’s influence.

Whether you’re fighting a custody battle against a sociopathic ex or being gaslighted by a boss or coworker, you’ll find hope and help within this book. With this guide to disarming the conscienceless, Dr. Stout provides an incisive new examination of human behavior and conceptions of normality and gives listeners the tools needed to protect themselves.

©2020 Martha Stout (P)2020 Random House Audio

Critic reviews

“Dr. Stout's book is mandatory reading on how to effectively deal with sociopaths before you get hurt.”—Joe Navarro, former FBI special agent and the author of Dangerous Personalities

“[Dr. Stout’s] often grim but ultimately reassuring primer will leave readers feeling better prepared to face the malign individuals in their lives.”—Publishers Weekly

useful and healing

a follow up to her book, The Sociopath Next Door, this book is more of a how to. practical tips to effectively deal with the sociopaths we are unlucky enough to spend time with. Therefore, it isn't as much of a story as the previous book. More dry but maybe more important.

A great sequel to the first book

Martha Stout has a wonderful way of explaining the dark world of the sociopath. In this book she gives practical and sound tips and suggestions for dealing with the socio in your life. I particularly enjoyed the inclusion of letters she’s received since the first book detailing readers’ own experiences with such people. Highly recommended if you’d like to be forewarned forearmed agains psycho predators, this is a good book to start with.

Great read!

It is so important to learn this skill. These personalities lurk in so many settings.

A MUST if you're in a custody battle!

Of all the books I've read on the matter, this is the first one that explains how to handle such individuals if you're in court over custody battles. I would highly recommend this book before any parent takes their narcissistic or sociopathic ex to court over custody so you can derive a game plan that's most effective to what's truly important - keeping the child(ren) safe.

Important information for all of us!

Most of us including myself have only had a few true sociopaths in their life. Having read this I'm now know how to keep myself and my family safe. The tactics mentioned in this book work. Thank you so much.

A comprehensive and informative guide for the average person.

There are several people in our life that have made life very uncomfortable! I have a much better understanding of why they behave so viciously! And our ability to keep them on the fringe or completely out of our life has made all the difference! Our intuitive response to them in the past was pure luck. Some of the techniques in this book will help us maintain the distance from these toxic individuals. Thank you!

Sociopaths and narcissistic individuals

Great listen and read, very very recommended to everyone who’s ever met someone difficult, and who has found themselves to be a bit selfish sometimes.

One of the best things to teach young ones and ourselves.

Read them both.

Read both books in this series. I’m glad Martha published another one. Seeing the personality disordered quickly is a necessary like skill.

Amazingly insightful! Excellent Advice.

Before listening to this book, I wasted so much time trying to change a sociopath!

The tools, techniques and studies are accessible to most

I appreciate everything mentioned in the book definitely when identifying the cues to understanding what is and what is not a sociopath. The breakdown of why you may have difficulty with things and how to overcome them was brilliantly laid out however I thought it was odd to continuously use a he pronoun as an example for the “sociopath” . Maybe I could be overthinking it but it seemed bias a bit.