The next time you find yourself alone with a psychopath, Kevin Dutton says that rather than running for cover, maybe you should take notes. Dutton is the author of “The Wisdom of Psychopaths: What Saints, Spies, and Serial Killers Can Teach Us About Success."
Dutton says he wanted to write this book to debunk the myth that psychopathy is all bad for society. He compares exposure to this personality trait with exposure to the sun: if you get too much, you will surely get burned, but it isn't all bad. Indeed, it is necessary for our survival.
"With regulated exposure, I think psychopathy can have intrinsic benefits," Dutton says. "High levels of psychopathy amounts to personality cancer, but at low levels, as I say in the book, it's personality with a tan."
Another myth that Dutton wanted to disprove was that psychopathy was "an all or nothing affair." As he says, many of the traits that make a psychopath — ruthlessness, fearlessness, coolness under pressure, charm, and charisma — are the very same characteristics that can make for a successful banker or surgeon.
"If you turn some of those dials up high and some of them down low," Dutton says, "then, you are, as Reuters once ran a very famous headline, you're more likely to make a killing in the market than anywhere else."
Neurosurgeons, for instance, must be cool under pressure. They must also be fairly ruthless — able to do dangerous and risky things to their patients, without hesitation.
"My dad actually was a psychopath," Dutton admits. "It seems a crazy thing to say, looking back on it, but there's absolutely no doubt. He wasn't violent — he was a market trader — but of course, one of the things which I outline in the book is that you don't necessarily need to be violent to be a psychopath. He was charming, he was charismatic, he was ruthless, he was fearless." The more Dutton studied, and the more he learned about psychopathy, the more clear it became that his father had a number of those characteristics.
The takeaway? A lot of psychopathy can land you in prison, but a bit of psychopathy could be key to success.
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Comments [5]
Someone's making excuses for Psychopaths here. None of these traits are limited only to psychopaths.
"My dad actually was a psychopath,"
Oh, and now he just hands us his outright bias.
I'm looking forward to reading this book on crowded subways in New York. I think I will always get a seat
I spent 15 years trying to navigate the delicate balance of the useful and dangerous psycopathic tendancies of my former business partner. At the time, I shared many of Kevin Dutton's observations of the value of the focus and determination, however in my case there were underlying narcisisitic tendancies as well that rose to the surface when opportunities or difficult circumstances presented. In the end there was no place for better judgement to prevail.
The guy who claims to be an "Independent" who says that the government cannot create jobs and that only the private sector can create jobs is NOT an Independent. He's a Republican. He may not like Romney but he's not an "Independent." Let's call these Independents for what they are... people that are unhappy with their party's choice. In the end, I promise you that guy would never ever ever vote for a Democrat even if Satan himself were the Republican candidate.
I have a major problem with Kevin Dutton lumping all sorts of human traits into the psychopath category. I especially object to the example of the doctor. Especially because I dealt with a doctor whom I think was truly a psychopath. The difference between his description of the neurosurgean and the doctor I dealt with was that the neurosurgeon in Dutton's article/book was taking care of the patient's problem. The psychopath doctor I dealt with had NO grasp of the concept that I was suffering and that he needed to focus on what my problem was. He acted purely on the basis of his own agenda - how his notes and tests he ordered, what he told me and others benefited him. that is a short and uninteresting version of a very strange and very painful experience I had with this doctor. I could go on about this for hours, but I will just say this, evolutionarily we had developed certain traits that were required for our survival, but I think in no way are those traits equivalent with the disturbed minds of criminals that we call psychopaths.
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