A great book on this subject
My book of the month is The Sociopath Next Door by Martha Stout, a Harvard psychologist. (sociopath and psychopath are the same). Her estimate is that 4% of the population is sociopathic, meaning that they have no consciences, and they marvel at the rest of us who are so concerned with unimportant emotions. They know well how to use our peculiar concerns against us. They are often very clever, generally manipulative and very rarely are they criminal. The real threat is from our spouses, children, neighbors, friends and colleagues who appear to us to be normal but who view us as potential victims. She points out the closest thing to a flashing warning of a sociopath is the constant need to be pitied - they are always victims in their own minds. What this implies is that the article above is just silly. 99% of sociopaths have no overt or severe criminal tendencies. The identification of sociopathology with Ted Bundy makes no sense except in that limited arena of criminality. We are still left with our caution and alertness to find most of the sociopaths that we encounter every day or week. And that is usually almost impossible until it is too late.
