Psychopathy

A Very Short Introduction

By: Essi Viding

Narrated by: Esther Wane

Psychopathy is a personality disorder that has long captured the public imagination. Newspaper column inches have been devoted to murderers with psychopathic features, and we also encounter psychopaths in films and books. Individuals with psychopathy are characterized in particular by lack of empathy and guilt, manipulation of other people and, in the case of criminal psychopathy, premeditated violent behavior. They are dangerous and can incur immeasurable emotional, psychological, physical, and financial costs to their victims and their families.

Despite the public fascination with psychopathy, there is often a very limited understanding of the condition, and several myths about psychopathy abound. For example, people commonly assume that all psychopaths are sadistic serial killers or that all violent and antisocial individuals are psychopaths. Yet, research shows that most psychopaths are not serial killers, and, equally, there are plenty of antisocial and violent offenders who are not psychopaths.

Viding explores the latest genetic, neuroscience, and psychology evidence in order to illuminate why psychopaths behave and develop the way they do, and considers whether it is possible to prevent or even treat psychopathy.

©2019 Essi Viding (P)2020 Tantor

Insightful

Insightful & brilliant.... I have listened to this book multiple times, absorbing this window into psychopathy.

Helpful

Very good information, provided relevant distinctions not typically present in pop culture. And, data galore!

Best introduction on the topic possible.

Viding is a clear writer. Which is needed on this cloudy issue.

She outlines some problems with current research. She is not over dramatic.

She also credits her PHD students.

Viding is encouraging and unpretentious.

This is the best introductory book on the topic. Don’t waste your time with anything else.

Very informative but extremely redundant

Wish the author could have come up with an abbreviation for the phrase "children at risk for psychopathy," also uses the word empathy a ton in the first couple chapters. Basically says for most of the book that empathy and concern for others and cooperation are the default mode for most humams.... I must have heard the word empathy about 1000 times

Author writes, "No one is born a psychopath."

Know before you buy that the author, despite a background in neuroscience, opens with the offhanded statement that nobody "is born a psychopath." For those up to speed on the role of fMRI in studying psychopathy, that is just a bizarre claim for a treatment published in 2020.