When I speak of divisions greater than gender or race, I say that because it is so unimaginable. I can imagine what it would be like to be another race. Or to be a man - I could draw that up in my mind and experience it. Schizophrenia? We're all schizophrenic in our dreams. Depression? Most of us have been at least a little depressed and can imagine it. But not having a conscience? Conscience is so profound and so basic in most of us.
Martha StoutSociopathy is the inability to process emotional experience, including love and caring, except when such experience can be calculated as a coldly intellectual task.
Martha StoutThe perfect victim, from the sociopath's point of view, is the person who is smart enough and capable enough to do him some good in the world and who is also fun to manipulate. How much fun is it to manipulate someone who is stupid and incompetent?
Martha StoutI am always impressed by the fact that even the tiniest amount of being listened to, the barest suggestion of the possibility of kind treatment, can bring such an immediate rush of emotion. I think this is because we are almost never really listened to. In my work as a psychologist, I am reminded every day of how infrequently we are heard, any of us, or our actions even marginally understood. And one of the ironies of my "listening profession" is its lesson that, in many ways, each of us ultimately remains a mystery to everyone else.
Martha StoutIn northwest Alaska, kunlangeta "might be applied to a man who, for example, repeatedly lies and cheats and steals things and does not go hunting, and, when the other men are out of the village, takes sexual advantage of many women." The Inuits tacitly assume that kunlangeta is irremediable. And so, according to Murphy, the traditional Inuit approach to such a man was to insist he go hunting, and then, in the absence of witnesses, push him off the edge of the ice.
Martha StoutSociopaths love power. They love winning. If you take loving kindness out of the human brain, there's not much left except the will to win.
Martha StoutThe sociopath wants the person to be easily enough fooled to stick with him. This can be accomplished by looking for someone who is very, very loyal. Most of us consider loyalty to be a very positive trait - and it is a positive trait. But it also blinds people to some of the traits of the person they're loyal to.
Martha Stout