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The Wisdom of Psychopaths

What Saints, Spies, and Serial Killers Can Teach Us About Success
Dec 09, 2012Yuhu rated this title 1.5 out of 5 stars
The author seems to be in process of reinventing himself as a psychologic specialist, diving into the "pop-psych" of psychopathy with virtually no academic credentials and no published work in the field. Check his current website (kevindutton dot co dot uk, accessed Dec 2012), and you'll see a young man pandering to the public image of a psychopath as promotion for his book. This is reprehensible from an academic standpoint, and certainly erodes his credibility. Mr. Dutton's academic background in no way supports his claim to be an expert in this field; he did doctoral work at the University of Essex in the UK, appearing as secondary author on a handful of undistinguished papers on aspects of perception, and for several years he was connected with the Faraday Institute, a Cambridge University-based religious "think tank" whose mission seems to be combatting the atheists of the world like Chris Hutchens (RIP) and Daniel Dennett. There is nothing in Dutton's academic record that would reflect clinical work in this realm of psychology or psychiatric practice, and (as is the case with a number of current works purporting to describe the 'psychopathic personality') this book mostly consists of anecdotes--interviews and case descriptions of alleged psychopaths. There is very little concerning the significant and central issues of nomenclature, taxonomy, and diagnosis. As a popular work, this may be entertaining, but based on the author's slender qualifications, it cannot be recommended as a sound and reliable scientific account.