Book Post 4

The next reading in my book The Wisdom of Psychopaths written by Kevin Dutton was a little bit more boring than the recent ones, but Dutton did provide more connections between business and being a psychopath, which is something that continues to interest me.

My stance on the book has not been altered due to this reading. I believe that Dutton makes some really interesting points connecting psychopaths to the business world, but I believe a lot of details and stories that Dutton adds are unneeded. They do not help further Dutton’s argument and sidetrack the reader from the connections he is making. In this section, this exactly what Dutton did.

The reading started off very well. The first few pages built up a strong connection between the traits of strong business leaders with those of psychopaths. Dutton showed a chart that showed the traits of a leader compared side by side with the traits of a psychopath and the results were shocking. With different wording, most of the traits were seen on both sides of the chart.  Dutton went on to discuss the perfect mix of traits. Clearly psychopaths are psychopaths and businessmen are businessmen for a reason. They can’t easily switch from one lifestyle to another, but businessmen can be functional psychopaths according to Dutton. If you take away the poor decision-making and put a person in the right environment, having the emotionless, persuasive and impulsive abilities of a psychopath can put you in front of the pack in the business world. After Dutton explained this, he digressed into a story about how society has become less dangerous and then a story about his friend Andy and their encounter with a psychopath.

Overall, the connections that Dutton made this week were similar but he shined new light on the idea of a functional psychopath and how they could fit into society. The book continues to show times of excitement but overall doesn’t spend all its time on furthering the argument.