The Wisdom of Psychopaths (38 page)

28
“The answer, I believe, is no …”
See Heinz Wimmer and Josef Perner, “Beliefs About Beliefs: Representation and Constraining Function of Wrong Beliefs in Young Children’s Understanding of Deception,”
Cognition
13, no. 1 (1983): 103–28, doi:10.1016/0010-0277(83)90004-5.

29
Beasley tells me about a study conducted by Alfred Heilbrun …
See Alfred B. Heilbrun, “Cognitive Models of Criminal Violence Based upon Intelligence and Psychopathy Levels,”
Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology
50, no. 4 (1982): 546–57.

30
Paul Ekman, at the University of California, Berkeley …
The work of Paul Ekman and Robert Levenson is described in Daniel Goleman, “Dalai Lama” (foreword),
Destructive Emotions: How Can We Overcome Them? A Scientific Dialogue with the Dalai Lama
(New York: Bantam Books, 2003). For general background, see also Paul Ekman, Richard J. Davidson, Matthieu Ricard, and B. Alan Wallace, “Buddhist and Psychological Perspectives on Emotions and Well-Being,”
Current Directions in Psychological Science
14, no. 2 (2005): 59–63, doi:10.1111/j.0963-7214.2005.00335.x.

31
Sabrina Demetrioff, at the University of British Columbia …
Data as yet unpublished.

32
Chris Patrick of Florida State University compared the reactions of psychopaths and non-psychopaths …
See Christopher J. Patrick, Margaret M. Bradley, and Peter J. Lang, “Emotion in the Criminal Psychopath: Startle Reflex Modulation,”
Journal of Abnormal Psychology
102, no. 1 (1993): 82–92.

33
The greatest worth, wrote the eleventh-century Buddhist teacher Atisha …
For an accessible guide to the writings, and philosophy, of Atisha, see Geshe Sonam Rinchen,
Atisha’s Lamp for the Path to Enlightenment
, ed. and trans. by Ruth Sonam (Ithaca, NY: Snow Lion Publications, 1997).

34
The latest FBI crime figures estimate …
See Blake Morrison, “Along Highways, Signs of Serial Killings,”
USA Today
, October 5, 2010,
ww​w.u​sa​to​da​y.​co​m/​ne​ws​/n​at​io​n/​20​10​-10​-0​5-​1A​hi​gh​way​ki​ll​er​05​_C​V_​N.h​tm
.

35
It’s a poem about moths …
See Don Marquis, “the lesson of the moth,” in
The Annotated Archy and Mehitabel
, ed. Michael Sims (New York: Penguin, 2006).

Psychologically speaking, writers come in all different shapes and sizes. For me, writing a book that makes people laugh would, notionally, be relatively easy. Writing a book that makes people laugh and think—as I did previously with
Split-Second Persuasion
(or so I’m told by those who like me)—is a little more difficult. Writing a book that just makes people think, well … that doesn’t come easy at all.

The Wisdom of Psychopaths
arguably falls into this third category (though if, at times, I’ve managed to raise a smile, let’s not fall out about it). Psychopaths, undeniably, are fascinating. But the plain unvarnished truth is that there is nothing remotely funny about them. They can be dangerous, destructive, and deadly—and any serious writer has a duty of care to handle them as judiciously on the printed page as they would were they to encounter them in real life.

Such scrupulous editorial hygiene is even more important under conditions of existential favor: when one advances the notion that the brain of the psychopath is not, in its entirety, the glacial, inhospitable world glimpsed, as is so often the case, in remote neurological orbit within the teeming synaptic firmament, but offers instead—contrary to popular belief—a habitable psychological refuge for normal, regular people during the course of their everyday lives (at least, that is, in its milder, more temperate regions). Evidence must be presented within hermetically sealed scientific argument, empirically sterilized to eradicate even the most infinitesimal microbes of hyperbole and glamorization, and conclusions generated under strictly controlled, highly secure conditions.

Yet psychopaths are as beguiling on paper as they are face-to-face, and my wife assures me that I have not escaped their devious psychological clutches unscathed. So naturally, she has a plan. To redress the balance and make it all up to her, my next book, she insists, should be a treatise on love and compassion—two attributes that in my considered opinion are wholly overrated and inestimably superfluous (fat chance of
that
book ever getting written, then). On which note, Elaine, I just want to say: Thanks for bloody nothing, love. You’ll be hearing from my solicitor very soon.

Billy Wilder once said that agents are like car tires: to get anywhere at all, you need at least four of them, and they need to be rotated every five thousand miles. Personally, I cannot espouse enthusiastically enough the merits of the unicycle—in particular, those of the Patrick Walsh variety. With the aid of my specialized puncture-repair kit, Jake Smith-Bosanquet, I have ridden Patrick for a good few years now, and have relished every minute in the saddle. God knows where the next adventure will take us.

Other people without whose help this book would never have seen the dark of night (and who duly coughed up the inclusion fee) are as follows: Denis Alexander, Paul Babiak, Alysha Baker, Helen Beardsley, James Beasley III, Peter Bennett, James Blair, Michael Brooks, Alex Christofi, David Clark, Claire Conville, Nick Cooper, Sean Cunningham, Kathy Daneman, Ray Davies, Roger Deeble, Mariette DiChristina, Liam Dolan, Jennifer Dufton, Robin Dunbar, Elsa Ermer, Peter Fenwick, Simon Fordham, Mark Fowler, Susan Goldfarb, Graham Goodkind, Annie Gottlieb, Cathy Grossman, Robert Hare, Amelia Harvell, John Horgan, Glyn Humphreys, Hugh Jones, Terry Jones, Stephen Joseph, Larry Kane, Deborah Kent, Nick Kent, Paul Keyton, Kent Kiehl, Jennifer Lau, Scott Lilienfeld, Howard Marks, Tom Maschler, Matthias Matuschik, Andy McNab, Alexandra McNicoll, Drummond Moir, Helen Morrison, Joseph Newman, Richard Newman, Jonica Newby, Steven Pinker, Stephen Porter, Caroline Pretty, Philip Pullman, Martin Redfern, Christopher Richards, Ann Richie, Ruben Richie, Joe Roseman, John Rogers, Jose Romero-Urcelay, Tim Rostron, Debbie Schiesser, Henna Silvennoinen, Jeanette Slinger, Nigel
Stratton, Christine Temple, Leanne ten Brinke, John Timpane, Lisa Tuffin, Essi Viding, Dame Marjorie Wallace, Fraser Watts, Pete Wilkins, Mark Williams, Robin Williams, Andrea Woerle, Philip Zimbardo, and Konstantina Zougkou. (Note: Though of questionable importance anyway, Ian Collins did not see fit to stump up the required disbursement, and thus shall herewith remain conspicuous by his absence.)

Special thanks also go to my editors at William Heinemann, Tom Avery and Jason Arthur, and to the equally fastidious Amanda Moon and Karen Maine at Farrar, Straus and Giroux.

Dr. Kevin Dutton is a research psychologist at the Calleva Research Centre for Evolution and Human Science, Magdalen College, University of Oxford. He is a fellow of the Royal Society of Medicine and the Society for the Scientific Study of Psychopathy. Dutton is the author of
Split-Second Persuasion
. His writing and research have been featured in
Scientific American Mind, New Scientist, The Guardian, Psychology Today
, and
USA Today
. He lives in Oxford, England.