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183 reviews for:
The Psychopath Inside: A Neuroscientist's Personal Journey into the Dark Side of the Brain
James Fallon
3.26 AVERAGE
183 reviews for:
The Psychopath Inside: A Neuroscientist's Personal Journey into the Dark Side of the Brain
James Fallon
3.26 AVERAGE
I went into this book with really high expectations which was, as always, my downfall. But can you really blame me? This book sets itself up to be completely fascinating! To be fair, it did have a lot to offer, however, you have to get through a lot of other stuff to find it. The first half read like a textbook and I'm sure many people appreciated that but I am not one of them. The information Fallon wrote about in those sections could have been interesting but it was so dense. I had a hard time understanding what he was trying to explain and even if I could understand it, I had a hard time connecting it to psychopathy. The beginning was really hard to get through and I skipped over most of the scientific explanations but I'm glad I kept going because the last few chapters met my original expectations. It was really interesting reading about his personal life and how he behaves or thinks differently. To make this book more enjoyable for me, I would have made the whole book more like the last two chapters and rewrite the scientific aspects. I think they were important to include but didn't clearly connect to the subject and were not explained well. Maybe other scientists would get it but broadening the audience would have been beneficial. In the end, I did learn a lot which is always good, especially since this topic is so fascinating to me. I don't think I would recommend it to anyone but I think I'm glad I read it.
Wow! I can't believe this book has such low ratings. It's so interesting. I looked it up and about 1% of the population has this mental disorder. It seems to be related mostly to genetics but can also interact with related mood disorders (it's pretty complicated). But at 1%, you regularly run into and interact with psychopaths, you probably even have some "friends" with this condition. I think it's imperative that the rest of us understand what we're up against.
What makes this book really amazing is that the author is both a neurobiologist and a psychopath himself (and bipolar). He hides very little about his own personality in order to illustrate the issue. This is very off-putting, yes. I had to get to Chapter 4 before it got interesting enough that it compensated for how awful the author is. But that's part of the point. The author is awful because he's a psychopath. It's a great service to those of us trying to understand what's going on inside these people that he reveals himself so much even at the risk of being despised. Even though I previously knew a little bit about psychopaths I'm still shocked by the psychopath mentality that other people just serve a purpose - and that they are nearly devoid of personal emotion for them. Please read this book! Think of it as a self-defense course.
5 stars for importance not for enjoyability or accuracy.
What makes this book really amazing is that the author is both a neurobiologist and a psychopath himself (and bipolar). He hides very little about his own personality in order to illustrate the issue. This is very off-putting, yes. I had to get to Chapter 4 before it got interesting enough that it compensated for how awful the author is. But that's part of the point. The author is awful because he's a psychopath. It's a great service to those of us trying to understand what's going on inside these people that he reveals himself so much even at the risk of being despised. Even though I previously knew a little bit about psychopaths I'm still shocked by the psychopath mentality that other people just serve a purpose - and that they are nearly devoid of personal emotion for them. Please read this book! Think of it as a self-defense course.
5 stars for importance not for enjoyability or accuracy.