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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
emotional
funny
informative
lighthearted
medium-paced
Informative, interesting. Fallon has a bad habit of starting a chapter with interesting anecdote-style information, then killing his momentum with 5-10 pages of deep neuro stuff. I wish that aspect could have been delivered a little more smoothly.
What to say about this book? Fallon’s unapologetic genetic determinism was grating a bit - he seems like a late holdover from the 90s to early 2000s brain craze. Well, we’re a couple decades out and that didn’t quite pan. On the other hand, I found his three-legged stool theory prescient. Overall, I think his callous attitude to others and his disdain for women really did take away from how much I liked this book. I also think he sort of masked just how many people had issues with him or what those issues were until the end. It was a well-written book and I admire his honesty. I did learn plenty about psychopathy. I guess he self-describes as a blowhard, so it shouldn’t be too rude to say it here, but I think generally scientists should not be quite so cocksure about unproven hypotheses.
What to say about this book? Fallon’s unapologetic genetic determinism was grating a bit - he seems like a late holdover from the 90s to early 2000s brain craze. Well, we’re a couple decades out and that didn’t quite pan. On the other hand, I found his three-legged stool theory prescient. Overall, I think his callous attitude to others and his disdain for women really did take away from how much I liked this book. I also think he sort of masked just how many people had issues with him or what those issues were until the end. It was a well-written book and I admire his honesty. I did learn plenty about psychopathy. I guess he self-describes as a blowhard, so it shouldn’t be too rude to say it here, but I think generally scientists should not be quite so cocksure about unproven hypotheses.
slow-paced
*3.5/5 stars
this book is helping me realize that neuroscience and/or psychology might be things i wanna study in college, so that’s really helpful. i agree with all the comments about Fallon being narcissistic and annoying, and i thought that he left a lot about himself out until the end which i found quite confusing and annoying. good read though
this book is helping me realize that neuroscience and/or psychology might be things i wanna study in college, so that’s really helpful. i agree with all the comments about Fallon being narcissistic and annoying, and i thought that he left a lot about himself out until the end which i found quite confusing and annoying. good read though
informative
reflective
medium-paced
Well then. This book is all kinds of interesting, in the sense of the wish that one might live in "interesting" times. Swimming around in the head of a possible psychopath is certainly illuminating, though not always edifying. For all his expertise, I can't take Fallon at face value because he had no business diagnosing himself, and for all his claims of trying to do better and be better, it's clear he could benefit from some professional guidance. He's clearly intelligent and well-versed in his subject matter, but he's also spectacularly clueless about many things. Past events he treats with a blase attitude sent chills up my spine, like his self-professed pyromania and his curling view that his youthful car thefts were harmless pranks.
This is a man I have no interest in meeting in person, and while there may be something to his point about there being some societal benefit to psychopathy, I imagine most of us could happily live without psychopathy.
Some of his views also struck me as lacking nuance, perhaps because it's to his benefit. Social conditioning has a lot to do with why we accept some of the behaviors we do. If we were better at talking about mental health issues, maybe we could get away from attitudes like "boys will be boys", as well as writing off offensive behavior as being the nature of humanity. Our discomfort with and lack of support for mental health issues makes it far easier for us to write anti-social behavior off than to tackle the challenge of working to change it.
We're at a point where society is becoming more aware of the idea that human behavior is a spectrum, and hopefully that will get us away from our tendency to train boys to be aggressive and girls to be docile as a result of a mistaken belief that gender is destiny, a concept that does great harm to men and women alike.
His positing that women choose "bad" boys has more to do with society than anything. For women in war-torn countries, there's logic to it. For women in stable countries, it has more to do with society romanticizing unacceptable behavior. If pop culture were to stop making "bad" boys sexy and girls and women had a better understanding of what constitutes relationship abuse, much of the appeal would disappear. Instead, we teach boys and girls alike to minimize unacceptable behavior.
I learned things from this book, but it left me unsettled and dissatisfied. Despite our scientific and technological advancements, we humans clearly have a very long way to go.
This is a man I have no interest in meeting in person, and while there may be something to his point about there being some societal benefit to psychopathy, I imagine most of us could happily live without psychopathy.
Some of his views also struck me as lacking nuance, perhaps because it's to his benefit. Social conditioning has a lot to do with why we accept some of the behaviors we do. If we were better at talking about mental health issues, maybe we could get away from attitudes like "boys will be boys", as well as writing off offensive behavior as being the nature of humanity. Our discomfort with and lack of support for mental health issues makes it far easier for us to write anti-social behavior off than to tackle the challenge of working to change it.
We're at a point where society is becoming more aware of the idea that human behavior is a spectrum, and hopefully that will get us away from our tendency to train boys to be aggressive and girls to be docile as a result of a mistaken belief that gender is destiny, a concept that does great harm to men and women alike.
His positing that women choose "bad" boys has more to do with society than anything. For women in war-torn countries, there's logic to it. For women in stable countries, it has more to do with society romanticizing unacceptable behavior. If pop culture were to stop making "bad" boys sexy and girls and women had a better understanding of what constitutes relationship abuse, much of the appeal would disappear. Instead, we teach boys and girls alike to minimize unacceptable behavior.
I learned things from this book, but it left me unsettled and dissatisfied. Despite our scientific and technological advancements, we humans clearly have a very long way to go.
dark
informative
fast-paced
Straight Boomer Insufferability
Completely unreadable, but not for the reasons you might think. After THE most smug and self aggrandizing chapter of boomer bs I have EVER read, next comes golf and "business" references out the wazoo. Old white man! I don't care! No 1 curr!
My favorite bits of the less than 50% I made it through:
He pitied MY generation because we can't blow up pipe bombs and terrorize otherslike in his gold o!d days. (These kinds of remarks are within stories that he *maybe* thinks could be problematic about his past, but us mostly just presented as boomers boys being hooked boys!)
Bits of bs related to evolutionary psychology sprinkled throughout, red flags everywhere with that nonsense.
Did I mention he was an ACTOR, A FAMOUS IMPORTANT SCIENCE MAN, AND AN AMAZING ATHLETE WHO HAD LITERALLY THE BEST CHILDHOOD AND ADOLESCENCE EVER, WHERE WOMEN AND MEN ALIKE LOVED HIM AND HE WAS LITERALLY PERFECT IN EVERY CONCEIVABLE WAY?? No? Well he sure does, for a whole chapter and peppered into literally everything else I got through.
Grossly awkward and casual language used to describe the murderers he worked FOR, comically flippant word choices. EXTREMELY amateur ish writing that screams "hello fellow kids!" Repetition of all the NDAs he has to abide by also seems smugly teasing. "Yeah, I know aaaaaall the juicy details but, tee hee, I'll never tell!" Coy attitude is offputting , especially considering he's referencing extremely upsetting and sensitive things.
This book is proof his claim that 60 is the final age of brain development as that's when wisdom coalesces is complete opinion. (As if living in 2020 hadn't taught us all that anyway, lol.)
Oh please, tell me more about all the completely immoral work you have done for big tobacco, pharmacy companies, our corrupt justice system.
And finally, the one part that made me actually laugh: When he states he became a libertarian as a young man. Of course! What psychopath isn't a libertarian, lolololol. (In the SIXTIES no less. This man is literal garbage.)
So yeah, I don't care if he's a psychopath or not because he fer sure is at least a RAGING narcissist, and it's painfully embarrassing and dull to read about. Interesting book idea, absolute wrong person to make good on it. Though you'd think his complete inability to act, write, think, speak, or behave like a normal human being would actually STRENGTHEN the narrative. Huh. Funny how that works.
Completely unreadable, but not for the reasons you might think. After THE most smug and self aggrandizing chapter of boomer bs I have EVER read, next comes golf and "business" references out the wazoo. Old white man! I don't care! No 1 curr!
My favorite bits of the less than 50% I made it through:
He pitied MY generation because we can't blow up pipe bombs and terrorize otherslike in his gold o!d days. (These kinds of remarks are within stories that he *maybe* thinks could be problematic about his past, but us mostly just presented as boomers boys being hooked boys!)
Bits of bs related to evolutionary psychology sprinkled throughout, red flags everywhere with that nonsense.
Did I mention he was an ACTOR, A FAMOUS IMPORTANT SCIENCE MAN, AND AN AMAZING ATHLETE WHO HAD LITERALLY THE BEST CHILDHOOD AND ADOLESCENCE EVER, WHERE WOMEN AND MEN ALIKE LOVED HIM AND HE WAS LITERALLY PERFECT IN EVERY CONCEIVABLE WAY?? No? Well he sure does, for a whole chapter and peppered into literally everything else I got through.
Grossly awkward and casual language used to describe the murderers he worked FOR, comically flippant word choices. EXTREMELY amateur ish writing that screams "hello fellow kids!" Repetition of all the NDAs he has to abide by also seems smugly teasing. "Yeah, I know aaaaaall the juicy details but, tee hee, I'll never tell!" Coy attitude is offputting , especially considering he's referencing extremely upsetting and sensitive things.
This book is proof his claim that 60 is the final age of brain development as that's when wisdom coalesces is complete opinion. (As if living in 2020 hadn't taught us all that anyway, lol.)
Oh please, tell me more about all the completely immoral work you have done for big tobacco, pharmacy companies, our corrupt justice system.
And finally, the one part that made me actually laugh: When he states he became a libertarian as a young man. Of course! What psychopath isn't a libertarian, lolololol. (In the SIXTIES no less. This man is literal garbage.)
So yeah, I don't care if he's a psychopath or not because he fer sure is at least a RAGING narcissist, and it's painfully embarrassing and dull to read about. Interesting book idea, absolute wrong person to make good on it. Though you'd think his complete inability to act, write, think, speak, or behave like a normal human being would actually STRENGTHEN the narrative. Huh. Funny how that works.
informative
slow-paced
informative
slow-paced
This book left me very conflicted. Because while the science part was both very sound and deeply interesting the other parts of the book were not. The personal parts often read as if written by an enormous douchebag (which considering the subject matter shouldn’t be a huge surprise), and the parts concerning stuff like his swimming strokes were just downright tedious. So while the chapters on neuroscience and psychopathy were huge interesting and educational, all the other chapters made it hard to keep reading the book. If editing would’ve put the focus on the research this book, and my opinion on it, would’ve been much better.