Martha Stout Quotes & Sayings

Sociopaths cannot love, by definition they do not have higher values, and they almost never feel comfortable in their own skins. They are loveless, amoral, and chronically bored, even the few who become rich and powerful. — Martha Stout

We are all a little crazy. — Martha Stout

Sociopaths love power. They love winning. If you take loving kindness out of the human brain, there's not much left except the will to win. — Martha Stout

If courage is acting according to one's conscience despite pain or fear, then strength is the ability to keep conscience awake and in force despite the demands of authorities to do otherwise. — Martha Stout

I saw a werewolf drinking a pina colada at Trader Vic's. His hair was perfect. — Martha Stout

We feel that if someone is bad, he should be burdened with the knowledge that he is bad. It seems to us the ultimate injustice that a person could be evil, by our assessment , and still feel fine about himself. — Martha Stout

As for the boys ... vulnerable fathers turn to time-honored defensive responses to maintain the function that father knows best' Parents, especially fathers, teach their sons to obey authority no matter what. — Martha Stout

When confronted with a destructive outcome that is clearly their doing, they will say, plain and simple, "I never did that," and will to all appearances believe their own direct lie. — Martha Stout

-If I somehow possessed a set of videotapes that contained all the most significant events of your childhood, in their entirety, would you want to see them?
-Absolutely. Right this very second.
-But why? Don't you think some of the tapes would be very sad?
-Most of them, yes. But if I could see them, then I could have them in my brain like regular memories-horrible memories, yes, but regular memories, not sinister little ghosts in my head that pop out of some part of me I don't even know, and take the rest of me away. Do you know what I mean?
-I think so, If you have to remeber, you'd rather do it in the front of your brain than in the back. — Martha Stout

Controlling others - winning - is more compelling than anything (or anyone) else. — Martha Stout

If all you had ever felt toward another person were the cold wish to "win," how would you understand the meaning of love, of friendship, of caring? You would not understand. You would simply go on dominating, and denying, and feeling superior. Perhaps you would experience a little emptiness sometimes, a remote sense of dissatisfaction, but that is all. — Martha Stout

Conscience is a creator of meaning. As a sense of constraint rooted in our emotional ties to one another, it prevents life from devolving into nothing but a long and essentially boring game of attempted dominance over our fellow human beings, and for every limitation conscience imposes on us, it gives us a moment of connectedness with an other, a bridge to someone or something outside of our often meaningless schemes. — Martha Stout

After listening for almost twenty-five years to the stories my patients tell me about sociopaths who have invaded and injured their lives, when I am asked, "How can I tell whom not to trust?" the answer I give usually surprises people. The natural expectation is that I will describe some sinister-sounding detail of behavior or snippet of body language or threatening use of language that is the subtle giveaway. Instead, I take people aback by assuring them that the tip-off is none of these things, for none of these things is reliably present. Rather, the best clue is, of all things, the pity play. The most reliable sign, the most universal behavior of unscrupulous people is not directed, as one might imagine, at our fearfulness. It is, perversely, an appeal to our sympathy. — Martha Stout

In northwest Alaska, kunlangeta "might be applied to a man who, for example, repeatedly lies and cheats and steals things and does not go hunting, and, when the other men are out of the village, takes sexual advantage of many women." The Inuits tacitly assume that kunlangeta is irremediable. And so, according to Murphy, the traditional Inuit approach to such a man was to insist he go hunting, and then, in the absence of witnesses, push him off the edge of the ice. — Martha Stout

Sociopathy is the inability to process emotional experience, including love and caring, except when such experience can be calculated as a coldly intellectual task. — Martha Stout

Asked about our sense that we are not safe in our own world, Albert Einstein once said, The world is a dangerous place to live, not because of the people who are evil, but because of the people who don't do anything about it. — Martha Stout

A substantial proportion of people do what they are told to do, irrespective of the content of the act and without limitations of conscience, so long as they perceive that the command comes from a legitimate authority. — Martha Stout

I am sure that if the devil existed, he would want us to feel very sorry for him. — Martha Stout

And people who do hideous things do not look like people who do hideous, things. There is no "face of evil." If we could somehow subtract all its horrifying connotations, the actual face of Saddam
I Hussein looks rather avuncular, and has often been recorded as having a big friendly smile. Hitler's face, had it not become an icon of
evil because of the atrocities his life engendered, might be considered almost comical, Ch — Martha Stout

The panicked feeling of a guilty conscience never squeezes at your heart or wakes you in the middle of the night. Despite your lifestyle, you never feel irresponsible, neglectful, or so much as embarrassed, although for the sake of appearances, sometimes you pretend that you do. For example, if you are a decent observer of people and what they react to, you may adopt a lifeless facial expression, say how ashamed of your life you are, and talk about how rotten you feel. This you do only because it is more convenient to have people think you are depressed than it is to have them shouting at you all the time, or insisting that you get a job. You notice that people who do have a conscience feel guilty when they harangue someone they believe to be "depressed" or "troubled." As a matter of fact, to your further advantage, they often feel obliged to take care of such a person. — Martha Stout

About one in twenty-five individuals are sociopathic, meaning, essentially, that they do not have a conscience. It is not that this group fails to grasp the difference between good and bad; it is that the distinction fails to limit their behavior. The intellectual difference between right and wrong does not bring on the emotional sirens and flashing blue lights, or the fear of God, that it does for the rest of us. Without the slightest blip of guilt or remorse, one in twenty-five people can do anything at all. — Martha Stout

To admit that some people literally have no conscience is not technically the same as saying that some human beings are evil, but it is disturbingly close. And good people want very much not to believe in the personification of evil. — Martha Stout

...after twenty-five years of treating trauma survivors, I have learned that getting hit is actually one of the more bearable ways a person can be assaulted. — Martha Stout

Conscience- protects the privileges of intimacy, makes ,friends keep their promises, prevents the angered spouse from striking back. — Martha Stout

We raise our children, especially girls, to ignore their spontaneious reactions-we teach them not to rock the societal boat ... By the time she is thirty, the valient little girl's "Ick!"-her tendency to respond, to rock the boat, when someone's actions are really mean, may have been exciese from her behavior, and perhaps from her very mind. — Martha Stout

And sociopaths are noted especially for their shallowness of emotion, the hollow and transient nature of any affectionate feelings they may claim to have, a certain breathtaking callousness. They have no trace of empathy and no genuine interest in bonding emotionally with a mate. Once the surface charm is scraped off, their marriages are loveless, one-sided, and almost always short-term. If a marriage partner has any value to the sociopath, it is because the partner is viewed as a possession, one that the sociopath may feel angry to lose, but never sad or accountable. — Martha Stout

If, instead, you find yourself often pitying someone who consistently hurts you or other people, and who actively campaigns for your sympathy, the chances are close to 100 percent that you are dealing with a sociopath. — Martha Stout

One way or another, a life without conscience is a failed life. — Martha Stout

And so without our primordial attachments to others, what would we be?
Evidently, we would be the players of a game, one that resembled a giant chess match, with our fellow human beings as the rooks, the knights, and the pawns. For this is the essence of sociopathic behavior, and desire. — Martha Stout

Conscience is the still small voice that has been trying since the infancy of our species to tell us that we are evolutionarily, emotionally, and spiritually One, and that if we seek peace and happiness, we must behave that way. — Martha Stout

A part of a healthy conscience is being able to confront consciencelessness. When you teach your daughter, explicitly or by passive rejection, that she must ignore her outrage, that she must be kind and accepting to the point of not defending herself or other people, that she must not rock the boat for any reason, you are NOT strengthening her prosocial sense, you are damaging it
and the first person she will stop protecting is herself. — Martha Stout

Maybe you cannot be the CEO of a multinational corporation, but you can frighten a few people, or cause them to scurry around like chickens, or steal from them, or - maybe best of all - create situations that cause them to feel bad about themselves. And this is power, especially when the people you manipulate are superior to you in some way. Most invigorating of all is to bring down people who are smarter or more accomplished than you, or perhaps classier, more attractive or popular or morally admirable. This is not only good fun; it is existential vengeance. And without a conscience, it is amazingly easy to do. You quietly lie to the boss or to the boss's boss, cry some crocodile tears, or sabotage a coworker's project, or gaslight a patient (or a child), bait people with promises, or provide a little misinformation that will never be traced back to you. — Martha Stout

I am always impressed by the fact that even the tiniest amount of being listened to, the barest suggestion of the possibility of kind treatment, can bring such an immediate rush of emotion. I think this is because we are almost never really listened to. In my work as a psychologist, I am reminded every day of how infrequently we are heard, any of us, or our actions even marginally understood. And one of the ironies of my "listening profession" is its lesson that, in many ways, each of us ultimately remains a mystery to everyone else. — Martha Stout

Rather, the best clue is, of all things, the pity play. The most reliable sign, the most universal behavior of unscrupulous people is not directed, as one might imagine, at our fearfulness. It is, perversely, an appeal to our sympathy. I first learned this when — Martha Stout