The Sociopath Next Door

A sociopath is Hannibal Lecter - the cold, calculating monster who has no compunction, no sense that what he or she does is wrong. Sociopaths learn early on to sham emotion, but underneath they are indifferent to others' suffering. This title aims to uncover the hidden signs of the sociopath, teaching readers to question authority.
People are accustomed to assuming of sociopaths that they are all violent criminals. But in The Sociopath Next Door, Martha Stout reveals that a shocking 4 percent of ordinary people have an often undetected mental disorder, the chief symptom of which is that the person possesses no conscience. They feel no guilt for anything at all. One of the primary characteristics of this disorder is that the individual has a charisma that makes them more charming than others, and tricky to identify.