Introduction by the Blog Author
Recently a neuroscientist found out that he himself had strong
psychopathic tendencies. This led to a
labyrinth of self-discovery and personal maturity. Below is a description by Amazon.com of the
book he wrote. That is followed by some
readers’ reviews.
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“The last scan in the pile
was strikingly odd. In fact it looked exactly like the most abnormal of the
scans I had just been writing about, suggesting that the poor individual it
belonged to was a psychopath—or at least shared an uncomfortable amount of
traits with one....When I found out who the scan belonged to, I had to believe
there was a mistake....But there had been no mistake. The scan was mine.”
For the first fifty-eight years of his life James Fallon was
by all appearances a normal guy. A successful neuroscientist and medical school
professor, he’d been raised in a loving, supportive family, married his high
school sweetheart, and had three kids and lots of friends.
Then he learned a shocking truth that would not only disrupt his personal and
professional life, but would lead him to question the very nature of his own
identity.
The Psychopath Inside tells the fascinating story of Fallon’s reaction
to the discovery that he has the brain of a psychopath. While researching
serial murderers, he uncovered a distinct neurological pattern in their brain
scans that helped explain their cold and violent behavior. A few months later
he learned that he was descended from a family with a long line of murderers
which confirmed that Fallon’s own brain pattern wasn’t a fluke.
As a scientist convinced that humans are shaped by their genetics, Fallon set
out to reconcile the truth about his brain with everything he knew about the
mind, behavior, and the influence of nature vs. nurture on our personalities.
How could he, a successful scientist and a happy family man with no
history of violence, be a psychopath? How much did his biology influence his
behavior? Was he capable of some of the gruesome atrocities perpetrated by the
serial killers he had studied?
Combining his personal experience with scientific analysis, Fallon shares his
journey and the discoveries that ultimately led him to understand that, despite
everything science can teach us, humans are even more complex than we can
imagine.
--Amazon.com
Readers’ reviews
Reading
this book is an extraordinary experience. As the author, a brain researcher of
international stature, unpeels his own life and psyche, going deeper and deeper
as the memoir proceeds, something happens to the reader. As he admits to us
some of the most self incriminating thoughts and experiences ever written by a
professional or family man, especially one with such impeccable credentials and
credibility, I found myself examining my own life in a similar way. He subtly
coaxes you into reflecting on your own own motivations. It is a revealing and
for me even freeing read. His personal story is weaved with sophisticated but
remarkably accessible scientific descriptions on the brain, psychiatry,
genetics, and medicine as a whole. I felt like I received the wealth of a year
of advanced science education in just a thoroughly enjoyable three hours it
took me to read it. This guy is a fantastic teacher, and one who may challenge
what you think and feel about your own life.
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5 stars
A unique personal journey
indeed., August 21, 2014
This
review is from: The Psychopath
Inside: A Neuroscientist's Personal Journey into the Dark Side of the Brain
(Hardcover)
Dr Fallon is a skilled
communicator. I knew this first hand because I was once one of his medical
students. Our class voted him our favorite professor due to his uncanny ability
to make the complex simple. It is a delight to find he is providing his
insights and novel perspectives to the general public with this effort.
This examination of how brain anatomy and genes may influence personality is
built upon disquieting discoveries the author made about himself in the course
of his research into the brain. Jim Fallon's willingness to make personal observations
is fearless and that humanizing narrative pulls the reader into the examination
of how we become who we are.
The difference between turning out as a distinguished academic (vs axe
murderer) is possibly a finer line than medical science had appreciated. The
reader is sure to gain useful insights into people they know, and maybe even
him- or herself. I am pleased to see my former professor continuing to educate
in his entertaining way. Read this book.
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5.0
out of 5 stars Welcome to the club.
The bad news and the good news., August 13, 2014
This
review is from: The Psychopath
Inside: A Neuroscientist's Personal Journey into the Dark Side of the Brain
(Hardcover)
Welcome to the club. The bad news
and the good news.
We are in a very strange period of human evolution. We are beginning to
understand how our brain functions as humans never have before. We are living
longer and longer, we are solving problems that have tormented humanity for
millennia, yet as fast as we solve problems, we create new ones.
We are the only animals on our planet with full self-awareness and knowledge of
our own mortality. We are the only animals with a sense of “right and wrong,”
which we refer to as ethics or morality. Nature has no sense of morality. My
wife and I live in the woods on an island in Puget Sound.
Occasionally I see an eagle or hawk or owl snatch a bunny or squirrel and
consume it. The eagle swoops; the bunny hides and runs; neither thinks this is
right or wrong. It's just nature. Only human beings say “Don't murder, torture,
rape; help out people less fortunate.” (sometimes as they performing these very
“sinful” actions they ostensibly oppose). I am a life long atheist; if you
consider yourself a good person (and probably you are, most of the time)
because of Jesus or whatever, “good on you,”
As far as I can tell, the reason most of us behave reasonably well most of the
time is that we possess a feature in our nervous system called “empathy.” I
have felt pain; I am reluctant to inflict pain. If I see someone in pain, I am
impelled to relieve their suffering if I can.
About 1% of human beings lack empathy. We call these people
psychopaths/sociopaths. Some of them are very bad people, who kill other human
beings because it satisfies desires or because it is amusing and entertaining
to do so. The vast majority of “paths” are not killers; they just steal,
seduce, and torment for similar reasons. Some people do bad things for other
reasons. Sometimes people do them out of desperation. My family had a car
stolen from right in front of our house once; when we recovered the vehicle we
learned that the thieves were a desperate homeless couple. I have also had at
least three serious run-ins with non-violent psychopaths during my life time.
Two were bosses (one a high administrator of a large, much admired public
library system); #3 was a long-time ecological cult leader and career swindler,
whom my wife and I defeated in an immense civil trial – proxy for a criminal
trial – that went to the Oregon Supreme Court.. All three of these “paths”
fooled me (and many others) completely. “Paths” can be very, very dangerous
people.
I found this book fascinating, well written, and to the extent I could evaluate
the rather technical scientific information included, accurate and persuasive.
I have a personal reason for liking the book rather similar to the author's for
writing it. He recognizes that he is a psychopath by a “blind test” of his
brain scan. That's the “bad news.” The “good news” is that because of fortunate
events in his childhood and upbringing he learned how to avoid his “genetic
doom” (the murderous trail of psychopathic murders in his genealogical record
going back to King John (the psychopathic king of England who unwillingly
signed the Magna Carta). There is bad stuff in my psychopath make up as well. I
doubt that I am a “full out” psychopath (I have some empathy) but I am a
relatively “cool and unemotional” person whose psyche vibrates with some
resonance with psychopath harmonies. Your mileage may vary.
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Afterword by the Blog Author
The reviews of this book are worth looking at, especially the
strong minority that ranks it as only one or two stars. There’s an element of personal anger in those
antagonistic reviews.
I want to speculate on that anger, because it is so
unreasonable and so consistent between different angry reviewers. If a man with the brain of a psychopath acts
normal, then it means that nurture remains important and it also argues very
strongly for free will. That’s important
because there is a faux-scientific attack on the legal system and on criminal
confinement stemming entirely from the wholly intellectual notion that
criminals can’t help but commit crimes and that therefore they aren’t in charge
of their own motives and intents, and that therefore they aren’t guilty of
anything.
But if someone with the same twisted brain wiring can lead a
normal life, that explodes the argument.
And they hate that, do these dissing reviewers, and they objectify that
hatred through personal attack, because they
need to defend their own construct against an astonishing yet true case
history.
