I read this article and it made me think and my professions. (I’m stretching the definition of profession here.) Civil Servant is tenth on the list but both Layout Artist and Fiction Writer aren’t. As far as Layout Artist goes, there aren’t that many of us and there could easily be a large amount of Psychopaths in the business.
Fiction writing however isn’t on the list and I don’t think it would be on the top 1000. I could be wrong but every fiction writer I’ve met has a strong empathy and understanding of emotions and others. From my exhaustive research. It seems that “antisocial personality disorder” (Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders) or “dissocial personality disorder” (World Health Organization) is a condition that limits or prevents someone from being empathic and emotional.
Empathy and emotion are two attributes that every political alignment of author seem to have in spades. Writing a character is intensely empathic, you have to think differently and feel differently. Its can sometime, in extreme cases, cause and author to break down.
I don’t think there are no psychopaths in the fiction writing world but I think it’s they are rare.
If you’re interested in fiction staring a psychopath check out the The John Cleaver Series By Dan Wells. It’s both intense and amazingly well written. The protagonist has to deal with his own Psychopathy and a real psychopath killing people.
What do you make of it? Was your profession on the list?
Éric
OMG. My cubicle neighbour is a psychopath….
– Superficially charming, psychopaths tend to make a good first impression on others and often strike observers as remarkably normal. (I suppose).
– Yet they are self-centered (check), dishonest (check) and undependable (check), and at times they engage in irresponsible behavior for no apparent reason other than the sheer fun of it (DING DING DING DING DING). Largely devoid of guilt, empathy and love, they have casual and callous interpersonal and romantic relationships. Psychopaths routinely offer excuses for their reckless and often outrageous actions, placing blame on others instead. They rarely learn from their mistakes or benefit from negative feedback, and they have difficulty inhibiting their impulses.
Dammit. Now you’ve turned her into a psychopath. She cries at the drop of a hat but I wonder if that’s because she wants people to think that she ~*feels*~ as much as she does. There’s something extremely insincere about her. Huh.
And to follow up on that… it breaks my heart when I can’t help my clients the way I’d like to. I’m sure there are others who would get off on that.