Jobs fit for a psychopath

Parent Cafe
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<p>Once again, musica, you crack me up!</p>

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<p>It’s still smart to go to church in case you need an exorcist for a nasty psychopathic lawyer.</p>

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<p>Management consultants might be on the list too, though the range of the job is so wide. Per someone I know who has done personality testing, consultants score low on empathy, high on manipulation.</p>

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<p>Civil Servants? My sister was in charge of a government department full of them and was more likely to be checking them for a pulse than for abnormal behavior - unless you count “playing dead” for 8 hours a day as psychopathic.</p>

<p>Maybe DMV skews the data.</p>

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<p>I don’t think sociopaths are “really empty, insecure, unhappy people” - I think they’re wired differently and thus experience the world in a completely different way emotionally. It means they will tend to be very good at tasks others of us would freak out at because our emotional response would get in the way of the rational thought needed to resolve the situation.</p>

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<p>Oh Lord, I’m married to one on the list! And yeah, most of the guys in that professions . . . Definitely.</p>

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<p>I must have had particularly bad luck with teachers…</p>

<p>I wonder whether in some of those professions, the person is actually better at the job if he or she has some of these psychopathic characteristics. For example, it’s a cliche in medical circles that surgeons are egocentric and supremely self-confident–but perhaps they need to be in order to successfully cut holes in other people.</p>

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<p>I could understand if the list was about highest rates of narcissists, but psychopaths? Wow. Yikes.</p>

<p>As a member of a profession named on this list: OUCH!</p>

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<p>Sociopath and psychopath are terms which are often used interchangeably. </p>

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<p>Some scholars differentiate the two:</p>

<p>[Sociopathy</a> vs. Psychopathy | Forensic Focus](<a href=“http://blogs.psychcentral.com/forensic-focus/2010/07/sociopathy-vs-psychopathy/]Sociopathy”>Mental Health Blog | Psych Central)</p>

<p>I read The Sociopath Next Door. It scared the crap out of me.</p>

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<p>*I could understand if the list was about highest rates of narcissists, but psychopaths? Wow. Yikes.</p>

<p>Suzy’s response:
As a member of a profession named on this list: OUCH!*</p>

<p>lol…no offense to you. :)</p>

<p>It’s just that a number of those professions on that first list do have a higher rates of people with NPD.</p>

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<p>IMHO an example of a CEO sociopath</p>

<p>“AIG has paid back its debt to America with a profit, and we mean it when we say thank you to the American people,” said Benmosche.</p>

<p>yep,we mean it when we say thank you,now on to the lawsuit</p>

<p>Read more: [Washington’s</a> jaw drops at possibility of AIG lawsuit - Ben White and Anna Palmer - POLITICO.com](<a href=“Fury at possible AIG lawsuit - POLITICO”>Fury at possible AIG lawsuit - POLITICO)</p>

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<p>Yeah…aig bugs me too.</p>

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<p>CEOs? I can believe that. Ditto chef and some others. However, I have yet to meet a psychopath lawyer. Maybe I used to hang out with the wrong kind of lawyers… patent attorneys are quite nice. Civil servant - is that a term for a politician? Should be moved to the top of the list, IMO.</p>

<p>I’d add to the list: (chemistry) research professors. I’ve seen quite a few that fit the definition of a psychopath, like the guy who was throwing lab stools around and yelling at his grad student profanities, something about the grad student’s mother.</p>

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<p>I’d add to the list: (chemistry) research professors. I’ve seen quite a few that fit the definition of a psychopath, like the guy who was throwing lab stools around and yelling at his grad student profanities, something about the grad student’s mother.</p>

<p>wow…</p>

<p>There is a German teacher here at a local high school that frequently throws things out of the second story window when he’s angry. One time he broke the windshield of a car below. So far, no people have been injured by his odd rants. Don’t know why the school keeps him??? Maybe it’s very hard to get German teachers???</p>

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<p>Being a jerk, having a bad temper, even being a violent criminal, doesn’t necessarily mean someone is a psychopath.</p>

<p>I’ve read a few books about sociopaths recently, and lawyers have come up frequently as a profession apparently attractive to sociopaths.</p>

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<p>Too late to edit my prior post…</p>

<p>I think these profs were indeed psychopaths, not just bad-tempered people. They thrived on abusing their grad students and had enormous egos. I have stories to tell…</p>

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<p>^^^^Very well could be. I think some of the scariest hallmarks of the psychopath are the absolute inability to feel remorse for his actions, the fact that he is incapable of feeling empathy, and that he just can’t experience true love for another person (beyond what that person can do for them). These people seem to have no soul.</p>

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<p>^^ but they make great warriors.;)</p>

<p>I have been using this information for personal “risk management” for years. When I ask new acquaintances what they do for a living, I want to find out how close I should allow them to get to me. I am not trying to “make” small talks.</p>

<p>It works brilliantly.</p>

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<p>As a matter of fact, one of the books I read made that exact point.</p>

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<p>Do some of those jobs require some level of psychopathy? For example, if everyone, even someone accused of a heinous crime with slam-dunk evidence, must have good legal representation in any court procedure, would it unbelievable that a non-psychopath lawyer specializing in criminal law would have trouble effectively defending such an accused, because of the possibility that an (intended from a defense point of view) acquittal may be “letting someone get away with murder”?</p>