"Now, you don't need to be violent to be a psychopath."

And there was a chapter in that book, called "Natural Born Persuaders," about how psychopaths are better at persuading. 

clinicians, the medical experts couldn't countenance the possibility that there'd be benefits to psychopathic characteristics at large.   --Dr. Kevin Dutton    

The evil geniuses of persuasion, the con artists, who've learned it all from first principles, learned it all from the streets, living on their wits.  So who learned more about persuasion, me, the boffin, the nerd, or the guys who learned it from books.  Turns out it was a bit of a draw.  He knew all the technical terms, but they knew how to do it, and they are the evil geniuses of persuasion.  They were all of them, without exception, psychopaths.  Now, you don't need to be violent to be a psychopath.  They had no conscience, no remorse.  They were pretty ruthless, and they could destroy people's lives not by violence but by fraud and deception.

Is that the definition of a psychopath, the willingness to inflict harm on other people for your own benefit without caring about it?  

No, that's more of a sadist.  Now you do get sadistic psychopaths.  It's interesting.  When people hear the word psychopath, they tend to think of real-life serial killers like Ted Bundy and on the silver screen, your Hannibal Lecters.  But actually, Konstantin, when psychologists like myself talk about psychopaths we're, in fact, referring to a distinct set of individuals 

But actually, Constantines when psychologists like myself talk about psychopaths we're, in fact, referring to a distinct subset of individuals with a specific constellation of personality characteristics, such as ruthlessness, fearlessness, mental toughness, self-confidence, coolness under pressure, emotional detachment, 

They also exhibit focus, charm, charisma, and of course, those trademark deficits of conscience and empathy you hear so much about.  None of those traits is necessarily a problem in itself.  In fact, all of them dialed up at the right levels and deployed within the right context can actually prove rather useful.  The key lies in context (timing and circumstances you find yourself in) and level.  Imagine these qualities I've just listed comprise the hodgepodge of knobs and sliders on a personality mixing desk.  So if you twiddle them up and down in various combinations, you're going to arrive at 2 conclusions: 1) no size fits all, 2) by its very nature, there's going to be certain jobs or professions are going to demand those mixing decibels be turned up just a little bit higher than average, demand precision engineered psychopathy.  

For example, imagine you've got the skill sets to be a top surgeon but you lack the ability to emotionally disengage from the person you're operating on.  You're not going to cut it, are you?  

Imagine you've got the skill sets to be a top lawyer but you lack the almost pathological self-confidence to be the center of attention in the middle of a packed courtroom, that narcissism to be the big shot in front of a jury. 

Context is key.  When writing Flipnosis, 2011, I wanted to know if there was a DNA of persuasion that you know would make you We're all capable of it, but can we all find the key?  

I was talking to conmen, and they were all psychopaths.  And there was a chapter in that book, called "Natural Born Persuaders," about how psychopaths are better at persuading in general than the rest of us.  They've got that charm, that charisma, but also they're not caught up in the emotion of persuasion.  They can almost move you around on a court like a top tennis player.  When that chapter came out for review, all the reviewers zoned in on it, and they said, if psychopaths are better at persuasion than the rest of us, then what else are they good at?  Turns out that psychopaths are very good at a lot of things.  But when the book came out, many thought it was controversial because many didn't know what a psychopath really was.  They looked to the media, saw Hannibal Lecter, and thought that all psychopaths were rapists, serial killers, and suicide bombers.  Second, the clinicians, the medical experts couldn't countenance the possibility that there'd be benefits to psychopathic characteristics at large because the only psychopaths that they'd seen had been the bad ones on the screen that had been referred to them from forensic, clinical settings.  By the very nature of their jobs, they were going to meet the top surgeons or the special forces soldiers or the CEOs.  His book is the only that argues that there are benefits to psychopathic characteristics.  Most of his people would agree that he's won the argument.  

The guest's name is Dr. Kevin Dutton.