The Psychopath Inside

A Neuroscientist's Personal Journey into the Dark Side of the Brain

By: James Fallon

Narrated by: Walter Dixon

Length: 4 hrs and 58 mins

Publisher's summary

The memoir of a neuroscientist whose research led him to a bizarre personal discovery, James Fallon had spent an entire career studying how our brains affect our behavior when his research suddenly turned personal.

While studying brain scans of several family members, he discovered that one perfectly matched a pattern he’d found in the brains of serial killers. This meant one of two things: Either his family’s scans had been mixed up with those of felons or someone in his family was a psychopath. Even more disturbing: The scan in question was his own. This is Fallon’s account of coming to grips with this discovery and its implications.

How could he, a happy family man who had never been prone to violence, be a psychopath? How much did his biology influence his behavior? Fallon shares his journey to answer these questions and the discoveries that ultimately led to his conclusion: Despite everything science can teach, humans are even more complex than we can imagine.

©2013 James Fallon (P)2013 Gildan Media LLC

Critic reviews

“As comprehensive as it is compelling, essential listening for understanding the genetic and neuroscience underpinnings of psychopathy.” (M. E. Thomas, author of Confessions of a Sociopath)

Entertaining story with some quick neuroscience

Any additional comments?

The book itself is interesting on several levels. It tells the story of a successful Professor who stumbled across the finding that his brain resembled those of psychopaths and serial killers. In researching himself he also discovered murderers in his extended family tree.

The underlying neuroscience of psychopathy was presented in lightning fast speed that was hard to follow in the audible version, even for someone like myself who is a physician. I ended up buying the printed book so I could reread those sections and look at the images and diagrams.

One particularly useful point in the book is his distinction between psychopathic and antisocial. His brain was psychopathic but his behavior was not antisocial. I regard this as a meaningful and helpful distinction.

Professor Fallon's personal story was fascinating if more than a trace narcissistic. I also had the sense that he greatly minimized some of his peccadillos in the middle of the book while alluding to greater indiscretions toward the end.

The subtextual question of nature versus nurture runs through the book. Professor Fallon's bias is toward the nature explanation, stating that 80% of who we are is determined by our inborn biology and the structure of our brain. At the end he does leave the door open to the possibility that it was the nurturing tolerance of and containment of his youthful adventurous escapades by his understanding parents that shepherded his psychopathic brain into a productive life with only minimal misbehavior.

This is a fun book to listen to for an aerial view of the topic. It will be sufficient for most readers. The more serious student of the topic will need to pursue it elsewhere but this is an entertaining start.

brutal, and not for everyone.

the book is full jargon that isn't necessary to absorb the book, but it makes sense that the author would add all of it.

Jaw dropping! But an amazing read!

After hearing this wonderfully fun, insightful, scary book, the question that lingers is: Who is his wife?? Wow! The woman has the patience of a saint!

Now, because I've just spent two years in a relationship with a man who has the same kind of brain that James Fallon has, I have personal experience at how "trying" it can be! I have read all the "Psychopathy" books, and found them okay, except that they demonized the "disorder." They encouraged me to delete this man from my life. Completely. "No Contact!" They all screamed at me.

I tried, but he wouldn't let me go... (just as those books predicted!) And I couldn't delete him from my brain or my heart no matter how hard I tried! No matter how bad I knew he was for me. And it really pissed me off! ;^)) Because he's impossible! But he's also funny, smart, charming - like so many psychopaths!

So I wanted to find a way to "understand" what was going on with him, and James Fallon's book gave me exactly what I needed. Fallon explains the brain structures that compel the person (usually male) to be an extreme thrill seeker, drinker, druggie.. and many other lovely "anti-social" things that even James Fallon won't describe. Be that as it may, the take-away from this book is that "his brain" is needed in our species's DNA mix. And I think he's right.

He's given me another way to deal with the "personality disorder" that I love. Now, I can decide what I want to do with him from a less charged and far less judgmental perspective. I know he will never change. All I needed from the relationship was to learn to love unconditionally.

James's wife, who's known James since he was 12, must have an over-soul who reminds her of his inner goodness. Learning to love someone unconditionally is more difficult than people realize. James's wife has done it! I doubt that I have the same patience.

A hard book to listen too

So here's the deal, the author of this book is incredibly self indulgent and narcissistic, which shouldn't be surprising because of the topic. The narrator, Walter Dixon does an awesome job and even made me forget that he wasn't actually the author telling me the story, the narrator was the only part of this book that I enjoyed. My main issue with this book is that it's like listening to that obnoxious co-worker that just won't stop talking, I don't care that James Fallon was good at everything and all women and men love him, it's annoying and mind numbing. If you want to listen to a narcissistic psychopath, this book is worth checking it, but I got the idea of the thing after the first chapter and just couldn't do it anymore.

Like Other Readers...

I found Fallon at times the slightest bit self-indulgent (should we expect otherwise, given the theme?), but, for the most part, this is an interesting and entertaining book. If you want something more serious and scientific, read Without Conscience or The Science Of Evil, but this book serves nicely for an up-to-date primer for the neurology of psychopathy, and it also serves its purpose well: the story of one man's dealing with the realization that he has the brain structure and innate tendencies of the very people he has been studying for years: the psychopath.

I really liked the book

when i first got the audio version, i was a little nervous since there were some bad reviews. once i was listening to it on my own, it wasn’t bad. the narration was a little too quick for me so i had to slow it down to about 0.8x. i felt like the story was very telling. for someone that watches/listens to true crime, i could see some of the attributes commonly displayed and talked about in his stories. i really appreciated the science portion of it as well. it helped make more sense from a biological perspective. i would probably listen to this again.

James Fallon is great for this read. Such insight

As a pro- social psychopath, he gives us the playbook for anti social behavior and the manipulation that is used. Thank you James Fallon!

Interesting

It was an interesting experience although not what I had expected. More boasting than informing.

As a psychopath

It’s a good book. Thank you for moving awareness forward. Too many psychopaths don’t care about our perception, which is why it is so poor. This is a step forward

theduranman

now that I understand this much better I now beleive I may have several of these traits. I also feel my father was and couple of my brothers are this way.