The Wisdom of Psychopaths

The psychopath, it’s been said, gets the words, but not the music, of emotion.

Foundation for the Study of Personality in History,

emotional distress

Who in the rainbow can draw the line where the violet tint ends and the orange tint begins? Distinctly we see the difference of the colours, but where exactly does the one first blendingly enter into the other? So with sanity and insanity. – Herman Melville

Openness to Experience, Conscientiousness, Extraversion, Agreeableness and Neuroticism – think OCEAN – constitute the genome of human personality.

Emotion is entropy, and seriously bad for business. I’ve hunted it down to extinction over the years.’

Their heart rates actually went down. As soon as they entered the danger zone (or the ‘launch pad’, as one guy I spoke with put it) they assumed a state of cold, meditative focus: a mezzanine level of consciousness in which they became one with the device they were working on.

It was conviction that made them tick.

interpersonal difficulties