First off, one must understand that this is a popular psychology book. You are not going to be reading anything particularly deep or earth shattering. The psychology section of any shopping mall bookstore will yield a majority of these kinds of books. They are light on theory and studies and heavy on practical advice. Very little distinguishes most of them from Self-Help books and I'm sure Freud wasn't pioneering psychoanalysis in hopes of one day taking responsibility for "I'm Ok, You're Ok".

You have to judge it by these merits and not by the merits of a trained clinical psychologist or psychoanalyst. Once you do that you can relax and read this book as the pop psych text it is, rather than the indepth psychological book it isn't.

This is a great book for anyone victimized by those without conscience. It gives plenty of warning signs including the plea for pity that many of these jerks use with regularity. It will explain why you never could get through to your roommate, why your old boyfriend sucked the life out of you and why that priest or rabbi managed to make you doubt yourself to the point where it took you years to rebuild your self-image.

Of course, you might be wrong in your assessment of these jerks in your life, but you might also be right. Either way, this is a great book at describing the kinds of sociopaths you might encounter from the aggressive creep to the "helpful" authority figure that stabs you in the back to the bitter old woman to the lazy shiftless jerk that keeps claiming "depression" or "trauma" as an excuse to live off of your efforts.

The reservations one might have about these books include the author's politics which sneak in every so often (she's definitely against all types of warfare) and the points where the author tries to say what causes sociopathy or argue why a conscience is better than no conscience (as if you have a choice).

Definitely a good companion book to THe Gift of Fear.

I thought this book was excellently written and a fun read. If ever there was a complete diagram of a sociopathic mind, this is it. Although we all know sociopaths, few of us can recognize their charmed ways of deviousness until we've been taken.
This book will literally make you think about everyone you know in a different way!