Published on 15.4.2013, Frank Thadeusz of Der Spiegel writes about Kevin Dutton’s latest book, The Wisdom of Psychopaths: What Saints, Spies, and Serial Killers Can Teach Us About Success (original English title).
Psychology: Could one also make a career instead of becoming a serial perpetrator? Soul watchers discover the type of professionally successful psychopaths. A British scholar even believes that everybody can learn from those who are perturbed.
The book is about research into the lives of psychopaths and their cunning behaviour patterns. The author set out on a vast inquiry – including the latest advances in brain scanning and neuroscience – to find out not only what makes a psychopath but also which jobs are particularly attractive for this type of human. He found that leading are corporate chiefs and lawyers, followed by surgeons in the fourth position; priests are found in the eighth position.
He describes the difference between a psychopath and a normal corporate leader: “A normal person having just lost a billion by messing up would lock himself into the toilet and throw up. The psychopath goes home undeterred and doesn’t even think about it.” By this he means financial jugglers such as Bernard Madoff and Richard Fuld of the Lehman Brothers; also included in his research are Kennedy, Nixon, Clinton, and Steve Jobs.
Dutton’s theory is that we all possess psychopathic tendencies, that society as a whole is more psychopathic than ever. He argues that there are indeed “functional psychopaths” among us — different from their murderous counterparts — who use their detached, unflinching, and charismatic personalities to succeed in mainstream society, and that shockingly, in some fields, the more “psychopathic” people are, the more likely they are to succeed.
The book appears provocative and reveals a lot of food for thought about the so-called dark side in many humans.
The article by Der Spiegel concludes:
“How to exploit one’s followers bluntly and in an exceedingly comfortable manner, was virtuously demonstrated by another sect leader in the seventies. The Indian Chandra Mohan Jain, also known as Bhagwan, preached humility to his disciples but for himself he aspired to own a Rolls Royce for every day of the year.
That his followers accepted this contradiction uncomplainingly, was commented by Bhagwan in probably the only possible way: ‘Five percent of the people are intelligent, the remaining 95 percent are our followers.’”
Now the reader may wonder why Osho is mentioned in this context at all. I asked myself the same question and in lieu of having the actual book at hand, went online and checked Dutton’s book at Amazon. There is a clever little search button for the contents in the book and interestingly none of the names for Osho, or Poona, or even India came up. Assuming that Amazon’s search engine works, this is puzzling; one must assume Dutton didn’t mention Osho at all.
The writer of the review – in the typical shabby and whacky manner of Der Spiegel – may have simply thought he would attract more readers if he would include Osho’s photo, two lame paragraphs about Osho and an entirely false quote attributed to Osho. Der Spiegel’s archives have also not been updated in a long time – Mr. Tadeusz, the names you used for Osho haven’t been used since the late eighties and as for the quote, you might be well advised to do your research.
Bhagawati for Osho News
Thanks to Sankalpa and Bodhena for getting the article to us.