The Psychopath Inside, James Fallon
The Psychopath Inside, James Fallon
16 Rating(s)
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The Psychopath Inside
A Neuroscientist's Personal Journey into the Dark Side of the Brain

Author: James Fallon

Narrator: Walter Dixon

Unabridged: 4 hr 58 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Publisher: Ascent Audio

Published: 11/01/2013


Synopsis

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.

Reviews

Goodreads review by Claudia on August 16, 2014

This guy is a complete jerk, as you might imagine from the title. As a narcissist, he not only doesn't mind this, he kind of likes the idea that he's an asshole. Once you get past that, he does happen to know a few things about brain science and about genetics. For the most part, he explains them qu......more

Goodreads review by Anne on January 24, 2025

Nature vs Nurture. I've heard it said that genetics loads the gun and environment pulls the trigger. But how true is that? So, Fallon was/is a neuroscientist who had two separate studies going. One looking at brain scans for markers of Alzheimer's and another looking at the brain scans of "psychopaths......more

Goodreads review by Beth on September 24, 2014

I thoroughly enjoyed this book, especially the science. I skimmed through some reviews and saw many people didn't like the book because they thought the author was full of himself and down plays the wrong he has done and the hurt he has caused others. Of course he is and has. If truly a psychopath (......more

Goodreads review by David on November 16, 2015

James Fallon is a neuroscientist, a professor of psychiatry at the School of Medicine at University of California, Irvine. He is an active researcher in brain structure. He discovered telltale attributes of brain scans (PET, fMRI) that indicate that a person is a psychopath. So, it was with shock and......more

Goodreads review by Traveller on November 10, 2021

We all have an idea what “evil” is. The fifth emperor of Rome, Nero, (r. 54 AD-68 AD) was seen as evil, as was Caligula, Rome’s third Emperor (r. 37 AD – 41 AD), mainly because they killed many people upon a whim in some rather cruel ways, and seemed not to care a fig about the well-being of their s......more