Free The Sociopath Next Door by Martha Stout PhD Page A

will eventually go to his grave not understanding that his life could have been full of meaning and warmth.

THREE

    when normal conscience sleeps

    The price of freedom is eternal vigilance.

    —Thomas Jefferson

    C onscience is a creator of meaning. As a sense of constraint rooted in our emotional ties to one another, it prevents life from devolving into nothing but a long and essentially boring game of attempted dominance over our fellow human beings, and for every limitation conscience imposes on us, it gives us a moment of connectedness with an other, a bridge to someone or something outside of our often meaningless schemes. Considering the ice-cold alternative of being someone like Skip, conscience is devoutly to be wished. So the question arises: In the 96 percent of us who are not sociopathic, does conscience ever change? Does it ever waver or weaken—or die?
    The truth is that even a normal person's conscience does not operate on the same level all of the time. One of the simplest reasons for this changeability is the fundamental circumstances of living inside a fallible, need-driven human body. When our bodies are exhausted, sick, or injured, all of our emotional functions, including conscience, can be temporarily compromised.
    To illustrate this, as he drives along in his car, let us give attorney Joe, owner of Reebok, a dizzying fever of about 102 degrees. We can see right away that his common sense is faltering, since, sick as he is, he is still trying to get to his meeting at work. But what about his moral sense? As a pitiless virus takes possession of his body, what does Joe do when he remembers that his dog Reebok, whom he loves, has no food? In this version of the story, Joe may barely have enough energy to go through with the plans he has already made, let alone be able to think quickly, prioritize on the spot, and redirect himself, as he does in the nonsick–Joe scenario. Feverish and queasy, now his emotional reaction to Reebok's distress is in direct competition with his own misery. Maybe conscience will still prevail. On the other hand, maybe Joe, weakened by illness, no longer possesses the complete strength of his convictions. Following the course of least resistance, maybe he will just keep driving and try to suffer through his original plans, and Reebok, though not altogether forgotten, will be relegated to an emotional back burner for a while.
    This is not really how we want to think about Joe, or about ourselves, but it is interesting, and it is true: Our exalted sense of conscience, the bringer of connection and meaning, can at times be significantly affected by something as totally irrelevant to right versus wrong, as unrelated to our moral sensibilities, as the flu—or a missed night's sleep, or a car crash, or a toothache. Normal conscience never disappears, but when the body is weak, conscience can get very sleepy and unfocused.
    An assault to the body is one of two things—the other one being great fear—that elevate continued, wide-awake conscience to an heroic level in our eyes. If a person is acutely ill or seriously injured, or afraid, and yet remains true to his or her emotional attachments, we think of that person as courageous. The classic example is the frontline soldier who, though injured himself, rescues his comrade from enemy fire. That we insist on the concept of courage to describe such acts is our tacit acknowledgment that the voice of conscience is commonly outshouted by substantial pain or fear. And in order to care for Reebok, if Joe were to make an extra drive home even with a fever of 102, we might see his behavior as heroic in a minor way. We would do more than just smile at him sentimentally. We might want to pat him on the back.
    Another bodily influence on conscience is, strangely enough, hormones. To relate this impairment of conscience succinctly—according to figures from the National Adoption Information Clearinghouse, 15 to 18 percent of recent births in the