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that I never felt when they hurt others, as if the hurt they had caused was so cosmically connected to the goodness of the universe as to reverberate back to them. These things I had pretended to feel for many years, had attempted assiduously to mimic the manifestations of, but had never actually felt in my life. I was more curious than anything. If there was a label for who I was, then maybe I could learn something more about myself. In fact, I had no trouble recognizing myself in the descriptions I found in my research.
    It turned out that my officemate had been acquaintedwith a man she discovered was a sociopath. Rather than live out the sob story of the con artist’s innocent victim, she had maintained a deep and enduring friendship with him. In retrospect, her willingness to regard me as a human being despite her firm belief that I was a sociopath offered me the possibility that I could be understood and accepted as I was. She was proof that not all people with consciences and empathy were appalled by the existence of people like me.
    I was actually glad that there was a word for it, that I wasn’t the only one like this. It must be a similar feeling to that of people who discover for themselves that they are gay or transgendered: in their bones, they’d known it all along.
    Years had passed from that tentative self-diagnosis to my period of introspection after being fired. Once the word
sociopath
had entered my consciousness and my initial satisfaction with finding a label had faded, I had treated it as an unimportant oddity, like an interesting but irrelevant quirk, until eventually I forgot it. But as my life crumbled around me, I knew that I couldn’t keep living like I had been before, acknowledging that I was different but ignoring the differences. I was so desperate for answers that I had begun seeing a therapist, but she was nothing more than a thing for me to toy with, and even then, she was too expensive for the limited satisfaction our sessions gave me. But through those therapy sessions, I had remembered that summer internship and that casual diagnosis of “sociopath.” I sensed there were answers about myself there, so I started reading a book that just happened to be available in its entirety online, written by the father of the modern concept of psychopathy, Dr. Hervey Cleckley.
    Cleckley, in his groundbreaking book
The Mask of Sanity
, first published in 1941, presented the profile of the personality he called the psychopath, but which we now commonlyrefer to as the sociopath. Cleckley explained that a psychopath was extremely difficult to diagnose, because his mental faculties were fully intact, as was his ability to function in society as a seemingly normal human being, even a particularly successful one. Cleckley wrote:
    Not only is the psychopath rational and his thinking free of delusions, but he also appears to react with normal emotions. His ambitions are discussed with what appears to be healthy enthusiasm. His convictions impress even the skeptical observer as firm and binding. He seems to respond with adequate feelings to another’s interest in him and, as he discusses his wife, his children, or his parents, he is likely to be judged a man of warm human responses, capable of full devotion and loyalty
.
    According to Cleckley, psychopaths are antisocials who excel at seeming social—seeming to feel, desire, hope, and love like everyone else. They exist virtually indistinguishable among society. In fact, the psychopath excels in many ways that others do not. Cleckley’s psychopath is uncommonly charming and witty. He is unflappable and eloquent, keeping his cool under pressure. Under this “mask of sanity,” however, is a liar, a manipulator, a person who disregards his obligations with little to no sense of responsibility. He is exciting because he is impulsive, whimsical, and prone to making the same mistake multiple times. His narcissism keeps him from forming any real emotional