ABSTRACT
When he was a baby, Andy McNab was abandoned in a shopping bag in front of a hospital and subsequently adopted. He did poorly in school and engaged in petty crimes as a juvenile. His life changed, however, when he joined the British Army at the age of sixteen. During his career, he excelled in the art of warfare, eventually leaving the military in 1993 as a member of the British Special Forces, having been awarded numerous medals for military heroism. Since then, he has written best-selling books about his war experiences, expanded his career into the business world, and is currently with his fifth wife. One of his books, co-written with psychologist Kevin Dutton, is entitled The Good
Psychopath’s Guide to Success: How to Use Your Inner Psychopath to Get the Most Out of Life. McNab is a self-professed psychopath who openly credits his successes to his psychopathic traits, such as his reduced feelings of empathy and fear (Dutton & McNab, 2014). He argues that psychopathic traits can help us achieve success in life, and perhaps even allow us to act heroically when the situation calls for it. As McNab explained, “If I’m in a hostage situation I’d rather have a psychopath coming through the door than anyone else because I know he’s going to be completely focused on the job in hand” (Merz, 2014). In his view, the capacity for cold-blooded killer instincts can be a tremendous advantage not just for psychopathic persons, but for those around them, at least in certain cases. McNab’s idea may understandably strike many readers as counterintuitive, even implausible.
