WITHOUT CONSCIENCE

A fascinating, if terrifying, look at psychopaths: the often charming, glib, sane-seeming people who rape and murder—and rip- off S&Ls—without a second's thought because they utterly lack the emotions that add up to the defining human characteristic of conscience. Hare (Psychology/University of British Columbia) gives thumbnail sketches of one psychopath after another—from John Wayne Gacy, the serial murderer who liked to entertain children as ``Pogo the Clown,'' to mere kids who torture and kill not only animals but other children. The author isolates the essential traits of the psychopath by using a ``psychopath checklist,'' a system of assessment he's devised during ten years of clinical practice with psychopaths in Canadian prisons. Again and again, Hare's rating system has verified a definition devised in 1941 by psychologist Hervey Cleckley, who concluded that psychopaths lack all personal values: ``It is impossible for [the psychopath] to take even a slight interest in the tragedy or joy or the striving of humanity as presented in serious literature or art,'' Cleckley wrote. ``He is also indifferent to all these matters in life itself.'' Hare cites provocative new evidence that the brain function of psychopaths may differ from that of normal adults: It seems that the speech of psychopaths is controlled by both hemispheres rather than by just the left, as is typical. In addition, ``neither side of the [psychopath's brain] is typical in the processes of emotion.'' While all the implications of psychopathic brain function remain unclear, Hare makes a strong case for the view that psychopaths are born, not made—and that, crucially, little can be done to unmake them. While advocating the firm training of psychopaths to consider rationally the outcome of their actions- -substituting head for heart—the author warns that denying the incorrigible nature of these cold, calculating beings will allow even more of them to prey on society. A chilling, eye-opening report—and a call to action.