I'm Worried About This

This is from the introduction to a book I just started reading called 'The Sociopath Next Door' by Martha Stout Ph.D:

  

"Or let us imagine the opposite extreme:  You have no interest in power.  To the contrary, you are the sort of person who really does not want much of anything.  Your only real ambition is not to have to exert yourself to get by.  You do not want to work like everyone else does.  Without a conscience, you can nap or pursue your hobbies or watch television or just hang out somewhere all day long.  Living a bit on the fringes, and with some handouts from relatives and friends, you can do this indefinitely.  People may whisper to one another that you are an underachiever, or that you are depressed, a sad case, or, in contrast, if they get angry, they may grumble that you are lazy.  When they get to know you better, and get really angry, they may scream at you and call you a loser, a bum.  But it will never occur to them that you literally do not have a conscience, that in such a fundamental way, your very mind is not the same as theirs.

The panicked feeling of a guilty conscience never squeezes at your heart or wakes you in the night.  

Despite your lifestyle, you never feel irresponsible, neglectful or so much as embarrassed, although for the sake of appearances, sometimes you pretend that you do.  For example, if you are a decent observer of people and what they react to, you may adopt a lifeless facial expression, say how ashamed of your life you are, and talk about how rotten you feel.  This you do only because it is more convenient to have people think you are depressed than it is to have them shouting at you all the time, or insisting that you get a job.

You notice that people who do have a conscience feel guilty when they harangue someone they believe to be "depressed" or "troubled."  As a matter of fact, to your further advantage, they often feel obliged to take care of such a person.  If, despite your relative poverty, you can manage to get yourself into a sexual relationship with someone, this person - who does not suspect what you are really like - may feel particularly obligated.  And since all you want is not to have to work, your financier does not have to be especially rich, just relatively conscience-bound.

   

I trust that imagining yourself as any of these people feels insane to you, because such people are insane, dangerously so."