| It seems pretty likely to me that Steve Jobs was a high functioning sociopath. The line about how his demeanor changed dramatically when Carmack's wife asked for a favor was indicative to me. "One time, my wife, then fiancée, and I were meeting with Steve at Apple, and he wanted me to do a keynote that happened to be scheduled on the same day as our wedding. With a big smile and full of charm, he suggested that we postpone it. We declined, but he kept pressing. Eventually my wife countered with a suggestion that if he really wanted “her” John so much, he should loan John Lassiter to her media company for a day of consulting. Steve went from full charm to ice cold really damn quick. I didn’t do that keynote." I find sociopaths fascinating, but I would sure never want to work for one. It must take an incredible amount of calculation and self discipline to keep a semblance of normality for an incredibly high profile sociopath like Jobs. On a side note, the late Pieter Hintjens of ZeroMQ wrote an excellent book about psychopaths available online for free here. https://legacy.gitbook.com/book/hintjens/psychopathcode/deta.... Also want to disclaim that I am not a psychiatrist and my opinion of Job's sociopathy is only my speculation. |
Mr. Hintjens was not a psychiatric expert either. That he wrote a book on the subject, is not entirely to his credit. As such, he could have just described "predatory behavior".
There is popular material available on psychopathy and socipathy written by subject matter experts. For example "The Psychopath Inside: A Neuroscientist's Personal Journey into the Dark Side of the Brain" by James Fallon is written by a neuroscientist who accidentally discovers he is a psychopath.