[fsloth]

If psychiatrists generally frown upon diagnosing people who are not their patients, as a non-expert, I would be fairly careful in labeling now deceased people based on anecdotal data. Especially if I was not familiar with the person. Jobs had obvious pathological facets in his interactions with other people - but inventing labels on top of the anecdotes really does not add value in any way.

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.

[taneq]

Generally I agree with you but there's a really, really clear pattern in everything anyone's ever written about an encounter with Steve Jobs. Over the space of decades he was unpredictably charming or abusive, a consummate manipulator and user, completely untrustworthy and seemingly without a conscience.

It's not a clinical diagnosis and should never be treated as such. But after you've run into a couple of people in your own life with those same attributes and that same pattern of behaviour, that's plenty to go on.

[fsloth]

Yes, some people have a pattern of behaving badly. Respectively, I still don't think it's a non-clinicians place to make armchair diagnoses based on anecdotes, especially since,

a) Not every pathological behavioral pattern has some underlying psychiatric or neurological condition to explain it. Some people just behave badly.

b) Often diagnosed psychological conditions don't really manifest in how people think they manifest

and

c) Completely dissimilar conditions can create similar behavior in some situtations.

Of c) especially: For example aspergers and narcissists can behave exactly the same in some situations. They both can lack in reciprocity, but for completely different reasons.

https://www.huffingtonpost.com/mark-goulston-md/just-listen-...

"...after you've run into a couple of people in your own life with those same attributes and that same pattern of behaviour, that's plenty to go on."

I agree that it's really critical to understand that there are people who don't engage in reciprocal relationships and can be abusive.