55 pages • 1 hour read
Robert HareWithout Conscience: The Disturbing World of the Psychopaths Among Us
Nonfiction | Book | Adult | Published in 1993A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Background
Literary Context: Contribution to Psychological Nonfiction
Without Conscience is a landmark work in the field of psychological nonfiction. Hare illustrates his points by providing real-world examples and case studies that illustrate the behaviors of psychopaths in different contexts—corporate boardrooms, criminal courtrooms, and personal relationships—demonstrating the far-reaching implications of psychopathy in everyday life.
Psychological nonfiction as a genre often seeks to explain complex mental and emotional phenomena to a broad audience. The works in this genre range from personal memoirs of psychological experiences to in-depth explorations of disorders, behavior, and the workings of the human mind. Authors like Oliver Sacks in The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat (1985) and Bessel van der Kolk in The Body Keeps the Score (2014) have helped shape this genre by combining scientific research with narrative storytelling, bridging the gap between academia and the general public. Without Conscience fits squarely into this tradition but carves out a niche in its focus on psychopathy, a subject that, while often sensationalized in fiction, is not well understood by the public.
The book offers a factual counterpoint to fictional representations of psychopaths—such as in 
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