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Dr. Keith Ablow is an author and forensic psychiatrist who is an expert on sociopaths—and from what he's read about the case, he belives that Scott Peterson is a classic sociopath.
"The hallmark of a sociopath is someone who lacks empathy, who can't resonate with another's feelings and who is going through life, in fact, almost imitating a human being," says Dr. Ablow. "[Scott] is clearly, and Anne mentions it in her book, sort of imitating a person. He'll use stock phrases from movies. He'll describe his relationship with Laci and say, 'She completes me.' Well, you know, we know that that's from a movie, Jerry Maguire. … He seems perfect, in fact, the golden boy, because there are no rough edges. But, in fact, people have rough edges."
According to the American Psychiatric Association 1 out of 25 Americans secretly has no conscience and can do anything at all without feeling guilty. Dr. Ablow believes, "Nobody is born evil; people are basically good. The empathy that we have, which is miraculous, the fact that we can hear a story of a friend who's in pain across the country and cry, or go to a movie and be moved to tears, is a gift. It's miraculous. Nobody can explain that. It's also very fragile. And it can be destroyed in children by showing them no empathy. At a certain point when a child feels helpless and decides, 'I'm not gonna feel anymore,' they lose the capacity to feel for me or you."
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