Listening to My Students and Learning Through Them…

In the previous posts, I’ve tried to put words to the events and relationships that propelled me onto the path of writing Psychopathy Unmasked. In this post, I want to say a little about a cohort of unsung heroes that rarely gets credit when scientists promote their work: my students.

Together, they are arguably the professional relationship that has benefited me the most.

When I finished my dissertation in 2017, I landed my first teaching gig at the University of Toronto Mississauga. Man, was I nervous when I entered that classroom for the first time. Excited, but nervous.

I was hired to teach partially in philosophy—which I felt comfortable with—but also in the Forensic Science Program, which felt much more foreign. Sure, I had written a dissertation on psychopathy, but I wasn’t a forensic scientist. Not even close. To this day, I remain incredibly grateful that the University of Toronto took a chance on me. I was by no means the obvious candidate.

But this post isn’t about impostor syndrome or hiring committees. It’s about students—and how they’ve shaped my thinking more than anyone else.

If you pick up a copy of Psychopathy Unmasked, you’ll find this passage in the acknowledgments:

“Since 2017, I have been part of the faculty in the Department of Philosophy and the Forensic Science Program at the University of Toronto, where I have had the privilege of teaching a diverse set of courses to an incredibly talented bunch of students. I am thankful for all the conversations I have had with them, and this book is in no small part an attempt to reproduce our discussions about psychopathy.”

That last sentence is no exaggeration. Psychopathy Unmasked is structured such that it literally follows a narrative I developed over seven years of teaching and discussing the topic of psychopathy. Many of my students provided feedback on the manuscript, and one of them told me: “When I was reading the script, it was almost like sitting in the classroom again, listening to our conversations.”

To me, that’s one of the greatest compliments I could ever receive.

What do students give you? Frankly, much more than you—or students themselves—initially realize.

Academics often become experts in narrow subfields—tight-knit conversations that rarely include outsiders (it’s bad, but true). Students are not complete outsiders, since they’ve already entered the field at its fringes the moment you start engaging with them. In a way, they still have one foot “outside” and one foot “inside.” That position primes them to ask questions that don’t fit neatly within your framework. Sometimes they ask about things that feel off-topic or even naïve—until you try to answer and realize you can’t.

Those are the moments that ground you. They pull you down from the imaginary ivory tower. It can be a very humbling experience. I’ve long since grown comfortable answering too-hard questions with an honest: “I wish I could answer your question, but I’m not sure I can.”

Years ago, probably in 2019, I was talking in class about why I was skeptical that psychopathy is a “real” disorder. A student raised their hand and asked, “Okay, but what about someone like Ted Bundy?” The student was right to ask. From the outside, Bundy seems like living proof that psychopathy is real.

I tried to give a coherent answer, but it fell flat. I probably came across as slightly dismissive. After class, I went back to my office and started digging deeper into Bundy (I’m embarrassed to admit it became a bit of an obsession for the better part of a year). Eventually, I arrived at the conclusion that Bundy is not a good example of psychopathy, based on a variety of compelling, fact-based reasons (there’s much more on that in Psychopathy Unmasked).

That entire line of inquiry started with a student question, and I probably wouldn’t been pushed there if it wasn’t for that student.

To this day, I continue to find genuine inspiration in my students. There is, of course, the joy of watching their development and rediscovering the fascination with philosophy and science through their eyes. But students give much more. They challenge you, stretch your thinking, and force me and my colleagues to revise and develop our materials every year.

Each new semester brings a new crowd and a new set of searing questions—and that’s both exhilarating and unnerving. These are the moments that truly push you as a researcher.

It’s a shame we don’t spend more time with our students than we do...

---

This blog is part of the series “The Making of Psychopathy Unmasked,” which shares behind-the-scenes stories about how the book came together and the experiences that shaped my thinking on psychopathy.