How Charles Manson Won Friends and Influenced People

The criminal and the self-help book

This explains so much:

Dale Carnegie Training, the self-help program that's shaped the lives of such people as Warren Buffett, Johnny Cash, and Emeril Lagasse, can claim an additional ardent disciple: Charles Manson.

In his new book, Manson: The Life and Times of Charles Manson, author Jeff Guinn credits Carnegie training with transforming Manson from "a low-level pimp" to the "frighteningly effective sociopath" who created a cult of killers in the late 1960s. Manson took classes in "How to Win Friends and Influence People," based on Carnegie's iconic book, while doing time for car theft in a California federal prison in 1957. "It was critical in shaping how he manipulated people," says Guinn, noting that the young convict told people he'd enrolled to get strangers to open up to him.

Manson was interested in Scientology and transactional analysis, too—a connoisseur of self-help fads and pop psychology. Sometimes he seems less like the closing chapter of the '60s than a dark parody of the '70s that no one recognized because it came in advance.

[Hat tip: Bryan Alexander.]

Comments

[Slammer]

Jeff Guinn is a very good writer. His book on Bonnie and Clyde was outstanding.

[Longtorso, Johnny]

Manson’s victims had Cleveland Browns as their pall bearers, so they “could let them down, one last time”.

[ant1sthenes]

I think you’re more intolerable than shriek. I just wanted you to know.

[Pro Libertate]

This reminds me of the The One Bullet Manager: Management Secrets of the Khmer Rouge from The Book of Sequels (working from memory, but I think that was written or edited by the same guy who co-wrote Bored with the Rings).

[John]

If you read the books by his followers, it is pretty obvious how he did it. He would show up and do nice things for people. He would give them his blanket, let them sleep on a bed if there was only room for one while he slept on the floor. It made people feel indebted to him and gave him an in on working on their psyche. And of course, once he had dedicated female followers, he was able to give men sex, which is a highly effective motivator.

[The Late P Brooks]

author Jeff Guinn credits Carnegie training with transforming Manson from “a low-level pimp” to the “frighteningly effective sociopath”

A role model for Spitzer, apparently.

[Pro Libertate]

I recently learned that James Lipton was a pimp, just like Tattaglia. Well, maybe more of a whore agent.

Anyway, I wonder if he shouldn’t represent Spitzer for a nominal fee?

[Fluffy]

Whoa, if you click the Transactional Analysis link you go to Google Books and the rest of the page is about how Manson thought he was Valentine Michael Smith.

I never heard about that before.

The page features a hell of a dark take on the synopsis of Stranger in a Strange Land.

[Pro Libertate]

He thinks he’s from Mars?

[SugarFree]

Stranger was beloved by much of the counterculture. Of course, they’d try and read another book by Heinlein and recoil in horror.

[Eduard van Haalen]

“became it came in advance”

“became”?

[Jesse Walker]

Ugh. I meant “because.” Fixing it now.