But do I get fooled? All the time.
Back when I was young and choosing my clinical specialty, I knew I needed to avoid working with anything to do with forensic, because I am such a super-soft touch. Sociopaths generally catch me every time. But you can’t work in psych without some court work, and I even one of my practica in a prison setting.
The funniest case, though he didn’t fool me, tried hard. He wasn’t very smart and I could see him morphing in front of my eyes to try to conform to what he thought would fool me. His court report was one of the more entertaining ones I ever wrote, and not only because his crimes were amusing.
So generally, yeah, my whole schtick for 40 years was reading people, and I do it pretty well. I do get taken occasionally, though, as my bent is to take people at face value, to think the best of them until proven otherwise.
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