Was he a psychopath?
No, I don't mean a serial killer, I mean a medically-specified psychopath. Here's a list of symptoms:
- Having a superficial charm and outwardly social behavior
- Difficulty with showing remorse or empathy
- Not sharing deep emotional connections with people who do care about them
- Pathological lying with ease and without remorse, even if not necessary
- Behaving in ways that conflicts with social norms
- Disregarding or violating the rights of others
- Inability to distinguish between right and wrong
- Manipulating and hurting others for personal gain
- Recurring problems with the law or authority
- General disregard toward safety and responsibility
- Expressing anger and arrogance on a regular basis
- Bouts of anger
With everything I've ever read about him, I think just about everything on this list checks a box from his personal life. He was a compulsive liar, stole from friends and other people, would betray decade-long friendships on a whim as if he never cared about them at all, was abusive towards his wife and kid, was great at forming connections but would immediately treat people like garbage once he had made use of them, was incapable of working for other people, had the inability to apologize unless feined, was known to have angry public outbursts for no reason, couldn't allow his leadership to be questioned, and was considered quite charming and charismatic to those who didn't know him well.
I definitely think Jobs was a psychopath, or had some sort of deeply controlling personality disorder or two. He tricked the whole world into thinking he was an inspiring revolutionary thinker, when he simply knew how to manipulate people. He was a social genius, not a technological one.