The Psychopath Test

This has to be one of the books that I brought up in conversation more than any other while I was reading it. I learned that you want be careful how you bring this topic up though, otherwise you might risk offending people. They’ll think that you’re implying that they’re psychopaths.

You know, like when you mention something like “Hey psychopaths don’t dream very often.” Then thoughtlessly add, “That’s funny, you don’t dream very often.”

And nothing wins you brownie points like saying, “You know that relative of yours? After reading this book I’ve noticed they show some traits of a psychopath.”

The good news for hypochondriacs though? Evidently if you are worried about being a psychopath then you aren’t one. Good to know, huh?

Seriously though, this book was informative, interesting and a little bit scary. It wasn’t just filled with facts (like how there’s a much higher percentage of psychopaths in important corporate positions than in the general public), there were also intimidating tidbits (like how the recidivism rate actually went up for psychopaths who were treated with therapy).

And of course there was the actual checklist test. I’m pretty sure I was driving my husband crazy by pointing out psychopathic traits of characters on the TV and in movies. I’m very surprised that my summation of Voldemort’s psychopathic characteristics didn’t earn me an eye-roll.

If you like to analyze the people around you then you will have a lot of fun with this book. There isn’t an abundance of scientific information here. It is more a tale of the author’s quest to find out what makes a person a psychopath, and of the interesting people he met along the way. ( )

Review from the Irish Independent
http://www.independent.ie/lifestyle/books-arts/review-the-psychopath-test-a-journey-through-the-madness-industry-by-jon-ronson-26782607.html


There are some breath- taking set pieces, in which Ronson, armed only with a notebook, meets some of the 21st Century's more powerful movers and shakers (and mass murderers) and asks them if they are psychopaths.

His quest begins with a bunch of neurologists, puzzled recipients of an indecipherable book. Ronson, as amateur sleuth/reporter, tracks down the author, and finds a (benign) "crackpot". What intrigues Ronson, however, are the ripples this one crackpot's actions create; is our world as rational as we like to think, or is it built on insanity? And, have we gone overboard on the insanity stakes, labelling even normal human behaviour as a mental condition, and coincidentally, inviting Big Pharma in to "medicate"?

A quick trawl through the DSM (Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Psychiatric Disorders), once a slim volume outlining 30 or so mental disorders, now a 886-page beast, boasting 374 disorders -- including such gems as Arithmetic Learning Disorder (being crap at sums), Caffeine Induced Disorder (the jitters from skulling too many espressos), Nightmare Disorder (too much rich food before bye-byes), tees Ronson up nicely for the next stage -- Bob Hare, and the Psychopath Test, or the 20 personality traits checklist now used by psychiatrists and mental health workers around the globe.

Hare's checklist scores potential psychopaths on a scale of 1-40 for superficial charm, proneness to boredom, pathological lying, lack of empathy, lack of remorse, parasitic lifestyle, promiscuous sexual behaviour and so on.

Hare believes that psychopaths are different, almost an alien species. No doubt if you worked with people such as Peter Woodcock, who killed because he "wanted to know what it would feel like to kill a human being", you would get a bit cynical, but a checklist that determines whether or not you are the worst kind of lunatic seems a tad extreme, and counter-intuitive -- if all you need is a checklist, why do we need mental health professionals?

There were some crazy experiments in the past, such as at Oak Ridge, Canada, where an idealistic young psychiatrist got permission to work with psychopaths, employing mammoth, naked psychotherapy sessions fuelled by LSD and lots of screaming. That ended in disaster (when freed, 85 per cent of the patients went on to savagely reoffend).

And then there those with psychopathic tendencies who are not locked up, but are rather at the top of the tree, such as very successful businessman Al Dunlap of Florida, who was responsible for stripping assets and thousands of workers from hundreds of firms (and enjoying it). Was he a psychopath? Ronson's interview is a minor masterpiece.
Or the television researcher who spent years tracking down people who were "just mad enough" to make cheap entertainment for a reality show -- was she part of a media machine that borders on psychopathy?
Is the "madness industry" itself -- now mainly a labelling system, delivering patients to Big Pharma, including the thousands of under-fives in America "diagnosed" as bipolar and on up to 20 pills a day -- psychopathic?

The most chilling line in the book has to be from a psychopath who was shown a photograph of a terrified woman and asked to identify the emotion. He didn't know, but it was the same expression he saw on the faces of victims just before he killed them.

In the end Ronson eschews the Hare checklist, and the outer reaches of conspiracy theorists (lizard people, etc), and argues for a less formulaic approach to mental illness overall, an acceptance that we are all a bit mad, "that there is no evidence that we have been placed on this planet to be especially happy or especially normal ... in fact, our unhappiness and our strangeness, our anxieties and our compulsions are quite often what lead us to do rather interesting things".

The Psychopath Test is a terrific contribution to the madness debate, but I'd still like to know what (human) events produce such damaged people -- long before the professionals or the pills get to them.
( )

Interesting enough, but I really think the author should let someone else do his narration. Ronson comes across as just a bit too excitable, which makes every conversation he recounts come across as an argument... ( )

There are no Eastern views of psychology or the disordered mind in Jon Ronsom's examination of how mental illness is diagnosed and treated. All of the interviews take place in the UK (at Broadmoor Hospital for the Criminally Insane and at Heathrow Airport), Sweden, and the United States. The groundbreaking psychopath checklist developed by Bob Hare is the crux of the matter.

Is it a simple matter to diagnose with a checklist? Does such simplification result in over-diagnosing certain common human traits as abnormal? How much does needing to be normal feed into our desire to be cured of any straying from calm systematic behavior?

Ronson has probing conversations with the key players in the debate, especially Bob Hare, and several editors of the mushrooming Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders. Along the way we meet some psychopaths who have spent serious time in hospitals for the criminally insane. Ronsom never condescends or oversimplifies the subjects of his quest, even when given every opportunity to do so, for instance, when he attends a gala at the mansion of L. Ron Hubbard, founder of Scientology. The Scientologists have a whole wing devoted to exposing psychiatry for its falseness.

I am fascinated by what separates those who can commit a crime from those of us who may have thought about it. This book satisfied a need to learn more about how psychology treats the criminally insane. ( )

Journalist Jon Ronson's quest to answer what is a psychopath, the various classification schemes, the people diagnosed, the medical practitioners, the lay opponents and proponents. Entertaining, but the book is quite a long way to say that these things come in degrees, are context dependent and that one should be cautious with absolute statements.

As in the Norwegian debate around the sanity of Anders Behring Breivik, it is striking how certain people are, especially regarding particular cases.

I susepect most people are struck, like the author and myself, by the urge to start self-diagnosing when hearing about checklists for mental disorders, which underscores how everyone shares many of the traits that make up a psychopath.

Scientologists for a change come off as a reasonable group, when criticizing the psychology/psychiatry professions for labeling regular conditions as diseases.

Some do come across as more wicked than others, like Haitian Emmanuel “Toto” Constant:
"Yes, observing people is one of my biggest assets," he said. "I always observe."
"Why?" I asked. "What are you looking for?"
There was a short slilence. Then Toto softly said, "I want to see if people like me."
"If people like you?" I said.
"I want people to think I'm a gentleman," he said. "I want people to like me. If people don't like me it hurts me. It's important for me to be liked. I'm sensitive to people's reactions to me. I'm observering people to see if they really like me." [...] "So I learn how to please people. I never disagree with anyone. I make them feel good so they like me."
"Isn't that a weakness?" I finally said. "Your desperate desire to have people like you. Isn't that a weakness?"
"Ah no!" Toto laughed. He animatedly waved his finger at me. "It's not a weakness at all!"
"Why?" I asked.
"I'll tell you why!" He smiled winked conspiratorially, and said: "If people like you, you can manipulate them to do whatever you want them to do!" ( )