Motivated by a keen interest in psychology, I recently read a fascinating book called The Sociopath Next Door by Martha Stout.  I was amazed to learn how commonplace sociopaths are, Stout claims four in a hundred people are so inclined.  So when I came across Jon Ronson’s The Psychopath Test: A Journey Through the Madness Industry, I immediately found it at my local library and downloaded it to my Kindle.  Before starting to read, I did a little research on Jon Ronson and learned that he is a Welsh journalist, author, and documentarian.  I had not read any of the books listed on his website, though I had heard of one due to the film made of it, The Men Who Stare At Goats, which is about an allegedly real-life, elite group of operatives who believe they possess extraordinary  powers, including the titular ability to kill goats merely by staring at them. I was intrigued as anything dealing with strange or aberrant human behavior captures my attention.      

The Psychopath Test did not disappoint as therein we meet several individuals who may, or may not, be psychopaths.  In the book, Ronson undertakes an investigation of the field of psychiatry or, as he calls it, the madness industry. In the course of his investigation, Ronson comes across Robert Hare’s Psychopath Checklist  (PCL), a list of behaviors and attitudes that may indicate the presence of psychopathy.  Though the meetings and conversations between the author and Hare are detailed throughout the book, and are primarily positive, after publication Hare criticized The Psychopath Test for trivializing his work and the work of other clinicians whose focus of study is psychopathy.  

While I tend to agree with Hare that Ronson does oversimplify the subject matter, Ronson never claims to be an expert and makes clear his approach is strictly as a layman.  Armed with the PCL, Ronson interviews a variety of individuals to see if, based on this checklist, he could determine a diagnosis of psychopathy.  One of the people that Ronson meets through a Scientologist acquaintance is Tony, a patient/inmate in the DSPD (Dangerous and Severe Personality Disorder) unit at the Broadmoor Hospital in Berkshire, England.  Tony claims that in order to try to avoid jail time for a crime he committed, he pretended to be “crazy” thinking he would be put in “some cushy hospital”.  Instead he found himself in a maximum security hospital surrounded by the criminally insane.  He immediately began to protest his sanity, which was in vain for many years.   

Because Scientology thinks psychiatry is, as Dr. Sheldon Cooper would say, a lot of hokum, a group of Scientologists are helping Tony with his tribunals, whose aim is to gain his release from Broadmoor, which finally comes about after twelve years.  Tony modeled his psychopath persona after both real and celluloid psychos such as Ted Bundy and the Dennis Hopper character in Blue Velvet. It was his contention, and that of his Scientologist supporters, that the ease with which he duped mental health professionals into believing he was a psychopath proved the arbitrary and nonsensical nature of the industry .

Ronson attempts to evaluate Tony using Hare’s PCL, though he is ultimately not convinced either way.  Among others interviewed for the book is a well-known corporate axman who took great delight in firing hardworking people, an anti-Aristide death squad leader, and a conspiracy theorist who eventually came to believe he was the Messiah.  Both scary and funny, these folks, like the book itself, make us question not only their sanity, but also our own.  Who among us, in an attempt to self-evaluate, has not wondered whether they had this or that disorder, according to some checklist?  Though The Psychopath Test succeeds in pointing out some of the seeming absurdity in diagnostic psychiatry, the field has arguably made some tremendous advances since its inception and has improved countless lives.  Still, if you want an interesting and amusing read about the fascinating subject of human behavior, give this book a try.        

Hare Psychopathy Checklist