Jon Ronson: “the Psychopath Test” is a journey through the madness industry. I just finished reading this book and to be frank, I am confused!
Is this book great or weird? I like the writing style but do I like what was written?
Ronson describes his quest to research psychopaths and takes the reader on a journey through prison and labs to CEOs houses and back. He tries to spot the psychopath amongst us by using the twenty-point Hare PCL-R Checklist:
1: glibness/superficial charm
2: grandiose sense of self-worth
3: need for stimulation/proneness to boredom
4: pathological lying
5: conning/manipulative
6: lack of remorse or guilt
7: shallow affect
8: callous/lack of empathy
9: parasitic lifestyle
10: poor behavioral controls
11: promiscuous sexual behavior
12: early behavior problems
13: lack of realistic long-term goals
14: impulsivity
15: irresponsibility
16: failure to accept responsibility for own actions
17: many short-term marital relationships
18: juvenile delinquency
19: revocation of conditional release
20: criminal versatility
This list sets of the idea that some of the most powerful people on earth might have psychopathic characteristics. However, along the way there is less proof of that and more on the obsession from Ronson. The book’s message is best summarized by a quote:
“We do it all,’ Adam was continuing. “All journalists. We create stories out of fragments. We travel all over the world, propelled onwards by something, we sit in people’s houses, our notepads in our hands, and we wait for the gems. And the gems invariably turn out to be madness-the extreme, outermost aspects of that person’s personality-the irrational anger, the anxiety, the paranoia, the narcissism, the things that would be defined within DSM as mental disorders. We’ve dedicated our lives to it. We know what we do is odd but nobody talks about it. Forget psychopathic CEOs. My question is, what does all this say about our sanity?”
Read it and let me know what your opinion is!
My other book reviews are here.