Book Reviews – for the Busy Business Owner
The Psychopath Test – by Jon Ronson, Riverhead Books, 2011
Rating: 
The Psychopath Test captured my complete attention early, and by the second page I’d settled into the reverie I enter whenever I have my hands on a good book.
At many points, I found myself surprised when I laughed out loud, completely involuntarily, and then I couldn’t help but wonder if the laughter demonstrated something about me – would a check mark or two beside my name in the Hare PCL-R reveal me as a psychopath?
Surely not! And I was relieved to learn that the psychopaths seem to be a bit different from you and I. They possess brains that are wired so differently that their amygdala displays abnormal reactions to stress. Furthermore, they lack empathy, and they lean toward lives of career criminal activity – general purpose malefactors if you will.
The aforementioned Hare PCL-R is the gold standard for measuring psychopathic disorder, officially known as Antisocial Personality Disorder, and the test is named for its creator, the Canadian psychologist Bob Hare. Jon Ronson is the esteemed author of The Psychopath Test, and he weaves a fascinating story in his engaging style, through the “madness industry” – the psychiatrists, clinical psychologists, criminal scientists, profilers, and let us not forget their clients: the patients, criminals, and free-ranging “insane at large”.
Being intrigued by the traits applied to the criminally insane, Ronson explores these behavior and personality indicators that the industry applies to the criminally insane, and then goes on to explore the same in the general population. It is perhaps not exactly surprising to find that no small portion of business leaders and others in positions of authority could easily be classified as psychopaths when measured with the standard PCL-R checklist.
The stories contained within The Psychopath Test are many times touching and sad. The tale of Tony, who feigned madness hoping to avoid what he believed might have been a harsh sentence for a violent crime – found himself in Broadmoor, a maximum security institution for the criminally insane. Fast forward twelve years and see Tony, still incarcerated, and powerless to convince anyone of his sanity. Those in charge of his treatment even admit that he was most likely sane upon admission, but must have surely have been crazy to portray insanity in the first place, and for that matter, only someone insane could maintain such a sane demeanor while in the midst of insanity of all forms.
You see – it’s really quite simple to “pull a face” of insanity, to convince someone that you are mentally ill. Here’s the formula: claim to hear voices, threaten to do yourself a harm, stop bathing and tending to your personal hygiene… if you can freak out and/or gross out enough people over a period of time, you’re almost guaranteed a new bottle of prescription drugs, and even a stay in a psychiatric unit if you really embrace your role. But, take a moment and consider this – how would you go about convincing people that you’re sane? That is a whole new ballgame, and a much harder task indeed.
Ronson, determined to decipher the difference, turns his investigation to psychology’s most influential and respected experts to educate him in the art of diagnosing and spotting psychopaths. Once armed with his new understanding, he turns his gaze upon CEOs, politicians, war criminals – and himself. What complicates the issue is that his enhanced perspective only serves to create a muddier pool of water, and we begin to wonder if through their quest to categorize abnormality, the field of psychology ceased to recognize the many and varied degrees of normal.
I completely enjoyed this book, a neoclassic page-turner, and Ronson is ever-so-charming while investigating difficult issues. He ponders “Should we define people by their madness or by their insanity?”. How many mental illnesses are actually just normal behaviors by another name, and what about the permanence of the labels which are assigned?
Read the book and ask yourself these questions. You won’t regret it.
*As of this writing The Psychopath Test is also available on Amazon in Kindle edition with audio/video, and Audible Audio.
Amazon Link: http://www.amazon.com/Psychopath-Test-Journey-Through-Industry/dp/1594488010
For more information about The Psychopath Test and Jon Ronson see, http://www.jonronson.com/psycho.html
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