Psychopath Test: A Journey through the Madness Industry

by Jon Ronson

Overview

In this madcap journey, a bestselling journalist investigates psychopaths and the industry of doctors, scientists, and everyone else who studies them.

The Psychopath Test is a fascinating journey through the minds of madness. Jon Ronson's exploration of a potential hoax being played on the world's top neurologists takes him, unexpectedly, into the heart of the madness industry. An influential psychologist who is convinced that many important CEOs and politicians are, in fact, psychopaths teaches Ronson how to spot these high-flying individuals by looking out for little telltale verbal and nonverbal clues. And so Ronson, armed with his new psychopath-spotting abilities, enters the corridors of power. He spends time with a death-squad leader institutionalized for mortgage fraud in Coxsackie, New York; a legendary CEO whose psychopathy has been speculated about in the press; and a patient in an asylum for the criminally insane who insists he's sane and certainly not a psychopath.

Ronson not only solves the mystery of the hoax but also discovers, disturbingly, that sometimes the personalities at the helm of the madness industry are, with their drives and obsessions, as mad in their own way as those they study. And that relatively ordinary people are, more and more, defined by their maddest edges.

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Product Details

ISBN-13:	2901594488015
Publisher:	Penguin Publishing Group
Publication date:	05/12/2011
Edition description:	NE
Pages:	288
Product dimensions:	6.50(w) x 1.50(h) x 9.50(d)

About the Author

Jon Ronson is a bestselling writer and documentary filmmaker whose books include The Men Who Stare at Goats and The Psychopath Test. He lives in London.

Jon Ronson is a bestselling writer and documentary filmmaker whose books include The Men Who Stare at Goats and The Psychopath Test. He lives in London.

Table of Contents

1 The Missing Part of the Puzzle Revealed 1

2 The Man Who Faked Madness 33

3 Psychopaths Dream in Black-and-White 65

4 The Psychopath Test 89

5 Toto 119

6 Night of the Living Dead 139

7 The Right Sort of Madness 169

8 The Madness of David Shayler 179

9 Aiming a Bit High 212

10 The Avoidable Death of Rebecca Riley 230

11 Good Luck 253

Notes/Sources/Bibliography/Acknowledgments 273

What People are Saying About This

From the Publisher

"Engrossing.... This book brings droll wit to buoy this fascinating journey through 'the madness business.'" —-Publishers Weekly

Editorial Reviews

…[Ronson] retains his own paranormal ability to locate and befriend wing nuts of every stripe…his winning style pervades most of The Psychopath Test…
—The New York Times

Janet Maslin

Though the book has its share of sensational anecdotes, these aren’t Ronson’s primary interest. His focus is on the way in which medicine and the media reduce a personality to nothing more than “its extreme, outermost aspects.”
—The Washington Post

Lloyd Rose

In this engrossing exploration of psychiatry's attempts to understand and treat psychopathy, British journalist Ronson (whose The Men Who Stare at Goats was the basis for the 2009 movie starring George Clooney) reveals that psychopaths are more common than we'd like to think. Visiting Broadmoor Psychiatric Hospital, where some of Britain's worst criminal offenders are sent, Ronson discovers the difficulties of diagnosing the complex disorder when he meets one inmate who says he feigned psychopathy to get a lighter sentence, and instead has spent 12 years in Broadmoor. The psychiatric community's criteria for diagnosing psychopathy (which isn't listed in its handbook, DSM-IV) is a checklist developed by the Canadian prison psychologist Robert Hare. Using Hare's rubric, which includes "glibness," "grandiose sense of self-worth," and "lack of remorse," Ronson sets off to interview possible psychopaths, many of them in positions of power, from a former Haitian militia leader to a power-hungry CEO. Raising more questions than it answers, and far from a dry medical history lesson, this book brings droll wit to buoy this fascinating journey through "the madness business." (May)

Publishers Weekly

"Engrossing.... This book brings droll wit to buoy this fascinating journey through 'the madness business.'" —Publishers Weekly

From the Publisher

From the author of The Men Who Stare at Goats (2005), another readable, entertaining excursion into extreme territory.

London-based journalist Ronson delves into the realm of mental illness, traveling to the notorious British facility Broadmoor to meet "Tony," who claimed to have successfully "faked" madness—he feigned a disorder to avoid jail for a violent assault, and has been held ever since despite his protests. Psychiatrists assured Ronson that Tony was not insane, but psychopathic, a distinction that led the journalist to Canadian psychologist Robert Hare, who developed a "checklist" of personality traits to reveal psychopaths (who are by definition glib and deceptive). Ronson interviewed Hare and took his seminar. Hare contends that "psychopaths are quite incurable" due to brain abnormalities, and that his research provides the best methods for rooting them out. Hare's seminar suggests that the detached sadism and lack of empathy which criminal psychopaths demonstrate can be seen in the wider world, where they cause great harm despite being only 1 percent of the population. "Serial killers ruin families," he says. "Corporate and political and religious psychopaths ruin economies." With this notion in mind, Ronson experienced chilling encounters with a Haitian death-squad leader and with Al Dunlap, a corporate raider who took great joy in firing people. Although the book's various strands don't fully coalesce, they remain engaging; Ronson is skilled at handling disturbing subject matter and difficult interview subjects with breezy insouciance. Yet the undertones are disturbing: While society seems unable to stop true psychopaths before they inflict major damage, Ronson argues that disturbed people like Tony essentially become "nothing more than a big splurge of madness in the minds of the people who benefit from it." The author's critique of these individuals within the mental-health industry will surely attract controversy.

Bizarrely captivating look at the terrifying mental disorder of psychopathy, the difficulty of its treatment and the professional infrastructure surrounding it.

Kirkus Reviews