Back in May and June, the media blitz for The Psychopath Test, by Jon Ronson, was in full swing. I finally got around to reading the book.
Ronson is a British journalist who apparently specializes in writing about nut cases. He wrote The Men Who Stare at Goats, which was made into a movie starring George Clooney and Jeff Bridges. He has a BBC radio show that, according to the New York Times book review, is considered comedy. But he’s famous, and people like him. I guess I wish that he’d used his clout and notoriety to do some good with this book.
Its full title is The Psychopath Test—A journey through the madness industry. The title is accurate. The book is essentially a history of how the disorder was identified and how the study and treatment of psychopathy evolved, with the stories of a few psychopaths included, most of them killers.
Ronson makes the most important point of the book almost in passing. He describes several meeting with Bob Hare, the respected psychopathy researcher who created “the psychopath test” that gives the book its title (the Psychopathy Checklist-Revised, or PCL-R). Ronson includes a scene in which he is in the U.K., driving Hare to the airport.
Hare says that he wishes he hadn’t spent all his time studying psychopaths in prison—he should have also studied them at the stock exchanges. (I’ve heard Hare make similar statements.) Ronson writes:
“But surely stock-market psychopaths can’t be as bad as serial-killer psychopaths,” I said.
“Serial killers ruin families.” Bob shrugged. “Corporate and political and religious psychopaths ruin economies. They ruin societies.”
This—Bob was saying—was the straightforward solution to the greatest mystery of all: Why is the world so unfair? Why all that savage economic injustice, those brutal wars, the everyday corporate cruelty? The answer: psychopaths ”¦ We aren’t all good people just trying to do good. Some of us are psychopaths. And psychopaths are to blame for this brutal, misshapen society. They’re the jagged rocks thrown into the still pond.
I thoroughly believe that psychopaths are responsible for most of the human-caused pain in society. Ronson actually came out and said it. But unfortunately, he didn’t continue to make the case. After the statement on page 112 of the book, he never returned to the thought.
One other part of the book was enlightening. Ronson spends a few pages discussing the evolution of the American Psychiatric Association’s Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (DSM), now in its fourth edition, with the fifth edition underway. On page 239, he explains why the mental health field has not agreed on what to call this disorder—psychopathy, sociopathy, antisocial personality disorder, whatever. He writes what he learned from Robert Spitzer, a psychiatrist who became editor of the third edition of the DSM:
I’d always wondered why there had been no mention of psychopaths in the DSM. It turned out, Spitzer told me, that there had indeed been a backstage schism—between Bob Hare and a sociologist named Lee Robins. She believed clinicians couldn’t reliably measure personality traits like empathy. She proposed dropping them from the DSM checklist and going only for overt symptoms. Bob vehemently disagreed, but the DSM committee sided with Lee Robins, and Psychopathy was abandoned for Antisocial Personality Disorder.
So there it is—the beginning of the dispute about naming the disorder and how to diagnose it, which has only kept the general public confused.
You might be entertained by this book—Ronson’s writing style is engaging, and the historical background is interesting. But if you’ve had a close encounter with your very own psychopath, you aren’t going to learn anything to help in your recovery.
The Psychopath Test on Amazon.com
Circus
“Since there are so many behaviors that the spaths can exhibit, it would take to long to say: The person who cheats, lies, manipulates, fakes, projects, accuses, slanders, destroys, whipsaws, drama addict, sex addict etc”.”
So, basically half the disorders in the DSM-IV…. Why don’t we just get rid of therapy and doctors all together and just start executing people who lie and manipulate, because they’re all a bunch of bloody sociopaths…..
one/joy_step_at_a_time
circus:
‘Why don’t we just get rid of therapy and doctors all together and just start executing people who lie and manipulate, because they’re all a bunch of bloody sociopaths”.. ‘
nope, that would have to be: The person who repeatedly and unendingly cheats, lies, manipulates, fakes, projects, accuses, slanders, destroys, whipsaws, dramatizes, abuses, cons, gaslights, lacks empathy, lacks conscience, etc.
Louise
Circus:
Yeah, that sounds like a great idea! I would love to execute all of the liars and manipulators!
Ox Drover
Behindblueeyes,
your comment that this was NOT A “SELF EVALUATION’ is not quite right me thinks, since HE ANSWERED THE QUESTIONS about how he would respond, of course it is a SELF evaluation.
A non self evaluation would be someone else answering those questions after OBSERVING HIM.
Many of these so called “evaluations” are nothing valid either, so don’t rely on what HE SAYS ABOUT HIMSELF in answering these 100,000 (hundred thousand) questions.
behind_blue_eyes
My perspective is that some sociopaths mask their disfunction so well, very few mental health professionals would correctly label them as such.
I bet my x-spath’s friends simply view him as a nice quiet guy who has simply been “unlucky” with love.
behind_blue_eyes
Ox;
Good point but since so many questions were answered, its hard to believe he could consistently fake answers. In addition, the results are so “unattractive” one would think that somebody might change some answers to appear more “attractive” on what is supposed to be a serious dating site, not one merely for sexual hookups.
I once mentioned to a friend that what I learned online about the x-spath was so shocking, it was hard for me to believe it was the same person. My friend’s reply was “maybe the online person is the real person.”
All this fits the portrait of a sociopath. Lack of meaningful insight into oneself and lack of shame…
Circus
You knocked it down to … I’d say an eighth of the DSM-IV.
Paranoid schizophrenia during psychotic episodes.
Bipolar disorder during manic or hypomanic episodes.
Borderline personality disorder.
Histrionic personality disorder.
Narcissistic personality disorder.
Antisocial personality disorder.
Schizoid personality disorder.
Alcohol/Substance abuse.
Sadism.
ADHD.
Conduct disorder.
Oppositional defiance disorder.
Kleptomania.
Pathological gambling.
Intermittent Explosive Disorder.
Pyromania.
PTSD.
Teenagers.
6-year-olds.
All of these disorders have similar symptoms to all or some of what you’ve described.
coping
Circus- my suggestion is since you love sociopaths so much why don’t you go out there and reuse one. Fall madly in love! Hell he can take your money, lie, cheat, beat you and break you down to the complete core! You can spare some poor woman at leaste a little time before he strikes again! Until then spare me the ungrad psych bs. Read the article on LF by real drs since you think we are all so full of shit!
ElizabethBennett
What is the fascination about with the DSM on lovefraud today? It’s getting as old as the baseball game I’m watching.
Circus
The articles I’ve read are written by real doctors. Most of them were written by Dr. Hare. And where in God’s name did you get the notion that I’m defending psychopaths? I’m not. At all. They do horrible things, and people should stay away from them. I’m defending people who have treatable disorders and are often accused of being sociopaths or psychopaths.