What to make of our mad, mad world
by E.B. | LONDON
The Psychopath's Test: A Journey Through the Madness Industry. By Jon Ronson. Riverhead Hardcover; 288 pages; $25.95. Picador; £16.99THERE is only one normal response to the sight of a man who has just been shot in the face at close range. A photograph of this grisly scene should inspire distress signals in the amygdalae and central nervous system, and jangled feelings of fear, guilt and remorse. That is, unless you are a psychopath. Among such rogues, the same picture may evoke curiosity, even titillation. The brains of psychopaths are wired differently from yours and mine. They are free of empathy or remorse. More troublingly, they seem to be beyond repair.
Though psychopaths make up perhaps 1% of the population, their impact is profound. Not only are they the most sinister criminals, but some psychiatrists suggest they also thrive at the top levels of power, politically and financially. So is there a sure-fire way to diagnose psychopathology? And once psychopaths are identified, what should we do with them? These are among the many provocative questions Jon Ronson poses in "The Psychopath Test", his "journey through the madness industry". It is a testament to his skills as a writer and a journalist that this book is as engaging as it is, given that he doesn't offer any answers.
At the centre of the book is the story of Tony, a man locked up in England's Broadmoor psychiatric hospital who insists that he is sane. Convicted at 17 of a violent crime, Tony assumed that if he pretended to be crazy he would be sent to a cushy asylum instead of prison. Twelve years later he is struggling to convince his wardens that he is not mad. The problem, Mr Ronson learns, is that Tony earned a high score on the Hare Checklist, otherwise known as the "gold standard for diagnosing psychopaths". According to this simple questionnaire, Tony is not only far from normal, but an incurable menace to society. His charms and powers of persuasion are all part of what make him so dangerous.
Initially seduced by Tony's charisma, Mr Ronson considers the logic of using checklists to classify disorders. He travels to meet the man behind the psychopath test—a Canadian psychiatrist named Robert Hare, who can be very convincing in his methodology. (Mr Hare is also convinced that "corporate professionals" are disproportionately psychopathic.) Dubious of theories that psychopaths are untreatable, Mr Ronson researches past efforts to heal such criminals. One prominent Canadian experiment from the 1960s involved LSD, nudity and heavy doses of raw emotion to foster empathy. Studies show it failed miserably.
But psychopathology is only part of the larger tale of "madness" Mr Ronson tries to tell, with patchy results. His approach can feel sprawling and anecdotal, particularly when he considers the role journalists play in spotlighting newsy nutcases. His footing is stronger when he explores the rise in so-called mental disorders, which are colonising ever more human behaviour—to the thrill of pharmaceutical companies, which now have hundreds of new disorders to invent medications for. In particular, psychiatric diagnoses for children "have mushroomed lately to endemic levels". When the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders grew to nearly 500 pages in 1980, it was a "revolution in psychiatry, and a gold rush for drug companies", which suddenly had millions of new patients to treat (particularly as so many were using the manual to diagnose themselves). The most recent edition of the DSM runs to nearly 900 pages. "It's very easy to set off a false epidemic in psychiatry," laments Allen Frances, the manual's current editor, who blames the textbook for inadvertently fuelling the boom in autism, attention-deficit disorder and the particularly controversial childhood bipolar disorder.
As with his earlier books—"Them" (about paranoid conspiracy theorists) and the bestselling "The Men Who Stare at Goats" (about the chaps behind some ridiculous warfare techniques)—Mr Ronson makes for a congenial guide through absurd terrain. A nebbishy Dante, he navigates mental hospitals and odd characters (inpatients, murderers, Scientologists) with wide eyes, sound judgment and rare comic timing, distilling his research into the yarns of a raconteur. Such charms earn forgiveness from readers who may otherwise pine for a more conclusive analysis of contemporary psychiatry.
Though psychopaths make up perhaps 1% of the population, their impact is profound. Not only are they the most sinister criminals, but some psychiatrists suggest they also thrive at the top levels of power, politically and financially. So is there a sure-fire way to diagnose psychopathology? And once psychopaths are identified, what should we do with them? These are among the many provocative questions Jon Ronson poses in "The Psychopath Test", his "journey through the madness industry". It is a testament to his skills as a writer and a journalist that this book is as engaging as it is, given that he doesn't offer any answers.
At the centre of the book is the story of Tony, a man locked up in England's Broadmoor psychiatric hospital who insists that he is sane. Convicted at 17 of a violent crime, Tony assumed that if he pretended to be crazy he would be sent to a cushy asylum instead of prison. Twelve years later he is struggling to convince his wardens that he is not mad. The problem, Mr Ronson learns, is that Tony earned a high score on the Hare Checklist, otherwise known as the "gold standard for diagnosing psychopaths". According to this simple questionnaire, Tony is not only far from normal, but an incurable menace to society. His charms and powers of persuasion are all part of what make him so dangerous.
Initially seduced by Tony's charisma, Mr Ronson considers the logic of using checklists to classify disorders. He travels to meet the man behind the psychopath test—a Canadian psychiatrist named Robert Hare, who can be very convincing in his methodology. (Mr Hare is also convinced that "corporate professionals" are disproportionately psychopathic.) Dubious of theories that psychopaths are untreatable, Mr Ronson researches past efforts to heal such criminals. One prominent Canadian experiment from the 1960s involved LSD, nudity and heavy doses of raw emotion to foster empathy. Studies show it failed miserably.
But psychopathology is only part of the larger tale of "madness" Mr Ronson tries to tell, with patchy results. His approach can feel sprawling and anecdotal, particularly when he considers the role journalists play in spotlighting newsy nutcases. His footing is stronger when he explores the rise in so-called mental disorders, which are colonising ever more human behaviour—to the thrill of pharmaceutical companies, which now have hundreds of new disorders to invent medications for. In particular, psychiatric diagnoses for children "have mushroomed lately to endemic levels". When the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders grew to nearly 500 pages in 1980, it was a "revolution in psychiatry, and a gold rush for drug companies", which suddenly had millions of new patients to treat (particularly as so many were using the manual to diagnose themselves). The most recent edition of the DSM runs to nearly 900 pages. "It's very easy to set off a false epidemic in psychiatry," laments Allen Frances, the manual's current editor, who blames the textbook for inadvertently fuelling the boom in autism, attention-deficit disorder and the particularly controversial childhood bipolar disorder.
As with his earlier books—"Them" (about paranoid conspiracy theorists) and the bestselling "The Men Who Stare at Goats" (about the chaps behind some ridiculous warfare techniques)—Mr Ronson makes for a congenial guide through absurd terrain. A nebbishy Dante, he navigates mental hospitals and odd characters (inpatients, murderers, Scientologists) with wide eyes, sound judgment and rare comic timing, distilling his research into the yarns of a raconteur. Such charms earn forgiveness from readers who may otherwise pine for a more conclusive analysis of contemporary psychiatry.
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