I suppose
I’m a little bit late to the party with this book – I seem to recall there
being quite a lot of talk about it when it first came out, five years. Well,
better late than never, I suppose!
As with
Ronson’s preceding works (see previous blogs), I found The Psychopath Test absolutely fascinating. There is something
intrinsically gripping out psychopaths and the unfathomable crimes they commit,
and I suppose this is why there are so many books, TV shows and films about them.
If you need a character to commit a heinous crime, well, it just has to be a
psychopath, doesn’t it? Nothing else would do.
Strangely,
the structure of the book reminded me of The
Simpsons (if you’ve never noticed, and I didn’t until it was pointed out to
me, every episode of the show opens with a little introductory story that leads
into a secondary, main story). The
Psychopath Test opens with a ‘teaser’ regarding a mysterious book called Being or Nothingness, which is a
fascinating topic in itself, but in any case this then leads on to the main
topic of psychopathy itself. Ronson does an excellent job of investigating a
number of areas: the treatment of psychopaths, the business of mental health
medication, the methods of diagnosis and so on. There are meetings and numerous
discussions with psychopaths (potential and actual) and the people who treat
them, which again is a feature of Ronson’s writing: he’s not content to sit
back and just research on the internet or from books, he actually wants to meet
people.
If the book
feels a little open-ended, that’s because there are a lot of contrasting views
on offer and very few absolute certainties. How exactly do we say, with any
kind of conviction, that a person is or is not a psychopath? Are we treating
psychopaths fairly? Is psychiatry, in fact, bunk, as claimed by Scientologists?
The Psychopath Test certainly reignited
my interest in the human mind, so it has to be yet another thumbs-up for Mr
Ronson!
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