The Psychopath Test, by Jon Ronson

A few weeks ago I read Jon Ronson’s So You’ve Been Shamed and I was so impressed that I thought I’d read another of his books. For a year now one of my friends has been trying to get me to read The Psychopath Test and it certainly sounded interesting, so last week I downloaded it onto my Kindle and began reading.

Like the author, I wasn’t entirely sure what a psychopath was at the beginning of his adventure. Of course, I knew a few things. Psychopath is a bit of a buzzword. But I didn’t know, for example, that it’s used interchangeably with “sociopath,” or what exactly constituted either a psycho- or sociopath.

At the beginning of the book, Ronson is thrown into a bit of a mystery. It’s his style to engage with the subject of his research and to follow a story wherever it goes, putting himself thoroughly into the narrative. I quite enjoyed that in So You’ve Been Shamed. One of my literary heroes, after all, is Hunter S. Thompson, who was a one-man Gonzo genre.

Yet, for me, Ronson’s insertion of himself can be a little annoying at times. Whereas Thompson was larger than life and did it partially for comic reasons, Ronson is, like me, a fairly quiet and anxious person. Moreover, he seems to leave very little out of the book. At the end, in the acknowledgments, he thanks an editor for removing a few lines and I wondered if that’s all that was ever excised from the book. But it was an engaging read, nonetheless. Ronson’s story wandered hither and thither but it was always interesting, even if you were sometimes left wondering when you’d come back to the idea of psychopathy.

Like Ronson, learning about psychopathy made me wonder: Am I a psychopath? When he introduced the Bob Hare checklist that essentially determines whether or not a person is a psychopath, I found myself applying it to myself. Even after an expert in the book tells us that wondering whether or not you’re a psychopath is a sure sign that you aren’t, I still found myself wondering.

Oddly enough, I must admit, I kind of wanted to find myself out as a psychopath… One of the key notions of the book is that psychopaths walk among us, not necessarily hidden the shadows looking for someone to rape or kill, but in plain sight: they are often highly successful people. They are successful because they aren’t held back by guilt and empathy.

In the end, I had to admit to myself I just wasn’t psychopath material. I guess if I want to be successful I’ll have to go forth with guilt and empathy holding me back.

I was interested to learn, however, that I do know one genuine psychopath. I dated her for a year quite recently. I actually called her a “sociopath” at one point and thought of her as such on a few occasions, although I didn’t truly know the word’s meaning. She does, however, check most of the boxes on Hare’s checklist. Given that fewer than one in a hundred people are psychopaths, I found that frightening and yet amazing.

Despite my criticism of its rambling narrative, Ronson’s book is very readable. It doesn’t wander too far from the point, and is always fascinating. I highly recommend it to anyone wanting to better understand the human mind.