TEXT Ø The Psychopath Test × Jon Ronson
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 man Warning this review is not for the fainthearted A video recently went viral of a Texas judge savagely beating his disabled teenage daughter with a beltview spoiler Her mother tells her to bend over and take it like a woman moments after the man's sadistic promise to beat her into fucking submission to teach her obedience hitting her while she begs from a corner of the room so all the camera can catch are her screamsIf only someone could walk into the scene and drag that man away end him cleanly somewhere off stage Not in punishment or revenge but as a simple matter of course No such hope Not in the justice system which cannot prosecute him statute of limitations being what it is hey it’s not like he did drugs or anything he was just sadistically beating a child Not even the mother in the video who – both because of her husband’s behavior and in spite of it – exposed her children to his malice in the misguided faith that deep inside we are all essentially the same that beneath her husband’s veneer of cruelty was someone ill and needy someone she could change that he could be a better manOf course she was wrong hide spoiler
Jon Ronson × The Psychopath Test MOBI
The Psychopath TestUt 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 and defined by their maddest edges he DSM IV TR is a 943 page textbook published by the American Psychiatric Association that sells for 99There are currently 374 mental disorders I bought the bookand leafed through itI closed the manual I wonder if I've got any of the 374 mental disorders I thought I opened the manual again And instantly diagnosed myself with twelve different ones c We journalists love writing about eccentrics We hate writing about impenetrable boring people It makes us look bad the duller the interviewee the duller the prose If you want to get away with wielding true malevolent power be boring cWhen I asked Robert Spitzer about the possibility that he'd inadvertently created a world in which ordinary behaviours were being labelled mental disorders he fell silent I waited for him to answer But the silence lasted three minutes Finally he said 'I don't know cI supposed there was no reason why psychopaths shouldn't have unrelated hobbies cPeople who are normal ie sane sensible don’t try to open lines of communication with total strangers by writing them a series of disjointed weird cryptic messages c Seriously? No shitPractically every prime time program is populated by people who are just the right sort of mad and I now knew what the formula was The right sort of mad are people who are a bit madder than we fear we're becoming and in a recognizable way cHe did another experiment the Startle Reflex Test in which psychopaths and non psychopaths were invited to look at grotesue images like crime scene photographs of blown apart faces and then when they least expected it Bob would let off an incredibly loud noise in their ear The non psychopaths would leap with astonishment The psychopaths would remain comparatively serene cthe American physician Samuel Cartwright identifying in 1851 a mental disorder drapetomania evident only in slaves The sole symptom was “the desire to run away from slavery” and the cure was to “whip the devil out of them” c if you’re beginning to feel worried that you may be a psychopath if you recognize some of those traits in yourself if you’re feeling a creeping anxiety about it that means you are not one c