Strange answers to the psychopath test Jon Ronson

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if daily starts I was at a friend’s

house and she had on her shelf a copy of

the DSM manual which is the manual of

mental disorders at lists every known

mental disorder and he used to be back

in the fifties a very slim pamphlet

America bigger and bigger and bigger and

now it’s 886 pages long and it lists

currently 374 mental disorders so I was

leafing through it wondering if I had

any mental disorders and it turns out

I’ve got 12

I’ve got generalized anxiety disorder

which is a given

I’ve got Knightmare disorder which is

categorized if you have recurrent dreams

of being pursued or declared to failure

and all my dreams involve people chasing

me down the street going you’re a

failure

I’ve got parent-child relation or

problems which I blame my parents for

I’m kidding I’m not kidding I’m kidding

and I’ve got malingering and I think

it’s actually quite rare to have both

malingering and generalized anxiety

disorder because malingering tends to

make me feel very anxious anyway I was

looking through this book wondering if I

was much crazier than I thought I was or

maybe it’s not a good idea to diagnose

yourself with a mental disorder if

you’re lots of chains professional or

maybe the psychiatry profession has a

kind of strange desire to label what’s

essentially normal human behavior as a

mental disorder I didn’t know which of

these things was true but I thought it

was kind of interesting and I thought

maybe I should meet a critic of

Psychiatry to get their view which is

how I ended up having lunch with the

Scientologists it was a man called Brian

who runs a crack team of Scientologists

who were determined to destroy

psychiatry wherever it lies there called

the CCHR and I said to him can I can you

prove to me and psychiatry is a

pseudoscience that can’t be trusted and

he said yes we can prove it to you

and I said how and he said we can

introduce you to Tony and I said who’s

Tony and he said Tony’s in Broadmoor

Broadmoor is Broadmoor Hospital he used

to be known as the Broadmoor asylum for

the criminally insane that’s where they

said that serial killers and the people

who can’t help themselves and I said too

bad well what did Tony do but he said

hardly anything he beat someone up or

something and he decided to fake madness

to get out of a prison sentence but he

faked it to well and now he’s stuck in

Broadmoor and nobody will believe he’s

sane

do you want us to try and get you into

Broadmoor to meet Tony so I said yes

please so I got the train to Broadmoor I

began to yawn uncontrollably around

Kempton Park which apparently is what

dogs also do when anxious they yawn

uncontrollably and we got to learn more

I’ve been taken through gate after gate

after gate after gate into the Wellness

Center which is where you get to meet

the patients it looks like a giant

Hampton Inn it’s all Beach and pine and

calming colors and the only bold colors

are the Reds of the panic buttons

had the patient started rift again

and they were quite overweight wearing

sweatpants and quite dopes are looking

and Brian the Scientologists whispered

to me that medicated which to the

Scientologists was not the worst evil in

the world but I’m thinking it’s from be

a good idea and then Brian said here’s

Tony and a man was walking in and he

wasn’t overweight he was a very good

physical shape and he wasn’t wearing

sweatpants he was wearing a pinstripe

suit and he had his arm outstretched

like someone out of The Apprentice he

looked like a man who wanted to wear an

outfit that would convince me that he

was very sane and he sat down and I said

so is it true that you faked your way in

here and he said yep yep absolutely I

beat someone up when I was 17 and I was

in prison awaiting trial and my cellmate

said to me you know you have to do faked

madness tell em you’re mad you’ll get

sent to some cushy hospital nurses have

been your pizzas you love you on

PlayStation I said well how did you do

it said well ask to see the prison

psychiatrist and I just seen a film

called crash in which people get sexual

pleasure from crashing cars into walls

so I said to the psychiatrist I get

sexual pleasure from crushing cars into

walls and I said what else he said oh

yeah I told the psychiatrist that I

wanted to watch women as they died

because it would make me feel more

normal and I said where’d you get out

from he’s all from a biography of Ted

Bundy that they had to the prison

library anyway faked madness - well he

said and they didn’t send him some cushy

hospital they sent him to Broadmoor and

the minute he got there said it’s what

one look at the place asked to see the

psychiatrist said there’s been a

terrible misunderstanding I’m not

mentally ill I said how long have you

been here for he said well if I just

done my time in prison for the original

crime I’d have got five years

I’ve been in Broadmoor for 12 years Tony

said that it’s a lot harder to convince

people you’re sane than it is to

convince if you’re crazy

yes I thought the best way to stay

normal would be to talk to people

normally about normal things like

football or what’s on TV I subscribed to

New Scientist and recently they had an

article about the u.s. army was trailing

bumblebees to the fat explosives so I

said to a nurse did you know that the US

Army’s training bumblebees to sniff out

explosives whenever at my medical notes

I saw they’d written believes bees can

sniff out explosives

he said you know they’re always looking

out for non-verbal clues to my mental

state but how do you sit in a sane way

how do you cross your legs in the same

way it’s just impossible

no one totally said that to me I thought

to myself am I sitting like a journalist

crossing my legs like a journalist he

said you know I’ve got the Stockwell

strangler on one side of me and I’ve got

the tiptoe through the tulips rapist on

the other side of me so I tend to stay

in my room a lot because I find quite

frightening and they take Dad is a sign

of madness they say it proves that I’m

aloof and grandiose so only in Broadmoor

would not wanting to hang out with

serial killers be a side of madness

anyway he seemed completely normal to me

but what did I know but I’ve got home I

emailed his punished and honestly made

and I said what’s the story and he said

yep we accept that toady faked madness

to get out of a prison sentence because

his hallucinations that had seemed quite

cliched to begin with just vanished the

minute he got to Broadmoor however we

have assessed him and we’ve determined

that what he is is a psychopath and in

fact faking madness is exactly the kind

of cunning and manipulative act of a

psychopath so on the checklist having

manipulative so faking your brain going

wrong is evidence that your brain has

gone wrong and I spoke to other experts

and they said the pinstripe suits

classic psychopath speak of items 1 & 2

on the checklist glibness superficial

charm and grandiose sense of self-worth

I said what I said the Wadden hang out

with the the other patients classic

psychopath it speaks to grandiosity and

also lack of empathy so all the things

that has seemed most normal about Tony

was evidence according to his clinician

that he was mad in this new way he was a

psychopath and his clinician said to me

if you want to know more about

Psychopaths he can go on a Psychopaths

spotting course run by Robert hare who

invented the psychopathy checklist so I

did I went on a Psychopaths possum

course and I am now as

if I’d and I have to say extremely adept

it’s like a bad spotter so here’s the

statistics one in a hundred regular

people is a psychopath so there’s 1500

people in this room 15 of you are

psychopaths

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although that figure rises to four

percent of CEOs and business leaders

over I think there’s a very good chance

is about 30 or 40 psychopaths in this

room it could be carnage by the end of

the night hair said the reason why is

because capitalism at its most ruthless

rewards psychopathic behavior the lack

of empathy the glibness

cunning manipulative in fact capitalism

perhaps at its most remorseless is a

physical manifestation of psychopathy

it’s like a form of psychopathy that’s

come down to

affect us all the hair said to me you

know what forget about some guy at

Broadmoor who may or may not have faked

madness who cares that’s not a big story

the big story he’s had his corporate

psychopathy you want to go and interview

yourself some corporate Psychopaths so I

gave it a try wrote to the Enron people

I said could I covered it for you in

prison to find out if your Psychopaths

they didn’t reply so I changed tack I

emailed chainsaw al Dunlap the asset

stripper from the 1990s he would come

into failing businesses and close down

30% of the workforce just turn American

towns into ghost towns and I emailed him

and I said I believe he may have a very

special brain anomaly that makes you

special interested in the predatory

spirit and fearless can I come and

interview you about your special brain

anomaly and he said come on over so I

went to our deluxe Grand Florida mansion

that was filled with sculptures of

predatory animals there were lions and

tigers he was taking me through the

garden there were foul cones and ethos

in the sent me over they’ve got sharks

and what you’ve sent us in at less

effeminate way you’ve got more sharks

and you’ve got Tigers was like Narnia

and then we went into his kitchen now

our double up would be bought in to save

failing companies he closed down 30

percent of the workforce and he quite

often fire people with a joke that for

instance one famous story about him

suddenly came up to him and said I’ve

just bought myself a new car and he said

well you may have a new car but I tell

you what you don’t have a job so in his

kitchen he was standing there with his

wife Judy and his bodyguard sword and I

said you know how I said in my email

that you might have a special brain

anomaly that makes you special and he

said yes an amazing theory it’s like

Star Trek you’re going where no man has

gone before and I said well some

psychologists might say that this makes

you

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daddy said what and I said it’s like the

pastor and I said I’ve got a list of

psychopathic traits in my pocket can I

go through them with you

and he looked intrigued and despite

himself but he said okay go on and I

said okay grandiose sense of self-worth

which I have to say would have been hard

for him to deny because he was standing

underneath a giant or your painting of

himself

he said well you’ve got to believe in

you and I said manipulative he said

that’s leadership

and I said shallow effect an inability

to experience a range of emotions he

said who wants to be weighed down by

some nonsense emotions so he was going

down the psychopath checklist basically

turning it into who moved my cheese

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but I did notice something happening to

me that I was without them laughs

whenever he said anything to me that was

cut and normal like he said no to

juvenile delinquency he said he got

accepted into West Point and they don’t

let delinquents in West Point is have no

too many short marital relationships

he’s only ever been married twice

admittedly his first wife cited in her

divorce papers but he once threatened

her with a knife and said he always

wanted what human flesh tasted like but

people say stupid things to each other

in bad marriages in the heat of an

argument of his second marriage has

lasted 41 years so whenever he said

anything to me that just seemed kind of

non psychopathic I thought to myself

well I’m not going to put dad in the

book and then I realized that becoming a

psychopath spotter had kind of turned me

a little bit psychopathic so I was

desperate to shove him in a box marked

psychopath I was desperate to define him

by his maddest edges and I realized oh

my god this is what I’ve been doing for

20 years it’s what all journalists do we

travel across the world with our

notepads in our hands and we wait for

the gems and the gems are always the

outermost aspects of our interviewees

personality we stitch them together like

medieval monks and we leave the normal

stuff on the floor I know this is a

country that overdiagnosis certain

mental disorders hugely childhood

bipolar children as young as four are

being labeled bipolar because they have

temper tantrums which scores them high

on their bipolar checklist when I got

back to London

Tony phoned me

he said why don’t you been returning my

calls I said well they say that you’re a

psychopath and he said not a psychopath

said you know what one of the items on

the checklist is lack of remorse but

another item on the checklist is cunning

manipulative so when you say you feel

remorse for your crime they say typical

of the psychopath to cunningly say he

feels remorse but he doesn’t

it’s like witchcraft they turn

everything upside down he said I’ve got

a tribunal coming up when you come to it

so I said okay so I wouldn’t which

tribunal and after 14 years in Broadmoor

Denison go they decided that he

shouldn’t be held indefinitely because

he scores high on a checklist that might

mean that he would as a greater than

average chance of recidivism so they let

him go and outside in the corridor he

said to me you know what John everyone’s

a bit psychopathic he said you are I am

well obviously I am I said what are you

gonna do now he said I’m gonna go to

Belgium because there’s a woman there

that I fancy that she’s married so I

would have to get a splitter from her

husband

anyway that was two years ago and that’s

where my book ended and for the last 20

months everything was fine

nothing bad happens he was living with a

girl outside London he was according to

Brian the Scientologist making up for

lost time which I know sounds ominous

but isn’t necessarily ominous

unfortunately after 20 months he did go

back to jail for a month he got into

Africa in a bar he called it and took

him to jail for a month which I know is

bad but at least a month implies that

it’s whatever the frak are well was

wasn’t too bad

and then he phoned me and you know I

think it’s right

that Thole is out because you shouldn’t

define people by their maddest edges and

what Tony is is a he’s a semi psychopath

he’s a gray area in a world that doesn’t

like grey areas but the grey areas are

where you find the complexity of

so you found the humanity and that’s

where you found the truth

and totally said to me John

could I buy you a drink at a bar to sort

of thank you for everything you’ve done

for me

and I didn’t go what would you have done

thank you

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