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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