The Psychopath Test
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Hardcover edition
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| Author | Jon Ronson |
|---|---|
| Country |
United Kingdom United States |
| Language | English |
| Publisher |
Picador Riverhead |
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Publication date
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May 12, 2011 |
| Media type | Print (Hardcover) Audiobook |
| Pages | 240 pp. (first edition, hardback, UK) |
| ISBN | |
The Psychopath Test: A Journey Through the Madness Industry is a 2011 psychology book written by British author Jon Ronson in which he explores the concept of psychopathy, along with the broader mental health "industry" including mental health professionals and the mass media. It spent the whole of 2012 on United Kingdom bestseller lists and ten weeks on The New York Times Best Seller list.
Ronson visits purported psychopaths, as well as psychologists and psychiatrists who have studied them, particularly Canadian psychologist Robert D. Hare, the eponymous author of the Hare Psychopathy Checklist, a 20‑part test administered to detect psychopathy. Ronson explores the idea that many corporate and governmental leaders are psychopaths whose actions to others can only be explained by taking that fact into account, and he privately uses the Hare test to determine if he can discern any truth to it.
He meets Toto Constant, whom he speculates is a psychopath, corporate leader Albert J. Dunlap, whom the magazine Fast Company speculated was a psychopath, as well as a young man detained in Broadmoor Psychiatric Hospital who claims to be a victim of the psychiatric industry's unfalsifiable diagnoses.
He speaks to Anthony Maden, a professor and the forensic psychiatrist in charge of the Dangerous and Severe Personality Disorder unit at Broadmoor, who tells him that the controversial DSPD scheme would not have happened without Hare's checklist, adding: "Personally I don't like the way Bob Hare talks about psychopaths almost as if they are a different species" and "Even if you don't accept those criticisms of Bob Hare's work...it's obvious, if you look at his checklist, you can get a high score by being impulsive and irresponsible or by coldly planning to do something. So very different people end up with the same score."
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