They Walk Among Us

I just finished reading “The Psychopath Test”, the incredible new book by Jon Ronson. What starts off as the investigation of a hoax evolves into an exploration of psychopaths and the psychiatric industry. Ronson meets with leading psychologists as well as institutionalized patients in his quest to gain a clearer understanding of the psychopath personality disorder.

Much of the book centers around the Hare Checklist that was developed by Dr Robert Hare to help evaluate potential psychopaths by rating people on 20 components including:

• superficial charm
• lack of remorse or guilt
• callousness
• lack of empathy
• shallow nature
• failure to aceept responsibility for one's actions
• grandiosity

Early on, Ronson points out that while psychopaths represent barely 1% of the population, they seem to be prevalent in positions of power to a much greater degree. They're not all muttering to themselves in the streets or chasing people around with butcher knives. Some, like the former Haitian death-squad leader Ronson meets in Queens, certainly fit some preconceived notions of how a psychopath might behave. Others, like legendary headcount killer CEO “Chainsaw” Al Dunlop, become more vivid as Ronson uses Hare's Checklist to illuminate their behavior in this context. The point is that not only do these people walk among us, they are leading our industries and exist in the upper echelons of our society. The scary thing is that there is no cure as the root causes seem to be with the brain's own wiring.

While reading this book, I started thinking about the people who packaged sub-prime mortgages and subsequently bet against them. Their calculating ways led us into an economic crisis that ruined lives and made its architects obscenely wealthy. Did they sit around in their steel towers considering for a second the people who were going to suffer greatly if their bets paid off? I don’t believe they gave it a single thought. My belief is that these people do not possess the ability to think beyond spreadsheets and numbers to drill down to the level required to feel empathy. What they saw on paper looked like a sure thing and that was the end of the discussion.  If I were to come up with a plan to make a lot of money, I don’t think I would be able to move forward if I thought there was a chance that a lot of people would be seriously harmed in the process. If you look at the Hare Checklist, you might cite the bullets above as proof that these people possess traits of a psychopath. Who really knows?

As Ronson points out, there is a danger in putting people into neatly organized categories and making sweeping conclusions about them. He brings up childhood bipolar disorder as an example of how so many children have been medicated and labeled without thorough oversight. As I read “The Psychopath Test”, I started to wonder about myself. (Thankfully, Ronson takes the time to point out that if you become nervous as you read his book, you're not a psychopath). I don't think that most people are all one thing or another. The majority of us live on the in-betweens but I have to admit that there are people in my life that I'm seriously re-considering now that I've read this book.

Photo courtesy of http://neuroanthropology.net.