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The Psychopath Test
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The Psychopath Test (2011) (edit title/settings)

A Journey Through the Madness Industry

by Jon Ronson (Author) (edit contributors)

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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... read more

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  • “I now felt that the checklist was a powerful and intoxicating weapon that was capable of inflicting terrible damage if placed in the wrong hands. I was beginning to suspect that my hands might be the wrong hands.”
  • “There seemed to be a tacit consensus that in David's case the 'July 7 never happened' was a little too dull for the right sort of madness, the hologram/plane theory was ideal, and the Messiah was the wrong sort of madness. But why? What made one appropriate and the other not? Most journalists would presumably plead innocence, saying the holograms seemed an innocuous enough cough along the way to the obvious lung cancer of the Messiah declaration -and of course there would be some truth to this- but I wasn't sure it was simple as that. Bothe theories seemed to be palpable manifestations of mental illness, yet only one had proved to be a ticket to the airwaves.”
  • “I think the madness business is filled with people like Tony, reduced to their maddest edges. Some, like Tony, are locked up in DSPD units for scoring too high on Bob's checklist. Others are on TV at nine p.m., their dull, ordinary, non-mad attributes skillfully edited out, benchmarks or how we shouldn't be. There are also people in the middle, getting overlabeled, becoming nothing more than a big splurge of madness in the minds of the people who benefit from it.”
    Jon Ronson
  • “'I heard a story about her once,' said James. 'She was interviewing a psychopath. She showed him a picture of a frightened face and asked him to identify the emotion. He said he didn't know what the emotion was but it was the face people pulled just before he killed them.'”
  • “Yes, there was a missing piece of the puzzle, Douglas Hofstadter was saying, but the recipients had got it wrong. They assumed the endeavour was brilliant and rational because they were brilliant and rational and we tend to automatically assume that everybody else is basically just like us. But in fact the missing piece was that the author was a crackpot. The book couldn't be decoded because it was written by a crackpot.”
  • “The Antisocial Personality<This type of personality> cannot feel any sense of remorse or shame. They approve only of destructive actions. They appear quite rational. They can be very convincing.”
  • “At the end of our conversation she turned to address you, the reader. She said, if you're beginning to feel worried that you may be a psychopath, if you recognise some of those traits in yourself, if you're feeling a creeping anxiety about it, that means you are not one.”
  • Popular Highlights from Kindle Customers
  • Item 1: Glibness/superficial charm Item 2: Grandiose sense of self-worth Item 3: Need for stimulation/proneness to boredom Item 4: Pathological lying
    Highlighted by 403 Kindle customers
  • Item 16: Failure to accept responsibility for own actions Item 17: Many short-term marital relationships Item 18: Juvenile delinquency Item 19: Revocation of conditional release Item 20: Criminal versatility
    Highlighted by 384 Kindle customers
  • There is no evidence that we’ve been placed on this planet to be especially happy or especially normal. And in fact our unhappiness and our strangeness, our anxieties and compulsions, those least fashionable aspects of our personalities, are quite often what lead us to do rather interesting things.
    Highlighted by 320 Kindle customers
  • “Serial killers ruin families.” Bob shrugged. “Corporate and political and religious psychopaths ruin economies. They ruin societies.”
    Highlighted by 305 Kindle customers
  • psychopaths as “predators who use charm, manipulation, intimidation, sex and violence to control others and to satisfy their own selfish needs. Lacking in conscience and empathy, they take what they want and do as they please, violating social norms and expectations without guilt or remorse. What is missing, in other words, are the very qualities that allow a human being to live in social harmony.”
    Highlighted by 267 Kindle customers
  • “Sociopaths love power. They love winning. If you take loving kindness out of the human brain, there’s not much left except the will to win.”
    Highlighted by 238 Kindle customers
  • If you want to get away with wielding true, malevolent power, be boring.
    Highlighted by 233 Kindle customers
  • it—Snakes in Suits: When Psychopaths Go to Work— coauthored with a psychologist named Paul Babiak.
    Highlighted by 221 Kindle customers
  • She said 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.
    Highlighted by 183 Kindle customers
  • Narcissistic Personality Disorder, sufferers of which have “a grandiose sense of self-importance and entitlement,” are “preoccupied with fantasies of unlimited success,” are “exploitative,” “lack empathy,” and require “excessive admiration,” and Antisocial Personality Disorder, which compels sufferers to be “frequently deceitful and manipulative in order to gain personal profit or pleasure (e.g., to obtain money, sex or power).”
    Highlighted by 123 Kindle customers
Show all 17 quotes from this book

First Sentence edit see section history

This is a story about madness.

Table of Contents edit see section history

1. The Missing Part of the Puzzle Revealed
2. The Man Who Faked Madness
3. Psychopaths Dream in Black-and-White
4. The Psychopath Test
5. Toto
6. Night of the Living Dead
7. The Right Sort of Madness
8. The Madness of David Shayler
9. Aiming a Bit High
10. The Avoidable Death of Rebecca Riley
11. Good Luck

Notes/Sources/Bibliography/Acknowledgements

Glossary edit see section history

  • psychopath: A person suffering from chronic mental disorder with abnormal or violent social behavior. In this book it is used interchangeably with "sociopath." These people are characterized as being self-serving, parasitic, and lacking in empathy.

Series & Lists edit see section history

This book is in Amazon.com Best Books of 2011. (authoritative list)
This book is in Publishers Weekly Best Books of 2011. (authoritative list)

Authors & Contributors edit see section history

  1. Jon Ronson (Author)

First Edition edit see section history

Original Language: English
Publisher: Riverhead Hardcover
Country: USA
Publication Date: May 12, 2011
ISBN: 1594488010
Page Count: 288

Classification edit see section history

  • Library of Congress: HV33 .R66 2011
  • Dewey: 306

Links to Supplemental Material edit see section history

More Books Like This edit see section history

   
  • Thugs
  • A First-Rate Madness
  • Voluntary Madness
  • Unhinged: The Trouble with Psychiatry - A Doctor's Revelations about a Profession in Crisis
  • Anatomy of an Epidemic
  • The State Boys Rebellion
  • The Lives They Left Behind
  • My Lobotomy
  • Madhouse: A Tragic Tale of Megalomania and Modern Medicine

Books with Additional Background Information edit see section history

   
  • Daggers of the Mind
  • Diseasing of America
  • Anatomy of an Epidemic

Books Cited by This Book edit see section history

   
  • Gödel, Escher, Bach
  • I Am a Strange Loop
  • Being or Nothingness
  • The Sociopath Next Door
  • Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders DSM-IV-TR
  • Without Conscience
  • Snakes in Suits
  • The Jigsaw Man

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