The Psychopath Test by Jon Ronson

I’ve signed up to Amazon’s daily newsletter to let me know which Kindle books are reduced to 99p each day, and it’s become a dangerous game. To begin with, I was finding my next book just as I was finishing the one I was reading, but now I’ve got 3 bought and queued up. Whoops. Genre-wise, this next book is something fresh for me as it’s non-fiction, but it’s also about psychopaths so still very much in my comfort zone. What is it that makes us so obsessed with murderers and psychopaths?!

Regardless, I found The Psychopath Test a fascinating read, but it wasn’t the book I thought it would be. Jon Ronson takes us on a wild journey as he learns what defines a psychopath and how, if at all, they are treatable.

It’s a story that has a certain flow to it, but meeting one person opens up a completely different perspective and so it also jumps around quite a bit. It means every chapter brings something new but it can be quite difficult to follow at times and there are a lot of names to remember.

I think what I found the most fascinating was one of the experiments in which someone (I’ve forgotten their name already, I’m the worst) sends people to different psychiatric institutions across America with a specific mental issue to report in with. None of these people suffer or have suffered from any mental health problems but after telling officials the line they were given, all were admitted. These people then had to convince the officials they were perfectly sane, but it took them weeks to be released.

When they were found out, they contacted the leader of the experiment and were furious because of the damage done to their reputation, and one demanded that more ‘fakes’ were sent and that they would suss them out. Over the coming months they reported back that (I think) 42 fakes had been identified, and the leader of the experiment admitted that they hadn’t actually sent anyone else.

In college, I studied Psychology for a year and although I failed hard in my exams and had to drop the subject, it still remains my favourite subject I’ve ever studied. There’s just something so riveting about how our minds work! I’m probably sounding like a complete oddball now so I’ll end my rambles here, but if you have an interest in the subject too I highly recommend this book!