Voices
faked madness to escape a prison
sentence for GBH (grievous bodily
harm) and is now stuck in a secure hospital because nobody will
believe he’s sane. It was the Scientologists — brutally opposed to
psychiatry — who introduced me
to Tony. It’s also about the compelling theory that you are four times
more likely to have a psychopath
running your business than you are
to have one as your underling. This
is because items on the psychopath
checklist include Grandiose Sense
of Self Worth, Lack of Empathy, and
so on — characteristics rewarded
in our society, unfortunately. It’s a
story about psychopath-spotting
in high places, then, but also about
how becoming a psychopath-spotter
can turn you a bit psychopathic because it compels you to start reducing people to items on a checklist —
to their maddest edges.
It’s something we all do. Whenever someone comes onto the TV or
the radio sounding potentially like
a psychopath — Lance Armstrong,
etc. — we all get drunk with our
psychopath-spotting powers. I get
millions of tweets asking me if they
are one. I also get offers to be a talking head on TV. I try to always say
no because whilst it would be nice
to make hay while the sun shone,
JON
RONSON
it’s quite morally corrosive (not to
mention massively unethical) to diagnose someone off the TV.
I tell you who would be even more
unethical than me if they went on
TV to diagnose someone from afar
as a psychopath: any forensic psychiatrist or psychologist or anyone
who works in that field as an expert.
The Psychopath Test is a cautionary tale to not do that, in fact.
It’s as much a book about confirmation bias as it is about psychopaths. (By the way, ever since I
learnt about confirmation bias I’ve
started seeing it everywhere.)
When I started writing The
Psychopath Test I read this book
which diagnoses Lyndon Johnson
from afar as bipolar. It might be
right for all I know. Maybe Lyndon
Johnson was bipolar. But it was so
TED and The Huffington Post are
excited to bring you TEDWeekends,
a curated weekend program that
introduces a powerful “idea worth
spreading” every Friday, anchored in
an exceptional TEDTalk. This week’s
TEDTalk is accompanied by an original
blog post from the featured speaker,
along with new op-eds, thoughts
and responses from the HuffPost
community. Watch the talk above, read
the blog post and tell us your thoughts
below. Become part of the conversation!
HUFFINGTON
04.07.13