The Psychopath Test: A Journey Through the Madness Industry by Jon Ronson

They say one out of every hundred people is a psychopath. You probably passed one on the street today. These are people who have no empathy, who are manipulative, deceitful, charming, seductive, and delusional. The Psychopath Test is the New York Times bestselling exploration of their world and the madness industry.

When Jon Ronson is drawn into an elaborate hoax played on some of the world’s top scientists, his investigation leads him, unexpectedly, to psychopaths. He meets an influential psychologist who is convinced that many important business leaders and politicians are in fact high-flying, high-functioning psychopaths, and teaches Ronson how to spot them. Armed with these new abilities, Ronson meets a patient inside an asylum for the criminally insane who insists that he’s sane, a mere run-of-the-mill troubled youth, not a psychopath—a claim that might be only manipulation, and a sign of his psychopathy. He spends time with a death-squad leader institutionalized for mortgage fraud, and with a legendary CEO who took joy in shutting down factories and firing people. He delves into the fascinating history of psychopathy diagnosis and treatments, from LSD-fueled days-long naked therapy sessions in prisons to attempts to understand serial killers.

Along the way, Ronson discovers that relatively ordinary people are, more and more, defined by their most insane edges. The Psychopath Test is a fascinating adventure through the minds of madness.

“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.” 

Unless you have severe mental health issues, it really seems that there is a very fine, blurry, wavy line separating those who are 'normal' and those who are 'crazy'.

There isn't really a swaying conclusion pushed in the book, just a way to look at mental health and mental illness from a few different angles each chapter, which I liked so that at the end I could make up my own mind about what I thought about it all.

Although it was discussing a potentially mentally 'heavy' topic it was easy to follow, understand and I still enjoyed learning about it (as well as being intelligent AND funny!)

(I couldn't help myself. And after finishing reading I had to do the Robert Hare Psychopath Test, and I was happy to see that I definitely am NOT a psychopath - phew!... unless I am such a good psychopath that I was able to beat the test... ... ...) 

Read my review on Goodreads