The Psychopath Test: compelling, disturbing, unpleasant

Jon Ronson’s book about psychopaths, possible psychopaths and the problems of telling the difference between the two is compelling reading, in turns disturbing, unpleasant and intriguing.

His thorough investigation gives a fair airing to sharply differing views. You feel that his own views swung back and forth during the research for the book as he dug into the different angles of the issue, at times moving towards a fear of widespread psychopathy dominating business and political leaders yet at others favourable to the idea that psychopathy is regularly wrongly diagnosed, with innocent, healthy people maligned as a result.

The end result is a book that gives a really broad grounding in the controversies rather than a polemic arguing just the one side of a case – and a book that is easy to read, often funny and frequently moving.

A note about the audio version of the book. It’s narrated by Jon Ronson and normally I’m a great fan of audio books recorded by the author. However, good though he is as an author and competent though he is as a narrator, he isn’t up there with the best audio book narrators such as Tim Goodman. That’s a shame as much of the material is so emotional and moving that it would have really benefited from someone in the Goodman league. So five stars for the print version of the book, but fewer for the audio.

If you like this, you might also be interested in Jon Ronson’s excellent The Men Who Stare At Goats.

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Buy The Psychopath Test by Jon Ronson here.