Uploaded on Mar 9, 2011 by RiverheadBooks
A Journey Through the Madness Industry
In this madcap journey (on sale May 12, 2011), 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 world’s top neurologists takes him, unexpectedly, into the heart of the madness industry. An influential psychologist who is convinced that many important CEOs and politicians are, in fact, psychopaths teaches Ronson how to spot these high-flying individuals by looking out for little telltale verbal and nonverbal clues. And so Ronson, armed with his new psychopath-spotting abilities, enters the corridors of power. He spends time with a death-squad leader institutionalized for mortgage fraud in Coxsackie, New York; a legendary CEO whose psychopathy has been speculated about in the press; and a patient in an asylum for the criminally insane who insists he’s sane and certainly not a psychopath.
Ronson not only solves the mystery of the hoax but also discovers, disturbingly, that sometimes the personalities at the helm of the madness industry are, with their drives and obsessions, as mad in their own way as those they study. And that relatively ordinary people are, more and more, defined by their maddest edges.
I, too, am going through all of the available literature on psychopathy. What Jon Ronson and most of the rest of the specialists in this area are missing is that it is not a disorder or mental illness, it is a genetically determined alternate brain structure. We are witnessing the evolution of man, and this new human 2.0 is a predator on humans themselves. In small tribal groups this genotype was not tolerated, but civilization has created the conditions for the genes for psychopathy to spread unchecked. Humanity is in a genetic emergency NOW, and we get out in front of this and stop it or we live with the consequences of doing nothing.
From the way I understand it, there are genetic markers that can help identify but the best and just about only way to truely detect it without the psycopath admitting it is through brain scans. There is a certain area in the brain of the psycopath that physically doesnt light up because of an underdevelopment in the growth of the region that is responsible for empathy and related emotions. one of the best ways to tell is by looking at the eyes… but this only is a tell for some psychopaths. Once you learn to recognize psychopaths you will find them everywhere and one of the best things you can do for your children is to teach them some of the warning signs about these types of people and to avoid them at all costs. If they do have to deal with a psychopath then teaching them to always watch them and never being afraid to shine a light on them so others will recognize them.
You didn’t mention the Australian University study which found that psychopaths have a very poor sense of smell: http://www.news.com.au/lifestyle/health-fitness/psychopaths-have-poor-sense-of-smell-say-macquarie-university-scientists/story-fneuzlbd-1226478502621
Tony: from the interesting article you reference, it says “Both phenomena have been independently traced to dysfunction in part of the brain called the orbito-frontal complex.”
A very important part of psychopathy is that they do not believe they have a dysfunction, in fact, they believe they are superior to us “normals”. When psychopathy is viewed from the perspective of evolutionary psychology, this makes sense — they have become superior to normals in their ability to exploit other humans for gain. I would interpret this article on lack of sense of smell in psychopaths to indicate that a genetically based re-wiring has occurred in their brains which converts tissue formerly used in smell and put to work in a kind of “psychological smell”. This is the psychopath’s famous ability to quickly “read” other humans, to identify their strengths, weaknesses, and desires and then work out a plan to exploit those. We should not be surprised that some of us big-brained humans are evolving in this direction. The question is, do we like what we see? These psychopaths currently run the world, and are openly talking about reducing the population by 90%. Guess which 10% they want to keep.