Strange answers to the psychopath test

Is there a definitive line that divides crazy from sane? With a hair-raising delivery, Jon Ronson, author of The Psychopath Test, illuminates the gray areas between the two. (With live-mixed sound by Julian Treasure and animation by Evan Grant.)

The story starts:
I was at a friend's house,

and she had on her shelf
a copy of the DSM manual,

which is the manual of mental disorders.

It lists every known mental disorder.

And it used to be, back in the '50s,
a very slim pamphlet.

And then it got bigger
and bigger and bigger,

and now it's 886 pages long.

And it lists currently
374 mental disorders.

So I was leafing through it,

wondering if I had any mental disorders,

and it turns out I've got 12.

(Laughter)

I've got generalized anxiety disorder,

which is a given.

I've got nightmare disorder,

which is categorized

if you have recurrent dreams of being
pursued or declared a failure,

and all my dreams involve people
chasing me down the street

going, "You're a failure!"

(Laughter)

I've got parent-child relational problems,

which I blame my parents for.

(Laughter)

I'm kidding. I'm not kidding.

I'm kidding.

And I've got malingering.

And I think it's actually quite rare

to have both malingering
and generalized anxiety disorder,

because malingering tends
to make me feel very anxious.

Anyway, I was looking through this book,

wondering if I was much crazier
than I thought I was,

or maybe it's not a good idea to diagnose
yourself with a mental disorder

if you're not a trained professional,

or maybe the psychiatry profession
has a kind of strange desire

to label what's essentially normal
human behavior as a mental disorder.

I didn't know which of these was true,
but I thought it was kind of interesting,

and I thought maybe I should
meet a critic of psychiatry

to get their view,

which is how I ended up having
lunch with the Scientologists.

(Laughter)

It was a man called Brian,
who runs a crack team of Scientologists

who are determined to destroy
psychiatry wherever it lies.

They're called the CCHR.

And I said to him, "Can you prove to me

that psychiatry is a pseudo-science
that can't be trusted?"

And he said, "Yes,
we can prove it to you."

And I said, "How?"

And he said, "We're going
to introduce you to Tony."

And I said, "Who's Tony?"

And he said, "Tony's in Broadmoor."

Now, Broadmoor is Broadmoor Hospital.

It used to be known as the Broadmoor
Asylum for the Criminally Insane.

It's where they send the serial killers,

and the people who can't help themselves.

And I said to Brian,
"Well, what did Tony do?"

And he said, "Hardly anything.

He beat someone up or something,

and he decided to fake madness
to get out of a prison sentence.

But he faked it too well,
and now he's stuck in Broadmoor

and nobody will believe he's sane.

Do you want us to try and get you
into Broadmoor to meet Tony?"

So I said, "Yes, please."

So I got the train to Broadmoor.

I began to yawn uncontrollably
around Kempton Park,

which apparently is what dogs
also do when anxious,

they yawn uncontrollably.

And we got to Broadmoor.

And I got taken through gate
after gate after gate after gate

into the wellness center, which is where
you get to meet the patients.

It looks like a giant Hampton Inn.

It's all peach and pine
and calming colors.

And the only bold colors
are the reds of the panic buttons.

And the patients started drifting in.

And they were quite overweight
and wearing sweatpants,

and quite docile-looking.

And Brian the Scientologist
whispered to me,

"They're medicated,"

which, to the Scientologists,
is like the worst evil in the world,

but I'm thinking
it's probably a good idea.

(Laughter)

And then Brian said, "Here's Tony."

And a man was walking in.

And he wasn't overweight,
he was in very good physical shape.

And he wasn't wearing sweatpants,

he was wearing a pinstripe suit.

And he had his arm outstretched

like someone out of The Apprentice.

He looked like a man
who wanted to wear an outfit

that would convince me
that he was very sane.

And he sat down.

And I said, "So is it true
that you faked your way in here?"

And he said, "Yep. Yep. Absolutely.
I beat someone up when I was 17.

And I was in prison awaiting trial,

and my cellmate said to me,

'You know what you have to do?

Fake madness.

Tell them you're mad, you'll get
sent to some cushy hospital.

Nurses will bring you pizzas,
you'll have your own PlayStation.'"

I said, "Well, how did you do it?"

He said, "Well, I asked to see
the prison psychiatrist.

And I'd just seen a film called 'Crash,'

in which people get sexual pleasure
from crashing cars into walls.

So I said to the psychiatrist,

'I get sexual pleasure
from crashing cars into walls.'"

And I said, "What else?"

He said, "Oh, yeah.
I told the psychiatrist

that I wanted to watch women as they died,

because it would make
me feel more normal."

I said, "Where'd you get that from?"

He said, "Oh, from a biography
of Ted Bundy that they had

at the prison library."

Anyway, he faked madness
too well, he said.

And they didn't send him
to some cushy hospital.

They sent him to Broadmoor.

And the minute he got there,

said he took one look at the place,
asked to see the psychiatrist,

said, "There's been
a terrible misunderstanding.

I'm not mentally ill."

I said, "How long have you been here for?"

He said, "Well, if I'd just
done my time in prison

for the original crime,
I'd have got five years.

I've been in Broadmoor for 12 years."

Tony said that it's a lot harder
to convince people you're sane

than it is to convince them you're crazy.

He said, "I thought
the best way to seem normal

would be to talk to people
normally about normal things

like football or what's on TV.

I subscribe to New Scientist,

and recently they had an article

about how the U.S. Army was training
bumblebees to sniff out explosives.

So I said to a nurse,

'Did you know that the U.S. Army
is training bumblebees

to sniff out explosives?'

When I read my medical notes,
I saw they'd written:

'Believes bees can sniff out explosives.'"

(Laughter)

He said, "You know, they're always
looking out for nonverbal clues

to my mental state.

But how do you sit in a sane way?

How do you cross your legs in a sane way?

It's just impossible."

When Tony said that to me,

I thought to myself,
"Am I sitting like a journalist?

Am I crossing my legs like a journalist?"

He said, "You know, I've got
the Stockwell Strangler on one side of me,

and I've got the 'Tiptoe
Through the Tulips' rapist

on the other side of me.

So I tend to stay in my room a lot
because I find them quite frightening.

And they take that as a sign of madness.

They say it proves
that I'm aloof and grandiose."

So, only in Broadmoor would not wanting
to hang out with serial killers

be a sign of madness.

Anyway, he seemed completely normal
to me, but what did I know?

And when I got home I emailed
his clinician, Anthony Maden.

I said, "What's the story?"

And he said, "Yep.
We accept that Tony faked madness

to get out of a prison sentence,
because his hallucinations --

that had seemed
quite cliche to begin with --

just vanished the minute
he got to Broadmoor.

However, we have assessed him,

and we've determined that what he is

is a psychopath."

And in fact, faking madness

is exactly the kind of cunning
and manipulative act of a psychopath.

It's on the checklist:
cunning, manipulative.

So, faking your brain going wrong

is evidence that your brain
has gone wrong.

And I spoke to other experts,

and they said the pinstripe
suit -- classic psychopath --

speaks to items one
and two on the checklist:

glibness, superficial charm
and grandiose sense of self-worth.

And I said, "Well, but why didn't
he hang out with the other patients?"

Classic psychopath -- it speaks
to grandiosity and also lack of empathy.

So all the things that had seemed
most normal about Tony

was evidence, according to his clinician,

that he was mad in this new way.

He was a psychopath.

And his clinician said to me, "If you
want to know more about psychopaths,

you can go on a psychopath-spotting course

run by Robert Hare, who invented
the psychopath checklist."

So I did.

I went on a psychopath-spotting course,

and I am now a certified --

and I have to say, extremely adept --
psychopath spotter.

So, here's the statistics:

One in a hundred regular people
is a psychopath.

So there's 1,500 people in his room.

Fifteen of you are psychopaths.

Although that figure rises to four percent
of CEOs and business leaders,

so I think there's a very good chance

there's about 30 or 40
psychopaths in this room.

It could be carnage
by the end of the night.

(Laughter)

Hare said the reason why
is because capitalism at its most ruthless

rewards psychopathic behavior --

the lack of empathy, the glibness,

cunning, manipulative.

In fact, capitalism, perhaps
at its most remorseless,

is a physical manifestation
of psychopathy.

It's like a form of psychopathy
that's come down to affect us all.

Hare said, "You know what?
Forget about some guy at Broadmoor

who may or may not have faked madness.

Who cares? That's not a big story.

The big story," he said,
"is corporate psychopathy.

You want to go and interview yourself
some corporate psychopaths."

So I gave it a try.
I wrote to the Enron people.

I said, "Could I come
and interview you in prison,

to find out it you're psychopaths?"

(Laughter)

And they didn't reply.

(Laughter)

So I changed tack.

I emailed "Chainsaw Al" Dunlap,

the asset stripper from the 1990s.

He would come into failing businesses

and close down 30 percent
of the workforce,

just turn American towns into ghost towns.

And I emailed him and I said,

"I believe you may have
a very special brain anomaly

that makes you ... special,

and interested in the predatory
spirit, and fearless.

Can I come and interview you
about your special brain anomaly?"

And he said, "Come on over!"

(Laughter)

So I went to Al Dunlap's
grand Florida mansion.

It was filled with sculptures
of predatory animals.

There were lions and tigers --
he was taking me through the garden --

there were falcons and eagles,

he was saying, "Over there
you've got sharks and --"

he was saying this
in a less effeminate way --

"You've got more sharks
and you've got tigers."

It was like Narnia.

(Laughter)

And then we went into his kitchen.

Now, Al Dunlap would be brought in
to save failing companies,

he'd close down 30 percent
of the workforce.

And he'd quite often
fire people with a joke.

Like, for instance,
one famous story about him,

somebody came up to him and said,
"I've just bought myself a new car."

And he said, "Well,
you may have a new car,

but I'll tell you what you
don't have -- a job."

So in his kitchen --

he was in there with his wife, Judy,
and his bodyguard, Sean --

and I said, "You know
how I said in my email

that you might have a special brain
anomaly that makes you special?"

He said, "Yeah, it's an amazing
theory, it's like Star Trek.

You're going where
no man has gone before."

And I said, "Well --" (Clears throat)

(Laughter)

Some psychologists might say

that this makes you --"
(Mumbles)

(Laughter)

And he said, "What?"

And I said, "A psychopath."

And I said, "I've got a list
of psychopathic traits in my pocket.

Can I go through them with you?"

And he looked intrigued despite himself,

and he said, "Okay, go on."

And I said, "Okay.
Grandiose sense of self-worth."

Which I have to say, would
have been hard for him to deny,

because he was standing
under a giant oil painting of himself.

(Laughter)

He said, "Well, you've
got to believe in you!"

And I said, "Manipulative."

He said, "That's leadership."

(Laughter)

And I said, "Shallow affect,

an inability to experience
a range of emotions."

He said, "Who wants to be weighed
down by some nonsense emotions?"

So he was going down
the psychopath checklist,

basically turning it
into "Who Moved My Cheese?"

(Laughter)

But I did notice something happening
to me the day I was with Al Dunlap.

Whenever he said anything to me
that was kind of normal --

like he said "no" to juvenile delinquency,

he said he got accepted into West Point,

and they don't let
delinquents in West Point.

He said "no" to many short-term
marital relationships.

He's only ever been married twice.

Admittedly, his first wife
cited in her divorce papers

that he once threatened her with a knife

and said he always wondered
what human flesh tasted like,

but people say stupid things to each other

in bad marriages
in the heat of an argument,

and his second marriage
has lasted 41 years.

So whenever he said anything to me
that just seemed kind of non-psychopathic,

I thought to myself, well I'm not
going to put that in my book.

And then I realized that
becoming a psychopath spotter

had kind of turned me
a little bit psychopathic.

Because I was desperate to shove him
in a box marked "Psychopath."

I was desperate to define him
by his maddest edges.

And I realized, my God --

this is what I've been doing for 20 years.

It's what all journalists do.

We travel across the world
with our notepads in our hands,

and we wait for the gems.

And the gems are always
the outermost aspects

of our interviewee's personality.

And we stitch them together
like medieval monks,

and we leave the normal
stuff on the floor.

And you know, this is a country
that over-diagnoses

certain mental disorders hugely.

Childhood bipolar --

children as young as four
are being labeled bipolar

because they have temper tantrums,

which scores them high
on the bipolar checklist.

When I got back to London, Tony phoned me.

He said, "Why haven't you
been returning my calls?"

I said, "Well, they say
that you're a psychopath."

And he said, "I'm not a psychopath."

He said, "You know what?

One of the items on the checklist
is lack of remorse,

but another item on the checklist
is cunning, manipulative.

So when you say you feel
remorse for your crime,

they say, 'Typical of the psychopath

to cunningly say he feels
remorse when he doesn't.'

It's like witchcraft, they turn
everything upside-down."

He said, "I've got a tribunal coming up.

Will you come to it?"

So I said okay.

So I went to his tribunal.

And after 14 years
in Broadmoor, they let him go.

They decided that he shouldn't
be held indefinitely

because he scores high
on a checklist that might mean

that he would have a greater
than average chance of recidivism.

So they let him go.

And outside in the corridor he said to me,

"You know what, Jon?

Everyone's a bit psychopathic."

He said, "You are, I am.
Well, obviously I am."

I said, "What are you going to do now?"

He said, "I'm going to go to Belgium.

There's a woman there that I fancy.

But she's married, so I'm going to have
to get her split up from her husband."

(Laughter)

Anyway, that was two years ago,

and that's where my book ended.

And for the last 20 months,
everything was fine.

Nothing bad happened.

He was living with a girl outside London.

He was, according
to Brian the Scientologist,

making up for lost time,
which I know sounds ominous,

but isn't necessarily ominous.

Unfortunately, after 20 months,

he did go back to jail for a month.

He got into a "fracas"
in a bar, he called it.

Ended up going to jail for a month,
which I know is bad,

but at least a month implies
that whatever the fracas was,

it wasn't too bad.

And then he phoned me.

And you know what, I think
it's right that Tony is out.

Because you shouldn't define
people by their maddest edges.

And what Tony is,
is he's a semi-psychopath.

He's a gray area in a world
that doesn't like gray areas.

But the gray areas
are where you find the complexity.

It's where you find the humanity,

and it's where you find the truth.

And Tony said to me,

"Jon, could I buy you a drink in a bar?

I just want to thank you
for everything you've done for me."

And I didn't go.

What would you have done?

Thank you.

(Applause)