How a Satirical Book Ignited My Skepticism about Psychopathy

Inspiration often comes from unexpected sources…

Back in November 2015—when I was still very much a “green” researcher trying to find my way through the fascinating world of psychopathy research—I picked up a copy of The Psychopath Test: A Journey Through the Madness Industry by British author Jon Ronson.

No doubt, I wasn’t expecting much more than an entertaining read. It’s by no means a scholarly book (and certainly not one typically recommended to graduate students), and Ronson makes no pretense at that either.

But despite this shortcoming, Ronson’s work tickled my “curiosity bone” more than most books on psychopathy.

The book is, I think, hilarious at times. It follows Ronson as he meets and chats with some of the biggest names in psychopathy research. There’s a lot of dialogue, and you feel like you’re right there with him—talking with Robert Hare and others.

However, what begins as a curious investigation soon turns into something more like an act of skepticism: a questioning of the scientific foundations of the psychopathy diagnosis and the substantial power it holds in psychiatry and law.

What struck me most was Ronson’s ability to cast doubt on the very premise of psychopathy research—without ever fully abandoning the journalist’s open-ended stance. He raises questions that are simple, yet deeply unsettling from a scientific point of view: Can we really know who is a psychopath? And if we can’t… then what exactly is this research all about?

Through a series of interviews and site visits, Ronson also exposes the fragile assumptions beneath our diagnostic confidence—especially the idea that psychopathy is untreatable, a widely held (false) belief that has enormous legal consequences around the world (I write about this in my book  Psychopathy Unmasked).

One of the most memorable parts of the book, for me, is Ronson’s deep dive into a now-infamous treatment program at Oak Ridge, a Canadian forensic psychiatric hospital. The program—which involved extreme, coercive “therapies”—was meant to cure and rehabilitate so-called psychopaths. It failed catastrophically and has since become a symbol of one of the darkest and most grotesque chapters in the history of Canadian psychiatry. And Ronson is right there with some of the victims who lived through the horrific experience.

Link to CBC documentary: https://youtu.be/_zawytiPcH4?si=PfkmBxiLbXtamHC1

Ronson doesn’t deliver these criticisms with academic rigor. Instead, the power of his book lies in its tone: curious enough to spark your skepticism. That tone—half-satirical, half-sincere—caught me off guard as a graduate student. It was a surprise left hook, that got me rethinking my approach to studying psychopathy. More than anything, it nudged me to reconsider a field I had, up to that point, perhaps taken a bit too seriously.

Ironically, Robert Hare—creator of the Psychopathy Checklist-Revised and one of the field’s most influential figures—was reportedly furious with the book (for both good and bad reasons, in my opinion). In a long, private commentary, he laid out various objections. Chief among themwas that Ronson’s skeptical tone might undermine public trust in psychopathy research.

But in hindsight, that’s exactly what the field needed back in 2011 when Ronson’s book was published. At the time, no one had taken on a sustained, critical analysis of the diagnosis and its legal use. That’s what I’ve tried to do in Psychopathy Unmasked 14 years later. And it all started, in part, with a not-so-serious book that dared to ask the serious questions—questions that, for some reason, provoked even the most seasoned researchers.

Sometimes it takes the unexpected character to point out the obvious. Like the child in H.C. Andersen’s fairytale who yells:

“But he’s not wearing any clothes!”

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