Rick B. (bup) - , reviewed on 2/7/2013 + 165 more book reviews

Helpful Score: 2

A scattershot look at psychopathy, and in some parts, just more general crazy.

Probably the most valuable perspective Ronson provides is what he calls "semi-psychopaths." Bob Hare, who has a short test to determine if someone is a psychopath, and Martha Stout, who wrote the book "The Sociopath Next Door," see the defining trait of psychopathy/sociopathy as a lack of empathy, and see it as an on/off switch. Most aspects of human behavior aren't on/off switches, they're continuums (continuuae?).

It's much easier for me to accept there are people out there with relatively few feelings for fellow humans (who, it seems to me, would be cool in tense situations - good in war, hostage standoffs, espionage), some with a little more, and then some with so much they're always anxious. I could believe, too, a very few have absolutely none and literally treat all other humans as objects.

Hare and Stout don't have it that way, and they have the official model right now. Hare's checklist also discounts that environment could temporarily affect things - for instance, being a coroner or an EMT could numb one to human suffering without meaning that person's amygdala is malfunctioning and the only thing keeping her from killing for fun is the inconvenience of it.

So, anyway, I hope Ronson's view in this (non-scientific, journalistic, occasionally humorous) book gets some traction.

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