Early on in his book The Psychopath Test, Jon Ronson writes:
I’d never really thought much about psychopaths before that moment and I wondered if I should try and meet some. It seemed extraordinary that there were people out there whose neurological condition, according to James’s story, made them so terrifying, like a wholly malevolent space creature from a sci-fi movie. I vaguely remembered hearing psychologists say there was a preponderance of psychopaths at the top, in the corporate and political worlds – a clinical absence of empathy being a benefit in those environments. Could that really be true? And I decided, no, it would be a mistake to start meddling in the world of psychopaths, an especially big mistake for someone like me who suffers from a massive surfeit of anxiety.
Having explored the world of extremists in Them, and the wilder shores of the US military’s psychic operations in The Men who Stare at Goats, Jon decided to turn his attention to psychopaths. In this entertaining interview, he explains why. To listen, click here.
And to read the first chapter of the book, click here.