I am currently reading The Psychopath Test by Jon Ronson. The book is about psychopaths and the author’s journey through discovering more and more about them. Psychopaths rule the world. 1% of the world’s population is psychopathic but 4% of corporate CEOs are psychopaths. They can’t feel empathy or remorse and while this can lead to great economical success (even if it is not through entirely moral ways). It also leads to mental institutions and prison. In the author’s first encounter with a psychopath, he meets a man named Tony.
Tony is a psychopath who got put in a mental institution when he pretended to be crazy to get out of jail time. Once he arrived in the mental institution it was determined that he was actually psychopathic, not crazy. Tony has been trying to get released since he first entered the institution. Evidence presented by the author of the book shows that being a psychopath is most likely a physical deformity in the brain rather then a mental illness. It is even believed by some people that it is genetic. There is currently no known therapy to treat psychopaths. Tony has been in the mental institution for four years longer then the seven year maximum on the crime he commit, with currently no chance of release.
This question has been bothering me since I first read about it. On one hand Tony has served his time. I don’t want to feel empathy for a man who can’t feel it himself, but I can’t help but think how strange it must be for him. He has been in jail since he was seventeen because he made a stupid decision. The crime he committed was not particularly psychopathic. He could become a regular functioning member of society. But he is also a psychopath and that can’t be cured. 25% of prisoners are psychopathic but psychopaths commit 60% of crime in prisons. They don’t learn from punishment, and Tony’s experience in the mental institution wouldn’t stop him from committing another crime. He is a danger to others because of the way his mind works. Its wrong to lock him up but it is probably for the greater good if he is locked up.
If I could release Tony I don’t think I would. I really and truly feel bad for him. At the same time if he went out into the world to kill someone, it would be on my hands, and I don’t think I could live with that.
Txai here-
ReplyDeleteSomething interesting about folks trying to be placed in mental institutions in order to escape jail time is that, if diagnosed as a sociopath INCORRECTLY, then the victim's insistence that they are not a sociopath makes them seem like more of a sociopath.
I would also like to add Tony did, in fact, exhibit psychopathic behaviors by trying to reduce his jail time and he was convicted in the first place for beating up a man REALLY badly. While trying to convince the jury that he was, indeed, a sociopath, he referenced gory movies and claimed that he derived pleasure from them. Convincing, yes but I can't help but wonder how much 'research' he actually committed himself to doing for the sake of coming off as a sociopath.
- I'm sorry if I'm being incoherent, I just finished a book that questioned a lot of what I believe in in a logical(ish?) manner to I sort of feel like my head's about to implode (yay! mini-black holes for my desk!!).
Lol nice! Have you read the book? And he badly beat up a man in a situation that a not psychopathic person might have beat the guy up in. And he did referenced gory movies as a way to seam crazy. All he knew about crazy people was from movies. It is quite ironic though that they figured out he was actually crazy because he was pretending to be crazy
ReplyDeleteReally great blogpost Miranda.
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