Strange answers to the psychopath test | Jon Ronson | TED

24,369,475 views ・ 2012-08-15

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Translator: Timothy Covell Reviewer: Morton Bast
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The story starts: I was at a friend's house,
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and she had on her shelf a copy of the DSM manual,
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which is the manual of mental disorders.
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It lists every known mental disorder.
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And it used to be, back in the '50s, a very slim pamphlet.
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And then it got bigger and bigger and bigger,
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and now it's 886 pages long.
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And it lists currently 374 mental disorders.
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So I was leafing through it,
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wondering if I had any mental disorders,
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and it turns out I've got 12.
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(Laughter)
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I've got generalized anxiety disorder,
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which is a given.
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I've got nightmare disorder,
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which is categorized
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if you have recurrent dreams of being pursued or declared a failure,
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and all my dreams involve people chasing me down the street
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going, "You're a failure!"
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(Laughter)
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I've got parent-child relational problems,
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which I blame my parents for.
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(Laughter)
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I'm kidding. I'm not kidding.
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I'm kidding.
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And I've got malingering.
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And I think it's actually quite rare
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to have both malingering and generalized anxiety disorder,
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because malingering tends to make me feel very anxious.
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Anyway, I was looking through this book,
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wondering if I was much crazier than I thought I was,
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or maybe it's not a good idea to diagnose yourself with a mental disorder
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if you're not a trained professional,
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or maybe the psychiatry profession has a kind of strange desire
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to label what's essentially normal human behavior as a mental disorder.
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I didn't know which of these was true, but I thought it was kind of interesting,
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and I thought maybe I should meet a critic of psychiatry
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to get their view,
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which is how I ended up having lunch with the Scientologists.
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(Laughter)
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It was a man called Brian, who runs a crack team of Scientologists
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who are determined to destroy psychiatry wherever it lies.
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They're called the CCHR.
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And I said to him, "Can you prove to me
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that psychiatry is a pseudo-science that can't be trusted?"
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And he said, "Yes, we can prove it to you."
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And I said, "How?"
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And he said, "We're going to introduce you to Tony."
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And I said, "Who's Tony?"
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And he said, "Tony's in Broadmoor."
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Now, Broadmoor is Broadmoor Hospital.
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It used to be known as the Broadmoor Asylum for the Criminally Insane.
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It's where they send the serial killers,
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and the people who can't help themselves.
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And I said to Brian, "Well, what did Tony do?"
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And he said, "Hardly anything.
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He beat someone up or something,
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and he decided to fake madness to get out of a prison sentence.
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But he faked it too well, and now he's stuck in Broadmoor
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and nobody will believe he's sane.
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Do you want us to try and get you into Broadmoor to meet Tony?"
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So I said, "Yes, please."
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So I got the train to Broadmoor.
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I began to yawn uncontrollably around Kempton Park,
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which apparently is what dogs also do when anxious,
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they yawn uncontrollably.
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And we got to Broadmoor.
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And I got taken through gate after gate after gate after gate
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into the wellness center, which is where you get to meet the patients.
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It looks like a giant Hampton Inn.
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It's all peach and pine and calming colors.
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And the only bold colors are the reds of the panic buttons.
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And the patients started drifting in.
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And they were quite overweight and wearing sweatpants,
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and quite docile-looking.
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And Brian the Scientologist whispered to me,
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"They're medicated,"
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which, to the Scientologists, is like the worst evil in the world,
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but I'm thinking it's probably a good idea.
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(Laughter)
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And then Brian said, "Here's Tony."
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And a man was walking in.
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And he wasn't overweight, he was in very good physical shape.
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And he wasn't wearing sweatpants,
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he was wearing a pinstripe suit.
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And he had his arm outstretched
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like someone out of The Apprentice.
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He looked like a man who wanted to wear an outfit
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that would convince me that he was very sane.
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And he sat down.
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And I said, "So is it true that you faked your way in here?"
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And he said, "Yep. Yep. Absolutely. I beat someone up when I was 17.
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And I was in prison awaiting trial,
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and my cellmate said to me,
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'You know what you have to do?
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Fake madness.
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Tell them you're mad, you'll get sent to some cushy hospital.
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Nurses will bring you pizzas, you'll have your own PlayStation.'"
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I said, "Well, how did you do it?"
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He said, "Well, I asked to see the prison psychiatrist.
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And I'd just seen a film called 'Crash,'
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in which people get sexual pleasure from crashing cars into walls.
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So I said to the psychiatrist,
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'I get sexual pleasure from crashing cars into walls.'"
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And I said, "What else?"
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He said, "Oh, yeah. I told the psychiatrist
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that I wanted to watch women as they died,
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because it would make me feel more normal."
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I said, "Where'd you get that from?"
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He said, "Oh, from a biography of Ted Bundy that they had
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at the prison library."
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Anyway, he faked madness too well, he said.
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And they didn't send him to some cushy hospital.
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They sent him to Broadmoor.
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And the minute he got there,
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said he took one look at the place, asked to see the psychiatrist,
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said, "There's been a terrible misunderstanding.
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I'm not mentally ill."
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I said, "How long have you been here for?"
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He said, "Well, if I'd just done my time in prison
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for the original crime, I'd have got five years.
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I've been in Broadmoor for 12 years."
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Tony said that it's a lot harder to convince people you're sane
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than it is to convince them you're crazy.
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He said, "I thought the best way to seem normal
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would be to talk to people normally about normal things
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like football or what's on TV.
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I subscribe to New Scientist,
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and recently they had an article
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about how the U.S. Army was training bumblebees to sniff out explosives.
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So I said to a nurse,
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'Did you know that the U.S. Army is training bumblebees
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to sniff out explosives?'
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When I read my medical notes, I saw they'd written:
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'Believes bees can sniff out explosives.'"
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(Laughter)
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He said, "You know, they're always looking out for nonverbal clues
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to my mental state.
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But how do you sit in a sane way?
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How do you cross your legs in a sane way?
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It's just impossible."
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When Tony said that to me,
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I thought to myself, "Am I sitting like a journalist?
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Am I crossing my legs like a journalist?"
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He said, "You know, I've got the Stockwell Strangler on one side of me,
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and I've got the 'Tiptoe Through the Tulips' rapist
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on the other side of me.
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So I tend to stay in my room a lot because I find them quite frightening.
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And they take that as a sign of madness.
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They say it proves that I'm aloof and grandiose."
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So, only in Broadmoor would not wanting to hang out with serial killers
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be a sign of madness.
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Anyway, he seemed completely normal to me, but what did I know?
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And when I got home I emailed his clinician, Anthony Maden.
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I said, "What's the story?"
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And he said, "Yep. We accept that Tony faked madness
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to get out of a prison sentence, because his hallucinations --
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that had seemed quite cliche to begin with --
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just vanished the minute he got to Broadmoor.
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However, we have assessed him,
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and we've determined that what he is
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is a psychopath."
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And in fact, faking madness
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is exactly the kind of cunning and manipulative act of a psychopath.
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It's on the checklist: cunning, manipulative.
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So, faking your brain going wrong
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is evidence that your brain has gone wrong.
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And I spoke to other experts,
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and they said the pinstripe suit -- classic psychopath --
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speaks to items one and two on the checklist:
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glibness, superficial charm and grandiose sense of self-worth.
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And I said, "Well, but why didn't he hang out with the other patients?"
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Classic psychopath -- it speaks to grandiosity and also lack of empathy.
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So all the things that had seemed most normal about Tony
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was evidence, according to his clinician,
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that he was mad in this new way.
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He was a psychopath.
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And his clinician said to me, "If you want to know more about psychopaths,
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you can go on a psychopath-spotting course
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run by Robert Hare, who invented the psychopath checklist."
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So I did.
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I went on a psychopath-spotting course,
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and I am now a certified --
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and I have to say, extremely adept -- psychopath spotter.
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So, here's the statistics:
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One in a hundred regular people is a psychopath.
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So there's 1,500 people in his room.
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Fifteen of you are psychopaths.
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Although that figure rises to four percent of CEOs and business leaders,
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so I think there's a very good chance
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there's about 30 or 40 psychopaths in this room.
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It could be carnage by the end of the night.
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(Laughter)
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Hare said the reason why is because capitalism at its most ruthless
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rewards psychopathic behavior --
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the lack of empathy, the glibness,
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cunning, manipulative.
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In fact, capitalism, perhaps at its most remorseless,
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is a physical manifestation of psychopathy.
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It's like a form of psychopathy that's come down to affect us all.
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Hare said, "You know what? Forget about some guy at Broadmoor
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who may or may not have faked madness.
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Who cares? That's not a big story.
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The big story," he said, "is corporate psychopathy.
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You want to go and interview yourself some corporate psychopaths."
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So I gave it a try. I wrote to the Enron people.
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I said, "Could I come and interview you in prison,
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to find out it you're psychopaths?"
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(Laughter)
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And they didn't reply.
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(Laughter)
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So I changed tack.
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I emailed "Chainsaw Al" Dunlap,
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the asset stripper from the 1990s.
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He would come into failing businesses
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and close down 30 percent of the workforce,
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just turn American towns into ghost towns.
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And I emailed him and I said,
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"I believe you may have a very special brain anomaly
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that makes you ... special,
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and interested in the predatory spirit, and fearless.
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Can I come and interview you about your special brain anomaly?"
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And he said, "Come on over!"
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(Laughter)
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So I went to Al Dunlap's grand Florida mansion.
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It was filled with sculptures of predatory animals.
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There were lions and tigers -- he was taking me through the garden --
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there were falcons and eagles,
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he was saying, "Over there you've got sharks and --"
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he was saying this in a less effeminate way --
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"You've got more sharks and you've got tigers."
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It was like Narnia.
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(Laughter)
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And then we went into his kitchen.
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Now, Al Dunlap would be brought in to save failing companies,
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he'd close down 30 percent of the workforce.
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And he'd quite often fire people with a joke.
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Like, for instance, one famous story about him,
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somebody came up to him and said, "I've just bought myself a new car."
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And he said, "Well, you may have a new car,
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but I'll tell you what you don't have -- a job."
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So in his kitchen --
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he was in there with his wife, Judy, and his bodyguard, Sean --
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and I said, "You know how I said in my email
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that you might have a special brain anomaly that makes you special?"
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He said, "Yeah, it's an amazing theory, it's like Star Trek.
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You're going where no man has gone before."
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And I said, "Well --" (Clears throat)
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(Laughter)
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Some psychologists might say
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that this makes you --" (Mumbles)
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(Laughter)
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And he said, "What?"
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And I said, "A psychopath."
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And I said, "I've got a list of psychopathic traits in my pocket.
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Can I go through them with you?"
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And he looked intrigued despite himself,
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and he said, "Okay, go on."
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And I said, "Okay. Grandiose sense of self-worth."
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Which I have to say, would have been hard for him to deny,
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because he was standing under a giant oil painting of himself.
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(Laughter)
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He said, "Well, you've got to believe in you!"
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And I said, "Manipulative."
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He said, "That's leadership."
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(Laughter)
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And I said, "Shallow affect,
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an inability to experience a range of emotions."
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He said, "Who wants to be weighed down by some nonsense emotions?"
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So he was going down the psychopath checklist,
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basically turning it into "Who Moved My Cheese?"
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(Laughter)
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But I did notice something happening to me the day I was with Al Dunlap.
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Whenever he said anything to me that was kind of normal --
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like he said "no" to juvenile delinquency,
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he said he got accepted into West Point,
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and they don't let delinquents in West Point.
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He said "no" to many short-term marital relationships.
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He's only ever been married twice.
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Admittedly, his first wife cited in her divorce papers
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that he once threatened her with a knife
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and said he always wondered what human flesh tasted like,
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but people say stupid things to each other
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in bad marriages in the heat of an argument,
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and his second marriage has lasted 41 years.
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So whenever he said anything to me that just seemed kind of non-psychopathic,
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I thought to myself, well I'm not going to put that in my book.
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And then I realized that becoming a psychopath spotter
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had kind of turned me a little bit psychopathic.
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Because I was desperate to shove him in a box marked "Psychopath."
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I was desperate to define him by his maddest edges.
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And I realized, my God --
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this is what I've been doing for 20 years.
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It's what all journalists do.
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We travel across the world with our notepads in our hands,
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and we wait for the gems.
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And the gems are always the outermost aspects
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of our interviewee's personality.
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And we stitch them together like medieval monks,
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and we leave the normal stuff on the floor.
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And you know, this is a country that over-diagnoses
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certain mental disorders hugely.
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Childhood bipolar --
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children as young as four are being labeled bipolar
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because they have temper tantrums,
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which scores them high on the bipolar checklist.
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When I got back to London, Tony phoned me.
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He said, "Why haven't you been returning my calls?"
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I said, "Well, they say that you're a psychopath."
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14:58
And he said, "I'm not a psychopath."
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He said, "You know what?
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15:02
One of the items on the checklist is lack of remorse,
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15:04
but another item on the checklist is cunning, manipulative.
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15:07
So when you say you feel remorse for your crime,
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they say, 'Typical of the psychopath
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to cunningly say he feels remorse when he doesn't.'
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15:15
It's like witchcraft, they turn everything upside-down."
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He said, "I've got a tribunal coming up.
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Will you come to it?"
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So I said okay.
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So I went to his tribunal.
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And after 14 years in Broadmoor, they let him go.
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They decided that he shouldn't be held indefinitely
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because he scores high on a checklist that might mean
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that he would have a greater than average chance of recidivism.
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So they let him go.
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And outside in the corridor he said to me,
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"You know what, Jon?
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Everyone's a bit psychopathic."
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15:52
He said, "You are, I am. Well, obviously I am."
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I said, "What are you going to do now?"
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15:59
He said, "I'm going to go to Belgium.
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There's a woman there that I fancy.
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But she's married, so I'm going to have to get her split up from her husband."
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16:07
(Laughter)
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Anyway, that was two years ago,
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and that's where my book ended.
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And for the last 20 months, everything was fine.
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Nothing bad happened.
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16:22
He was living with a girl outside London.
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16:24
He was, according to Brian the Scientologist,
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16:26
making up for lost time, which I know sounds ominous,
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16:29
but isn't necessarily ominous.
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Unfortunately, after 20 months,
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he did go back to jail for a month.
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He got into a "fracas" in a bar, he called it.
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Ended up going to jail for a month, which I know is bad,
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16:44
but at least a month implies that whatever the fracas was,
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16:47
it wasn't too bad.
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And then he phoned me.
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And you know what, I think it's right that Tony is out.
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Because you shouldn't define people by their maddest edges.
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17:01
And what Tony is, is he's a semi-psychopath.
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17:05
He's a gray area in a world that doesn't like gray areas.
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But the gray areas are where you find the complexity.
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It's where you find the humanity,
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and it's where you find the truth.
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And Tony said to me,
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"Jon, could I buy you a drink in a bar?
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I just want to thank you for everything you've done for me."
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And I didn't go.
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What would you have done?
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Thank you.
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(Applause)
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About this website

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