The Psychopath Test by Jon Ronson

Quite a disturbing book about how the medical profession have been on a drive to have an easy simple way of detecting psychopaths.  Unfortunately most of us display some of the traits on the PCL-R Hare checklist at some point, and once you have been labelled it is very difficult to prove otherwise since the more you deny it the stronger you are seen to be a psychopath.

The actual book is engaging and written as a story of how a journalist investigates a series of particular cases rather than a dry academic text.  It doesn't just cover those in mental institutions but also reality TV contestants, ADHD in schools, senior corporate managers, .....

Really made me think - am I a psychopath, how many people I know are psychopaths by these definitions?

They say Hubbard was the very first man to reveal that psychiatrists were dosing patients with massive amounts of LSD and electro-convulsive therapy in secret CIA-funded attempts to create brainwashed assassins. He published his account of the experiments in 1969 and it wasn’t until June 1975 that the Washington Post announced to an unsuspecting world that these programmes (codenamed MK-ULTRA) existed.Read more at location 789

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Their conclusions became the basis for his now-famous twenty-point Hare PCL-R Checklist. Which was this: 

ITEM 1:  Glibness/superficial charm 

ITEM 2:  Grandiose sense of self-worth 

ITEM 3:  Need for stimulation/proneness to boredom 

ITEM 4:  Pathological lying 

ITEM 5:  Cunning/manipulative 

ITEM 6:  Lack of remorse or guilt 

ITEM 7:  Shallow affect

ITEM 8:  Callous/lack of empathy 

ITEM 9:  Parasitic lifestyle 

ITEM 10:  Poor behavioral controls 

ITEM 11:  Promiscuous sexual behavior 

ITEM 12:  Early behavior problems 

ITEM 13:  Lack of realistic long-term goals 

ITEM 14:  Impulsivity 

ITEM 15:  Irresponsibility

ITEM 16:  Failure to accept responsibility for own actions 

ITEM 17:  Many short-term marital relationships 

ITEM 18:  Juvenile delinquency 

ITEM 19:  Revocation of conditional release 

ITEM 20:  Criminal versatilityRead more at location 1500

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They love winning. If you take loving kindness out of the human brain there’s not much left except the will to win.’ ‘Which means you’ll find a preponderance of them at the top of the tree?’ I said. ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘The higher you go up the ladder the greater the number of sociopaths you’ll find there.’Read more at location 1772

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Snakes in Suits: When Psychopaths Go To Work – co-authored with a psychologist named Paul Babiak.Read more at location 2141

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Practically every peak-time programme is populated by people who are just the right sort of mad, and I now knew what the formula was. The people who are the right sort of mad are a bit madder than we fear we’re becoming, and in a recognizable way. We might be anxious but we aren’t as anxious as them. We might be paranoid but we aren’t as paranoid as them. We are entertained by them, and comforted that we’re not as mad as they are.Read more at location 3265

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There is no evidence that we’ve been placed on this planet to be especially happy or especially normal. And in fact our unhappiness and our strangeness, our anxieties and compulsions, those least fashionable aspects of our personalities, are quite often what lead us to do rather interesting things.Read more at location 4220

The Human Mind, and how to make the most of it

Robert Winston's book to accompany the BBC TV series. Explores the biology of, primarily damaged, brains to understand our minds and the faculties we all have. He looks at the biology of the brain and how the mind is a description of teh working action of the brain. Finally he touches on the evolutionary drivers that have caused our brains to develop as they have.

p121 the process of recognition by pattern matching the firing of individual memories of all the attributes of an object. So that the individual attributes can be shared across a number of objects.
p146 on the biological process that underlies mastering a task so that it becomes subconscious
p149 on the location of 'will' as in 'free will' in the brain. Given that actions or descisions to act become conscious only some time (p173) after an action has been initiated then is there such a thing as free will at all?
p208 a biological explanation for teenager anger.
p459 Stephen Wiltshire gets his own mention!

Darwin's Dangerous Idea

Daniel Dennett, explores how Darwinian evolutionary theory can be successfully applied to many fields beyond biology.

He looks at the evolution of language, culture, ethics and the origins of life itself.

As ever his books are very well written and a delight to read.

The Agile Gene

Matt Ridley follows on from his earlier work 'Genome' to explore the nature vs nurture debate. In the end he describes it as a false dichotomy with nurture favouring certain individuals and hence the genes that will continue their lineage, in turn defining the personality of those who will nurture the next generation.

A Devil's Chaplain

A diverse collection of Dawkins essays from over 25 years covering a wide range of topics. A very good introduction to some of the underlyig themes that have enlightened hs work.

The Blank Slate

A seminal work on the Nature vs Nurture debate, that actually comes out to say it is around 50:50 but with much more nature than most would be prepared to admit.

Numerous examples from various studies to illustrate his points that challenge 'modern' thinking that we are all equal - we are not. On the other hand that doesn't mean we don't all have something to bring to society.

Unweaving the Rainbow

Richard Dawkins sets out in this book to arge that understanding the origin and evolution of life doesn't mean you have to wonder at it any less.

In fact he makes a very good argument for wondering at the beauty of it even more.

River out of Eden

Richard Dawkins gives a very readable account, as ever, of some rather abstract issues within evolutionary biology.

How we are all much more closely related to each other than some might care to think. The river of the title is the mitocondrial DNA that flows through teh generations on the maternal side.

How evolution actually works, how it has no purpose and doesn't necessarily select the 'best' organisms, just the best in the environment at the time (on average). In esscence how a blind, simple process of random mutation combined with selective reproduction can explain the wonderful diversity of life we see around us today.

The Blind Watchmaker

Richard Dawkins seminal work on the way evolution operates blindly with no purpose and creates the wonderful incredibly diverse world we see around us.

If you read no other book by Dawkins (and many of his later works tend to become more polemical) then you should read this one.