the psychopath test_ a journey through the madne - jon ronson

[...]... in 1969 The CCHR visualized psychiatry as Hubbard had depicted it, as a Dark Empire that had existed for millennia, and themselves as a ragtag rebel force tasked with defeating the Goliath And they have won some epic victories There was, for example, their campaign back in the 1970s and 1980s against the Australian psychiatrist Harry Bailey He ran a small, private, suburban psychiatric hospital in Sydney... believe that the religion and all that is done in its name, including its antipsychiatry wing, are nothing less than a manifestation of L Ron Hubbard’s madness They say he was paranoid and depressed (he would apparently at times cry uncontrollably and throw things against the wall and scream) Tommy and Bob said Hubbard was a genius and a great humanitarian They pointed to his record as a world-class Boy... indefinitely detain an “untreatable” patient if their crime was a relatively minor crime like GBH.) The problem was that at Broadmoor if a nurse sits next to you at lunch and makes small talk, and you make small talk back, that’s considered engaging with therapy So Tony had to tell them all, “Will you sit on another table?” The psychiatrists realized it was a tactical ploy They wrote in their reports that it... Ron had his Coca-Cola machine,” explained Bob He smiled “Ron loved CocaCola He drank it all the time That was his thing Anyway, one day the machine leaked some syrup That’s what the stain is There’s been a lot of debate about whether we should clean it up I say leave it It’s a nice thing.” “Like a relic,” I said “Right,” said Bob A kind of Coca-Cola Turin shroud,” I said “Whatever,” said Bob Anti-Scientologists... still an open book.” A year ago, when the new-born baby Abbie Humphries was snatched from a hospital, the Daily Mail wondered what sort of woman could do such a thing Luckily, Dr Persaud was on hand to explain that the kidnapper may have had some sort of “need for a baby.” And so on In late 2007, Dr Persaud was at Brian’s instigation investigated by the General Medical Council for plagiarism He had written... puzzle, Douglas Hofstadter was saying, but the recipients had gotten it wrong They assumed the endeavor was brilliant and rational because they were brilliant and rational, and we tend to automatically assume that everybody else is basically just like us But in fact the missing piece was that the author was a crackpot The book couldn’t be decoded because it was written by a crackpot Hofstadter wrote:... [Hubbard’s self-help book] and it helped me with the pain.” The manor house was immaculate in a way that manor houses rarely are these days It was as spotless and sparkling as manor houses in costume dramas set during those long-ago days when the British gentry had real power and unlimited money The only stain I saw anywhere was in the Winter Room, where a small number of the gleaming marble floor tiles were... bring back happy memories of past sleuthing adventures There were the weeks I spent trailing the conspiracy theorist David Icke around as he hypothesized his theory that the secret rulers of the world were giant, blood-drinking, child-sacrificing pedophile lizards that had adopted human form That was a good story And it began, as this one was, with the smell of a newly cleaned rental car The SatNav took... out a word—“Time”—and Tony shot from our table and across the room to the door that led back to his block All the patients did the same It was a display of tremendous, extreme, acute good behavior Brian gave me a lift back to the station I didn’t know what to think Unlike the sad-eyed, medicated patients all around us, Tony had seemed perfectly ordinary and sane But what did I know? Brian said it was... Deborah in a Perspex box for a year The archive actually captured her looking quite happy in the box, and I later did some fact-checking and discovered she’s contended throughout her life that the box was basically just a crib and she was hardly ever in there anyway and her father was in fact a lovely man The DVD commentary said, “In every city, every state, every country, you will find psychiatrists . PART OF THE PUZZLE REVEALED Chapter 2. - THE MAN WHO FAKED MADNESS Chapter 3. - PSYCHOPATHS DREAM IN BLACK-AND-WHITE Chapter 4. - THE PSYCHOPATH TEST Chapter 5. - TOTO Chapter 6. - NIGHT OF THE LIVING. © Barney Poole Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Ronson, Jon, date. The psychopath test : a journey through the madness industry / Jon Ronson. p. cm. eISBN : 97 8-1 -1 0 1-5 151 6-7 1 LIVING DEAD Chapter 7. - THE RIGHT SORT OF MADNESS Chapter 8. - THE MADNESS OF DAVID SHAYLER Chapter 9. - AIMING A BIT HIGH Chapter 10. - THE AVOIDABLE DEATH OF REBECCA RILEY Chapter 11. - GOOD