Ted Talk: Strange Answers to the Psychopath Test By: Jon Ronson
Strange Answers to the Psychopath Test Reflection
This Ted Talk is beautifully done and provides a particularly interesting message. Jon Ronson delivers a really fascinating meaning that society in a way only picks out a person’s worst (psychopathic) traits to put them into a category of mental illness. In the talk Tony, the man Ronson interviews at Broadmoor, says, “It’s harder to convince someone you’re sane, then it is to convince them you’re crazy.” I don’t believe Ronson is expressing in the talk that mental illness isn’t a large concern but as he was talking about in the beginning of the story he explained that he found he had at least twelve different disorders in the DSM, a manual of mental disorders, though he does express that normal human behaviors can be signs of mental illness to psychiatrists who are attempting to diagnose. In the interview Tony continues to say to Ronson, “You know they are always looking out for non-verbal clues to my mental state, but how do you sit in a sane way?” I think Ronson mentions this in the talk because it goes to show that when someone is dedicating so much time trying to pin point something wrong then they will eventually find it. In this case Ronson gives the example that kids as young as four are being diagnosed with bipolar as an illness because they are having tantrums. I reason Ronson made some very respectable and intelligent points in the lecture. At the end of the talk I consider he made the right choice of refraining from going out to have a drink with Tony because like Ronson understood he was semi-psychopathic. As a comparison in the book, The Great Gatsby, Tom is very narcissistic and overpowering that in some way he could be considered a psychopath in the way it was portrayed in the Ted Talk. Tom always had to be better then everyone. In my opinion Tom never showed remorse, which was on the psychopath test, even when he heard of Gatsby’s death. Nick expresses Tom's many psychopathic characteristics when he thought, “As for Tom, the fact that he “had some woman in New York” was really less surprising than that he had been depressed by a book” (Fitzgerald 20). The quote exemplifies Tom having a shallow affect and lacks taking responsibility of his actions of adultery. The connection between Tom and the Ted Talk match perfectly and give great insight into the traits of a psychopath.