The Psychopath Test

by Jon Ronson

Someone would yell out the name of a potential new mental disorder and a checklist of its overt characteristics, there’d be a cacophony of voices in assent or dissent, and if Spitzer agreed, which he almost always did, he’d hammer it out then and there on an old typewriter, and there it would be, sealed in stone. It seemed a foolproof plan. He would eradicate from psychiatry all that crass sleuthing around the unconscious. There’d be no more silly polemicizing. Human judgement hadn’t helped his mother. Instead it would be like science. Any psychiatrist could pick up the manual they were creating – DSM-III – and if the patient’s overt symptoms tallied with the checklist they’d get the diagnosis. And that’s how practically every disorder you’ve ever heard or have been diagnosed with came to be invented, inside that chaotic conference room, under the auspices of Robert Spitzer, who was taking his inspiration from checklist pioneers like Bob Hare.