Scary Psychos

Having barely survived four terrifying episodes of Wallander, with some creepy psycho women hunting down abusive husbands, I know I’m just not cut out for scary stuff.  I should have stopped after my post- Girl With The Dragon Tattoo bed-wetting.

So I gently declined my mum’s suggestion for summer reading, Jon Ronson’s The Psychopath Test, in favour of less frightening cultural distractions. 

I particularly enjoyed a good Hamlet.  As a Globe Theatre touring production it was traditionally staged, but reliably acted and zipped through without compromising the text.  The setting, the grand quad of Oxford’s Bodleian library, was stunning – not in the least chilling, in fact warm and dry!

But then it rained all summer, so I read the Ronson book anyway.  And, of course, it scared the pants off me!

The focus is on madness, in particular psychopathy – the chronic inability to feel guilt, anxiety or remorse for any actions.  More precisely, psychopaths are defined by a 20-point checklist devised by the psychiatrist Bob Hare. 

So what do you think defines a psychopath?  I would have guessed at traits like lying, manipulation, callousness and irresponsibility.  But would you also expect charm, impulsivity and promiscuity?

You might imagine the scariest bits of the book to be gruesome descriptions of serial killers, but whilst one of the most frightening scenes is in a secure mental hospital, the terror comes not so much from the inmates (sorry, patients) as the system. 

Tony explains he is a petty criminal who feigned insanity to get a cushy sentence – but laid it on too thick and ended up in Broadmoor!  Worse still, the more he protests his innocence, the more it’s taken as evidence of his deviousness and lack of remorse.  It’s the modern witchcraft - scary indeed.

Ronson meanders more than a Polonius farewell, but does pose interesting questions about madness, and is disarmingly frank about his own tenuous grip on rationality.  In fact everyone in his book is somewhere on the insanity spectrum.

Just like Hamlet in fact – surely a play about madness?  He does at one point say he’ll feign “an antic disposition”, and later claims “I am but mad north-northwest…”.  But how would you keep your wits if you had your father killed, mother seduced by the murderer, lover barred and friends turned against you - oh and your right to be king snatched too? 

And it’s not just him.  Take dotty old Polonius (funny mad), with his daughter Ophelia (sad mad) and son Laertes (angry mad).  The mental health of Hamlet’s mother must be in doubt.  And his dead father even loses his marbles beyond the grave, haunted by his hideous murder, wife’s faithlessness, and son’s procrastination. 

In fact pretty much everyone in Hamlet is an apple short of a picnic:  from potty prince to gaga gravedigger - who says the prince was sent to England “because a was mad. A shall recover his wits there; or if a do not, ‘tis no great matter … there the men are as mad as he!”.

Now I’m an expert psychopath detector (skim-read the 20 questions and you’ll spend your life psychospotting), I have a new take on the old play – everyone maybe crazy, but only one character is a proper psycho.

Claudius has all the signs:  killing your brother must tick the box for ‘failure to behave responsibly’.  As for ‘criminal versatility’ he’s got it all, from poisoned wine and tampering with weapons, to hidden death-notes and  pouring hemlock into his own brother’s ear. 

His ‘lack of remorse’ is total, save one occasion when he is caught praying (and even then I wonder if this could be played as him tricking Hamlet – it certainly stops him being killed).  And how about this for ‘callousness’:  in the final scene, his new wife Gurtrude takes a poisoned cup, and rather than save her and risk revealing his deception he just lets her drink – how cold-hearted can you get? 

Yet he’s ‘charming’ and ‘cunning’ too – he keeps Hamlet in Denmark and names him heir, then manipulates his friends Rosencrantz and Guildenstern and later Laertes to betray him.  In between times he schmoozes his way not just into any bedchamber, but that of his dead brother’s wife. 

My verdict:  total psycho.

As usual Shakespeare is way ahead of us.  Ronson only hints at a theory - that whilst only 1% of society would be termed psychopathic, when it comes to our political and business leaders it’s more like 10%.   If true, that would be sensational - surely it merits a whole book?

Think about it:  just as everyone at Elsinore is somehow mad but it’s the psycho Claudius who comes out on top, so it is in our crazy world, where smiling villains like Madoff, Diamond, or indeed Blair, charm to power and then remorselessly shaft us all.

So it’s no longer Swedish serial killers keeping me up at night. 

Rather, I awake sweating, fearing how Mr Cameron would score in the test.  Now that is really scary.