Strange answers to the psychopath test | Jon Ronson | TED

Is there a definitive line that divides crazy from sane? With a hair-raising delivery, Jon Ronson, author of The Psychopath Test, illuminates the gray areas between the two. (With live-mixed sound by Julian Treasure and animation by Evan Grant.)

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[WilliamAndrews]

I think the biggest problem is that if you tell someone for 14 years every day that they are insane, at one point they start to believe you.

[nathanwaltrip]

Tony: I'm not a psychopath!
Tony's doctor: *That's exactly what a psychopath would say!*

[ashleywei]

The absolute best Ted Talk I've ever heard. "He's a gray area in a world that doesn't like gray areas. But the gray areas are where you find the complexity." The majority of societal problems has to do with the many labels and stereotypes places upon things. If those left, we would be a lot better off.

[MrHenhen]

I remember learning about a psychology study where the researchers would admit themselves into a mental hospital. Don't remember too much of the details, but the main point was once you're labelled as "insane" it's extremely hard to remove the tag. Even if you behave normally (which is hard to do when you're actively trying to behave normally) and deny that you're insane, it's labelled as insane behavior.

[jakewaugh]

"The grey area is were you find the complexity, the truth, the humanity." Beautiful quote.

[udxchrg]

"It's a lot harder to convince people you're sane than to convince people you're crazy." I fell that on a spiritual level.

[stephjonestherapyandcoching]

During my life I amassed a huge number of diagnostic labels - anxiety, GAD, depression, OCD, SAD, PTSD, potential bipolar/BPD, complex PTSD.... only, it was none of those things.

It was autism and it took 41-years, decades of therapy, and countless clinical assessments to be correctly identified.

The DSM is only helpful if the clinician is fully aware. And believe me, not all practitioners are made equal.

Misdiagnosis happens all the time.

[Shivani-vojf]

This reminds me of a study conducted in 1960s by Rosenhan, where 8 completely sane people go into these hospitals claiming they heard voices but then act completely normal. it tuned out that nurses recorded their very normal behavior like pacing out of boredom as schizophrenic traits

[animepeople]

someone once said "it is easier to fool people than to convince them they're fooled"

[ashwin]

Imagine after the speech he just started laughing and said “ That's right. I am Tony ”

[zhou_sei]

surprised the checklist didn't have "stands in a dimly lit room with two very bald men behind him in the shadows"

[Theebutuoy]

I think the conclusion is so on point, we live in a world that’s obsessed with categorisation because it makes things easier for us to understand but this is something that doesn’t work well when applied to mental state

[Cinderspark]

I really like that one line "I was desperate to define him by his maddest edges."

[_uce]

, ,There's about 30 or 40 psychopaths in this room."
Psychopaths in the room: *laughing inside*

[Elfsinger]

Absolutely. I went to visit a friend in a mental hospital. When we were sat there, there was random screaming and banging in the corridors which was really scary! I said "I bet you stay in here all the time, I know I would!" and she said she had to start with but she'd been told they thought she was insane because she didn't want to socialise with the other inmates. So she was having to force herself out to be with them. I cried all the way home for her. (She's fine now and back in the community).

[SqueamishNerd]

I find the part about bomb-sniffing bees interesting, because I've been to bad MDs and bad therapists many times, and every time I feel like I don't trust them and read my journal afterwards, it's obvious why I didn't trust them, simply because they misinterpreted several things I said.

For example, when one MD asked me about my daily life as unemployed I said that I play video games, go for walks, and other things like that. What they wrote was "Plays video games all day and never goes out". And once I told a therapist that my depression got worse a specific year, and I had previously mentioned that I moved in with my partner that same year, in my journal it said "Partner makes them depressed", which wasn't true at all, especially since my depression got worse in the beginning of said year, and I moved in with my partner in the end of that year, and my partner actually helped me to get help in the first place, because I didn't even know I needed help, my partner saw the signs.

In the past 1.5 years, almost 10 years since I first tried to get help, I've finally found a therapist and a psychiatrist who I trust. I haven't read the journals they write, because I don't feel like I need to, because I doubt that they write things that are simply not true. Sure that they might misinterpret me at times, but they're so understanding in general that I trust that they don't write things that are outright wrong.

[eiebsrebla]

A book with 374 mental disorders... Find someone that has none of them and watch that number go up to 375.

[loriddell]

"He's a grey area in a world that doesn't like grey areas."
Never heard anything truer.

[lychee]

there are great points in this
- sometimes, people overanalyze things
- you can eventually turn into the person you “hate”
- let’s just say the media or everyone else will always nitpick on other’s business
-_”You shouldn’t define people based on their maddest edges”_

[paracosm-cc]

"a world that doesn't like grey areas" is a perfect description of Twitter.