Tony, the man who faked madness, has lost 14 years of his life to Broadmoor because as a kind of semi-psychopath he got judged by his maddest edges. There are tragedies chronicled in my book. Without in any way disrespecting those people who have debilitating mental health issues (God knows there are enough of them in my life) the book shines quite a shocking light on how people in the middle – people who just aren’t conformist enough for our increasingly conformist world – are falling foul to mental health checklists, getting judged by their madder edges, sometimes with disastrous results. But it is about some very serious things. This is – like my previous books – a funny, exciting adventure story, a journey. What would you like readers to take away from the book? You shouldn't become victim to the kind of power-crazed psychologist and journalist I became while writing the book.

So it becomes a bit of a paean to eccentricity - that it's okay to be a bit eccentric. They turn me a bit power-crazed with my new psychopath spotting powers, and I go out into the world to try and spot psychopaths in high places - at the helm of corporations, etc.Įventually I realize I've gone power-mad, and the book becomes a look at how people are judged, more and more, by their maddest edges. They say you can tell them by their sentence construction, their nonverbal clues, etc. These powerful psychologists teach me the art of psychopath spotting. This takes me into the world of people who decide who is and isn't sane - who is and isn't a psychopath, more specifically. (It was the Scientologists who led me to Tony).

It begins with me meeting a man at Broadmoor hospital - formally Broadmoor Asylum for the Criminally Insane - who wants to convince me that he faked madness to get out of a prison sentence and now he's stuck inside Broadmoor, and nobody will believe he's sane. Is madness the force that makes the world go around? Do the people I write about behave the strange ways they do because madness is the engine that powers them? I felt I needed to address this question head-on. I wanted to write a book about madness because it has always been - I think - the elephant in the room of my other books.

The Psychopath Test by Jon Ronson