WEBVTT 00:00:17.190 --> 00:00:18.642 Hello. 00:00:18.642 --> 00:00:23.090 OK, this is a talk about how to spot a psychopath. 00:00:23.090 --> 00:00:24.688 The statistics, by the way - 00:00:24.688 --> 00:00:28.521 which Robert Hare, who invented the psychopath checklist, 00:00:28.521 --> 00:00:29.532 came up with this - 00:00:29.532 --> 00:00:34.703 says 1 in 100 people is a psychopath. 00:00:34.713 --> 00:00:38.135 There's 100 people in the room, so one of you ... 00:00:38.135 --> 00:00:39.728 (Laughter) 00:00:39.728 --> 00:00:41.414 ... is a psychopath. 00:00:43.700 --> 00:00:47.090 If psychopaths enjoy going to talks about psychopaths, 00:00:47.090 --> 00:00:49.514 there could be more than one of you in the audience. 00:00:49.514 --> 00:00:50.524 (Laughter) 00:00:50.524 --> 00:00:53.594 And I think psychopaths do enjoy going to talks about psychopaths 00:00:53.594 --> 00:00:57.688 because of item 2: grandiose sense of self-worth. 00:00:58.177 --> 00:01:00.947 So, 1 in 100 regular people is a psychopath, Hare says, 00:01:00.947 --> 00:01:06.056 but 4 in 100 CEOs are psychopaths. 00:01:06.056 --> 00:01:09.619 So you're four times more likely to be ruled by a psychopath 00:01:09.619 --> 00:01:12.119 than you would have one as your subordinate. 00:01:14.312 --> 00:01:16.526 OK, so I'm now professionally trained, 00:01:16.526 --> 00:01:20.057 and, I've got to say, an extremely adept psychopath spotter. 00:01:20.057 --> 00:01:22.917 I'll tell you the story of how I became a psychopath spotter, 00:01:22.917 --> 00:01:25.123 and what I did with my powers. NOTE Paragraph 00:01:25.814 --> 00:01:27.334 It started at a friend's house, 00:01:27.334 --> 00:01:29.954 and she had on her shelf a book called the "DSM." NOTE Paragraph 00:01:29.954 --> 00:01:31.725 Do people know the DSM? 00:01:31.725 --> 00:01:34.008 It's a manual of mental disorders. 00:01:34.008 --> 00:01:36.482 In the 50s, it was very slim, like a little pamphlet, 00:01:36.482 --> 00:01:37.989 but now it's an enormous book. 00:01:37.989 --> 00:01:40.559 They've come up with a huge number of mental disorders. 00:01:40.559 --> 00:01:45.564 There are 886 pages, 374 mental disorders. 00:01:45.564 --> 00:01:48.950 I was leafing through the book wondering if I had any mental disorders, 00:01:48.950 --> 00:01:50.361 and it turns out I've got 12. 00:01:51.861 --> 00:01:55.782 I've got generalized anxiety disorder, which is a given. 00:01:57.452 --> 00:01:59.364 I've got nightmare disorder, 00:01:59.364 --> 00:02:03.164 which is categorized if you have recurrent dreams of being pursued 00:02:03.164 --> 00:02:04.409 or declared a failure. 00:02:04.409 --> 00:02:07.086 All my dreams involve somebody chasing me down the street 00:02:07.086 --> 00:02:08.973 going, "You're a failure!" 00:02:08.973 --> 00:02:10.703 (Laughter) 00:02:10.703 --> 00:02:13.852 I've got malingering, and I think it's actually quite rare 00:02:13.852 --> 00:02:17.423 to have both malingering and generalized anxiety disorder 00:02:17.423 --> 00:02:20.337 because malingering tends to make you feel extremely anxious. 00:02:20.617 --> 00:02:23.599 And I have parent-child relational problems, 00:02:23.599 --> 00:02:25.224 which I blame my mother for. 00:02:25.224 --> 00:02:26.309 (Laughter) 00:02:26.319 --> 00:02:30.717 And I have caffeine-induced disorder, which I've got right now. 00:02:30.717 --> 00:02:32.257 (Laughter) 00:02:32.607 --> 00:02:35.636 So I was leafing through this book, wondering, 00:02:35.636 --> 00:02:38.446 "My goodness! Am I crazier than I thought I was?" 00:02:38.446 --> 00:02:41.264 Or maybe it's not a good idea to self-diagnose 00:02:41.264 --> 00:02:43.149 if you're not a trained professional. 00:02:43.149 --> 00:02:44.994 Or maybe the psychiatry industry 00:02:44.994 --> 00:02:50.238 has a strange fetish to diagnose normal behavior as a mental disorder. 00:02:50.238 --> 00:02:51.668 I have no idea which was true. 00:02:51.668 --> 00:02:54.151 I was quite excited to have so many mental disorders. NOTE Paragraph 00:02:54.151 --> 00:02:55.250 It kind of made me feel 00:02:55.250 --> 00:02:58.220 like it's good to know there's something wrong with you. 00:02:58.220 --> 00:03:00.545 I wondered whether my anxiety was a good thing. 00:03:00.545 --> 00:03:03.489 Maybe it's a thing that drives me forward to achieve. 00:03:03.489 --> 00:03:06.979 Maybe it makes me do interesting things. I was wondering what is all this. NOTE Paragraph 00:03:06.988 --> 00:03:09.867 I thought it'd be interesting to meet a critic of psychiatry 00:03:10.387 --> 00:03:11.720 to get their view on it, 00:03:11.720 --> 00:03:14.430 which was how I did a pubby lunch with the Scientologists, 00:03:14.430 --> 00:03:16.778 who have a crack team of psychiatry busters 00:03:16.778 --> 00:03:18.867 called the CCHR. 00:03:18.867 --> 00:03:22.661 So I said to them, "Can you prove to me that my thesis is right 00:03:22.661 --> 00:03:25.201 and that psychiatry is pseudoscience?" 00:03:25.201 --> 00:03:27.684 They said, "Yes, we can, we can prove it to you. 00:03:27.684 --> 00:03:29.824 We can introduce you to Tony." 00:03:29.824 --> 00:03:33.866 So I said, "Who's Tony?" And they said, "Tony's in Broadmoor." 00:03:33.866 --> 00:03:36.747 Now Broadmoor is Broadmoor Hospital which used to be known 00:03:36.747 --> 00:03:40.277 as "Broadmoor Asylum for the Criminally Insane." 00:03:40.557 --> 00:03:42.788 So I said, "What did Tony do?" 00:03:43.128 --> 00:03:46.797 And the Scientologists said, "Hardly anything." 00:03:46.797 --> 00:03:49.414 "He's completely sane, he beat somebody up or something. 00:03:49.414 --> 00:03:52.975 He's totally sane. He faked madness to try to get out of a prison sentence. 00:03:53.455 --> 00:03:56.504 He faked it too well, and now he's stuck at Broadmoor. 00:03:56.504 --> 00:03:58.709 The more he tries to convince people he's sane, 00:03:58.709 --> 00:04:01.057 the more they take it as evidence that he's crazy. 00:04:01.057 --> 00:04:04.075 Do you want us to get you into Broadmoor to meet Tony?" 00:04:04.075 --> 00:04:06.164 So I said, "Yes, please." 00:04:06.164 --> 00:04:07.764 So I went to Broadmoor. 00:04:09.684 --> 00:04:11.594 The Scientologists got me in. 00:04:12.056 --> 00:04:13.286 It's not easy. 00:04:13.846 --> 00:04:16.106 We were sitting in the Wellness Center. 00:04:17.066 --> 00:04:18.686 (Laughter) 00:04:20.886 --> 00:04:22.593 And Brian the Scientologist said, 00:04:22.593 --> 00:04:26.033 "By the way, Tony is the only person in the entire DSPD unit 00:04:26.033 --> 00:04:29.115 to have permission to meet people in the Wellness Center. 00:04:29.115 --> 00:04:31.211 So I said, "What does DSPD stand for?" 00:04:31.211 --> 00:04:33.858 He said, "Dangerous and Severe Personality Disorder." 00:04:33.858 --> 00:04:35.951 So I said, "Is Tony in the part of Broadmoor 00:04:35.951 --> 00:04:38.181 that houses the most dangerous people?" 00:04:38.183 --> 00:04:40.153 And Brian said, "Yeah, isn't that crazy?" 00:04:40.967 --> 00:04:44.278 So then the patients started drifting in, and most were overweight, 00:04:44.278 --> 00:04:47.998 and they were wearing sweatpants, and they looked quite docile. 00:04:48.601 --> 00:04:51.051 And then Brian said, "There's Tony." 00:04:51.051 --> 00:04:54.916 Tony came in, and he wasn't overweight, he was in extremely good shape. 00:04:55.606 --> 00:04:58.505 He wasn't wearing sweatpants, he was wearing a pinstripe suit, 00:04:58.505 --> 00:05:01.185 and he was walking towards me with his arm outstretched, 00:05:01.185 --> 00:05:03.355 like someone out of "The Apprentice." 00:05:03.355 --> 00:05:06.595 Somebody wants to convince me that he was very sane. 00:05:07.257 --> 00:05:08.772 So he sat down. 00:05:08.772 --> 00:05:11.377 I said, "Was it true that you faked your way in here?" 00:05:11.377 --> 00:05:15.769 He said, "Yeah, I beat someone up in Reading. 00:05:16.929 --> 00:05:20.295 I was on remand in my cell, and my cellmate said, 00:05:20.295 --> 00:05:24.565 "You're looking at five years. What you need to do - fake madness. 00:05:24.565 --> 00:05:29.636 Tell them you're mad, you'll go to some cushy hospital, 00:05:29.636 --> 00:05:32.846 nurses will bring you pizzas, you'll have a PlayStation." 00:05:32.846 --> 00:05:34.524 I said, "How did you fake madness?" 00:05:34.524 --> 00:05:36.858 He said, "I asked to see the prison psychiatrist. 00:05:36.858 --> 00:05:39.934 I'd just seen this film called "Crash" by David Cronenberg, 00:05:39.934 --> 00:05:43.294 in which people get sexual pleasure from enacting car crashes. 00:05:44.166 --> 00:05:46.233 So, I told the psychiatrist, 00:05:46.233 --> 00:05:48.695 "I get sexual pleasure from enacting car crashes." 00:05:48.695 --> 00:05:49.723 And I said, "Why?" 00:05:49.723 --> 00:05:53.163 "Oh, yeah. I told the psychiatrist I like to watch women as they die 00:05:53.163 --> 00:05:55.213 because it would make me feel more normal." 00:05:55.213 --> 00:05:57.163 So I said, "Where did you get that from?" 00:05:57.163 --> 00:06:00.782 He said, "From a biography of Ted Bundy that they had in the prison library." 00:06:01.582 --> 00:06:04.412 So he evidently faked madness much too well, 00:06:04.422 --> 00:06:05.897 and they sent him to Broadmoor. 00:06:05.897 --> 00:06:07.773 He took one look at the place and said, 00:06:07.773 --> 00:06:09.865 "There's has been a terrible mistake. 00:06:09.865 --> 00:06:10.958 I'm not mad." 00:06:10.958 --> 00:06:12.955 I said, "How long have you been here for?" 00:06:12.955 --> 00:06:15.765 "If I'd just done my prison sentence, I'd have got 5 years. 00:06:15.765 --> 00:06:18.136 I've been in Broadmoor for 12 years." 00:06:19.506 --> 00:06:20.806 So, for the last 12 years, 00:06:20.806 --> 00:06:24.286 he's tried to convince them that he's sane. 00:06:24.286 --> 00:06:25.739 I said, "How do you do that?" 00:06:25.739 --> 00:06:29.487 He said, "Well, it's not easy. I subscribe to New Scientist. 00:06:29.487 --> 00:06:33.703 I like to try and talk to them about normal things, like football. 00:06:33.703 --> 00:06:36.953 And there's an article in New Scientist that recently said 00:06:36.953 --> 00:06:40.743 the US Army was training bumblebees to sniff out explosives. 00:06:40.743 --> 00:06:42.343 So I said to the nurse, 00:06:42.343 --> 00:06:46.060 "Did you know that the US Army's training bumblebees to sniff out explosives?" 00:06:46.060 --> 00:06:48.781 He said later when he saw his case notes, they'd written, 00:06:48.781 --> 00:06:52.229 "Believes bees can sniff out explosives." 00:06:53.169 --> 00:06:57.059 He said, "The more you try to act sane, the more crazy you seem." 00:06:57.359 --> 00:07:03.102 So, Tony seemed completely sane to me, but I'm not a professional. 00:07:03.602 --> 00:07:05.467 I left, and I wondered what to do. 00:07:05.467 --> 00:07:09.216 So I decided to write to his clinician, Anthony Maden. 00:07:09.216 --> 00:07:13.202 I said, "What's the story?" And his clinician emailed back and said, 00:07:13.202 --> 00:07:15.653 "Yeah, we accept that Tony's story is true. 00:07:15.653 --> 00:07:18.833 We accept that he faked madness to get out of prison sentence 00:07:18.833 --> 00:07:21.794 because his delusions were very cliched. 00:07:21.794 --> 00:07:23.785 However, we've assessed him, 00:07:23.785 --> 00:07:26.995 and we've decided that what he is is a psychopath! 00:07:26.995 --> 00:07:29.092 And in fact, faking madness 00:07:29.092 --> 00:07:33.283 is exactly the kind of cunning and manipulative act of a psychopath." 00:07:33.283 --> 00:07:34.973 So, faking your brain going wrong 00:07:34.973 --> 00:07:36.983 is evidence that your brain has gone wrong. 00:07:36.983 --> 00:07:40.035 He said, "It's on the checklist - cunning and manipulative." 00:07:40.035 --> 00:07:41.406 And I said, "What else?" 00:07:41.406 --> 00:07:46.406 He said, "Well, pinstriped suit - classic psychopath 00:07:47.256 --> 00:07:51.436 That speaks to 'grandiose sense of self-worth,' 00:07:51.436 --> 00:07:54.477 and also 'glibness/superficial charm.' " 00:07:55.241 --> 00:07:58.615 Tony had told me that he didn't like to hang around with his neighbors. 00:07:58.615 --> 00:08:01.453 He has the Stockwell strangler on one side of him, 00:08:01.453 --> 00:08:03.023 so he stayed in his room a lot. 00:08:03.023 --> 00:08:05.333 They take that as a sign that he's a psychopath 00:08:05.333 --> 00:08:09.178 because it speaks to lack of empathy, grandiosity. 00:08:09.178 --> 00:08:12.394 Only in Broadmoor would not wanting to hang out with serial killers 00:08:12.394 --> 00:08:13.844 be a sign of madness. 00:08:15.878 --> 00:08:19.980 So Anthony Maden said, "If you want to know more about psychopaths, 00:08:19.980 --> 00:08:23.040 you can go to a psychopath spotting course 00:08:23.040 --> 00:08:26.052 of Robert Hare, who invented the psychopath checklist. 00:08:26.052 --> 00:08:28.162 So I did, I went on a three-day course, 00:08:28.162 --> 00:08:31.297 which is exactly the same as people who now are court experts, 00:08:31.297 --> 00:08:33.453 who speak at sentencing hearings and so on, 00:08:33.453 --> 00:08:37.574 to determine whether somebody is a high-scoring psychopath or not. 00:08:37.574 --> 00:08:39.055 I went on the three-day course, 00:08:39.055 --> 00:08:43.175 and I am now an extremely adept psychopath spotter. 00:08:43.725 --> 00:08:47.357 Hare said to me, repeatedly, 00:08:47.807 --> 00:08:50.902 "Some guy in Broadmoor who may or may not fake madness - 00:08:50.902 --> 00:08:52.107 that's not a big story. 00:08:52.107 --> 00:08:56.267 The big story is corporate psychopathy." 00:08:56.267 --> 00:08:59.379 He said, "Psychopathy is so powerful, a brain anomaly." 00:08:59.379 --> 00:09:00.996 "It is a brain anomaly," he says. 00:09:00.996 --> 00:09:05.157 The amygdala doesn't send enough signals of fear and distress 00:09:05.157 --> 00:09:07.178 up and down the central nervous system. 00:09:07.178 --> 00:09:10.120 Psychopaths are the neurological opposite of me. 00:09:10.120 --> 00:09:13.733 My amygdala sends way too many signals of fear and distress 00:09:13.733 --> 00:09:15.983 up and down to my central nervous system. 00:09:15.983 --> 00:09:18.520 So, they don't feel anxious. No anxiety. 00:09:19.070 --> 00:09:21.205 He said, "It's such a powerful brain anomaly 00:09:21.205 --> 00:09:24.516 that it molded society all wrong." 00:09:24.516 --> 00:09:27.274 Capitalism, at its most ruthless, 00:09:27.274 --> 00:09:29.684 is a physical manifestation of psychopathy. 00:09:29.684 --> 00:09:32.356 That's how powerful the condition is. 00:09:32.356 --> 00:09:35.206 We are all victims of psychopathy. 00:09:35.206 --> 00:09:37.890 He said, "You'll really want to try and get an interview 00:09:37.890 --> 00:09:40.084 with a corporate psychopath." 00:09:40.404 --> 00:09:43.614 So I looked around, and I chose ... 00:09:46.340 --> 00:09:47.720 Al Dunlap. 00:09:48.610 --> 00:09:53.930 Al Dunlap, in the 1990s, was a very notorious asset stripper. 00:09:54.490 --> 00:09:58.578 He would come into a company, and he'd fire everybody, 00:09:58.578 --> 00:10:01.323 and the share prices would shoot up. 00:10:01.323 --> 00:10:02.733 He did it at Scott's, 00:10:02.733 --> 00:10:06.877 which is one of America's leading toilet paper manufacturers. 00:10:06.877 --> 00:10:09.787 He came in, closed down plants all over the place. 00:10:09.787 --> 00:10:13.552 And he'd kind of fire people quite often with a quip, with like a funny joke. 00:10:13.552 --> 00:10:16.907 So one of his stories was somebody came up to him and said, 00:10:16.907 --> 00:10:18.536 "I just bought myself a new car." 00:10:18.536 --> 00:10:20.596 And Al Dunlap said, "You may have a new car, 00:10:20.596 --> 00:10:23.007 but I'll tell you what you don't have - a job." 00:10:24.637 --> 00:10:26.995 He once went to a plant in Mobile, Alabama, 00:10:26.995 --> 00:10:29.235 asked somebody how long he'd been working there, 00:10:29.235 --> 00:10:30.625 and the guy said, "30 years." 00:10:30.625 --> 00:10:33.860 "Why do you want to work at a place for 30 years? It makes no sense." 00:10:33.860 --> 00:10:36.258 Then he closed the plant down and fired everybody. 00:10:36.258 --> 00:10:39.096 He said something that wasn't psychopathic. 00:10:39.096 --> 00:10:42.231 Like, for instance, he said no - 00:10:42.231 --> 00:10:45.416 I didn't ask him about promiscuous sexual behavior 00:10:45.416 --> 00:10:48.325 because his wife was there, and, frankly, I chickened out. 00:10:48.325 --> 00:10:54.728 But he said no to juvenile delinquency, and he said no to early behavior problems. 00:10:54.728 --> 00:10:57.131 He said, "Because I got accepted into West Point, 00:10:57.131 --> 00:10:59.991 and if I was a delinquent, they wouldn't have me in." 00:10:59.991 --> 00:11:03.836 There's no rumors of affairs. He's already been married twice. 00:11:03.836 --> 00:11:06.666 Admittedly, his first wife cited in her divorce papers 00:11:06.666 --> 00:11:08.769 that he once threatened her with a knife 00:11:08.769 --> 00:11:11.949 and said, "I always wondered what human flesh tasted like." 00:11:11.949 --> 00:11:14.709 But he has only been married twice. 00:11:14.709 --> 00:11:19.404 Also, by the way, he would often speak about his wise and supportive parents 00:11:19.404 --> 00:11:21.722 but didn't turn up to either of their funerals. 00:11:21.722 --> 00:11:25.010 But even so, there were quite a few items on the psychopath checklist 00:11:25.010 --> 00:11:26.896 that didn't apply to him at all. 00:11:26.896 --> 00:11:30.461 So I thought to myself, well, I won't put that in the book. 00:11:30.461 --> 00:11:31.839 Then I realized, my goodness, 00:11:31.839 --> 00:11:36.594 being a psychopath spotter has turned me somewhat psychopathic. 00:11:37.344 --> 00:11:42.574 I was displaying lack of empathy, I was being cunning and manipulative. 00:11:43.250 --> 00:11:45.560 It had turned me kind of power-mad. 00:11:46.998 --> 00:11:50.008 Then I got a call from Tony in Broadmoor. 00:11:51.335 --> 00:11:54.243 By the way, Tony has always denied being a psychopath. 00:11:54.243 --> 00:11:59.001 He said the problem with the checklist - one of the items is lack of remorse; 00:11:59.001 --> 00:12:02.656 another item is cunning, manipulative, and pathological lying. 00:12:02.656 --> 00:12:06.094 So if you tell them, "I feel enormous remorse for what I did," 00:12:06.094 --> 00:12:09.400 they say, "Typical of a psychopath to pretend to be remorseful 00:12:09.400 --> 00:12:10.708 when they're not." 00:12:10.708 --> 00:12:13.790 He said it's like voodoo - they turn everything upside down. 00:12:14.960 --> 00:12:18.782 And the Hare checklist is used by experts in sentencing hearings, 00:12:18.782 --> 00:12:20.976 in parole and probation hearings all the time. 00:12:20.976 --> 00:12:23.734 The rest of somebody's life can be determined 00:12:24.904 --> 00:12:28.174 on how high they score on the psychopath test. 00:12:28.174 --> 00:12:30.871 Anyway, Tony said he had a tribunal planned, 00:12:30.871 --> 00:12:32.071 and would I like to come? 00:12:32.071 --> 00:12:33.381 So I went to it. 00:12:33.991 --> 00:12:36.516 And after 14 years in Broadmoor 00:12:36.516 --> 00:12:40.751 for a crime that would have got him five years if he hadn't faked madness, 00:12:40.751 --> 00:12:42.233 they let him go. 00:12:42.233 --> 00:12:44.148 And he's now out. 00:12:44.728 --> 00:12:48.383 He said to me, "Jon, the way you got to remember - 00:12:48.383 --> 00:12:50.033 everybody is a bit psychopathic." 00:12:50.033 --> 00:12:53.134 He said, "You are, I am. Well, obviously I am." 00:12:53.134 --> 00:12:55.054 I said, "What are you going to do now?" 00:12:55.054 --> 00:12:58.483 He said, "Well, there's this woman in Belgium I fancy, but she's married. 00:12:58.483 --> 00:13:02.249 [inaudible] get her divorced, but that's OK because we're manipulative. 00:13:02.249 --> 00:13:04.515 So Tony is out and about. 00:13:04.515 --> 00:13:07.816 I spent a long time wondering what I should think about Tony. 00:13:07.816 --> 00:13:08.959 I was worried, you know, 00:13:08.959 --> 00:13:12.223 because part of me really wanted to support him, 00:13:12.223 --> 00:13:16.003 and another part of me thought, well, you know, he might be a psychopath, 00:13:16.003 --> 00:13:18.897 and they have a 60% recidivism rate. 00:13:18.897 --> 00:13:19.899 What do I do? 00:13:19.899 --> 00:13:21.137 For a while, I've wondered 00:13:21.137 --> 00:13:23.486 if I should write about him in a supportive way, 00:13:23.486 --> 00:13:26.366 but not quite good enough for it to actually work. 00:13:27.056 --> 00:13:31.745 So, like campaign for his release but quite badly like a sort of crap Bono. 00:13:31.745 --> 00:13:33.045 (Laughter) 00:13:33.045 --> 00:13:35.175 But now I've decided, actually, 00:13:35.175 --> 00:13:38.965 is Tony a psychopath or is Tony a miscarriage of justice? 00:13:39.335 --> 00:13:43.006 And the answer I came up with is "both." 00:13:43.006 --> 00:13:45.824 You can be a psychopath and also be a miscarriage of justice 00:13:45.824 --> 00:13:49.589 because we should not be determined by a checklist. 00:13:50.199 --> 00:13:54.260 And we should be defined by our sanity 00:13:54.260 --> 00:13:56.812 and not our madness, if we possibly can. 00:13:56.812 --> 00:13:58.654 And sometimes it's our madness, 00:13:58.654 --> 00:14:02.152 it's the least attractive aspects of our personality, 00:14:02.152 --> 00:14:05.912 it's our anxieties, our compulsions, and our obsessions, 00:14:05.912 --> 00:14:09.054 that lead us sometimes to quite interesting things, 00:14:09.054 --> 00:14:11.884 that leads us to move forward and succeed. 00:14:11.884 --> 00:14:13.479 Thank you very much. 00:14:13.479 --> 00:14:16.259 (Applause)