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A review by croscot
Sociopath: A Memoir: A journey into the mind of a woman without remorse and her fight to understand her diagnosis by Patric Gagne
challenging
dark
emotional
funny
informative
sad
tense
medium-paced
3.5
I found it a bit weird that this memoir read like a really well-written fiction. Not in the sense that I questioned whether certain events happened or not - the author must have embellished the dialogues, because humans don't speak like characters from a dramedy, but I do believe that she did what she claims to have done - more in the sense that it all tied up so neatly in all the right places, all the shocking reveals and cliffhangers (in a memoir!) were exactly where you'd expect them to be, that it made me feel slightly manipulated, as if Patric Gagne wanted me to really like her book instead of trying to debunk preconceived notions about sociopaths. (Also good lord, was it really necessary to mention her diagnosis several times in every single conversation? ðŸ˜)
However, despite lengthy dramatic dialogues, repetition of the same thoughts, and David, Patric's husband, the book did make me rethink my understanding of sociopathy. It raised such important questions like absense of empathy in sociopaths (how are they supposed to get this learned behaviour when it is never shown towards them?), the classification of the disorder (if there are differences between sociopathy and other behavioural disorders, why doesn't it have its own category?), marginalisation of sociopaths in the media (why do we label every diagnosed sociopath as automatically evil?), and lack of reliable treatment (it is believed to be untreatable, but is every sociopath a lost cause, then, or are there ways to ease the symptoms for the patient and people around them?).
However, despite lengthy dramatic dialogues, repetition of the same thoughts, and David, Patric's husband, the book did make me rethink my understanding of sociopathy. It raised such important questions like absense of empathy in sociopaths (how are they supposed to get this learned behaviour when it is never shown towards them?), the classification of the disorder (if there are differences between sociopathy and other behavioural disorders, why doesn't it have its own category?), marginalisation of sociopaths in the media (why do we label every diagnosed sociopath as automatically evil?), and lack of reliable treatment (it is believed to be untreatable, but is every sociopath a lost cause, then, or are there ways to ease the symptoms for the patient and people around them?).