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A review by thereadingrambler
Sociopath: a Memoir by Patric Gagne
emotional
informative
reflective
fast-paced
Reviewing a non-fiction book, particularly a memoir, is always difficult, in my opinion; you don’t want to appear that you’re criticizing someone’s experiences. Given the topic and purpose of this particular memoir that is even more of a risk. Patric Gagnes is a diagnosed sociopath—although part of the memoir is dedicated to the fact this isn’t a precise or specific diagnosis. The memoir documents her life from childhood to the present as she comes to grips with her diagnosis, understands it, embraces it, and eventually becomes a psychologist to research the disorder and help people with it. I am cautious about how I approach this review because “sociopath” is a loaded term and heavily stigmatized. Gagnes’s stated goal with this memoir is to give visibility to the disorder and reach other people who see their experience reflected in hers. She openly acknowledges her privileged position (gender, race, socioeconomic status) allowed her to get the help she needed. Like most people with stigmatized and rare/underdiagnosed conditions, people with antisocial personality disorder/sociopathy, are often in very under-privileged situations, often due to their disorder. Gagnes first encounters other people with this disorder when she is doing her internship at a community healthcare clinic. She was given all of the “problem” clients that no one else at the clinic could help, AKA the sociopaths.
Sociopaths, as defined by Gagnes, are people who have to put significantly more effort into learning the learned (social) emotions. According to this psychology theory (and I’m not a psychologist, so I’m offering no commentary on this theory), there are inherent emotions and learned emotions. Gagnes does experience emotion, but emotions that are connected to other people, such as love and empathy, are significantly harder for her to access and require concerted effort, whereas non-sociopaths generally learn these emotions naturally while growing up in a community. This general apathy and lack of connection is what led to Gagnes’s aberrant or criminal behavior (and the stereotype of sociopaths as violent): she would break into houses or stalk people (innocently, not obsessively) because it would give her a release from the overwhelming apathy. She called this sociopathic stress, and doing these deviant behaviors released the stress.
The book expertly wove together Gagnes’s experiences and her research. She would introduce a symptom or behavior of her disorder and her growing understanding of herself as she ages, and then later explain why she did this thing and what psychological benefit she was deriving from stealing cars or violent fantasies. For someone who openly has a disorder that makes empathy almost impossible to access emotion and who is explicitly writing about this difficulty, I found myself able to easily empathize with Gagnes; her writing style is engaging and accessible. I was rooting for her the entire time, even as I found some of her thought processes disturbing. As she works through her behavior in therapy and her own research, she comes to the belief that sociopaths, yes, need to curtail their criminal and deviant actions, but they need to embrace their differences rather than try to meet societal expectations. She observes how this logic applies to many other disorders, but the heavy stigmatization of sociopathy means that people are reluctant or outright resistant to allowing for this disorder to actually be recognized and treated. Many people believe that sociopaths “belong” in prison as they are too “dangerous” to society. And yes, she fully admits that sociopaths can be dangerous—but so can anyone else.
Somewhat ironically perhaps, I walked away from the book with a much deeper empathy for sociopaths and even more skepticism about the true crime community’s rhetoric and approach to criminal behavior.
Sociopaths, as defined by Gagnes, are people who have to put significantly more effort into learning the learned (social) emotions. According to this psychology theory (and I’m not a psychologist, so I’m offering no commentary on this theory), there are inherent emotions and learned emotions. Gagnes does experience emotion, but emotions that are connected to other people, such as love and empathy, are significantly harder for her to access and require concerted effort, whereas non-sociopaths generally learn these emotions naturally while growing up in a community. This general apathy and lack of connection is what led to Gagnes’s aberrant or criminal behavior (and the stereotype of sociopaths as violent): she would break into houses or stalk people (innocently, not obsessively) because it would give her a release from the overwhelming apathy. She called this sociopathic stress, and doing these deviant behaviors released the stress.
The book expertly wove together Gagnes’s experiences and her research. She would introduce a symptom or behavior of her disorder and her growing understanding of herself as she ages, and then later explain why she did this thing and what psychological benefit she was deriving from stealing cars or violent fantasies. For someone who openly has a disorder that makes empathy almost impossible to access emotion and who is explicitly writing about this difficulty, I found myself able to easily empathize with Gagnes; her writing style is engaging and accessible. I was rooting for her the entire time, even as I found some of her thought processes disturbing. As she works through her behavior in therapy and her own research, she comes to the belief that sociopaths, yes, need to curtail their criminal and deviant actions, but they need to embrace their differences rather than try to meet societal expectations. She observes how this logic applies to many other disorders, but the heavy stigmatization of sociopathy means that people are reluctant or outright resistant to allowing for this disorder to actually be recognized and treated. Many people believe that sociopaths “belong” in prison as they are too “dangerous” to society. And yes, she fully admits that sociopaths can be dangerous—but so can anyone else.
Somewhat ironically perhaps, I walked away from the book with a much deeper empathy for sociopaths and even more skepticism about the true crime community’s rhetoric and approach to criminal behavior.