The Psychopath Test

I finished reading The Psychopath Test by Jon Ronson during a commute to work that usually takes 25 minutes but that day took over an hour.  I was about to become a psychopath myself in the very slow traffic I was experiencing.  Seriously, I got to the train tracks after waiting in line a very long time.  A freight train comprising on 110 cars goes by. The train passes and there, on the other side of the tracks, was the same truck. Traffic had not moved an inch in the time it took a freight train to pass.  Was I mad?  Oh, yeah, I was temporarily mad.  Oh, yeah, back to the book.  This book was interesting. The author is British and the British form of humor is subtle and that makes it even funnier.  The author is highly critical of the fields of psychiatry and of the criminal justice system and of Scientology. The author himself admits to an anxiety problem. Who doesn't have anxiety?  One of the experts in the field of mental health made a checklist that defines a psychopath. He had twenty items on the checklist.  He made the list to be helpful. But when the author took the checklist and started interviewing people everyone he met seemed to be a psychopath.  He was so surprised by that until a person suggested maybe he wasn't using the checklist correctly. Mental health and mental illness are not concrete things that can be easily distinguished. One message the author made clear.  If a reader of the book wonders if she or he is a psychopath then she or he is not a psychopath.