In The Psychopath Test, Jon Ronson begins:

What should his message be? Mr. Ronson, a popular British journalist, seems to have begun writing without a clear idea of what he was after, beyond trying to ferret out psychopaths and learn how their symptoms are defined. He opens a bit irrelevantly by trying to solve the minor mystery of a handmade, cryptic artifact that has been sent to neurologists and other scientists around the world. And he asks a couple of these scientists if he can see their workplaces. http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/17/bo...on-review.html

Robson concludes:

“The Psychopath Test” rambles from stop to stop, casting about for separate interviewees. Any of them could be and perhaps already have been subjects of his radio shows. In any case, they lead Mr. Ronson to speculate about the points where journalism and craziness overlap, and it is here that he draws his most discerning conclusions. Psychopaths come in all sizes and shapes, but it takes media attention to validate their aberrant behavior — or not. The world of reality television, Mr. Ronson observes, is full of subjects who might score high on the psychopath test but lacked the star quality to rise to the top of the reality-show heap.

In the end, Mr. Ronson comes up with a persuasive argument that the psychopath checklist and DSM-IV are dangerous weapons. If more and more fine-tuned mental disturbances can be diagnosed as legitimate, patients wind up in Catch-22 situations. (How do they do anything that is not suspect?) Drug companies thrive. And children get books like “My Bipolar, Roller Coaster, Feelings Book,” whose author is interviewed here. She earns her place in Mr. Ronson’s world for having given her baby son the nickname Mister Manic Depressive.

In a TEDtalk, Robson talks about strange answer to a psychopath test: http://www.ted.com/talks /jon_ronson_strange_answers_to_the_psychopath_test.html

Another example of the bizarre workings of the mental disorders realm.