Review by New York Times Review
As a teenager, M. E. Thomas - a fittingly egotistic pseudonym - was "so uniquely accomplished, talented and charming that I was naturally included on everyone's list of people to know." She went to indie movies and drummed in a rock band. Her friends idolized her. "Musicians are expected to be narcissistic and outrageous," she writes. "You're supposed to scream and dance wildly." Nobody suspected that the screaming and the wild dancing were indicative not of awesomeness but of sociopathy. In "Confessions of a Sociopath," Thomas self-identifies "more as a sociopath than by my gender or profession or race." People like her are "different from the average person, often in very dangerous or scary ways." It's startling to read these statements written so bluntly. As a healthy skepticism of mental health labeling grows, some people question whether sociopaths and psychopaths (Thomas is described in an evaluation as a " `socialized' or `successful' psychopath") actually exist, beyond being pejorative terms to describe horrible people. This book dispels that myth. It is practically unheard-of for a sociopath to write a memoir - about being a sociopath, I mean. There are presumably lots of memoirs by sociopaths about other things, like how to succeed in business. So I tore through this. How candid would Thomas be about her feelings - or lack of them? Could she solve mysteries that vex clinicians, like how to rein in her criminal counterparts' notoriously high recidivism rates? (She considers herself a noncriminal sociopath.) Besides, can she write well? Could someone with a clinical absence of emotional depth pull off a book? In my experience they can make the best and the worst interviewees. At best their skewed charisma makes them beguiling and quick-witted. Their cruelty can teach us important things about the cruelty of the wider world. And they're human - and all humans have positive attributes. But at their worst their grandiosity quickly grates. Their charm - defined by the Hare PCL-R checklist, the gold standard of psychopathy diagnosis, as "glib and superficial" - can make them more boring than they think they are. Where would Thomas fall? "Confessions of a Sociopath" turns out to be an intermittently gripping and important book - albeit one that sags dramatically in the middle when the author goes on for ages about her not especially interesting childhood. (Here she tries to solve the nature/nurture mystery and concludes that she doesn't know, but that her sociopathy is probably due to a bit of both.) Otherwise, it is a revelatory if contradictory muddle of a memoir in which she succeeds in simultaneously humanizing and demonizing herself. Such is the intense stigma that comes with the label, it's understandable she adopts a pseudonym. But it means we have only her word that Thomas is the woman she says she is: a sociopath as well as "an accomplished attorney and law professor," who is just as comfortable "in summer dresses as I am in cowboy boots," is super-popular - "in a world filled with gloomy, mediocre nothings," people "are attracted to the sociopath's exceptionalism like moths to a flame" - has "never had an insecurity," feels no anxiety and possesses "remarkably beautiful breasts." She rarely lets her pristine mask slip to reveal the gaping nothingness underneath. Although the mask does slip sometimes. There was the occasion she came down with appendicitis and went to school in such pain she forgot to mimic her peers' social niceties and instead "stared at them with the dead eyes I had previously reserved for when I was alone." More recently, when a city worker berated her for using an off-limits escalator, Thomas found herself following him, a "metallic" taste in her mouth, fantasizing about murder and "how right that would feel." She turned around only when she lost sight of him in the crowd. "I'm sure I wouldn't have been able to actually kill him," she says, "but I'm also relatively certain I would have assaulted him." Although sociopaths are relentlessly self-interested, the logic of punishment frequently eludes them. They're their own worst enemies - reckless, suffering poor precautionary controls,never learning their lesson. Thomas has lost count of the times she's gotten sick from eating rotten food because the "risk of injury never sinks in." Despite all her claims of Spock-like rational genius, you are frequently reminded that this is a book written by a damaged person. For instance, there's the implausible claim that although Thomas "has always lived in the worst neighborhoods," she doesn't need to worry about her pension because she's one of the world's greatest stock-market speculators, averaging a 9.5 percent return. "Beating the market this soundly and consistently is unheard-of," she writes, putting her success down to her "special vision. When I look at the world, the flaws or vulnerabilities in people and the social institutions that they've made jump out at me." During passages like this it's worth remembering that pathological lying and lack of realistic long-term goals are two of the items on the Hare checklist. And Thomas's claims of leading a moral life are undermined somewhat by the cheerful accounts of some chillingly cruel deeds she's committed, from leaving a baby opossum to drown in her swimming pool - "I did not give it a thought" - to the time she cut off all ties to a friend whose father was dying of cancer because the woman wasn't fun to be around anymore. By the book's final stretch - Thomas's reminiscences of a hedonistic year abroad in Brazil and her loveless sexual shenanigans - my patience began to wear thin. There's only so many ways someone can say she doesn't care about other people's feelings. Sociopaths are all surface, and so at times is this book. By the end you feel like the partner of a sociopath. You've had quite the memorable roller coaster ride, but now you're sick of the chilliness and the self-absorption, and you want out. Jon Ronson is the author of "The Psychopath Test: A Journey Through the Madness Industry" and, more recently, "Lost at Sea."
Copyright (c) The New York Times Company [July 2, 2013]
Review by Booklist Review
*Starred Review* Thomas (a pseudonym) is a young white female who has all the classic character traits of a sociopath. She is a thrill seeker with excessive self-esteem and a pronounced lack of empathy. She does not conform to social norms and has a penchant for deceit. I may have a disorder, she writes, but I am not crazy. In fact, she has excelled as an attorney and law professor who regularly writes for law journals and teaches Sunday school every week as a practicing Mormon. She is, she says, intelligent and charming. You would like me if you met me, she insists. She also describes what she is not. She is not a murderer nor was she ever a victim of child abuse. Recent studies, she maintains, report that 1-to-4-percent, or one in every 25 people, is a sociopath. Like her, most live normal lives. She describes her upbringing as the daughter of a violent father and an indifferent and at times hysterical mother and her genetic propensity toward her condition. Fascinating and compelling as well as chilling, Thomas' memoir offers a window into the mind of a portion of the population that usually remains shrouded in mystery and fear.--Sawyers, June Copyright 2010 Booklist
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
Pseudonymous author M.E. Thomas paints for the casual observer an illustration of the world of the sociopath. Bereft of the inborn empathic abilities that most people possess, Thomas used her considerable aptitudes to create a functional, albeit predatory, life for herself-a life anchored in rules arrived at through applied reason rather than in morals. Narrator Bernadette Sullivan's coolly amused tone effectively conveys Thomas's charming, detached observations about her life. Calm and self-possessed, Sullivan leads us through Thomas's narrative as the sociopath speculates about the causes of sociopathy, its implications, and the impact it has had on her life. By turns a confession, an examination, and a self-justification, the veracity of Thomas's narrative is open to question-she is a self-confessed liar and manipulator-but however fictional or distorted the story may be, Sullivan's presentation of it is undeniably seductive. A Crown hardcover. (May) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by Library Journal Review
Thomas is the pseudonym for a law professor who teaches Sunday school and donates to charity. She is also a "diagnosed" sociopath and author of the blog sociopathworld.com. Thomas here attempts to demystify sociopathy by sharing facts about the personality disorder, which is characterized by charisma, lack of emotions, and frequently by criminal behavior, though Thomas herself is not a criminal. She quotes heavily from relevant psychological studies and shares anecdotes from her life to help listeners better understand and protect themselves when necessary from the estimated four percent of Americans who are sociopaths. -VERDICT Since it lacks a clear structure and is often repetitive, the book reads like a series of poorly edited autobiographical blog entries. Bernadette Sullivan's flat expression complements Thomas's bloodless writing but is difficult to listen to for long periods. Recommended for comprehensive psychology collections. ["A page-turner with broad appeal," read the more positive review of the Crown hc, LJ 5/15/13.-Ed.]-Julie Judkins, Univ. of Michigan, Ann Arbor (c) Copyright 2013. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Review by Kirkus Book Review
The biting memoir of a "successful" sociopath, from the pseudonymous Thomas. The author is a lawyer, a teacher and a sociopath--she abjures "psycho" as a little too much--a full-blown example of anti-social personality behavior, with "a pervasive pattern of disregard for and violation of the rights of others"--not in a legally criminal way but certainly capable of inflicting damage. Her self-portrait is not likable, but readers will admire her drawing attention to all the sociopaths out there. "We are legion and diverse," she writes. "At least one of them looks like me. Does one of them look like you?" Thomas treats her life as a case history, reaching for cognizance while pulsing with a frankness that roves between raw self-evaluation--which might be disarming if she had more emotional capacity--and an undiluted meanness toward those she would ruin, the many "gloomy, mediocre nothings populating a go-nowhere rat race." She scours her past to see where her sociopathy was nurtured and genetics to see where it might have found a foothold through nature. She invites us into her courtroom, classroom and bedroom to witness how her behavior has stunted her work life and made her love life difficult. She explains her view of risks and consequences, "but my mind is almost always at peace no matter what I do." Much here is chilling, but there are also cracks that make you ache for her: "Sometimes I can't see people's disgust for me because I'm so single-mindedly inclined to see adoration." A work of advocacy for greater awareness of sociopathy's reach and conduct.]] Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
