Wednesday, September 21, 2011

"Psychopaths Dream in Black-and-White"

In chapter 3, Ronson enlightens his readers by revealing a new type of therapy that psychiatrists use to ultimately "cure" psychopaths and schizophrenics. Under the care of psychiatrist, Elliot Barker, the psychopaths are subjected to an epic 11 day, raw, nude, LSD-fueled physchotherapy session in order to "work through their madness." Inside the capsule, psychopaths at Oak Ridge would undergo a natural course of intervention or as Ronson would say, "a mass LSD trip," thus allowing their madness to burn itself out. Once, successfully cured, Ronson studied some of the former psychopaths who were released from Oak Ridge. His research showed that there was a very high rate, almost 80%, of the "cured" psychopaths that re-offended showing that Elliot's treatment methods were not successful. 


I found this chapter to be very interesting, yet creepy in many senses. It definitely kept my interest at all times; however, I found it difficult to relate and understand the exact emotions of the psychopaths, for obvious reasons. The idea of nude therapy sessions was extremely bizarre and a technique that I never knew existed. Near the end of the chapter, I was pretty surprised at the amount of re-offenders and their specific reasons for re-offending. I think those reasons, for example Woodcock's reasons, was something I didn't expect, but I felt that maybe that kind of behavior is what makes them a psychopath to begin with. This chapter definitely proved that psychopaths have no empathy and are not remorseful at all.

1 comment:

  1. I kept asking my psychopathic hasband "how does remorse feel"? And, as was predicted he mostly ingnored the question or shifted attention to another unrelated topic. Today he finally answered : "heavy". I asked for more deatails, but that was a far as i could get.

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