The Avoidable Death of Rebecca Riley

In “The Avoidable Death of Rebecca Riley,” Ronson discusses the problems associated with the DSM and how people find comfort in assigning a label to their quirky characteristics. He focuses on Robert Spitzer, a psychiatrist who becomes an editor for the DSM-III. Spitzer changed the way the DSM worked; he made it so that it only included diseases that had a specific checklist for diagnosis. At first, this was a good plan; it would eliminate any human judgment or bias from diagnosing patients.  But eventually it became dangerous, because diseases were classified by specific characteristics, people with those traits assumed they were mentally ill, regardless of any medical opinion. Soon rowdy children were being diagnosed with bipolar disorder and being treated with drugs that could kill them. This is where the name from the chapter comes from. A girl from Boston, Rebecca Riley, couldn’t sleep one night, and so her parents gave her a dose of her bipolar medication that killed her in her sleep, because it had not been approved for use in children.

I can honestly say, I do not know what my opinion is of this book. Some parts I loved, some I didn’t understand, and some I just didn’t understand the point of. I’m very torn as to what my opinion is. I feel as though it had great potential, a real look into the world of psychopathy and the twisted treatments that people go through. But Ronson’s level of anxiety and awkwardness made me question his sanity at times. Overall, I will say it was a very intriguing and good read, but I almost feel as though I can’t trust what he says. Maybe I’m just impressed that he actually interviewed all these people and experienced these shocking things, and just because I find it hard to believe I automatically assume he’s making it all up. The ending was also a bit disappointing. I wish he had continued to work on the book, so that we knew what the next message said and what the point of “Being of Nothingness” was. But maybe that was his point, for there to “be a little mystery left.”

The Madness of David Shayler

           In “The Madness of David Shayler,” Ronson meets with David Shayler, a retired spy for an Islamic Fighting Group. After attempting to assassinate Muammar Gadhafi, he decided he didn’t want to be part of an agency involved in assassinations, and so he leaked information to a newspaper. He spent time in jail, was released, became a conspiracy theorist, and eventually convinced himself he was the Messiah. The biggest conspiracy theory that he believed in was that the 7/7 bombings on a London train didn’t really happen, that it was simply a power surge. This prompted Ronson to get involved with Rachel North, a survivor of the attacks. After the attacks she began to blog about her experience with terrorism; Shayler and his followers created a campaign that said everything her blog said was false and that she didn’t really exist, that it was multiple people writing under one name. Towards the end of the chapter, Ronson evaluates the different incidences of Shayler’s madness and how much attention from the media they gave him.

            I found these chapters to be really engaging and intriguing. When Ronson is meeting with Rachel North and he had to almost give her reassurance that she did in fact exist just showed how much Shayler’s accusations had affected her. I also found the end of the chapter really interesting when Ronson shows how each of Shayler’s stunts gained him varying amounts of media attention. And finally, when he finally discovers the right sort of madness, “Those that are just a bit madder than the madness we all fear.” In the chapter “Aiming a Bit High” I got a little confused as to what was going on with the story of Colin Stagg and the murder of a young woman. 

"Something Borrowed"

In “Something Borrowed,” Gladwell describes his own experience in which his work and the work of a psychiatrist are plagiarized in a Broadway play. Bryony Lavery wrote the Broadway play “Frozen,” and directly copied it off the experiences of the psychiatrist Dorothy Lewis. The entire plot of the play was identical to the life and work of Lewis. Coincidently, Lewis had copied some of her work from Gladwell, and so his pieces of his work are copied into the play as well. He also discusses some of the issues of plagiarism in the music industry. Hundreds of songs contain similar beats and patterns of notes, but the way in which they’re copied dictates whether or not its plagiarism. Borrowing something because it gave one inspiration is acceptable, while borrowing because one lacks creativity is wrong; he claims that this is the same for literature.

This piece really made me question exactly what constitutes as “plagiarism.” The thought of owning words seems a bit ridiculous to me, and because of that, I’ve never had a clear definition of what plagiarism really is. I understand the taking someone’s thoughts word for word is wrong, but if someone simply changes one word, does that make it his or her own? Well, technically yes, but its still stealing someone’s idea. This is where I become confused on what really defines plagiarism. 

The Psychopath Test Chapters 6 & 7

In "Night of the Living Dead", Ronson meets with a man named Al Dunlap, who was a former CEO of a large company. Dunlap had previously worked for another company, going around firing employees. He then began working for Sunbeam Toasters, and eventually became CEO. Throughout Ronson’s meeting with him, he begins to take note of the psychopathic characteristics that Dunlap has. He meets a good portion of the criteria that Hare put on the psychopathic checklist.  

I thought these chapters were really interesting. I had been wondering when Ronson would mention the CEO’s that were questionable psychopaths, and I was glad he addressed that. I can see how a majority of CEO’s and people with other powerful positions could be questionable psychopaths, because they share a lot of the same traits as Dunlap. As a CEO, one has to be comfortable with firing people and disciplining them, they have to be aggressive to have their companies succeed, and they have to have a certain lack of empathy because of the competitive nature of their industry. So it could be fairly easy to detect a really powerful and successful CEO as a psychopath. I also found the story of Charlotte very interesting, how she had to find people that were “mad enough” to be on the TV show she worked for. 

Research Paper Topics

What led to the Russian Revolution of 1917?

I realize this is a very specific and uncommon question, but it’s something I’ve always been interested in. I’m very open to adjusting the question as I research, so it may change a bit as I continue on this paper. I’ve already researched this topic a bit, and read several books about early 1900’s in Russia. I’ve also always been fascinated with the last imperial family that was overthrown in the revolution. It might be a difficult question to answer because I’m probably going to find a lot of things that led to the revolution, or could’ve played a role in it. So I may just have to decide on a few major factors, and focus on those. I know the Tsar was often criticized for being “too gentle”, which in the case of ruling Russia, can be a dangerous characteristic. Also, the son of the Tsar had hemophilia, which took a toll on his abilities to rule such a huge country. Plus, the people never cared for the Empress. Those are some of the factors that could’ve potentially led to the revolution. I’ll also need to consider the fact that maybe it was destined to happen anyways, and it just so happened that the Tsar at the time couldn’t handle it. Or maybe it was his fault.

I may find that it’s very difficult to know exactly what caused the revolution, because there are so many potential factors. However, I can look into some of the more unnoticed reasons, and see if they added to the problems that the Tsar had created. 

The Psychopath Test

In “The Psychopath Test”, Ronson meets with Bob Hare, a therapist in Wales who did research comparing psychopaths and non-psychopaths. He found that psychopaths have a dysfunctional amygdala, the part of the brain that anticipates unpleasantness. After discovering this, he came up with the “checklist” to determine if one is a psychopath or not. It was named the Hare PCL-R Checklist, and it contains 20 characteristics, that if responded to in a particular way, indicate psychopathy. Near the end of the chapter, Ronson thinks back to Tony in Broadmoor, and wonders if he underwent the PCL-R checklist, maybe he could be released.

I found this chapter really interesting. At first, I didn’t think everything on the PCL-R could realistically apply to every psychopath, but it did. All the different scenarios they described, related back to the checklist. Even in “Toto” Ronson was able to use some elements of the checklist on Toto. However, I would still like to know more about psychopaths in high society positions. Ronson mentioned it several times in the chapter, but never really expanded on the idea of CEO’s and politicians that are psychopaths.