A meticulously detailed and blazingly honest self-portrait ... Elements of the book can feel like a cross between a podcast by relationship therapist Esther Perel and a salacious tell-all. Repetitive and navel-gazing at times but compelling and undeniably fascinating at others, Sociopath may not be everyone’s typical Sunday-afternoon read. But it makes a good point: "Representation matters.
A book that I have just hurled across the room ... I have little problem with Sociopath as a porthole into the unusual mind of one woman — albeit a smudged porthole; she admits to changing names, dates and details. It’s when Gagne swerves the wheel of that purloined auto into the scholarly realm, speeding through the psychiatrist Hervey Cleckley’s 1941 seminal work on psychopathy, The Mask of Sanity, and topics like cognitive behavioral therapy, that sweat begins to bead on my boringly neurotypical forehead.
Sociopath tells the story of one person who doesn’t see her experience reflected in broadly accepted perceptions of the disorder. And as such, it compels ... Gagne’s writing is peppered with colorful language and a touch of lyricism ... This thought-provoking memoir reminds us that everyone deserves supportive treatment, love, and acceptance.
Readers of this remarkable account, presented with Gagne’s psychology training and her clarity born of years explaining her experience, will never see the word sociopath the same way again.
Gagne makes a reasonable case for such sympathy and for the possibility that sociopathy may, to some extent, be treatable. However, the narrative itself, which relies heavily on conventions from the romance and thriller genres, has a markedly fantastical quality, and what emerges often seems to favor vivid storytelling and self-aggrandizement over honest introspection ... A peculiar, provocative exploration of the limits of social acceptance.
Image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay[/caption]
