In chapter four of The Psychopath Test, Jon Ronson meets with Bob Hare who invites him to his three day seminar on how to detect Psychopaths using his PCL-R checklist. At the seminar, Hare demonstrates his checklist to attendees using interviews and stories of psychopaths including Case Study H and Norman Mailer. He points out during them several items of the 20 that are on the list and concludes their behavior to be psychopathic. At first Ronson is skeptical of Hare's technique but towards the end of the seminar he is eventually convinced. Ronson now feels empowered to use it and motivated to detect psychopaths like Tony (who we met in the second chapter) and in the corporate and political world.
I find Hare's seminar on the PCL-R to be very convincing but I still feel skeptical myself of the checklist. All of his evidence makes sense but there is still something, possibly my conscience, that wants to think otherwise. Maybe it's because I'm anticipating some future event in the book to disregard his methods. Although, I do believe it is possible to be true because it makes sense when he describes the political, corporate, and criminal worlds disrupting society. When Ronson interviewed Toto, he proved himself to be very cunning and manipulative. At first I was with Ronson that he couldn't possibly be a psychopath but when he broke down Toto's wall of masking his madness it was impressive to see the checklist work.
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