As you will have gathered, or guessed, if you are a regular reader of this blog, I am not exactly over-endowed - no, no, I don't mean that - behave! - I mean that I am not over-endowed with qualifications. Five fairly soft 'O'-levels and, er, that's it, really! Mind you, I did qualify as a morse code operator in the army, albeit, possibly the slowest they ever had, so slow, in fact, that they were considering the re-introduction of homing pigeons! Later on, in another branch of the army I also qualified as a touch typist and, well, you can judge how well that lasted by the number of typos I produce - per sentence. So, all in all, not a very distinguished cv.
So it was with hope and expectation that I read a piece in The Telegraph by Tom Chivers who reports that some psychobabbler has produced a test which if you pass will qualify you as a psychopath. Well, when you are as bereft of qualifications as me, anything will do, frankly.
At heart, Hare’s test is simple: a list of 20 criteria, each given a score of 0
(if it doesn’t apply to the person), 1 (if it partially applies) or 2 (if it
fully applies). The list in full is: glibness and superficial charm, grandiose
sense of self-worth, pathological lying, cunning/manipulative, lack of remorse,
emotional shallowness, callousness and lack of empathy, unwillingness to accept
responsibility for actions, a tendency to boredom, a parasitic lifestyle, a lack
of realistic long-term goals, impulsivity, irresponsibility, lack of behavioural
control, behavioural problems in early life, juvenile delinquency, criminal
versatility, a history of “revocation of conditional release” (ie broken
parole), multiple marriages, and promiscuous sexual behavior. A pure,
prototypical psychopath would score 40. A score of 30 or more qualifies for a
diagnosis of psychopathy.
To begin with I was flying high - glibness and superficial charm, grandiose
sense of self-worth, pathological lying, cunning/manipulative, lack of remorse,
emotional shallowness, callousness and lack of empathy, unwillingness to accept
responsibility for actions, a tendency to boredom, a parasitic lifestyle, a lack
of realistic long-term goals - yep, all of that, no probs. But, alas, I failed on impulsivity on account of my tendency to boredom. Mind you, I came back strong on lack of behavioural control, although to be fair that's only when I'm on my third dry martini. My juvenile bad behavior was only distinguished by never having been caught and thus, never having been locked up, I couldn't be judged for breaking parole. Regretfully I lost out on promiscuous sexual behavior though it wasn't for lack of trying, and as for muliple marriages - what, do you think I'm mad or something? One's hard enough!
So, despite the fact that sometimes you might detect flecks of foam on your screen as you read this blog I can assure you that I am definitely not a psychopath - although I do know where you live!
