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zombiezami's review
dark
emotional
funny
hopeful
informative
mysterious
reflective
sad
tense
medium-paced
5.0
Over the past few years, I've been making an effort to seek out perspectives from people with heavily stigmatized diagnoses: anti-social personality disorder, narcissistic personality disorder, borderline personality disorder, etc. I'm very committed to disability justice action, and I think this is an important part of that that often gets overlooked. If we accept that mental illness is a disability, than we have to accept that it's, well, unacceptable to malign specific illnesses and disorders as if people with them are inherently evil.
As an autistic person, I felt very seen in this book. Like the author, I too have many experiences of people getting angry at me for not having the facial expression/emotional reaction that they expect in a given situation. I felt the frustration of the author as she tried her best to be honest and fit in, yet people still made assumptions about her and tried to use her. Overall, I thought the book was well written and often hilarious. I highly recommend it.
As an autistic person, I felt very seen in this book. Like the author, I too have many experiences of people getting angry at me for not having the facial expression/emotional reaction that they expect in a given situation. I felt the frustration of the author as she tried her best to be honest and fit in, yet people still made assumptions about her and tried to use her. Overall, I thought the book was well written and often hilarious. I highly recommend it.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Ableism, Stalking, and Mental illness
Moderate: Alcohol, Confinement, Bullying, Toxic friendship, Animal cruelty, Infidelity, Gaslighting, Emotional abuse, Classism, Toxic relationship, and Cursing
Minor: Pregnancy, Murder, Animal death, Suicide, Racism, Sexual content, Suicidal thoughts, and Forced institutionalization
Eugenics, incarcerationdblue236's review against another edition
dark
reflective
slow-paced
2.0
I got through about a third of this without much issue. It reads like fiction, and I'm inclined to think that most of it is, but it was more or less harmless and generally entertaining. But the more I read, the more I disliked the author, and the more off-putting the book became. By a little more than halfway through, I had to give up. I don't find her believable, I don't like her, and I just couldn't justify investing any more of my time.
Content Warnings
Moderate: Death, Child abuse, Bullying, Schizophrenia/Psychosis , Mental illness, Gaslighting, Animal cruelty, Medical content, Animal death, Emotional abuse, and Injury/Injury detail
torturedreadersdept's review
challenging
dark
informative
reflective
medium-paced
5.0
Content Warnings
Moderate: Adult/minor relationship, Blood, Animal death, Kidnapping, Injury/Injury detail, Gaslighting, Mental illness, Sexual violence, Stalking, Sexual harassment, Abandonment, Bullying, Dysphoria, Animal cruelty, Cursing, Toxic friendship, Toxic relationship, Body horror, and Sexual assault
spacebras's review
adventurous
challenging
dark
emotional
funny
hopeful
informative
inspiring
reflective
sad
fast-paced
4.5
4.5 stars- based on quality and engagement in writing. Not on the author's own experiences or the veracity of her claims cause I don't know her, whose to say! :)
Surprising no one, Sociopath by Patric (short for Patricia) Gagne is absolutely fascinating. Narrated by the author, we're taken through various instances in her life where her emotional distance and apathy are apparent as she struggles to understand why she feels the way she does (or doesn't). Now, in the present day, Gagne has the experience, the research, and the vocabulary to not only help herself navigate through life as someone with an "emotional learning disability", but to assist others just like her.
Gange's goal with Sociopath, is to explain and intellectualize her experiences in a way that will reach others like her, and help create the foundation for a more robust support system for people who have anti-social disorder, sociopathy, and psychoses. She does a fantastic job of relating her experiences in a way that I, a person who definitely feels way too much, can understand the process of thought. Her story is addictive and fascinating, not because of any voyeuristic pleasure, but because of the humanization of a HIGHLY stigmatized condition. When trying to tell my family what I was reading, they immediately recoiled, and that reaction is what she is trying to resolve. She isn't fundamentally a bad person due to her sociopathy. She's just different.
Just released, Sociopath has a lot of well-earned buzz around it. After finishing the memoir, you feel like you know Gagne's intimate thoughts, but you really don't know anything about her. While listening, I kept finding myself trying to look her up outside of her advocacy work and interviews about the memoir. It is very clear that Gagne has had a life few of us could imagine, her father is a hotshot music producer, and she worked in that world for a while too. At points, she would mention famous people she was on a first-name basis with (ex. Hugh Hefner), and I kept thinking "WHO IS SHE??". But her maiden name and her father's name and business are kept intentionally vague (ugh I wanna know! Who is this mysterious music star whom she has an ill-fated relationship with?? It's so movie, it's so LA-coded).
With this buzz, there are also people skeptical of her, her credentials, and her story. Which, sure, to be fair, she outright admits she's a liar. Sometimes antagonists in the memoir are a little too over the top mean, or scenes feel more like a movie than a recollection. But I think that the former can be an indication of her honesty- she's not hiding that she dislikes a person because why would she? And the latter is probably just a by-product of living and working in LA- I'm 86% sure it's not a real place, and she possibly had some script writer friends help her at some point. Those "Movie Moments", are pretty apparent and a little jolting. And her instance of calling her anti-social impulses her "darkness" was pretty cheesy. But ultimately harmless.
Her credentials, a Ph.D., seem to have been a source of confusion long before the memoir when she was writing essays for magazines about her sociopathy. There seem to be some accreditation issues with where she studied, but honestly, that doesn't really bother me. Gagne talks openly about how she isn't a good student and she is openly a sociopath. It stands to reason that your standard clinical psychology program probably doesn't want her/sees her as a liability. A so-called "diploma mill" might have been her only option because she is a marginalized person working at a deficit. The first thing Gagne does in Sociopath is mention how privileged and lucky she is, even as a rich, white, cis lady, she can't waltz into UCLA and say: "Hi I'm a sociopath, let me become a psychologist." The field is, ironically, very biased against people with mental health issues. Sociopathy is a loaded diagnosis as well, which she goes into great detail in the memoir about why she prefers this term. It's stupid for people to rag on her for it- it's her decision! If we're still letting people say they have "Asperger's" she can say she's a sociopath imho.
Surprising no one, Sociopath by Patric (short for Patricia) Gagne is absolutely fascinating. Narrated by the author, we're taken through various instances in her life where her emotional distance and apathy are apparent as she struggles to understand why she feels the way she does (or doesn't). Now, in the present day, Gagne has the experience, the research, and the vocabulary to not only help herself navigate through life as someone with an "emotional learning disability", but to assist others just like her.
Gange's goal with Sociopath, is to explain and intellectualize her experiences in a way that will reach others like her, and help create the foundation for a more robust support system for people who have anti-social disorder, sociopathy, and psychoses. She does a fantastic job of relating her experiences in a way that I, a person who definitely feels way too much, can understand the process of thought. Her story is addictive and fascinating, not because of any voyeuristic pleasure, but because of the humanization of a HIGHLY stigmatized condition. When trying to tell my family what I was reading, they immediately recoiled, and that reaction is what she is trying to resolve. She isn't fundamentally a bad person due to her sociopathy. She's just different.
Just released, Sociopath has a lot of well-earned buzz around it. After finishing the memoir, you feel like you know Gagne's intimate thoughts, but you really don't know anything about her. While listening, I kept finding myself trying to look her up outside of her advocacy work and interviews about the memoir. It is very clear that Gagne has had a life few of us could imagine, her father is a hotshot music producer, and she worked in that world for a while too. At points, she would mention famous people she was on a first-name basis with (ex. Hugh Hefner), and I kept thinking "WHO IS SHE??". But her maiden name and her father's name and business are kept intentionally vague (ugh I wanna know! Who is this mysterious music star whom she has an ill-fated relationship with?? It's so movie, it's so LA-coded).
With this buzz, there are also people skeptical of her, her credentials, and her story. Which, sure, to be fair, she outright admits she's a liar. Sometimes antagonists in the memoir are a little too over the top mean, or scenes feel more like a movie than a recollection. But I think that the former can be an indication of her honesty- she's not hiding that she dislikes a person because why would she? And the latter is probably just a by-product of living and working in LA- I'm 86% sure it's not a real place, and she possibly had some script writer friends help her at some point. Those "Movie Moments", are pretty apparent and a little jolting. And her instance of calling her anti-social impulses her "darkness" was pretty cheesy. But ultimately harmless.
Her credentials, a Ph.D., seem to have been a source of confusion long before the memoir when she was writing essays for magazines about her sociopathy. There seem to be some accreditation issues with where she studied, but honestly, that doesn't really bother me. Gagne talks openly about how she isn't a good student and she is openly a sociopath. It stands to reason that your standard clinical psychology program probably doesn't want her/sees her as a liability. A so-called "diploma mill" might have been her only option because she is a marginalized person working at a deficit. The first thing Gagne does in Sociopath is mention how privileged and lucky she is, even as a rich, white, cis lady, she can't waltz into UCLA and say: "Hi I'm a sociopath, let me become a psychologist." The field is, ironically, very biased against people with mental health issues. Sociopathy is a loaded diagnosis as well, which she goes into great detail in the memoir about why she prefers this term. It's stupid for people to rag on her for it- it's her decision! If we're still letting people say they have "Asperger's" she can say she's a sociopath imho.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Emotional abuse, Mental illness, Ableism, Animal cruelty, Bullying, Toxic relationship, Chronic illness, Gaslighting, Medical content, Panic attacks/disorders, Schizophrenia/Psychosis , Toxic friendship, and Stalking
Moderate: Cursing, Suicide attempt, Violence, Animal death, and Classism
This book is written about sociopathy by a sociopath. She does not couch her feelings or her actions. She never overtly harms anyone besides one instance where shedizzzybrook's review
challenging
medium-paced
4.0
This is a tricky one. For those with a strong educational foundation in mental health, psychology, or social work, the more clinical and academic information throughout this book felt very elementary. I found it very challenging to listen to Gagne’s narcissism, the way she announces herself as a sociopath on nearly every other page, and the way that so much of the events detailed throughout the memoir come across almost trivial. Gagne’s borderline obsession with finding some kind of meaning and identity in her sociopathy was extremely draining to listen to, so much so that I think this book could have benefited from a decent edit to weed out the repetition. There’s a lot of contradictory information throughout that I’m not entirely sure what to make of. This is definitely a fascinating read that I do believe is a great step forward in deconstructing the ways in which society demonizes and vastly misunderstands sociopathy, so I would say definitely pick this book up if you feel so inclined!
Content Warnings
Graphic: Toxic relationship, Animal death, Animal cruelty, Blood, Gaslighting, Mental illness, and Stalking
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