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41 " maybe the American Psychiatric Association had a crazy desire to label all life a mental disorder. I "
― Jon Ronson , The Psychopath Test: A Journey Through the Madness Industry
42 " I was much crazier than I had imagined. Or maybe it was a bad idea to read the DSM-IV when you're not a trained professional. Or maybe the American Psychiatric Association had a crazy desire to label all life a mental disorder. "
43 " the American physician Samuel Cartwright identifying in 1851 a mental disorder, drapetomania, evident only in slaves. The sole symptom was “the desire to run away from slavery” and the cure was to “whip the devil out of them "
44 " Psychiatric diagnoses are getting closer and closer to the boundary of normal,” said Allen Frances. "
45 " But they’re being labeled bipolar. That’s an enormous label that’s going to stay with you for the rest of your life. "
46 " That’s the psychopath: somebody who doesn’t understand what’s going on emotionally, but understands that something important has happened.” But "
47 " He fulfilled the bipolar checklist. See? And so they gave him some pretty heavy-duty medication. It slowed him way down, to a drooling fat kid. And they declared the meds a success.” It "
48 " I would also say you can never reduce any person to a diagnostic label. "
49 " Manipulative?” I said. “I think you could describe that as leadership,” he said. “Inspire! I think it’s called leadership.” “Are "
50 " There is no evidence that we've been placed on this planet to be especially happy or especially normal. "
51 " I thought about my own over-anxious brain, my own sort of madness. Was it a more powerful engine in my life than my rationality? "
52 " As a group they tend to be more charming than most people,” she said. “They have no warm emotions of their own but will study the rest of us. "
53 " we’re raised to believe that deep down everyone has a conscience.” At "
54 " The Antisocial Personality [This type of personality] cannot feel any sense of remorse or shame. They approve only of destructive actions. They appear quite rational. They can be very convincing. —L. "
55 " But at the core of psychopathy is a lack of moral restraint. "
56 " which is why she tried to join the RAF, so she could obtain a socially respectable opportunity to gratify her homicidal urges.” “So "
57 " As I glanced at the phraseology of the research report, dull and unfathomable to outsiders like me, I thought that if you have the ambition to become a villain, the first thing you should do is learn to be impenetrable. Don't act like Blofeld--monocled and ostentatious. We journalists love writing about eccentrics. We hate writing about boring, impenetrable people. ...If you want to get away with wielding true, malevolent power, be boring. "
58 " I was much crazier than I had imagined. Or maybe it was a bad idea to read the DSM-IV when you’re not a trained professional. Or maybe the American Psychiatric Association had a crazy desire to label all life a mental disorder. "
59 " That’s what I Am a Strange Loop is about,” said Deborah. “It’s about how we spend our lives self-referencing, over and over, in a kind of strange loop. "
60 " It is an awful lot harder, Tony told me, to convince people you’re sane than it is to convince them you’re crazy. “I "