In chapter three of Jon Ronson's novel "The Psychopath Test," he talks about how a psychopath could be cured, that is if there was even an actual cure known of. He continues to talk about a psychiatrist named Elliott Barker who thought he knew the cure to psychopathy. Throughout the chapter, Ronson discusses detailed events that Elloitt Barker experienced while trying to find a cure. Elliot Barker created a program within a psychiatric ward, which he eventually found "cured" the patients. Little did Braker know, and as Ronson found out, the patients were never technically cured; they elapsed back into psychopathy, and so their story goes goes on.
I find this chapter in Ronson's novel very disturbing, yet interesting. Could people ever really be cured of a mental disease? The stories of Barker's experience with the naked psychotherapy, and then his own version, seemed unheard of. I suppose if people are mental or psychopathic, maybe there wouldn't be a difference between being clothed or naked as long as they received therapy. Then when Barker made visitors wear pictures of graphic suicidal scenes, I wondered if that could be legal to keep a psychopath focused on the program by using these kinds of pictures as the visitors watched them. Most of the chapter made no sense to me, especially the fact that they thought it was really working and then a man was continually being released multiple times after committing similar crimes. Clearly, there is no cure for psychopathy.
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