TBR: “Sociopath: A Memoir”
Patric Gagne’s Sociopath: A Memoir (2024), appeared in my Kindle recommendations for quite a while before I finally clicked on it and added it to my TBR (“to be read”) pile.
I’m not sure why I was initially on the fence about it, since I’m often interested in mental health memoirs, but I remember reading a couple of blurbs and thinking that it “wasn’t for me.”
Turns out, I was partially right about that.
On the one hand, I really like the premise behind Gagne’s memoir: she wants people to move past the stigma that accompanies the label of “sociopath.”
In fact, even calling it a “stigma” is soft-pedaling it a bit.
People tend to regard the diagnosis of “sociopath” as a sure-fire guarantee that the person in question will eventually resort to criminality and murder.
As Gagne points out, however, it is more likely than not that there are any number of “sociopaths” living and working among us, who haven’t committed murder, and probably never will.
I found Gagne’s descriptions of her childhood and teenage years particularly compelling, if only because, as a former caregiver, I could empathize with her parents’ confusion and struggle.
Interestingly, I found it somewhat difficult to empathize with Gagne once she became an adult.
In retrospect, I think this is due in part to the fact that, in her memoir, she never really seems to reflect on her behavior through anyone else’s eyes. Even as she recalls the events of her childhood—wandering the neighborhood after midnight, following random strangers, breaking and entering, stabbing a classmate in the neck with a pencil—Gagne’s memoir sees these events solely from her own perspective.
Someone who did not identify as a sociopath might make the effort, however superficial, to imagine the effect that these behaviors had on others.
Gagne doesn’t do so: because she is, after all, a sociopath, this kind of narrative omission in her memoir is not surprising.
Overall, I found Sociopath interesting and worth reading; my one caveat would be that, for me, it became a bit repetitive.
It seemed to me that Gagne reiterated her diagnosis and what it meant for her relationships with others more than was necessary.
In the same vein, I found the point when she raged to her therapist about “fauxciopaths”—people who profess to be “sociopaths” like Gagne, but aren’t— a bit … odd.
Gagne was working in the music industry at the time: I found it hard to imagine that people in other walks of life would respond to her confession, “I’m a sociopath” with “Oh, yeah, me too!” as so many of her music industry co-workers and clients did.
In the end, I think that was perhaps the greatest benefit that Sociopath offered for me personally: it made me aware of where my own preconceptions and biases might be at work, and offered me an opportunity to think them through more fully.
It’s a memoir that offered me a great deal of food for thought, and one that I suspect I’ll continue to think about in the months to come.
