‘I’m a liar, I’m a thief ’: sociopath paints a provocative self-portrait
Patric Gagne began her life as a sociopath by stealing Ringo Starr’s glasses. Introduced to the former Beatle by her music executive father, the Los Angeles toddler swiped his spectacles and still owns them today. Young Patric was not a kleptomaniac, she insists in this intriguing, provocative but ultimately frustrating memoir. She simply wanted to feel something, any emotion at all that might fill the terrible psychic void inside her. Now aged 48, she claims to seem like a perfectly nice woman. She works as a therapist and volunteers as a grief counsellor, specialising in helping victims of violent crime. She has a husband, two children and plenty of friends. She lives in a big home, socialises at a country club and throws parties whenever the chance arises. Few of Gagne’s guests know that her background also includes stalking, joyriding, housebreaking and various other creepy activities. “Guess what?” she writes in her introduction. “I’m a liar. I’m a thief. I’m emotionally shallow. I’m mostly immune to remorse and guilt. I’m highly manipulative. I don’t care what other people think. I’m not interested in morals. I’m not interested, period. Rules do not factor into my decision-making. I’m capable of doing almost anything.” In short, Gagne is more than happy to label herself a sociopath. To put it more scientifically, she has what mental health experts call an antisocial personality disorder. Its symptoms can include cruelty, reckless behaviour and a total disrespect for the law. While she long ago gave up any hope of “curing” her condition, she very much wants to understand it. This book documents how sociopathy has affected her life and passes on some lessons to anyone who fears they might have a similar problem. It’s a confident, authoritative presentation but undermined by a nagging doubt: how much of her story can we take at face value? Gagne begins with a wistful account of her privileged Californian childhood, which sounds relatively normal up to the moment she stabbed a fellow second-grader in the head with a pencil. Gagne’s parents separated when she was 11. She moved to Florida with her mother and sister, who were both baffled by the girl’s hostile attitude. “You are a monster!” the long-suffering Mrs Gagne snapped after Patric first showed no reaction over the death of a pet ferret, then threw a violent tantrum because it had been buried without her presence. Patric’s only explanation was a line from the animated comedy film Who Framed Roger Rabbit? “I’m not bad,” the misunderstood Jessica Rabbit protests. “I’m just drawn that way.” Behind the bravado, Gagne was scared about what her future might hold. She first heard the word ‘sociopath’ when her prison guard uncle gave her a tour, learning that roughly 80pc of inmates could be categorised this way. At summer camp she fell in love with an older boy called Dave who accepted her quirks, but geographical distance and a four-year age gap put their relationship on hold. When Gagne won a place at the University of California, she sought out academics who might be able to offer her advice. Her book briefly takes a technical turn, detailing the issues she explored with various therapists and psychologists. What are a sociopath’s most common personality traits? How are they different from psychopaths? Why can they experience happiness and anger but not guilt or empathy? Are they all budding serial killers or can they redirect their destructive instincts towards something positive? Gagne got partial answers to these questions, but they didn’t stop her from continuing to break into empty properties or take other people’s cars for a drive as casually as she bought a carton of milk. Meanwhile, she needed to earn a living. Gagne’s father persuaded her to join his talent agency as a band manager, perhaps because he knew a sociopath would feel right at home there. By now, some readers may be a little uneasy. The fundamental problem is that Sociopath often feels like a novel rather than a work of non-fiction. It starts with a disclaimer that “some timelines have been condensed, some dialogue has been reconstructed and some characters have been presented as composites”. Many memoirs use these techniques, of course, but here they have really been taken to extremes. Gagne is a vivid storyteller and her lively narrative contains elements of various genres: crime, thriller, romance. She writes movingly about reconnecting with and eventually marrying David, despite his awkward questions such as: “Why do you have a lock-picking kit?” Before long, however, she is describing a “will they, won’t they?” situation with a sleazy celebrity musician disguised under the pseudonym Max Havoc. (Readers can have fun guessing his identity.) She also befriends “the singer of an up-and-coming rock band” who accompanies her on sociopathic crime sprees and declares: “I love riding your dark coat-tails.” Thankfully, Gagne gives us a happy ending of sorts. While taking a PhD in clinical psychology, she realised that much of the conventional wisdom about people like her is simply wrong. Sociopaths are not mad or evil, they just have difficulty in processing emotions that relate to other people. Sociopathy is not a category but a spectrum, with recent studies suggesting that between 1 and 4pc of the population are on it. You may well work with, live beside or even have given birth to someone who has this “emotional learning disability”. Gagne immodestly declares that she wrote her memoir to give sociopaths “the single thing I know they need most — hope”. She provides coping strategies and is evangelical about cognitive behavioural therapy. One day, she hopes, standard treatment plans will be available to sociopaths just as they are now for alcoholics, schizophrenics and bipolar depressives. All this adds up to a deeply peculiar book. If nothing else, however, Gagne’s disturbing confessional will give you a much greater understanding of the sociopaths in your life — and if you can’t see any, maybe it’s time to check the mirror?