Book Reflection: Sociopath, A Memoir by Patric Gagne, PhD
This Spring, I got in an argument with my mother about the word “sociopath”. I felt agitated during the conversation, defensive as I tried to explain that this isn’t even a term that is used in the DSM anymore. That using the term doesn’t do anything except to individually pathologize & criminalize what are actually systemic failures and contributes to dehumanizing people who are often multiply marginalized.
As I started researching sociopathy and considering it as a different neurotype, I realized that there were almost no books written by people who experienced it themselves. This, to me, is a huge red flag. As the disability justice saying goes “Nothing about us, without us.”
I am a therapist (technically a Licensed Professional Counselor). I am also a lived-experience therapist, which to me means that I’m Autistic, ADHD, C-PTSD and GAD. Throughout my training as a therapist, even in my alternative program (I studied Somatic Counseling & Dance/Movement Therapy), there was an implicit assumption that people with certain neurotypes were always patients and never providers. This was certainly true for both Autistic & Sociopathic spectrums.
In this book, I felt invited into Patric Gagne’s inner world. Although my experience is deeply different from hers, I related so much to the building pressure she describes - for me it was a masking pressure, the need to examine my surroundings and find ways to mirror the appropriate affect and make sense of why it felt like others could always just “tell” there was something “off” about me. Despite the differences of expression and experience, I saw this mirrored consequence of self-repression; a rejection of self in desperate effort to stay in connection with other.
Whereas Patric Gagne’s neurotype of sociopathy is characterized by apathy and an absence of emotion, my own experience was an influx of unfiltered emotion, the immensity of the world around me flooding my system with sensory input, emotional waves, and the dissonant way that communication never quite seemed to match up what was meant and what was said.
Whereas Patric Gagne saw aspects of herself in those who were incarcerated in the prison industrial complex, I saw aspects of myself in those who were incarcerated in the medical industrial complex. I became hypervigilant, found ways to be “smart” about my differences, to leverage or hide them in whatever way possible. Isn’t this how any animal might respond to danger? Adapting, in an effort to survive?
In this book, Gagne invites an intimate glimpse into her private world. It is a true memoir, a journey of self-discovery, which offers an accessible window into her research and contributions to her field. As I read it, I felt filled with a sense of hopefulness about the potentials and gifts of neurodiversity - the many ways that we can learn to support each other through embracing the many complex ways that there are to be human.
5 Stars. Highly Recommend. I think that everyone would benefit from reading this… however, I especially recommend for those who regularly use the term sociopath to develop a more humanized understanding of the “sociopathic spectrum” (as Gagne describes), for those who are studying to become therapists or mental health providers, and for those who have ever identified with the label of sociopathy.
