A sociopath writes a book…..
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Thank you @netgalley for my copy of this intriguing memoir written by Patric Gagne, PhD. ✨A fascinating, revelatory memoir revealing the author’s struggle to come to terms with her own sociopathy and shed light on the often maligned and misunderstood mental disorder.✨

Taken from the books introduction :
“Representation matters. I offer my story because it illustrates the truth no one wants to admit: that darkness is where you least expect it. I am a criminal without a record. I am a master of disguise. I have never been caught. I have rarely been sorry. I am friendly. I am responsible. I am invisible. I blend right in. I am a twenty-first-century sociopath. And I’ve written this book because I know I’m not alone.”

I REALLY wanted to read this book. I have always loved learning about things that I know nothing about. I have heard sociopath and psychopath before but my nurse practitioner brain has never had to KNOW what that diagnosis entails. But the layperson in me has heard it on TV time and time again on Criminal Minds, Killing Eve, and other shows alike. Patric dives into her real life experience and holds nothing back. There is quite a bit of clinical jargon sprinkled throughout as she learns who she is and why she has trouble with her “color wheel of emotions” and why she does what she does. It’s eye opening. It’s funny, she’s really witty! It’s heartbreaking. It’s a true life story of someone who not only overcomes but keeps walking over that mountain and grabbing others, holding their hand, and helping them over that same mountain. It’s really good. You have to read it when it publishes next April!

QUOTES:
🌱“The purest love is not born from bliss. It is pulled from the pyre. It is fierce and shape-shifted, slightly twisted and delicious.”
❤️‍🩹”Just because your love is different doesn’t mean it doesn’t count”
🤨”Why does the word “sociopath” make people feel more than it makes them think?”
⭐️”People tended to get angry when I told them the truth. Lying, on the other hand, always kept me safe.”

⁉️Q: what is the very last strong emotion you remember feeling? What was happening?

Wow! This was such an interesting glimpse into the mind of someone with sociopathy. So many times thrillers and movies present these people as heartless and killers without remorse but this author told her story in a way that painted the disorder in a different light. I thoroughly enjoyed it and will pick up any of her future works.

This was a really interesting look into a very underrepresented and often misunderstood condition. I appreciate the humanness and vulnerability that the author brings to their prose, and found this very difficult to put down.

An interesting personal look into one sociopath’s mind. This book is excellent if you’re looking for actual real world information instead of just clinical research.

This is definitely one of the more interesting memoirs I’ve read. I went into this with no knowledge of sociopathy (or the fact that it was apparently removed from mental health literature a long time ago), but Patric’s story is fascinating, and she makes a valid point about the “rest of us”: we may not be sociopaths ourselves, but Patric encountered a number of people who exploited her personality disorder, asking her to do things they couldn’t do themselves, or joining her on seedy adventures for a personal high. Patric is not a violent person, and she’s never hurt a fly. Are we really any better than her simply because we can feel, and she’s limited in her own feelings?

I was most interested in Patric’s childhood memories. That to me is where this book really shines. She describes having no moral compass as a little kid, and nothing to stop her from doing whatever she wants, with the exception of her mom, who eventually tires of constantly having to monitor her older daughter on top of raising two girls mostly alone, moving across the country, and getting divorced. Patric writes of escaping sleepovers when everyone else in the house is asleep, and I was intrigued by this. I too was always the last to fall asleep at sleepovers, and I found the loneliness of it to be unbearable. I thought about walking home, but I never actually did, unlike Patric.

This is a strange book in so many ways. She writes of breaking into people’s homes, and this felt really lonely to read. I was surprised she never got caught. I can’t imagine what the life of a sociopath must look like, so I can’t question it. But some of the things she apparently did seemed very isolating to me.

Again, I can’t speak to the research behind this particular area of mental health, but Patric’s story is worth a read. She has a happy ending, as we already know from her Modern Love column, and this might give people who identify with her some hope that they can lead meaningful lives in a similar way.

This is an incredible and most unusual book. Although the general belief is that psychopaths can't have any insight into themselves, this writer, who is an admitted psychopath, does just that. That's what the whole book is about. She fearlessly (well, that's part of their personality type) scours her history, shamelessly tells us all the outrageous, dangerous, abusive, careless actions she took as a child. She works hard to reform but it's like asking a fledgling to fly across the English Channel.
It's great book. She offers, for the first time I've seen it, the idea that pychopathy might be a defect that's on a sliding scale. That might be why she is able to write about herself. Just a brilliant, evocative, polished and literate book.

Patric Gagne knew something was wrong with her from a very early age – that she didn’t feel things the way others did or act the way others acted in certain situations. She didn’t have the same feelings others had – in fact, she seemed to have no feelings at all.
Some emotions happened without thinking, but social emotions such as guilt, empathy, remorse, and love did not come at all. What was wrong with her, she wondered? Her sister, Harlowe, she described as Dorothy in The Wizard of Oz; herself she described as Wednesday Adams!
She pretended to fit it, but it didn’t work out for her. So, she ended up living up to how she felt and trying to feel something instead of nothing. Unfortunately, her choices in this lifestyle were not the right ones.
Finally, in one of her college classes, Patric finds the word to describe herself – sociopath. She finally figured out all her “bad acts” were a kind of self-preservation.
With the help of the love from David, Patric learns to cope with this debilitating disease. It was a fascinating look into the mind of a sociopath and how exhausting their life can be!