Psychopaths Dream in Black-and-White

In this chapter of Jon Ronson's The Psychopath Test, the author focuses on the methodology used by Elliott Barker, and others, to cure psychopaths and schizophrenics of their mental illnesses. Ronson came across Elliott Barker through references to Barker in academic papers read in Ronson’s search of understanding the meaning of psychopathy. After many attempts to contact Barker without success, Ronson was rewarded with a response from Barker himself. With this newfound connection he was told of Elliott’s journey to becoming a psychiatrist, and the use of radical mental illness treatment methods. In Elliott’s personal research of treatment methods he learned of nude psychotherapy sessions where all participants are completely nude for a twenty-four hour nonstop session. Barker also came across Kingsley Hall, where schizophrenics and doctors alike become patients together. These influences led to Elliott’s use of LSD-injected, nude sessions in his psychotherapy program for criminal psychopaths. These sessions lasted for eleven days at a time and patients would ‘counsel’ each other in their time together. After many sessions, some patients were said to be ‘cured’ and they were freed from jail and sent back into the world. However, despite their ‘cured’ status, eighty percent of the psychopaths released back into civilization relapsed, killing again, thus proving the psychotherapy sessions were a failure and actually made the criminals worse as the previous relapse percentage had only been sixty percent.

As I was reading this chapter of Ronson’s book, I was very surprised at some of the methodology psychiatrists were able to use in the ‘so-called’ treatment of their psychopathic patients. I had never heard of such a thing as nude therapy sessions and especially not the use of LSD on criminal psychopaths in order to let them counsel each other in a hallucinogenic state. In addition, I could not believe that Barker thought he had ‘cured’ his patients. Psychopathy is not something that can be cured through the use of LSD and counseling from other psychopaths. Psychopathy is a mental condition that does not have a cure. I am also curious as to how these psychiatrists were allowed to perform these kinds of therapeutical/counseling sessions on their patients, in the first place. Their methods don’t seem very ethical. I would hope if methods like these were used in the United States that better surveillance would be kept on the patients, whether they are cured or not.