Bad Boys, Bad Men: Confronting Antisocial Personality Disorder

This is perhaps one of the best reviews I have read on any mental illness. Antisocial Personality Disorder is biologically based, but tragically often discarded as the result of poor parenting, movies, TV, video games, or a decline in social morals. It is none of these. It is a biological disorder with devasting effects on family members and far reaching costs to society. This book will take the reader on a review of what is currently known about this disorder and challange society to make a commitment to research and understand this illness. The author offers no excuses for the behavior of individuals with Antisocial Personality Disorder, but points out its costs to society and the need to understand, diagnose and develop treatments for it.

When I was a psychiatric resident at the University of Iowa Dr Black was my residency director. Occasionally during my training someone would make an unkind remark about the muddleheadeness thought to be pervasive in mental health circles in places like Cambridge MA and other sites on the East Coast. As an easterner myself I dismissed these remarks as bedtime stories meant to scare our residents into staying in the midwest. However after reading one reviewer of Dr Blacks book wringing his hands over Dr Black appearing exploitative and sarcastic toward a convicted serial killer I now realize there may have been a grain of truth to what my elders were attempting to teach me. It is clear that this book is needed more now than ever before. Our mental health system in part is suffering because evil is masquerading as disease. The result is increased stigmatization of the mentally ill and misallocation of resources. As the Jewish religious tradition teaches in Midrash Rabbah "Kindness to the wicked ends in cruelty to the righteous".

After I read this book, I began my research on psychopaths, sociopaths, serial killers and how it all gets started. I feel that they are drawn to positions of power because perhaps somewhere at some point in their lives, maybe after being dominated or abused at a very young age, they decide that as soon as they are able, they will never let anyone else tell them what to do. And the profession they come up with that will allow them to accomplish their objective would be one of power, often law enforcement. Scary. I just found out that my neighbor also escaped, but not with her children, as I did. Turns out that her ex husband, also violent, and also a psychopath, was also highly educated. A court appointed psychiatrist, even. So, it wasn't until five years ago when he finally landed in prison, did anyone start listening to her about this charming man. Who had of course had everyone convinced she was crazy. Invalidation, I find, is one of the most insidious forms of abuse that they use. Pretty soon, you start beginning to doubt your own thoughts and feelings, and eventually you stop having them altogether.

I have a shelf full of books that have bits and pieces of information on conduct disorder and the like on young men. Bad Boys, Bad Men takes all of that information, blends it together, adds to it, and spits it out in a very readable, comprehensive book that is like a dream come true to me. I mean it. And the advice to family members is so valid and honest. And the advice to the ASP person is so straight-forward. Reading this book has filled in many pieces for me in my search to understand the nature of a loved one. Bravo to Dr. Black and his writer friend. May this book be read by all the probation officers, juvenile judges, social workers and counselors alive. I truly believe that ASP is the basis for so much pain and suffering in our society.

I'm still recovering from my 5-year marriage to a man with ASP that ended in 1982. When I left him, I'd never heard of ASP or sociopathy and I thought I was losing my mind. Reading "The Mask of Sanity" was the best tool available to help me. "Bad Boys, Bad Men" was the book I wish had been available back then. This book isn't "pop" psychology. It is an engaging discussion of a long-term study of ASP by a respected researcher and professor of psychiatry. The financial and emotional costs of antisocial behavior are incalculable. But I hear commentators on TV and radio every day who simply don't know what they are talking about. I am so grateful to now have the facts at my fingertips.