Sociopath: A Memoir

Patric Gagne's certainty that she is a sociopath is evoking primarily knee-jerk reactions of either denial or horror from readers. However, I don't like to put people in neat categories and would prefer to view (and review) her memoir as one woman's story, sans clinical diagnosis.

The majority of Sociopath details Gagne's risky/illegal behaviors, which range from shoplifting to car theft. Only a few pages of her experiences with Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) are mentioned in the epilogue, begging the question of whether her adventures are designed to elucidate or just titillate. The book is too long, frequently repetitive, and lacking footnotes for the psychology studies cited. I was neither scandalized nor inspired by Gagne's memoir, but it's interesting to use it as a literary Rorschach test of people's hopes and fears around a label that is tossed around freely in these troubled times.