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This test consists of 5 short answer questions, 10 short essay questions, and 1 (of 3) essay topics.

Short Answer Questions

1. How do the criminal activities of psychopaths compare with those of other criminals?

2. What psychopath does the author claim commanded a nation?

3. Why were second-degree murder charges against Roxanne Murray dropped?

4. How are psychopaths unlike psychotics?

5. What did Philippe Pinel call psychopathy?

Short Essay Questions

1. What distinguishes psychopaths from the mentally ill?

2. How do normal criminals become involved in a criminal lifestyle?

3. What distinguishes psychopaths who become criminals?

4. Why has the author determined not to devote much of his book to psychodynamic, unconscious processes of psychopathy?

5. Without an internal motivation to abide by society's rules, what is the psychopath free to do?

6. Why doesn't the psychopath's need for change and excitement make him a good candidate for dangerous jobs?

7. Why did Ray's showing a knife to the author put the author in an impossible position?

8. How was Jeffrey able to override any suspicions Elyse should have had about him?

9. How are psychopaths often able to pass themselves off as experts?

10. Why has the author decided that it's important to write about the technical topic of psychopathy at a level that the public can understand?

Essay Topics

Write an essay for ONE of the following topics:

Essay Topic 1

Imagine that you have a friend whose new romantic interest appears to you to be a psychopath. You know that if you directly make this suggestion to your friend, your friendship will be at an end. Write an essay on the nature of psychopathy that you could show your friend in hopes that s/he would see the similarities between the cases to which you refer and her own situation. Feel free to invent the facts of your friend's situation, remembering that those facts have to demonstrate psychopathy.

Essay Topic 2

Dr. Pinel described psychopathy as "insanity without delirium," and psychopaths as "morally insane." Do you think there is a distinction between moral insanity and other kinds? Can a case be made that psychopaths are actually psychologically damaged in such a way that they should not be held accountable for their actions? In your essay, take a position for or against this contention and support your position with material from the text.

Essay Topic 3

Write an essay explaining why clinicians and other mental health professionals are frequently unable to agree on a workable definition of psychopathy. With what other terms is it often confused? What dysfunction in the mental health system is created by these disagreements?

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