Book Review: Sociopath: a Memoir by Patric Gagne PhD
June 6, 2025
In case you couldn’t tell ( you could for sure tell ) May was a bit of a reading slump month for me. I had a really hard time getting through any books at all. In fact, I think this book took me somewhere between two and three months to get through, which is not like me.
I have been getting into memoirs lately, which is a genre I have never really been that interested in, but I am finding, that it is more that I was just not interested in what those people had to say. ( sorry other authors ) I have really enjoyed finding new genres that I have enjoyed, and this is one of them!
We follow the life of a woman named Patric and her struggle to understand herself and her lack of emotions. All her life she feels painfully different than those around her, and is unsure why. She doesn’t feel remorse or guilt, but she does feel love and friendship, and that is confusing to her. If she doesn’t feel something shouldn’t she not feel it all? The older she gets, the more she wants to learn about herself and why she is different, so she begins taking classes on psychology, and sees a reflection of herself in a term that is almost impossible to do any research on: Sociopath. There is such a negative connotation with the term that it is hard to even discuss it with her professors and colleagues. Throughout the book, she struggles through the identity crisis that comes with identifying with a diagnosis ( and later getting diagnosed with it ) that everyone associates with serial killers and mass murderers, but eventually comes to the conclusion that she needs to be the change that she wants to see around the diagnosis.
For a long time, I have been a huge fan of psychology and learning about the brain, and this memoir was such a cool view into the mind of someone who is not exactly wired like everyone else. She still longs for love, she still has a friendship with her sister, she still is a responsible and thoughtful business woman ( and later psychologist ), she is still aware of what is right and wrong - even if she doesn’t feel it, she is still a wife, mother, daughter, sister, and friend.
I highly suggest this memoir to everyone. It is important to see the world though others eyes, and understand that ones own perspective is not the only one. Also, I highly suggest listening to this book, because it is read by the author herself, and there is something about being able to hear someone’s story from their own mouth that makes it extra special.
