In Sociopath,  confessions of a wife, mother and cat-choker having dark urges of stealing for thrills, joyrides, and gate-crashing at strangers’ funerals  – all a fascinating first-hand account of antisocial personality disorder. After the pencil attack she decided to steer clear of violence- not because she felt bad but because it attracted too much attention. She resolved  to finding ways of dealing with her anxiety that would allow her to fly beneath the radar.

Named as the most anticipated book of 2024 by Vulture, LitHub, The Guardian, and Cosmopolitan. A fascinating and revelatory memoir revealing the author’s struggle to come to terms with her own sociopathy and shed light on often maligned and misunderstood mental disorder.

Patric Gagne realized she made others uncomfortable before she started kindergarten, as something about her caused people to react in a way she didn’t understand. She suspected it was because she didn’t feel things the way other kids did. Emotions like fear, guilt, and empathy eluded her. For most part, she felt nothing and didn’t like the way that “nothing” felt.

She did her best to pretend she was like everyone else, but constant pressure to conform to a society she knew rejected anyone like her was unbearable. So Patric stole and lied and was occasionally violent. She became an expert lock-picker and home-invader, with a goal of replacing the nothingness with something.

In college, Patric finallyh confirmed what she’d long suspected. She was a sociopath. Even though it was her first personality disorder identified –well over 200 years ago- sociopathy had been neglected by mental health professional for decades. She was told there was no treatment, no hope for a normal life. She found herself haunted by sociopaths in pop culture, madmen and evil villains who are considered monsters. Her future looked grim. When Patric  reconnects with an old flame, she gets a glimpse of a future beyond her diagnosis. If she’s capable of love, it must mean that she isn’t a monster.  With the help of her sweetheart and some curious characters she meets, she embarks on a mission to prove that the millions of Americans who share her diagnosis aren’t all monsters either.

At college her favourite method was to take joyrides in cars she had stolen from drunken men at frat parties. She stalked people, on one occasion breaking into a house to watch her target sleep. She went to strangers’ funerals to feed off the emotional energy “ I bring flowers” she reassured her horrified father. “ I scheduled my mischief like a doctor’s prescrtiption”. Gagne acknowledges that she was insulated from consequences for her misbehaviour largely because she was rich, white and female. The lifestyle she describes features chandeliers, housekeepers, and parties in the Playboy mansion ( She even sneaked into Hugh Hefner’s office and stole a notebook). After graduating she went into music business and found her personality type fitted perfectly.  She is also the mother of two children aged 8 and 13. “When our son was born, I was not overcome with emotion. I didn’t get profound surge of perfect love I’d been promised, and I was angry” she writes. Motherhood didn’t come easily but she discovered  over time that “ those fundamental feelings for my son weren’t non existent. They were simply non-intrinsic. I had to work to experience them”.

She  trained in clinical psychology, specialising in sociopathy, and while working as a counsellor encountered many people less privileged than herself struggling with feelings of emotional emptiness and a drive to do bad things.

Sociopath tries to answer suffering with an entertaining, occasionally frustrating cocktail of psychology  and personal anecdote

This inspiring story of her journey to change her fate and how she managed to build a life full of love and hope.

Sociopath: A Memoir by Patric Gagne, Bluebird, £18.99, 347 pages.