This week while reflecting on the writings that most influenced my thinking about psychopathy/sociopathy, I received a letter from a mother of a five year-old boy whose father shows many signs of the disorder. She wrote:
Do you believe that children can show signs of being psychopathic? If so do you teach them to suppress the way they really feel by masking the problems with fake feelings? Can feelings of love really be learned? Just because someone on the outside appears like they have feelings does that mean inside they have actually changed? As you know they are good actors. The skill is learned very quickly to lie to blend in with the others. I bought your book off Amazon I should be getting it today. And i am also reading Dr. Hares book. I will try to look at your book some more today.
Shortly after my son’s father was arrested, I sat on my bed, with our seven month old baby asleep beside me, with the psychiatry DSM manual open to the page containing the criteria for “antisocial personality disorder”. I asked myself “do any of these criteria relate to common themes discussed in the child development literature.” I had to answer that question to know how best to mother my own child.
Interestingly, all the criteria mapped onto three developmentally acquired abilities: Ability to Love, Impulse Control, and Moral Reasoning. I then vowed I would read everything there was to read about each of these.
I started with Ability to Love. In my opinion the most important book about Ability to Love is Learning to Love by Harry Harlow, Ph.D. He is the scientist who demonstrated that a baby monkey clings to his mother out of pleasure in affection and “contact comfort” not because mother is a source of food. Prior to Dr. Harlow, scientists believed that the child learned to relate to his mother because she was associated with food.
The profound conclusion reached by Dr. Harlow’s research team is that babies are born to “learn to love” just like babies are born to learn language. We don’t come into the world talking but as our brains develop and we are exposed to language we learn to talk. Similarly, we don’t come into the world loving, but as our brains develop and we receive the right input we learn to love.
There are other interesting parallels between talking and loving including the observation that both are disordered in autism and both are influenced by genetics.
My world completely changed when I read page 44 of learning to love. It is on this page that Dr. Harlow discusses a very important developmental sequence. Ability to Love starts to develop before pleasure in aggression and competition sets in:
“The primary basis of aggression control is the formation of strong generalized bonds of peer love or affection… All primates, monkeys and men alike are born with aggressive potential, but aggression is a rather later maturing variable. It is obvious that a one year old suffers from fear and is terrified by maternal separation, but the child neither knows nor can express aggression at this tender age…This lack of aggression targets accounts in part for the fact that “evil emotion” culminates during the age-mate stage, long after peer affection and love have developed. It is the antecedent age-mate love that holds the fury of aggression within acceptable bounds for in group associates.”
Love starts to develop before aggression does, and has a head start in the race for the brain connections that form the basis of our values.
Now back to our 5 year old boy. I am very disturbed by the recent trend of referring to children as “psychopathic” in the scientific literature. Not that she does not describe symptoms of psychopathy, but to call a 5 year old psychopathic, negates the importance of learning to love and acts like it is an inborn ability.
I would say that this boy is learning disabled and requires extra help when it comes to learning to love. Just like speech therapy would help him if he couldn’t speak, love therapy will help him if he can’t love. Studies of autistic children show that a mother’s love makes a big differences for many severely affected children. Why shouldn’t we at least give this 5 year old the benefit of the doubt and give him love therapy.
Many studies show that the parents of at-risk children struggle with loving them. It is hard to love an impulsive child who goes after the cat with sharp tools. These parents are also harmed by suggestions that psychopathy is entirely genetic and firmly in place by age 3.
The focus on “discipline” also hurts these families because children need to learn to love. How can they learn to love if the people who are supposed to teach them are constantly yelling at them and scolding them or spanking them?
What is the answer?
An at-risk child is a full time job! Parents have to love that child 24/7 and not leave him alone to go to the kitchen to pick up the knife and go after the cat. Preventive positive parenting means waking up before the child, being there when he opens his eyes and saying, “I love you”. It means giving him hugs and kisses, playing and having fun together.
kathy-
“My question is: Is sociopathology inherited or is it a learned trait?”
We’ve been discussing that here for a long time. Yes, no, both…the debate continues. I lean toward the genetic explanation, with the nurturing aspect either modifying the tendencies or causing them to emerge in full force. That debate will continue.
Dear Kathy,
I suggest you go back and read some of the old archived articles (especially Dr. Leedom’s articles on research). There seems to be a BIG part of psychopathic personality disorder that is INHERITED. But it is not one of those things where one dominant gene makes it absolute, as it seems to be a big combination of SEVERAL GENES. However, there is one article on the “bondiing hormone” Oxytocin, where the psychopaths appear to have the hormone but lack the receptors in the brain. (the article was about sheep being used as test subjects for this hormone, which is released during birth, nursing and sex in humans as well as animals.)
My family history is rife with psychopaths,, and even ones where the natural parents did not raise the children. My biological father (sperm donor) who did not raise me, was an out of control child by age 8 or 10, my younger half sib who appears to be the only P out of his three children, was fighting his way home from school every day by age 8, my own P son had no environmental problems that should have caused him to become JUST LIKE my P-sperm donor who he never met. But he is so much like him in manner, thinking, violence, and cunning that it is errie.
There is a great deal of wonderful articles and many about medical research into the causes of psychopathic personality disorder. It is quite complex and not everything is known about it yet of course, but much IS BEING LEARNED.
As far as your X is concerned, Kathy, sounds like he had the double whammy, environment and genetics.
I think that much of your theories are out–dated. It used to be thought that autism was caused by “refrigerator moms”. Not true. Children are born with the instinct for love as well as for language. How that instinct is addressed is the issue. I suggest The Language Instinct, by Stephen Pinker. It’s a great book for anyone who has a child with a language disorder.
As for sociopaths, I believe they are born that way. A child who isn’t a sociopath and misbehaves has a behavior problem. A sociopath can learn to copy love, but doesn’t feel it. They act “as if” they loved someone. But they don’t.
Autistic people feel love, but they lack the ability to pick up social cues which enable them to “fit in”. They can learn to fit in better by wearing the same clothes as their peers or listening to the same music. My son is autistic. He feels real love and expresses it in a normal way. Where he goes wrong is in learning what to talk about with his peers, etc…
Dear Running away,
Glad you are here, and welcome. There are some articles here on autism vs psychopathic thinking (Dr. Liane Leedom’s blogs).
I just thought of something about this a while ago,, that sort of was an “ah ha” moment for me….Dr. Leedom talks about a child who has psychopathic genes being “learning disabled” in learning about love. That may be true in a manner of looking at it, but just as a BLIND child is “learning disabled” because he can’t see, though his intellect is quite bright, no matter how you nurture that child, he will NEVER BE ABLE TO SEE….I think there are at least SOME cases where children are SO learning disabled about the ability to love that their ability to love is just like the child born without eyes CAN NEVER SEE, there is NO WAY to get them to be able to experience love.
Of course just as there are “degrees” of “blindness” in children who are born or deveop some genetic problem with sight, with some being totally blind even to darkk or light, and some just having very poor vision, there are, I think, some degrees of the psychopathic personality disorder and how it is expressed. Some who are “not too bad” genetically, might be able to grasp some partial concept of empathy and love and others are totally devoid of ANY connection or bonding to other humans and are complete predators (although they CAN FAKE emotions).
I think by the time my P-sperm donor was 8 or 10 he was completely unmanageable and out of control, how much sooner was he out of control I am not sure, but he had no bonding to any human I can think of, though he did OWN several other people (in his mind at least) but he totally dispised every other person in the world.
My P-son mimics him completely, and yet they have never met. I think that both my P sperm donor and my P son were “born” without the capacity to love in any form other than “ownership” of others, or to have empathy or caring at all for the welfare of any one or anything except themselves. All other people are simply PREY to them. Just as a cat enjoys playing with a mouse it is killing, so do they enjoy toying with their prey.
I just posted a new article on parenting as an effective tool to correct asp tendencies
http://holywatersalt.blogspot.com/
Many a parent has had to deal with the pain and hardship of learning that their child is Downs, autistic, deaf, dyslexic, has leukemia, etc… How is testing children for psychopathy any different?
Dear SOS, if there was a specific “test” that could tell you that your child say at age 5 was going to be a “P” it would be nice. YOu could make some plans about what to do with that child. How to handle them, etc.
But at the same time, I would much rather my child had been DEAF and BLIND than to have been a Psychopath! I also would have been grateful when he was say age 17 to have been able to have tested him and had a diagnosis.
Since Ps are actually not “legally” either retarded or incapable of making decisions for themselves, and since they are many times quite “high functioning” (hey they can make it to be president of the US!) (not mentioning any names, but he is NOT president now) LOL but unless you are going to send these “positive testers” somewhere to isolate them from the rest of society, what the heck difference does it make? There is no treatment and depending on the kid, they may be dangerous by age 8 or 10. The only thing you can do with them if you KNEW the diagnosis is to warehouse them in some sort of in-patient faciity and then turn them loose at age 18 until they commit a crime and then they go to prison for a while.
Believe me, dealing with having one for a child is a lot worse than a child with an identifiable problem, or even a deadly disease where they actually die at some point. WISHING your kid would die is worse, I think, than having one die. Just MHO.
OxD,
Warehousing kids is getting a little Christopher Langan. But then the “worlds smartest man” ‘s stepfather was a sociopath, and you can tell that that experience left its mark.
Gladiator camps? …with all the drugs and sex you want? I read somewhere that the army had a project where they specifically chose psychopaths to initiate initial attacks, since most other soldiers would freeze in first combat ”“ but I think it was bogus. I’d think P’s would be serious disciplinary and loyalty problems.
P’s as president? Who knows. They all get accused of it (well, except when it’s too tough of a sell as with ’bumbling’ Ford and ’overly idealistic’ Jimmy). It could be that the media and the opposition keeps them in check. Personally, I avoid pointing the finger at all but the most obvious examples, like Blago-alphabet.
They have I.Q. tests for kids, reading tests for kids…
I believe because this is all so complicated as far as crossover symtoms in these different disorders it makes it even harder to comprehend as a parent what you are dealing with….
When I was pregnant with my now 16 year old son I already had a 10 year old at home so I was 39 years old. Because of my age I was advised to have the amnio. test to see if my baby was “all right”. Older mom, higher risk for mental retardation and some other things as well. I thought about it only for a moment and declined. My reasoning back then was if something was found wrong with my baby, how would I continue to carry him and have a decent attitude for the rest of the duration? I felt I wouldn’t be ok with abortion so what would the purpose be to have the test? I decided to take my chances NOT KNOWING….
Today I still would have made the same choice about the amnio test.
However, with what is going on with my son right now, I am not feeling content with the “not knowing” what the future holds for him. I realize of course no one knows what is in store for the future. This is not what I am talking about.
The “not knowing” that I am talking about is if my sons personality disorder (that I see) is caused by the tramatic event he had as a child, anti social personality disorder, another personality disorder, post tramatic disorder, the list could go on and on…..
Did he at some point shut down in puberty or did something (ugly) wake up within him in puberty? Does he really live in his own little world (of mental illness) or was his own little world created to save his sanity ? (because he is in unbearable pain) Is he unable to give or recieve love, or does he not have love to give and is unable to FEEL the love directed at him? Does his grandious ideas/beliefs and behaviours mean that he has high regard of himself or does it mean that he NO sence of self? Does he lie so consistantly and about everything because he is sick or is he sick because he lies about everything? Does he even know the truth?
All these questions and many others are questions I ask myself every day.
As much as I CAN understand why a child under 18 years old should NOT be labeled a sociopath because then there is no hope for a cure, I can also understand that it would be better for a parent to be able to RULE that out…..If that couldn’t possibly be the diagnosis….
Regardless of my sons age I would be told if he had any other incureable disease wouldn’t I? Although anti social personality disorder is the worst possible case senerio, and that would be the worst thing in the world to hear about your own child…..It would also be absolutely wonderful news to be able to rule that out and go on from there.
So my personal opinion is that this is very debatable…..As much as I don’t want to know IF this is the case with my son, I also deserve to know.
Right now I feel like I am banging my head against the wall just to get anywhere with him and still pretty unclear what his “condition” is, REALLY. And he is seeing a couscelor and he has seen a phyciatrist but he wasn’t given a FULL evaluation.
Why wasn’t he given a full evaluation? Is it economics ($$) Is it medicade (lack of good insurance) Is it a lazy or overbooked phyciatrist, lack of resources? What….
I took my son to get help. At a time when I felt, as his mother he was at a critical stage. Why is it that I still have more questions than answers at this stage of the process? Why do the mental health experts seem to be so hard to deal with..?
If my son has a mental illness where time is crucial….In other words, he MIGHT be helped because he is still young and there is a “window” of opportunity here….Before it is to late then I will be damned to know what we are waiting for.
I would venture to say that if my son had BROKEN the law and was court ORDERED to get an evaluation by a judge we wouldn’t be wasting all this valuable time. The judge would have a full evaluation in hand.
I do not percieve myself to be a person without patience…I know that Rome wasn’t built in a day and I am not sking for my son to be diagnosed, treated and cured within 6 months….I believe at BEST, whatever my sons problem is it will be one that will be a long term recovery if not life long. But it shouldn’t take 6 months just to get a referal. And I had to fight for just that.
I need my energy to deal with the daily “issues” I face at home with my son. It would be nice to at least have a more identifiable conclusion at this point of what exactly I am dealing with.
Many days I feel like I need a lawyer (being sarcastic) present when trying to talk to my son….Because he twist and turns things around to suit him. I am starting to feel like I need a TEAM of lawyers when I go to see my sons couscelor….
Do I have stupid written all over me?
Sos, I guess you know me well enough that you could tell there was SOME “tongue in cheek” in my “warehousing” comment.
Some of the world’s most intelligent and productive men have been psychopaths in their private lives—warriors, military, politicians, inventors, inovators of all kinds. So it is an ILL wind that blows no one good! Unfortunately, if you are involved with these men (and women) you can suffer for your trouble.
It would definitely be a nicer and safer world if they were all gone though. Beam THEM up, Scotty!