Last night Larry King Live of CNN hosted a discussion about whether criminals can be rehabilitated. I think it will be re-aired this weekend so try to watch. One of the guests drew a distinction between “learned” criminal behavior and psychopathy. She stated she believed that criminals who have learned to be that way can unlearn but psychopaths cannot be rehabilitated. I know many of you also hold this belief so I would like to tell you why I strongly disagree.
First I will tell you my position:
ALL criminality stems from an interaction between a person and a situation. A person is a product of his/her genetics and experiences. So in a sense what makes up personality (the “person”) is learned for everyone including the psychopathic. We are preprogrammed by our genetics to learn certain things better than others.
In terms of situational variables solid research has demonstrated that antisocial associates, poor work and educational performance, substance abuse, poor family ties and poor recreational achievement are all associated with criminality. These variables operate independently from personality variables and are important for even the most psychopathic individuals.
The more psychopathic a person is, the more deeply ingrained is the lifestyle of parasitism and predation BUT even those with lower levels of psychopathy can be very resistant to change and very dangerous to society. The definition of response to treatment depends on what you are looking for. If a person cheats 8 people a week, then goes into a program and cheats 1 person a week, that is a change. Everyone has a different definition of “rehabilitation”.
Coincidentally, I just read a great book, Persons in Context: Building a science of the individual. It is a tribute to Walter Mischel, Ph.D. one of the great thinkers of modern psychology. In his chapter “Intelligence as a Person-Situation Interaction”, Robert Sternberg lists five fallacies of thinking. He says, “There is another dimension to person-situation interaction: the extent to which particular situations elicit ‘stupid’ thinking in intelligent people.” All of his 5 fallacies occur in the context of perceived power or dominance. They are:
- The unrealistic optimism fallacy. This occurs when one believes that one is so smart and so powerful that it is pointless to worry about the outcome of what one does.
- The egocentrism fallacy. This occurs when one comes to think that one’s own interests are the only ones that are important.
- The Omniscience Fallacy. This occurs when people think they know more than they do.
- The Omnipotence Fallacy. This results from the power one wield or believes one wields.
- The invulnerability Fallacy. This derives for the illusion of complete protection.
Dr. Sternberg is one of many scientists who have discovered that the experience of power changes the mind/brain. Some people are more prone than others to these effects of power. Since psychopathic individuals seek out power constantly like a heroin addict seeking a fix, they are never free from all of the above fallacies of thinking. Life is a situation of constant power or perceived power.
In the absence of a loving nature all power pursuit becomes antisocial. Now power pursuit and attainment can also stomp out a person’s loving nature, if it was ever present in the first place.
To rehab the psychopathic we have to strip them of any power and teach them to love and care for others. To my knowledge there is no program that has yet succeeded in doing this even for those “sociopaths” who score at the lower end of the psychopathy scale.
Gem, it goes against nature for your children to hate you like that..it’s disgraceful, LET them go…for now if not forever, and really have compassion for yourself and what you are going through. Thinking of you…blessings and love x
I WISH I could say redemption is possible but it would be downright dangerous and irresponsible. What I have disscovered against all the odds is that psychopaths do not care…not for redemption…(they wouldnt even have a concept for redemption because they dont see themeselves as sick)
I agree totally with Hens, To which I will add they are a different species, from some black hole out there and they will always be around..pushing spiritual evolution into being…(yeah by being evil)
Empathic people, normal people however can be redeemed and brought to another level of understanding about life as a consequence of tangling with the black hole..
How can a psychopath be redeemed? all answers appreciated
Thank you guys so much for your love and support . Im crying now as I type this.Ive been in god dam denial for so long it felt normal.I tried SO DAM HARD for so LONG to get them to love me back. I turne d myself into a human pretzel, god dammit. NOTHING worked.When my ex husband was sober,[for nearly 10 years} he was a good husband, and we had almost a “normal” family. Then when oldest spath D hit puberty and theshit hit the fan,{her running away from school. leaving home, disappearing for 6 months, the police refused to help me find her, and then after all that worry and anguish I find out that spath daughter 2 knew ALL ALONG where she was and didnt tell me!And me trying to convince myself that this was NORMAL teenage behaviour!There was a huge boulder at the top of my steep drive, and I used to sit there for hours at night,just waiting for SOMEONE to come home! the 2 cats on one side of me and my dachshund, Bentley, on the other. Husband out, getting drunk. Spath daughter 1 ,ditto. Spath daughter 2, out all night with friends.I thought Id get cancer from worry, if theyd come home at all, or Id geta phone call from the police.Sunday, lunch time, everyone but me sleeping off hangovers.Spath Husband used to ring me up to pick him up from the pub, to get taxi, there, and drive him home. If I refused hed say, “Put D on”. She was 16, no licence, but she went to pick him up, on the promise of a drink. “F–k off, you cant stop me!” shed shout, as she disappeared up the drive to her waiting cab.After Id made my bid for freedom and had been in my tiny rented flat a few months,{this was before I met David,} they persuaded me to go to their place for dinner. Foolishly, I went. C had prepared a nice meal, my ex was getting drunk in the corner. There I was, the dog and cat at my feet, my kids one on each side of me on the sofa,”Why dont you just stay?” said my ex. I cant drive you back, Ive been drinking.” I cant.” I said, I have to get back.”
Wall to wall guilt again, but I was so RELIEVED to get back to my tiny flat, my paintings on the wall,{the ones Id rescued that my ex and spath D had not trashed.}.My goldfish, Cleo, swimming around in her bowl. My blue candle, burning.And PEACE. Oh how good it felt! Id escaped and even tho I had wall to wall guilt still .I was FREE.”Ill NEVER go back there, I thought.
None of them love me, they all hate me, all of them.”Mamagem.XX I met an old friend months after Id left, he told me hed called around, and theyd told him Id left. he said,”It was as if the Light had gone out of that house.And the Light was you.”
geminigirl,
Wow, what a beautiful thing to say…”it was as if the light had gone out of that house. And the light was you.” What’s bizarre is that your family members weren’t attracted to the light, (the warmth, the goodness of you). It’s interesting that outsiders could detect that the positive energy (of you) was absent from the house. I read your posts and feel for you, being saddened by your whole situation – unfortunate that you have two daughters who are plagued with this disorder. Unfair.
Thank you so much, BlueJay. Its so special that we can type away from any corner of the globe, and some loving, understanding soul can read it,somewhere else, and empathise.Thank God for Love Fraud!Writing is such a release for me, and its great that we can all share our lives, good and bad bits of it.I dont know if we EVER get over this sort of trauma,maybe we just learn to live with it,like withered leg, or a hunchback!But I feel if we stay human and hopeful and loving and dont get bitter, it will get better.
I like the Chinese saying,
“If you keep a flowering branch alive in your heart, a winged bird will surely come.”
God has given me my new family, and Im very grateful, but how can you forget your own flesh and blood?
Letting go, {maybe for ever,} is so hard. Mamagem.XX
Gem the light is within you and it sounds like you brought it with you to the tiny flat…no matter how small it was.. it was yours, free from abuse and pain. I so deeply appreciate my little haven, my 2 cats and all my little precious things around me…to look at my life you would think “failure to launch”…but I know it was “crashed into U.F.O” you don’t have to justify it to anyone but yourself…what an incredibly unlucky throw of the dice to have 2 daughters that treat you like that…ah I’m just reading you have a new family!! I’m not famliar at all with your story… wow that is heartening to hear…yes how can you forget your own flesh and blood..you can’t ..but if you can’t be with the ones you love ..love the ones your with…I can only feel bad for your daughters and what they have chosen to do. xx
Maybe one day they can invent a microchip to be placed in a sociopath’s brain in order to get them to at least to control their behaviour.
But considering that sociopaths run the world and hold most of the positions of power in everything from; politics, to science, to industry, to health care, to media… chances are they’ll declare non socipaths to be mentally insane and put a chip in our heads to make us accept being treated this way without complaining.
geminigirl,
We can all relate. I wonder if this is our “thorn in our side,” bearing something that nearly flattens us out at times, hating the whole experience, but being unable to completely detach from it. It’s a part of us permanently. We have to learn how to detach, not think so much about it. The pain will stay.
Mornin Crew…Pollyannanomore that was a nice response to my post about taking my picture. What bothers me the most about my involvement with him is I was his only option when he moved in with me. There was never a big romance or dating, at least on his part. I was having a sexual fling with him that kinda developed into a friendship. He told me his current relationship had developed into a roommate only thing. (Lie) To make a loooong story short. he got kicked out on his ass and I literally picked him up out of a ditch he was hiding in one nite during a very ugly fight with his (roommate)..so here I was trying to turn this nitemare into a ‘once in a life time love’ and it was anything but that. I was just his meal ticket. But he did enough to make me think there was hope.. He would always say he wished we had met under other circumstance’s. But anyway the humiliation and embarrasment on my part lasted along time after and still continues. But I volunteered to be his victim. He is gone and I am doing ok..I just wonder if he is going to haunt me the rest of my life? We all talk about our healing journey and getting in touch with ourselves, loving ourselves etc. I just wish I was not so lonely and alone, but I guess that is something I will just have to accept..
ErinB You can be so graphic in your post, my dog is doing well she has recovered and back to her onry self…thanx for asking about her…
Good morning Henry. I understand what you are talking about. I am so busy with getting in touch with myself and learning to love myself but sometimes I really do feel the loneliness. I am a late bloomer like my girl Mariska Hargitay. She and I have a lot in common and she was able to meet the man of her dreams and have her baby in her early forties. I hope it works out the same for me. It’s hard not to dwell on it sometimes.
I have to just put it out of my mind and tell myself that I’m OK all by myself. At this point I’m not ready for all that anyway. If I tried to kiss someone or have sex I would start crying and not be able to handle it. I’m just trying to make the best of it now. I’m glad your dog is OK. You will be OK too.
morning hens!
you said: ‘so here I was trying to turn this nitemare into a ’once in a life time love’ and it was anything but that….the humiliation and embarrasment on my part lasted along time after and still continues.
this is the crux of it, isn’t it? we projected what we wanted, didn’t deal with the real – and now judge ourselves and feel/ fear the judgment of others. i think that is lovefraud’s greatest achievement – it is a place to be where we know some, if not most of the people here will not judge what we did.
we can’t stay here hens, can’t stay stuck in that fear of our past, or in the fear of new people. i put HUGE pressure on myself to ‘be’ normal (bwahhaa) ‘out there’, and i REALLY have to work to bring my sotry out, to lose the shame. we’re queer – we know this landscape of shame and what coming out does for us. it’s a long road to integration. it took me years to not get baited by others re lesbianism. i am pretty rock solid now. it may take (fuck, i hope not) as long with this thing. i hope not ’cause i don’t have enough years left in me. i am giving a presentation – probably a spoken word piece – at a conference on poverty this fall. i am wondering if i will include the spath stuff. it is part of the pic, but i don’t know – there will be lots of peeps there i know professionally. being forthright has always been part of who i am – so, if i am taking my life back from that pustule, then don’t i need to be forthright? this shame/ humiliation has me by the ankle. i gotta hack away at it.
and you, you have to take some risks to meet some folks.
re pics of x and mom – why don’t you just burn the whole damn lot?
hugs,
one step