The brains of psychopaths are different. What does that mean for laws, crime, sentencing and treatment?
Read Psychopaths: Born evil or with a diseased brain? on BBC.co.uk.
Link supplied by a Lovefraud reader.
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How to recognize and recover from everyday sociopaths - narcissists
My one remaining cat, Destructo, is 18-1/2. After she’s gone, I don’t think I’ll ever have another cat. For one, I can’t bear another loss. For another thing, I will finally have the freedom to travel. Since I may even end up in Costa Rica, it wouldn’t be fair to get another cat. I am very attached to the snakes, too, but it’s not really the same. If I had to, I would give them up to move out of the country. It’s the only thing that would make me give them up. That and if they get too big for me to handle safely. (Having a boyfriend to help with them would fix that problem, but most men are afraid of snakes).
Stargazer:
Same reason here…traveling. It’s not fair leaving them alone.
Louise, I have a feeling we’re gonna run into each other in Costa Rica some day. lol
i would say that aprox 50 percent of population suffers from borderline personality narcisistic sociopathological disorders.some people call it just a little crazy.I am a magnest or these people seem to keep poping up in my life and taking me as a fool. the other bad part is that if u do not conform to fool and fall for it and they know you know who and what they are. Little accident and things to kill you will happen. These are sick people wh can be put down by a strong hand as they are also the weakest and looing for a weaker or weak person to walk on. step on maggots. and roaches.
Stargazer:
Haha, I just saw your comment about Costa Rica! I wouldn’t doubt it. I have always wanted to go there. I have heard it’s beautiful and very cost effective to live there 🙂
The author of this article clearly fails to understand the damage that sociopaths inflict on society. Also, as of yet, there are no known cures or treatments for the disorder. Therefore, the law should prosecute them as they would any other human being. There should be no special rights or allotments for entities whose sole purpose is to wreak havoc upon the innocent. They need to be either locked up forever, shot out into outer space, or used for medical experiments. The entire concept of civilization depends upon people respecting the rights of others. Since sociopaths, like wild man-eating tigers, cannot respect the rights of others in their society, they need to extricated and banished, either by death or some other method.
If we are being entirely logical, we would utilize them as a resource for the rest of the human community, the people who actually have consciences and are emotionally “human”. In my opinion, sociopaths are merely humanoids; that is, they appear human and are human genetically, but that vital piece of shared humanity that binds us and connects us as homo sapiens, that conscience, isn’t there. They cannot understand the human condition and are, therefore, only human genetically, not emotionally or mentally.
However, if a cure is developed and it’s proven effectual, we can perhaps implement plans to cure them, but only if it’s 100 percent viable and the treatment process poses no threat at all to the family or medical staff attending the sociopath.
Sociopaths are threats to society and must be removed. I despise idealists who espouse groundless claims that sociopaths can be treated. There is no scientific evidence whatsoever that suggests this. There is no way to “fix” something that isn’t there, namely the conscience. There is only a gaping hole, a ravenous chasm that seeks to fill itself with petty victories, games of mind-control, power-grabs, emotional sabotage, verbal abuses, physical assaults, rapes, murders and genocides. There is no room in a healthy society for these monsters. Make no mistake: The day you trust a sociopath is the day you kiss the devil.
I will understand if some people view this post as harsh or extreme. I will also conclude that those same people have never truly endured the full terror of sociopathic torture.
Breckgirl stands and applauds!!!!
SOS what you have said is what I have believe and I would bet others here do as well. I have no sympathy and give no quarter to N/P/S – essentially the Cluster B personality disordered… I hesitate to call them beings – they are quite simply predators. My own empathy is a tremendous hazard to me, it makes me vulnerable.
How many stories from Aesop – The Frogs Who Desired a King – which is a political allegory – and then the fable of the Scorpion and the Frog – which is the type of experience most of us have had here at LoveFraud…
Dear SOS,
I agree with you in many many ways…I am both the child of a psychopath and the mother of a psychopath, both of whom are murderers.
The problem with eliminating psychopaths is the same problem in eliminating the “retarded” —who is to DECIDE who is retarded and should not be allowed to breed? Is the cut off of “retarded” 74 IQ points or 75? Do you sterilize them, lock them up, or what?
Hitler decided to sterilize the retarded, or to kill them off for the “good of society” and there have been other attempts at eugenics over the course of human history.
In the 1800s and early 1900s it was not unusual for physicians to smother obviously retarded children at birth, or to “not encourage them to breathe,” because the families of those times had enough problems feeding the able bodied children, much less one that would require care 24/7. I don’t doubt that this has been more or less “policy” for midwives and physicians all through history for the “greater good” of the family and the community.
In some cultures, “excess” female children were buried alive or smothered so that they would not be a drain on the family’s finances.
I totally agree that psychopaths and others who are predatory are dangerous to deal with, but WHO is wise enough, who is Solomon enough, to decide at just which point a person is “predatory enough” to qualify for a life time on a desert island or to be “humanely put down”?
Dr. Simon Baren-Cohen shows in his research with empathy-deprived people that it is not just an IS OR AIN’T proposition, but a continuum along which each of us has more or less empathy, and also that empathy is never 100% there or totally lacking, but all of us are on a continuum where we may have empathy one day, but control the amount of empathy we have the next day. If we had 100?% empathy we could never drive by a homeless person on our way to work, we would be compelled to stop and take care of them, give them our clothes and our food. As long as there was ONE homeless person we would have to take them in and go without food ourselves until all the world had been fed.
Having a HEALTHY level of empathy is a good thing. Having a VERY LOW LEVEL of empathy is not such a good thing. Not all people without functional empathy though are psychopaths. Some people without much empathy are autistic, and they do not, unlike psychopaths, get “duping delight” from hurting others.
I wish this world were totally BLACK OR WHITE, good or bad, and that there was a way to distinguish which was which, but unfortunately, life is more shades of GRAY, so we just have to try to stay on the LIGHTER SIDE OF THE COLORS.
Here’s a link to a recent, related article:
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/11/111122230903.htm
Shockandawe,
I spoke wiht Dr. Kiehl and he was the one who told me that according to his research the AVERAGE convict has a score of 22 on the PCL-R, which essentially means that half score more and half less. The average sore of the public at large is 4-5 I think. So you can see that prisoners have a much higher score than the “joe plumber” Twenty to 25% of prisoners score 30 or above so that is a high percentage of the criminal element who are caught and sent to prison for their crimes. There are also only a VERY FEW prisoners who are sent to prison for singing too loudly in church. So While SOME ex convicts do go “straight” upon release, the majority do not even finish their paroles before committing new crimes and there is somewhere between 40 and 70% recidivism rates.
Some states have a “three strikes” law where on the third felony they are locked up for “life without parole” and while this is on the books, it is not frequently enforced and many criminals have LONG records of repeat felonies, as well as VIOLENT felonies including rape and murder and they are still given “more than one second chance.”
Even for first degree murder unless it is a cop or multiple murder about 25 years is a normal “life” sentence.