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.
- Menu
- Skip to right header navigation
- Skip to primary navigation
- Skip to main content
- Skip to primary sidebar
- Skip to footer
How to recognize and recover from everyday sociopaths - narcissists
http://abcnews.go.com/Health/Wellness/wireStory/women-broken-heart-syndrome-14965825#.TsQvVsP-8cJ
http://www.stltoday.com/news/local/metro/mom-held-in-the-death-of-st-louis-county-toddler/article_70885bdd-8352-5795-9bbf-01bdfa3c688c.html
Another tragic story. Mother beats her 1-year old to death, then dumps him in a cemetery and reports him missing to police. This happened in the past 24 hours…
Donna, I have just emailed Dr.Kiehl, pointing out very respectfully what made me question the article, including the possibility that some of his statements may have been cut out of the article and whether he could explain the therapy ideas he has some more. I pointed out how it comes across as it is in the BBC article.
I also suggested that there is another research opportunity with regards to psychopaths and their lack of remorse: the enjoyment they might feel by hurting others.
I have wrestled with how I felt about the death penalty my whole life and I have come down on the side of anti death penalty mainly because I believed it did not allow for a person to become repentant about what they had done. Now that I have had first hand experience with a psychopath, I am back to wrestling with this issue. Oxy, when you state, “Where do we draw the line in locking these people up for the ’good of society’ before they commit crimes? Where do we draw the line on commission of crimes and not allow a person a chance to redeem themselves”, you really have expressed some of the core issues. Where is the line between voluntary behavior and involuntary because of something organically wrong with the brain? And how do we measure it, define it, quantify it, prevent it, protect innocent people from it?? God help us!
Before I married a psychopath I believed that every single person had something good (love) at their core that could be nurtured and drawn out, and that good (love) could transform them into stronger, better, more loving people, God help me…I’m not so sure of that anymore. The quote from Dr. Kent, “I tend to see psychopaths as someone suffering from a disorder, so I wouldn’t use the word evil to describe them” has not lived with a psychopath and experienced first-hand how they intentionally, with malice and forethought and without a shred of compassion or remorse abuse, hurt, kill, destroy, use and abuse good people that actually love and care for them! When I read the article about the man that murdered his own sons while they slept…I see evil, pure evil! His own children…while they slept…sometimes I think the death penalty is appropriate. And I don’t have the words to express to you how that realization deeply pains my soul. As far as I am concerned nothing does a better job of describing this heinous behavior better than EVIL! Personally, I have no problem calling that behavior evil! NO PROBLEM AT ALL!
I explained Dr. Kiehl what makes people call psychopaths evil imo… it is not the lack of remorse or the lack of empathy, but the enjoyment and glee they express when they hurt others.
Someone who suffers from autism might do wrong, migth hurt someone, but it is a) unplanned b) they get no personal satisfaction or enjoyment from it. But a spath does!
And that is what is EVIL imo
Donna,
The problems I think arise in trying to diagnose a CHILD as a “problematic” child BEFORE it is “too late” and the brain IS “set in concrete” — in workiing with kids in IN-PATIENT settings I have seen kids as young as 7 to 10 that were/are DANGEROUS that you would not be safe going to sleep with those kids in the house unless they were locked up. Kids who show GLEE at setting fires and hurting others, and show NO remorse, shame or guilt at all. They ONLY respond to superior force.
That woman who sent her adopted 12 year old son back to Russia on the plane, I have no doubt was experiencing the same hair raising on the back of her neck that I experienced in working with these kids.
I know that parents who have children by a psychopath, or have the genes in their blood to pass on to a child (like I obviously did) worry about what they can do to help their child…and of course NO child comes with a guarantee that they will turn out to be a “good person” or pleasing to the parents.
Since most babies are given to young parents, I know I sure didn’t know much about raising a baby when I got my first child in my arms, and still didn’t know much when I got my second in my arms….but I did the best I could to be a parent to my kids, to love them and nurture them to the best of my ability.
When I got to the stage where my son Patrick was “acting out” roaming the streets at night, stealing, etc. I HOPED it was just teenage rebellion that would “pass” when he got some “sense” and I hoped to be able to prevent him from ruining his life completely before he “got some sense.” I held on to that malignant HOPE that he would be okay, even after the first and second arrests, then after the two years for felony, and then even after he was arrested and convicted for murder.
Why do we hang on to that malignant hope? that denial in the face of such EVIDENCE? Because we LOVE our children, we want the best for them. We don’t want to give up. We think we can fix them if we just FIND THE RIGHT THING to say or do.
Could my son have been “fixed? Until he was 11 he was as far as anyone could see a “perfect” child at home and at school. Then one episode of stealing….but I don’t know many kids who haven’t stolen something in their lives —so while I took it seriously, I didn’t think it showed he was a psychopath by any means…even if I had KNOWN what a psychopath was at that point, which of course I didn’t. So if there was a chance he could have been “fixed” it occurred, I think, long before I even suspected I had a problem with him. Now, (head shaking here) there is NO hope of him being fixed.
Liane Leedom is a fortunate mother with her young son by her psychopathic ex husband. She is a trained mental health professional, she is an experienced mother, and she knows what a psychopath is, and she started with her son at a VERY EARLY AGE. If it can be done, I think her son is a perfect experiment, and I wish her well and send my prayers for her and her son.
But those in the prisons, they are only “lab rats” as far as I am concerned, and I think the experiments with them are productive and necessary for learning about the disorder, but I do not feel a great deal of sorrow for them, or think that they should be released with compassion upon the rest of society. I don’t think they are “suffering” in the common sense of the word.
Here’s another article about empathy and genes.
http://www.cnn.com/2011/11/15/health/empathy-genes/index.html?hpt=he_t3
@darwinsmom
Yes, I agree, I watched my ex delight in deceiving people no matter how deeply it hurt them! That is what makes them evil! So narcissistic, so selfish that they don’t have a speck of compassion for other people!
Looking back I am now aware of a possible psychopathic child that I once knew. I used to work as a teacher’s aide for a small public school that had kindergarten and 1st grade students only. There was a 1st grade student that would talk about crushing his pet hamster and hearing the bones crunch, obviously a problem…it was very disturbing to both the teachers and the other students. I would remove him from the table and talk to him about it and how it bothered the other kids and he kept doing it. It was a big problem. There were lots of meetings with the parents. One day on the playground the kids were lining up to return to class and this boy was in line and another boy stood in front of him, he became so enraged at the other boy that he started strangling him. I ran to rescue the kid and I had a very difficult time pulling this kids hands off the neck of the other boy. He was only in the first grade and it took all my strength to get his hands off that other child. The boy was still throwing a fit and threatening the line jumper even after I got his hands off of him. It was the first and only time I picked up the violent boy and carried him to the office. I was very disturbing. Obviously this child has some very serious issues, but now, looking back, I think he may be a psychopath.
Hosanna,
I also wrestled with the death penalty, and since the DNA evidence that has proven DOZENS of people on death row were not only “not guilty” but were actually INNOCENT of the crimes they were sentenced for, I have reversed myself on it.
BUT…I do believe in the “three strikes (felonies) and you are out” laws. I wish that they would be ENFORCED completely.
Especially ones that involve sex and/or violence.
I understand your being disturbed by the kid attacking another kid. A older child once attacked my oldest son, and she took her fingernails and tried to gouge out my son’s eye balls with the INTENTION OF BLINDING HIM, she later admitted it to me. She has grown up to be a person I have NO doubt is a psychopath, and knowing what I know now, I realize her biological father AND her mother were both psychopaths as well.
Of course, with that being the case…who is going to raise these kids from infants? We have too many kids in foster homes now, and too many kids without any place to go, so what would we do with the kids of someone we thought might be a psychopath and the kids might have the genes to be a psychopath? Especially if the parents haven’t committed any crimes? WHO is going to be SOLOMON and make these decisions?
I once had a pupil who seemed a risk. In Belgium kids at elementary school and high school HAVE to follow 2 hours a week of religious classes. Catholic private schools of course give only 2 hours of Catholicism. But public schools provide all the official religions of the parents’ choice, including secular humanistic hours for people who are non religious. It is kind of a philosophy-ethics-debate class. I was a secular humanistic teacher for one schoolyear couple of years ago: subjects range from sexual and identity development, but also societal issues such as death penalty, abortion, racism, violence, … And this yuong teen of 16 years was in my class. He obviously found it a stupid class and didn’t want to cooperate. The student coaches told me he was a risk case in their eyes of one day arriving at school with guns and end up shooting people. They told me that his parents were divorced and his father was his chief guardian. The father was religious in a christian belief that is not officially recognized in Belgium and for which there are no religious classes. They were very strict and he was beaten with the belt. He apparently had a stash of teen clothes and IPod hidden in a forest en route to school so he could change his attire without his father knowing it.
So, when it was time to do the violence topic, I opted to focus on random violence where someone ends up massacring people out of the blue, and had the teens propose reasons for it why it could happen. He was quite silent that lesson and very attentive. I remember that at some point a line of thought in the discussion even animated him, as if he was recognizing certain issues.
But eventually that next follow-up lesson he told the whole class that his real wish was to become a hired assassin (next option was the army). He did not say this for shock effect, but said it soberly and it came across as if he meant it. He confessed to not having any emotions for people in general, not liking them (except for his girlfriend and mother), and that he felt no dislike against killing people. So it seemed reasonable to him to make money out of it. Of course the other pupils were totally outraged and tried to debate with him on how unethical and wrong that was, but I told them that in that class he had the right to express his opinion on topic as much as them and that it was important to really listen to him.
He was not into misschief, but I would compare him to the psychopathic character in There Will Be Blood. He was definitely mysantropic and cold. And yet after that class he started to treat me with respect. He expressed positive emotions for his mother and girlfriend, very loyal even. Maybe he was dead inside because of the abuse, rather than that he was born with it. But I do think he’ll end up a sociopath who can function highly.