I plan to review for you a very recent paper: Psychopathy as a disorder of the moral brain. Dr. Robert Hare is one of the authors. But, before I can get to explaining the moral brain part, I have to get past the first paragraph, so the moral brain will be have to be discussed more next week. As I sat down to translate this paper into plain English, I got stuck at the fourth sentence:
“Antisocial behavior by itself is a nonspecific symptom common to many conditions, so psychopathy and antisocial personality disorder (ASPD, American Psychiatric Association, 1994) are not analogous constructs while most cases of ASPD (sociopathy) do not fulfill the interpersonal and affective criteria for psychopathy (Hare, 2003; Ogloff, 2006) the behavioral features observed in these individuals are best explained by their level of psychopathy (Forth et al., 1996).”
O.K. let me get this straight, psychopathy and antisocial personality disorder are not the same thing so a sociopath is not a psychopath BUT to the extent that a sociopath is a sociopath, it is because he/she is a psychopath! Now, how are we supposed to understand that so we can start discussing the important point—the moral brain?
The first sentence of the paper sheds light on what the author is really trying to say, “Psychopathy is a personality disorder defined by a constellation of interpersonal, affective, and behavioral/lifestyle features, including manipulation and deception, grandiosity, shallow emotions, lack of empathy and remorse, an impulsive, irresponsible lifestyle, and the persistent violation of social norms and expectations.” What he should have said in the fourth sentence is that many people psychiatrists diagnose with sociopathy using the DSM do not score above 30 on the psychopathy inventory (PCL-R), so that by a strict definition they are not psychopaths. To give you some background about why there is an argument here please read Psychopath and Antisocial Personality Disorder: A Case of Diagnostic Confusion by Dr. Hare. He reports that the interpersonal behavior and emotions of psychopaths best define them. He objects to the fact that these are not emphasized enough in the current definition of ASPD, which places too much emphasis on antisocial behavior.
These arguments took place some time ago before it was discovered that both sociopathy (ASPD) and psychopathy are a spectrum. Before that time Dr. Hare said that “psychopaths” were those who scored more than 30 on his scale. But since that time we have discovered that many people who score between 20 and 30 on the tests have the same physical and brain abnormalities as those who score over 30. So in reality a person is not a sociopath or a psychopath a person simply possesses traits of these disorders to a high degree. The higher the degree of psychopathy the more likely it is that a person will have an abnormal moral brain. If we look at a group of people and do a correlation between the degree of sociopathy as measured by the DSM criteria and the degree of psychopathy as measured by the PCL-R there is a high correlation between the two. So your worst sociopath is also your worst psychopath. Rather than being an argument over trying to separate apples and oranges, this is an argument over how to best define an apple (or a bad apple depending on how you look at it).
Psychopathy and sociopathy are really patterns of extreme brain and endocrine function that we infer from observing a person’s behavior. The real question is which behaviors are most indicative of this extreme physiology? If you read the scientific literature you will discover that many individuals who score between 20 and 30 also have aberrant brain and hormonal function. So the problem is not criteria, the problem is the cut off score of 30 which is in my opinion too high. There are a couple of studies indicating people with scores as low as 12 might have abnormal moral brains. If the cut off for psychopathy is lowered to 20 or 25 there is considerably more overlap between the PCL-R and the DSM.
I happen to agree with Dr. Hare that his scale is better at identifying individuals high in psychopathic/sociopathic traits. But I don’t think he should stop at the PCL-R which is a test only specially trained clinicians can administer. He has also developed the P-Scan which is a 90 item test that anyone can use to rate another person’s psychopathy. I have used this scale and believe that if this was accepted as the rating scale for psychopathy/sociopathy everyone would be able to identify those high in these traits. Isn’t that what we should do? Why should the identification of morally insane people be only reserved for highly trained clinicians?
I also think we should get away from assuming sociopathy and psychopathy are categories that people either do or do not belong to. There are many instances where just a few psychopathic traits can do serious damage. Damaging people can have some of psychopathic traits and not others.
When psychopathic traits interact with a specific situation or opportunity to do harm there is likely to be trouble. An example of a trait-situation interaction is when a highly psychopathic person is a parent or spouse, or a boss. If the highly psychopathic person has low power and low situational opportunities for harm, he/she is less of a problem to society. Similarly society needs leaders and parents to be low in psychopathic traits because in these situations just a few traits bring out harmful behavior. If we focus on traits we can begin to discuss situation and trait interactions. If we focus on the traits, we will avoid making the mistake of saying, “He/she isn’t a sociopath, so he/she is O.K.” The authors are correct in saying that evil behavior is best predicted by the presence of psychopathic traits, irrespective of whether there is a “formal diagnosis” of psychopathy.
What I would like to see is studies of physiology using the P-Scan completed by relatives who know the subject well as an assessment. Although the question of what is different about the physiology of psychopaths/sociopaths is very important, it is not the only or even most practically important question. If psychopathy can only be identified by a few highly trained people, what good is the construct? But if we had a behavioral or psychological test that nearly anyone could use, and that test was related to abnormal physiology then it would be highly useful to humanity.
Furthermore, there are numerous hormonal and brain findings associated with psychopathy and sociopathy. It is likely that these findings relate to specific traits. For example, high testosterone is related to unrestricted sociosexual orientation, power motivation and impulsivity but is less related to low affection. In this regard, the P-Scan is very good because the 90 items examine psychopathic traits in detail. Next week, psychopathic traits and the moral brain.
OxD
If having a large and thick set of “rosecolored glasses” makes me a dreamer or an idealist I guess that must be me, but somehow I have difficulty seeing how it has helped the world! LOL”
Am sure it’s helped people on here, including me, that optimistic and open spirit. It’s part of why you write things that encourage others here, even when you’re hurting. Sure it’s helped the good people in your own personal life, as well. Being a caring, loving, kind person only hurts when it’s directed towards the wrong type of people, when it’s misguided. But real concern and caring, real idealism is the stuff that changes the world for the better. It looks at what is and sees what could be. That’s not good, when looking at a P, because we see good potential that isn’t there. But in everything else, well…
You know that phrase: be the change you want to see in the world?
In order to make the world a better place, you need people who can see it as a better place, first. If that makes sense.
S’paths can’t do that. They can only see destruction and sorrow. They can only be the change they see in the world, and it’s not good.
But people who see the good and strive for it are forces for good. They are the change they see in the world, too. That’s why it’s a quality worth keeping and worth protecting from S’paths.
Thank you Orphan, I appreciate those kind words, and yes, any good thing can be directed in the wrong direction–even caring and compassion….and I think in allowing our caring and compassion to become enabling, we are almost becoming the mirror image of the Ps—not exactly the same, but still not what we should be…enabling causes as much pain, I think as the Ps do in so many ways. I think it is just as toxic to the soul, of both the enabler and the enabled.
I do try to keep a positive outlook and try to see the “good” in any situation–After reading Dr. Viktor Frankl’s book, “Man’s Search for Meaning” which he wrote after he was released barely alive from the Nazi concentration camps in WWII, I realized what a wonderful example he was of someone who did make a difference in the world. He didn’t participate in his own victimization in the least, and was the victim of the ultimate Ps and Ps-by-proxy who did inhuman things to their fellow humans with no compassion or concern. He survived and became a better person for his experience, turned it into a positive influence in his life.
I don’t think I could ever aspire to “be like” anyone any more noble than he apparently was. He found meaning in his suffering…and somehow I have to find meaning in mine. One difference though, is that he did not “participate” in anyway in his suffering by holding onto malignant hope that his captors would some how change and start to “love” him, and I did, but still I want to find some good, some meaning, something that I can say “I’m better because of this experience”—or “I helped someone else live through this experience and heal.”
My one of my step sons was gravely head injured a few years before his death. I had worked for several years in head and spinal cord injury and when he came to stay with us, I was pretty well familiar with the problems with dealing with head inured patients. I used to tell my mother that I thought the years I had worked with head injuries was “God’s way of preparing me to deal with this.”
After my son went to prison for murder and my old college friend kept calling me to come to work at the psych hospital and I finally did, I think that that was God’s way of putting me where I needed to be to have the support I needed at that time, to see that my son wasn’t the “worst” P in the world. That I wasn’t alone in suffering because my son was a murderer.
My faith in God and my spiritual walk has grown since all of this, and maybe that’s the purpose. I don’t know…but maybe this experience is to help someone else cope with their pain with healing from the P. I know that my knowledge of head injuries in patients was very helpful to my husband, and my step son. Almost every job I have ever had in nursing from head injuries, to burn patients, and emergency medicine, to psychiatric patients, has been helpful to me in my life and to my family.
Thank you again for your kind words.
You’re welcome, OxD. Those words apply to nearly everyone encountered here so far, and I believe in them. There must be a balance between living in fear after experiencing an S and being malignantly optimistic.
Here’s something I read that sums up what drew an S to many of us, in their indolent nothingness, wishing for such good prey. This fits many of us, I feel:
“I am one of the searchers. There are I believe millions of us. We are not unhappy, but neither are we content. We continue to explore life, hoping to uncover its ultimate secret. We continue to explore ourselves, hoping to understand. We like to walk along the beach, we are drawn by the ocean, taken by its power, its unceasing motion, its mystery and unspeakable beauty. We like forests and mountains, deserts and hidden rivers, ond the lonely cities as well. Our sadness is as much of our lives as is our laughter. To share our sadness with one we love is perhaps as great a joy as we know—unless it be to share our laughter.
We searchers are ambitious only for life itself, for everything beautiful it can provide. Most of all we want to love and be loved. We want to live in a relationship that will not impede our wondering, nor prevent our search, nor lock us in prison walls; that will take us for what we have to give. We do not want to prove ourselves to another or compete for love.
These are thoughts for wanderers, dreamers and lovers, for men and women who dare to ask of life everything good and beautiful. It is for those who are too gentle to live among wolves.” James Kavanaugh
Have a lovely evening. We are not amongst wolves anymore.
Dear Orphan,
Thank you for that beautiful quote by James Kavanaugh, and you are so right “we are not among wolves anymore.”
I can’t remember where I read it, but years ago somewhere I found something that has stuck with me since then,
“A burden shared is halved, and a joy shared is doubled.”
There has been much wonder and beauty in my life, as well as much pain, and I want to focus on that beauty again, without feeling that the pain has been for naught, any more than the beauty has been.
I just got two books I ordered today. I am working up a paper to present to the parole board to ask them NOT to let the Trojan Horse P out of prison…he comes up for parole in April, the 21st. I ordered “Predators, Pedophiles Rapists, and other Sex offenders, Who they are, How they operate, and How we can Protect ourselves and Our Children,” by Anna C. Salter, PhD and another one which is a clinical risk assessment for violent offenders for health and psych professionals. I am hoping to get some good statistics and other research data from these books to give a “scientific” tone to my petition to the parole board. Wish me luck.
Since he is also a convicted child molester (3 victims, 2 below age 12) I am going to base my petition on his chances for repeat offenses. Though Dr. Salter speaks in her book of Psychopaths with some knowledge, she doesn’t seem to label each of these predators as a P, which I find a bit strange, as I would think that 99.9% of the pedophiles would be a P just by the nature of their crimes. Her statistics are enough to “curl your hair without a perm”
I’m having a bit of a time trying to read her book without grinding the caps off my teeth, as she talks about the MINOR percentage of people who actually molest children who are actually prosecuted even though there is little doubt that they are guilty, plus, the many “psychologists” who “interview” them and by nothing but an “interview” in which the P “acts nice” that the psychologists say “Oh, he couldn’t have done that, he was SO NICE in my office”–DUH! Her book was written in 2003. Apparently, though, she shares the frustration that we all do that Ps (and in her case specifically ones that are rapists and child molesters) “get away” with it more often than not.
Having actually personally known Charles “Jackie”Walls III from Arkansas who was a scout leader who molested over 1500 kids over a 20 yr period, including one he got to murder his family because after years of being molested the kid had told his parents, and the kid did murder his parents and sister, which eventually led to Jackie being arrested and given life plus “forever”–Jack’s nephew committed suicide…he had also been molested. There was a one-hour “true crime” special about Jackie on television as well.
I never liked Jackie and thought he was a horse’s butt, but never in my life would I have suspected that he would harm a child. Our living history group also had a state parks employee who was arrested in a child porno sting and went to prison, but the parks dept hushed it up. I only knew because I have many friends in the parks department. When he got out, the first thing he did was go to work for a museum working with little kids, and back into our organization also working with kids. I got him kicked out of our organization, and he was fired from his job at the museum when they were informed that he was an ex=convict. It amazes me that so many organizations do not do back ground checks on people working with children.
My son D works for the BSA part of the year and they fortunately do more to protect kids from predators than most organizations dealing with children.
If you think WE (adults) suffer at the hands of Ps, I can’t even imagine how children must suffer at their hands.
Thank you again for the James Kavanaugh passage, and you are right, “we are not amongst wolves anymore” (((hugs)))
You’re welcome. Well, in the world we obviously still are amongst wolves…or rather, they are amongst US. But hopefully here, we aren’t.
Child molesters are the worst kind of scum on the earth, and that was always one of the reasons I never wanted to move anyone in here when my kids were small. Someone lived with me once for a period of a few months many, many years ago and in the back of my head it was always a thought not to let him alone with them. You just never know. It probably would have been perfectly fine, but most child sexual assault is perpetrated by someone the child (and often the family) thinks they know well and trusts.
What is the BSA?
BSA is Boy Scouts of America.
The statistics I am reading in this book are mind boggling!
The NUMBER of victims of each of the “caught” molesters is horrifying—and how seldom they are caught, something like only 3%. Sheesh!
I have had knowledge of two rapes of children one 5 and the other 8 and NEITHER OF THESE WAS PROSECUTED. Both kids were credible, and there was physical evidence as well.
The author’s horror is that KNOWN pedophiles are not prosecuted even with good evidence. Her book was published in 2003, so this is NOT OLD INFORMATION.
This woman has devoted her career to this subject, written books on it, is “THE EXPERT” on it and recognized world wide.
One in three girl children will be molested, and one in six male children. BY ADULTS.
The Trojan-Horse-Psychopath that my son sent to invade our family is convicted on 3 counts, so by her statistics, that means he has gotten away with a minimum of 97 MORE EVENTS. The most he can spend under the last sentence is about another two years in prison, but I am determined to see that he at least spends THAT long in prison.
If I have the knowledge and information to keep him there, I feel that if I don’t exercise that to the fullest extent I can, that ANY CHILD he hurts because I sat by and let him get out earlier without trying, is on my conscience.
I have no doubt that he is seeking other victims, as when I got the “rap sheet” on him, I went to the neighbors around the little rent house he was renting from me, and he had been being “friendly” with the neighborhood kids and inviting them over. One stay-at-home-mother with a 12 year old son had seen this “nice guy” who moved into the neighborhood take an “interest” in her son, but she did not suspect a thing. I don’t think that he actually harmed this child, but I have NO DOUBT THAT HE PLANNED TO. Otherwise, why would a 40 year old man with a history of sexual predation have an “interest” in being around a 12 year old?
The BSA employee and volunteer training states that NO adult should ever be ALONE with a child. Even if you must talk or counsel with a child “privately” you do it within a visual range of another staff member so that the other staff member can SEE the child and you.
Of course a pedophile can find ways around this, but at least the BSA is making every effort to stop it as much as possible.
When the member of our living history group was exposed (by me) I went to the board of directors to get him tossed out, but I was surprised that the MEN on the board, since he had never been actually convicted of TOUCHING a child, (only child pornography) didn’t want to kick him out, but the women, bless their hearts, rose up in revolt and he was booted.
The men said “well, he has paid his debt to society” DUH??
I also informed the museum where he worked with kids, and they canceled his contract. But I noticed on the Internet the other day that he has a “company” that consults with 4-H children now. His wife, who is a school teacher, stayed with him after his arrest and incarceration, which makes me think that she is either another victim or she is involved as well.
Certainly, her being a teacher, gives him a nice group of victims to choose from.
Yes, the “wolves” inhabit the world, and there are probably a few lurking here as well…but over all I do feel safe here and validated and comforted that there are good people in this world. Sometimes it is all too easy to focus only on the negative things and people in the world, and lose the peace and joy of the positive things and the positive people. Finding a balance is important. How CAN we heal without a balance of accepting the negative without letting it turn us into a depressed negative person who cannot enjoy or even see the positives of the world?
On another blog I had a response from another blogger who said (paraphrase) “don’t give me lessons in philosophy 101 and psychology 101, just tell me how to heal and get over this pain” I realize how desperate she was, I’ve been that desperate myself, but I think that the philosophy AND the spiritual AND the psychology are ALL integral parts of the healing process.