A sociopath is someone who has a pervasive and persistent disregard for the rights and feelings of others. This disregard is manifested in the antisocial behavior sociopaths show. While we usually think of antisocial behavior as criminal, not all antisocial acts are illegal. A person who slips up once is not a sociopath. Sociopathy is a lifestyle.
Since humans are designed to live in society, a healthy personality has prosocial inclinations. Therefore, people who are pervasively antisocial are disordered in the sense that they are not the norm (thank God). Although antisocial behaviors are observable actions like lying, stealing and assault, there are personality traits that cause antisocial behavior. It should come as no surprise that people who have a sense of entitlement, over-rate their own greatness and have poor self-control are more likely to hurt others and show pervasive antisocial behavior.
The American Psychiatric Association has defined a group of personality disorders it calls “cluster B”. According to a recent paper* by German psychiatrist, Christian Huchzermeier, M.D., “ The cluster includes disturbances of personality that go hand in hand with emotional dysregulation phenomena, a tendency towards aggressive—impulsive loss of control, egoistic exploitation of interpersonal relationships, and a tendency to overestimate one’s own importance.”
The disorders of “cluster B” go together because what underlies them is a disturbance in three developmentally acquired abilities I have called The Inner Triangle. These abilities are:
Ability to Love
Impulse Control
Moral Reasoning
These abilities that a child gains during development are a triangle because the development of each depends on the other two. A child begins to acquire ability to love in the first year of life, impulse control begins in the second year of life. At two years of age there is already a link between ability to love and impulse control. Children with the best impulse control also are the most loving/empathetic. Moral reasoning begins in the third year of life and its development depends on a loving nature and impulse control. Similarly the most moral kids are also the most loving and self-controlled.
I think of the cluster B disorders as different manifestations of damage to the inner triangle. I think of sociopaths as individuals who completely lack ability to love and have impaired impulse control and moral reasoning.
Given the Inner Triangle, it should come as no surprise that it can be difficult to find people who have only one cluster B personality disorder. For that reason individuals with antisocial personality, narcissistic personality, borderline personality and histrionic personality often have symptoms of the other disorders. If someone gets a diagnosis of only one of these, it doesn’t mean that the person doesn’t also have one or all of the others. The person making the diagnosis simply thought that the one chosen best described the person. You should know there is a gender bias in diagnosis such that women are often labeled “borderline.” These women can also be sociopaths who leave a trail of victimized friends, lovers and children in their wakes.
A recent study reported in Behavioral Science and the Law, “The Relationship Between DSM-IV Cluster B Personality Disorders and Psychopathy According to Hare’s Criteria: Clarification and Resolution of Previous Contradictions” examines the relationship between psychopathic personality traits as defined by the screening version of the PCL and Cluster B personality disorders. The authors of this study were careful to examine people who had only one cluster B disorder. They found psychopathy to be associated with all cluster B disorders.
The authors conclude:
“One clinical implication of our results, nevertheless, is that in cases where a cluster B personality disorder is diagnosed a high psychopathy value is to be expected, especially where antisocial, borderline or narcissistic personality disorder is involved. The PCL score is a better predictor of subsequent events, such as problems during (criminal) custody or a relapse into delinquency, than a diagnosis of a DSM-IV personality disorder, especially in forensic populations; therefore, an additional investigation with the PCL should be carried out, if a cluster B personality disorder has been diagnosed.”
It is important for Lovefraud readers to be aware of this study especially if there is a divorce/custody proceeding or a cluster B personality disorder has been diagnosed. Many people might think that if the partner has been “diagnosed borderline” or “diagnosed narcissistic” that means the partner is not a psychopath/sociopath. This study suggests otherwise. IF YOU ARE INVOLVED WITH SOMEONE WHO HAS THESE YOU HAVE TO CONSIDER THEIR HARMFUL BEHAVIOR AS AN INDICATION OF PSYCHOPATHY/SOCIOPATHY. There are some people with cluster B, histrionic, borderline and narcissistic disorders who are not highly antisocial. But if the person is lying, cheating and manipulating, that is antisocial behavior. This behavior in the context of any cluster B means the person is potentially very dangerous. As the authors state:
“Screening for PCL-based psychopathy can also be important for general psychiatric patients with a DSM-IV personality disorder, so that potential difficulties in the course of their treatment can be anticipated and this comorbidity can be targeted in the planning of therapy. Patients with both a DSM-IV personality disorder and PCL-based psychopathy can exhibit behavior that is particularly dangerous to therapy (Stafford & Cornell, 2003).”
If you have been diagnosed with borderline personality and reading this frightens you, I am sorry. You can improve by working on your inner triangle. Talk to your therapist about DBT a treatment that is very effective in improving the state of the Inner Triangle in people who are motivated to do it.
*The reference for the paper discussed is Behav. Sci. Law 25: 901—911 (2007).
DJ- Im glad you are holding up so well and that you get to have one of your bests friends with you 24/7!! Keep on top of the police until you get a detective assigned. Advocated for yourself til you are blue in the face!! Sounds like you already are, and have alot of support from family friends and co-workers. The waiting is the hardest part, but your getting closer to justice being served each and every day, and when you need some healing insight or words or encouragement we are ALL here. (Prayers for you) Take care of yourself!!!
This neuroscientist’s story has stayed with me. I personally believe that one well timed spanking or any other major stressors in the first three years of life can trigger what is already genetically present and certainly sustained maltreatment is strongly contributive.
We begin a series today on the criminal brain, and how breakthroughs in neuroscience are changing the way some think about guilt and innocence. One pioneer is James Fallon. He’s a neuroscientist at the University of California at Irvine. For the past couple of decades, Fallon has studied the brains of murderers.
Recently, Fallon made a startling discovery. NPR’s Barbara Bradley Hagerty profiles the scientist with a family secret.
BARBARA HAGERTY: Jim Fallon spends a lot of time inside the heads of psychopaths. He studies the biological basis for behavior, and one of his specialties is to try to figure out how – say, a killer’s brain differs from yours and mine. It’s cutting-edge academic research but recently, it became intensely personal when Fallon had a conversation with his then-88-year-old mother, Jenny.
Dr. JAMES FALLON (Neuroscientist, University of California Irvine): It was four years ago, and we were at a family barbecue in the backyard – it was in the summertime. And she said, what are you doing now? Are you still doing those talks?
Ms. JENNY FALLON: And I says, Jim, why don’t you find out about your father’s relatives? I says, I think there were some cuckoos back there.
(Soundbite of laughter)
HAGERTY: So Fallon investigated, and it turns out that one of his direct great-grandfathers, Thomas Cornell, killed his mother in the 1600s. And that line of Cornells produced seven other alleged murderers.
Dr. FALLON: There’s this whole lineage of very violent people, killers, ending with Lizzy Borden.
(Soundbite of music)
Unidentified Children: (Singing) Lizzy Borden took an ax, gave her mother 40 whacks.
HAGERTY: Fallon was a little spooked by his ancestry, so he set out to see if anyone in his family had the brain of a serial killer. He knows what to look for, since he’s studied the brains of dozens of psychopaths. He calls up an image of a brain on his computer screen. It’s lit up with patches of color.
Dr. FALLON: Here is a brain that’s not normal. You can see where this is – this yellow here and red here, and look at it. It’s almost nothing here.
HAGERTY: He’s pointing to the orbital cortex. It’s completely dark. That’s the part of the brain that’s right above the eyes, and this is the area that Fallon and other scientists believe is involved with ethical behavior, moral decision-making and controlling one’s impulses.
Dr. FALLON: People with low activity are either freewheeling types or sociopaths.
HAGERTY: Fallon says that’s because the orbital cortex puts a brake on another part of the brain called the amygdala, which is involved with aggression and appetites. If there’s an imbalance, if the orbital cortex isn’t doing its job -maybe because it was damaged or was just born that way…
Dr. FALLON: What’s left? What takes over? Well, the area of the brain that drives your id-type behaviors – which is rage, violence, eating, sex, drinking.
HAGERTY: Now, nobody in his family has problems with those behaviors, but he persuaded 10 of his close relatives to submit to a brain scan. Then he examined the images, comparing them with the brains of psychopaths. His wife’s scan was normal. His mother, normal. Siblings, normal. Kids, normal.
Dr. FALLON: And I took a look at my own PET scan and saw something a little disturbing that I did not talk about.
HAGERTY: What he didn’t want to reveal was that his orbital cortex looks inactive.
Dr. FALLON: If you look at the PET scan, I look just like one of those killers.
HAGERTY: Fallon cautions that this is a young field. Scientists are just beginning to understand this area of the brain. Still, he says, the evidence is accumulating that some people’s brains predispose them toward violence, and that psychopathic tendencies may be passed down from one generation to another.
Which brings us to the next part of his family experiment. Along with brain scans, Fallon also tested each family member’s DNA for genes that are associated with violence and impulsivity. He looked at 12 genes and zeroed in on something called the MAOA gene. It’s also known as the warrior gene because it regulates serotonin in the brain.
Serotonin affects your mood, and many scientists believe that if you have a certain version of the warrior gene, your brain won’t respond to the calming effects of serotonin.
Dr. FALLON: So this is the MAO gene. And we can see here my daughter, son, daughter, daughter, brother, brother, wife, brother.
HAGERTY: Everyone in his family has the low-aggression variant, except…
Dr. FALLON: I’m like 100 percent here. I have the pattern, a risky pattern. In a sense, I’m a born killer.
HAGERTY: Fallon laughs as he says this. He doesn’t believe his fate, or anyone else’s, is entirely determined by genes. They merely tip you in one direction or another. And yet…
Dr. FALLON: When I put the two and two together, it was, frankly, a little disturbing. You know, you start to look at yourself and you say, I may be a sociopath. I don’t think I am, but this looks exactly like psychopaths, sociopaths that I’ve seen before.
Ms. DIANE FALLON: I wasn’t too concerned. I really wasn’t. I mean, I’ve known him since I was 12.
HAGERTY: That’s Jim Fallon’s wife, Diane. She probably doesn’t need to worry, according to scientists who study this area. They believe that brain patterns and genetic makeup are not enough to make anyone a psychopath. You need a third ingredient: childhood abuse.
Ms. D. FALLON: And fortunately, he wasn’t abused as a young person, so I’ve lived to be, you know, a ripe old age so far.
(Soundbite of laughter)
HAGERTY: Jim Fallon says he had a great childhood. And, he says, this journey through his brain has changed the way he thinks about nature and nurture. He used to believe that genes and brain function determine everything about us. But now, he says, he thinks his childhood may have made all the difference.
Dr. FALLON: We’ll never know. But had I been abused, I think we wouldn’t be sitting here today.
HAGERTY: As to the psychopaths he studies, he feels some compassion for these people who got, as he put it, a bad roll of the dice.
Dr. FALLON: It’s an unlucky day when all of these three things come together in a bad way. And I think one has to empathize with what happened to them.
HAGERTY: But what about people who rape and murder? Should we feel empathy for them? Should they be allowed to argue in court that their brains made them do it? Tomorrow, we look at the brain of a psychopath and how scientific discoveries are changing our notions of morality, crime and punishment.
Barbara Bradley Hagerty, NPR News.
whybother:
Wow! Thanks so much for posting this. Amazing information.
You’re welcome, Louise.
I have said for many years that people that are loved and nurtured properly as children do not grow up to club baby seals even to “feed their families”. It just isn’t in them.
Thanks for posting that Whybother, I had read that and he is a great researcher, BTW! It IS AMAZING information…and I have been studying this kind of thing recently, it is really amazing just how much information is out there on this subject.
Read Dr. Barbara OAkley’s stuff, she is coming out wiht a new book in August, I need to check and see if she has it out yet. I usually wait to buy them until they ahve been out long enough to get a used copy, but I WANT her new book NOW!!!! Can’t wait!
Dr. Simon Baron-Cohen is another one and I just reviewed one of his books. He is a researcher on empathy and Autisim but also on psychopathy.
I get frustrated sometimes as my short term memory is NOT what it was before the plane crash that resulted in my husband’s death in 2004, so I have to read slower and pay more attention and then I still have trouble remembering DETAILS. Getting better, at least I can read now, there was a while when I couldn’t read at all. PTSD does a number on your brain and memory for sure.
Glad you are here whybother! I love discussing the research going on. I’d love to be around in another 100 years to see what they find out!
Edit: I may have to agree to disagree with you about the “clubbing baby seals”–I don’t believe that lack of empathy is what makes people kill animals to support themselves. When I was a child and the milk cow’s calf was sent to the butcher I cried, and when the pig went to the butcher I cried, but I learned as well that there are some things that we can do in order to live.
Dr. Baron-Cohen’s book that I just reviewed talks about how we learn to have “subjective empathy” and that we learn to turn off empathy at times in order to survive. Empathy is NOT an “either have it or don’t” affair, but instead is on a Bell Curve arrangement in which there are times we must turn it off for our own survival. Some people can do that and others can’t, but not all people who can club baby seals are heartless brutes, and not all people who cannot even bear the thought of eating meat are good people with empathy. It is all on the Bell Curve.
I agree that there are cultural contexts that encourage/ advocate animal abuse as acceptable but doing the dirty work with your own hands is different and there are other ways to earn a living and certainly more humane ways to kill animals than clubbing. Have you ever seen slaughterhouse footage where the workers laugh as they throw piglets against the wall and beat them with metal rods? Unfortunately that is NOT the exemption in mass slaughter facilities. There’s even a push for federal legislation that makes it a fed crime to take photographs of abuses at slaughterhouses. The funders of our “democracy” (Tyson Foods, etc.) know these abuses are systematic and do not want them documented. My argument is there are certain things that you can turn off (subjective empathy) but regardless of why you turn them off, those same and certain instances make you categorically a sociopath.
Then I guess I qualify as a psychopath because I kill my own meat. In fact, I won’t eat meat I didn’t personally “know” before it died.
I won’t get into an argument with you about Tyson Foods, though, because I AGREE with you on that one, but I’m no bunny hugger by any means.
Actually I am aware of the very abuses you mention in farming as practiced by factory farms, which is one reason that I refuse to eat meat I didn’t know. I also know, though, that many “animal rights groups” have actually caused the suffering of hundreds of thousands of animals with their “feel good” legislation, such as the regulations against horse slaughter for human consumption in the US in 2007, which now results in those same horses being sent to Mexico for “humane” slaughter there, or them being turned loose to fend for themselves in the national forest because their owners can’t afford to feed them. NOT humane, actually.
However, until you have killed your own meat I personally suggest that you stop eating meat entirely.
Don’t cuss a farmer with your mouth full.
And, yea, ya pulled my trigger.
I don’t eat meat and I did not intend this to be an off-topic rant about the virtues of not eating meat. I am not the vegan police nor I do not believe all meat is unhealthy and should not be eaten by humans.
As I stated, there are cultural expectations and differences that I try to take into account whenever I discuss complex issues aiming for clarity and understanding and I agree that family farmed raised animals are often, though NOT always, more fairly treated and more humanely killed- if not sent to agribusiness slaughterhouses. The problem is that in 2011 there is simply not enough land nor desire by the people to raise their own animals so they need to pay someone to do it and they don’t want to pay a lot so that fosters the guy that will do it for cheap, which then encourages the sociopath that gets off by slamming piglets in the nearest wall.
I have lobbied for and against humane legislation on the national and local levels for almost thirty years and I am fully aware of how some maybe well-intentioned legislation has the exact opposite effect, as in the case of horse slaughter/meat. And to be clear, “slaughter” as we know it on factory farms is anything BUT humane, here or in Mexico but it can go from hell to HELL depending on the country and who’s in charge.
None of this was my point, however. My point is that one of the very first, if not the first, indicator of sociopathy IS animal abuse and, that is clearly documented by years of peer reviewed research, and, further, I firmly believe that sociopaths often grow up to seek jobs that encourage their already innate tendencies.
Killing an animal for food is one thing. Torturing it and killing it for FUN is another.
Sociopathy isn’t “categorical”. It’s all encompassing. I think it would be more appropriate to liken Tyson Foods, the corporation- to a psychopath ( A La Robert Hare… http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ui9C6xVpVf0 )… profit over animal welfare
That said, raising an animal humanely and slaughtering it for food ( humanely, of course ) is in my opinion, an honorable way of living. It’s what humans did before the institution of factory farming came on the scene ( unfortunately ) . Difficult? Yes.. but at least that creature has had the capacity of living a full and wonderful life. The closest thing most people have to a farm these days is their local butcher or market. Their hands are “free” of the blood and the act of slaughter but they’re still eating the meat. It’s not something that a lot of people can stomach ( slaughtering animals for food ) , for that fact- I think ( non-exposure ).
Categorical means unequivocal.
As I stated, I am not the vegan police but there are plenty of things to eat other than meat. We were gatherers and hunters, not hunters and gatherers. Meat was a “condiment”, not the main meal for hundreds of thousands, if not millions of years.
Again, this is all missing my point. There has been reference to subjective empathy on this site. I am arguing that we are all guilty of that on some level and, whereas I am, as I’m sure you are, seeking deep, complex understanding of what makes people do what they do, it is certainly within that realm to discuss animal abuse as an indicator of sociopathy and how different segments of society view abuse/use differently. I am far from the first person to point the connection between animal abuse and sociopathy. I am talking about people that take PLEASURE from harming animals.