Two Lovefraud readers brought an article in the latest issue of The New Yorker magazine to my attention. It’s entitled Suffering Souls—the search for the roots of psychopathy, by John Seabrook.
The article starts off describing the work of a researcher, Dr. Kent Kiehl, who is using an fMRI machine to study the brains of prisoners in the Western New Mexico Correctional Facility, searching for physical indications of psychopathy. The author provides a brief history of the evolution of scientific understanding about this personality disorder, and describes today’s conflicting opinions about it. Seabrook reviewed the literature and interviewed experts, including Dr. Robert Hare.
All in all, the article provides an excellent summary of the state of scientific research about psychopathy. If you want to understand how the researchers think about this personality disorder, I recommend that you read it.
Never met a psychopath
Although the story is comprehensive, one of the points made me think that we at Lovefraud have a better understanding of psychopaths than researchers.
“Unlike most academic psychopathy researchers, Kiehl has spent many hours in the company of his subjects. When he meets colleagues at conferences, he told me, “they always ask, ”˜What are they like?’ These are guys who have spent twenty years studying psychopaths and never met one.” Although the number of psychopaths who are not in prisons is thought to exceed the number who are—if the one-per-cent figure is correct, there are more than a million psychopaths at large in the United States alone—they are much harder to identify in the outside world. Some are “successful psychopaths,” holding down good jobs in many types of industries. It is generally only if they commit a crime and enter the criminal-justice system that they become available for research.”
This is scary—many researchers in psychopathy never met one? We should consider ourselves better informed, because we’ve all had extremely close encounters with these predators. And we know exactly how the ones who are not in jail behave.
More information is needed about psychopaths in the community. That’s why our contributions to the study, Victimizations, coping, and social support of adult survivors of psychopaths, are so important. If you haven’t yet filled out the survey, be sure to do it.
Parents and children
According to the New Yorker article, Dr. Robert Hare does not approve of using his Psychopathy Checklist-Revised (PCL-R) in child custody disputes. Although I can understand where Dr. Hare is coming from—his test was designed specifically to predict recidivism among offenders—it is still the gold standard in identifying psychopaths. As we at Lovefraud know, psychopaths make terrible parents. Unfortunately, there is no scientific documentation—yet—of what we know to be true.
This points to the need for more research on psychopaths who are not in jail. First of all, we need to be able to identify them, especially in family court cases. Secondly, we need research documenting that psychopaths do, indeed, harm their children. I know this cause is very important to Dr. Liane Leedom, and we hope to contribute to more thorough understanding of these problems.
The article also touches on the issues of children with psychopathic traits. On the one hand, it states that psychologists don’t want to label children as psychopaths. On the other hand, there is some evidence that children with psychopathic traits can be helped, “if you catch it young enough.” That means they need to be identified.
It’s a circular problem. There is a very strong genetic component to this personality disorder, so it is crucial to identify psychopathic parents, because their children may be at risk of also becoming psychopaths. We also need to identify children who have inherited the dispostion to the personality disorder and are, in fact, at risk. That means diagnosing them so we can try to help them.
The issue of at-risk children is not one in which we should be squeamish or politically correct about identifying the disorder. Lives are at stake.
Mental illness?
In scanning prisoners’ brains, Dr. Kent Kiehl hopes to find a biological cause for the psychopathic personality disorder. By finding a cause, there is the chance of developing drugs to treat the disorder.
This raises philosophical and ethical questions. What if he succeeds? What if he proves that psychopathy is a form of mental illness? But what if people are diagnosed and treatment doesn’t work? If psychopathy is a mental illness, does that mean that these predators aren’t responsible for their crimes?
I don’t have the answers to these questions. But I do know that here at Lovefraud, we are building a valuable knowledge base beyond that of the scientific researchers. We know how psychopaths behave when they are free, out in the community, and doing what predators do.
Precisly Donna!
Never met one ahuh!? I will bet my HOUSE that they have met many! they just never knew it ! LOVE jere
Great Article!
On the topic of the researchers never having met a member of their subject, I sure hope the folks researching open heart surgery and c-section techniques and writing documents on their “findings” have had hands-on experience. Good gravy.
This was a really good article. The problem with socios and psychopaths, as I see it, is that plenty of them break the law, they just are too crafty to get caught. Or if they do, they somehow manage to worm their way out of serious punishment. My ex P has been arrested numerous times for varying offenses, but he has never seen the inside of an actual prison. For theft about 25 years ago he spent a few days in the county jail, then he was sentenced to probation. He has spent a few days here or there through the years in the city or county jail, but never prison. It’s amost as if they are gifted at getting out of trouble.
He scams people out of money too, but the criminal justice system is so overloaded those kinds of cases aresn’t usually given much emphasis, and I think socios and psychopaths know this. It’s the perfect crime for them. So, IMO, most of them do break the law repeatedly, but alot of them just don’t end up in prison for it.
I hope these studies will eventually be useful in somehow assessing children so they can be helped at the stage when it is more possible to prevent the full blown disorder.
I want to play devil’s advocate here on a few things and want to make it clear I am playing devils advocate.
Any theory/explanation as to why these people do what they do is incomplete if it ignores one of if not the most important variables, the psychopath himself/herself. Each person is a unique product of nature and nurture. What impacts one person may have little to no impact on another person. There are a number of factors that contribute to the a person being a psychopath and there is no single element that is the cause. Research is slowly proving this to be true. To quote from some research released this month:
“An appreciation of the idea that differences in gene expression can occur over vastly different time scales helps understand some of the complex relationships between genes, brain and behavior,” Robinson said.
The picture that is emerging from these and other studies suggests that social signals can have a profound effect on when and how genes function.
An organism’s genes, its environment, the social information it receives, “all these things interact,” said Clayton. “Experience is constantly coming back in to the level of the DNA and twiddling the dials and the knobs.”
We should consider ourselves better informed, because we’ve all had extremely close encounters with these predators. And we know exactly how the ones who are not in jail behave.
I would say that we should consider ourselves better informed only about the ones we personally have interacted with. I say this because it is a mistake to try to say that all psychopaths behave the same way. It would be the same as saying we are better informed about depression because my spouse has it or better informed about ADD because my child has it. There may be behaviors and symptoms that some have in common but each person is unique and each combination of people is unique. What I think people who have dealt with psychopaths have that is golden is their information about how the psychopath acted with them. If a person knows I am a researcher they often act differently with me, if they see me as just some guy on the street they act differently, if they see me as their chosen prey they act differently. I have known psychopaths who have acted one way with one victim and another way with a different victim. Anecdotal evidence can be of value but it is dangerous and wrong to rely on it alone.
In the article it says:
But the problem is that “psychopathic behavior—”egocentricity, for example, or lack of realistic long-term goals—is present in far more than one per cent of the adult male population. This blurriness in the psychopathic profile can make it possible to see psychopaths everywhere or nowhere.
I think this is something that should be brought out more often.
Dangerous mentally ill people are “confined” today, and people who are “not guilty by reason of mental illness or defect” can be kept incarcerated or confined for the safety of the public. Many dangerously mentally ill people are NOT confined, but at the same time, there has to be some way to PROTECT society from the predation by these people regardless of what the “label” is.
Years ago a neighbor of ours was probably psychotic and he killed my cousin (in front of his 8 yr old son) then walked to town about 18 miles and told the sheriff what he had done, then told the sheriff that he better be “getting on home that it was time to milk, and he had a few more people he needed to dispose of as well.” He was kept confined for most of the rest of his natural life, they did let him out when he was very elderly and dying from tB. He escaped once and was out for a few weeks, and since my grandfather was one of the people this man wanted to kill and named, my grandfather went armed until the man was recaught. There is no doubt in my mind that this man was out of touch with reality, and did not know right from wrong, and because of his violence, he was kept locked up for the protection of society and any future victims. He could not have been “executed” because he really didn’t know the difference in right and wrong, but the bottom line was the same, he was kept in lock up with other violent and “crazy” people. Since at that time there were no real drugs for “curing” or “controlling” insanity, the ONLY way to keep him and others safe was to keep him in Rogers hall, which is the wing of the Arkansas State Hospital for the Criminally insane where this type of person is confined. I did a short stint there as a student observer.
Do you think that people any people can only love to the capacity that they were showed?
I would think that about my sociopath. His mother is cold, she has nothing to do with our son or even any of her grandchildren. His father moved away and left him when he was young. His father did the same to him as he is doing to my son, and he is cold like his mother. He has no concept of family or even love. He is always telling me something is better than nothing in regards to my son. He blames me for not seem him, but he fails to realize or even see that he choose to live the way he does. I am scared about my son, I never what him to be like his father. I want him to know family and what love is.
I would disagree-know a psycho – you know psychos.
Just as you see a broken leg, you know a broken leg.
They have different degrees of acting out and tools based on intelligence, status, looks etc. but there are many defining characteristics. Pity play is one, charm, hypocrisy etc…
I think their similarities are why we often think we know the same people!
http://holywatersalt.blogspot.com/
So does that mean there are tollerable PSY/SOC? a degree of abuse in a relationship that is tollerable?
They are searching the river today by my house! The hellicpters have been sitting there like giant dragonflys waiting to pounce on a bone! First thing this morning then back again for the noon a clock lunch hour! Casey Anthony is probably not one of the Divers ? I bet that water is cold it was 50″ here this mornin!
a degree of abuse in a relationship that is tollerable?
Of course not. But there is a difference between someone who is abusive and someone who is a psychopath. All psychopaths are abusive but not all abusers are psychopaths. And psychopaths are not abusive to everyone they interact with. So just because someone displays some psychopathic traits does not mean they are a psychopath.