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.
BloggerT7165
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.
Indigoblue
MY Psycopath Scored 100 and 10 percent He got a Gold star an A+ and got to go to the front of the line when the warden Hollard CHOW!
Ox Drover
Dear Anna,
There are BIG genetic components in psychopathic behavior and personality disorder, PLUS environmental. It sounds like your psychopath got the DOUBLE WHAMMY from genetics AND environment. Psychopaths are not good parents, so they pass on the genes sometimes and give the kid a miserable up bringing so the kid doesn’t have a snow ball’s chance of turning out to be anything except a psychopath.
My psychopath son had what I think is a fairly good up bringing, far from perfect, but I was a good parent. He was a psychopath anyway. My ADHD son who you would have thought was more likely to be a psychopath turned out to be a very caring person. Go figure.
You can’t “hang” all behavior good or bad on upbringing as we all have CHOICES in how we choose to behave toward others (with the exception of some people who are legally insane and out of touch with reality). The Ps have a choice because they KNOW RIGHT FROM WRONG, they just prefer WRONG.
But the genetic component doesn’t in my opinion give them a free ride any more than the genetic component toward alcoholism or drug addiction give the person a free ride. They also can choose yea or nay.
Tood
I cannot imagine it, but I suppose it is true. People can live a lifetime without knowing an S/P.
Aren’t those of us posting here just the lucky ones? Ha!
I’m going to have to weigh in on the “they’re all alike” side. Because of sites like this one, and learning all the predictable S/P behaviors, I was able to get away from mine fairly cleanly. No violence, no stalking, etc. Because they are so alike, and so predictable, I was able to anticipate what mine would do before he did it.
Indigoblue
I second this Opinion !Todd well said
holywatersalt
Plus those scales are administered by a professional within the confines of a limited relationship. Live with one, be the intimate of one…they’d be off the scales.
Jen2008
Well, a person could have every single trait on the PCL-R at the Level 1 range that applied to them and still score only a 20 on the PCL-R, thus they would not be a psychopath. They would just be high in psychopathic disturbance traits.
Ox Drover
DEa Jen,
Yea, well there has to be a cut off at some point. Just like a person w ho is “mentally retarded” I think the cut off is 75, legally, so if a person scores 74, he is MR and “not guilty” of his crimes, but if he is 76, then they can execute him. Of course the scores on an IQ test are variable depending on lots of things. So, it isn’t “fair” that the guy who scores 74 gets a pass and the guy who scores 76 gets executed, but in order to make it “objective” rather than “subjective” they have to put some kind of “score” to it.
I personally think 30 is TOO HIGH for the score, and it should be lower. But I don’t have any control over what it is set at, so I have to just go with the flow. If it would get some of them or the worst of them off the streets it would be better than what we have now.
Jen2008
I think for research purposes a cutoff score of 25 is sometimes used. Of course, a person who scores 20 on the PCL-R is gonna have a high number of psychopathic traits and be problematic. My only point was that a person can have all the traits to some extent, but not exhibit them to the degree that would be needed to qualify for a diagnosis of a true psychopath.
Jen2008
It is my understanding that in a formal diagnosis they also use collaborating information/records such as criminal records, school records, employment records, financial records etc. plus conduct interviews with family etc. in addition to just talking to and testing the potential psychopath themselves.