Dr. Robert Hare, who did seminal work in identifying psychopaths, refers to them as “intraspecies predators.” This prompted questions from a Lovefraud reader who asked,
- If psychopaths are indeed natural predators (by implication, their design is part of nature’s plan to maintain some balance) then would we ever be able to weed them out of society?
- Do they have a purpose in the natural order of things?
In this article, I’m going to address the second question. Then, next week, I’ll suggest an answer to the first question.
I don’t know about a purpose, but there are researchers who believe psychopaths are around us today because they survived the natural selection process of human evolution.
These researchers call psychopathy “a nonpathological, reproductively viable, alternate life history strategy.” This theory is outlined in Coercive and Precocious Sexuality as a Fundamental Aspect of Psychopathy, a paper published in 2007 by Grant T. Harris, PhD; Marnie E. Rice, PhD; N. Zoe Hilton, PhD; Martin L. Lalumiere, PhD; and Vernon L. Quinsey, PhD.
Evolution
Let’s talk about the evolution idea first. The authors write that our distant ancestors probably formed stable groups, characterized by cooperation and adherence to rules, which enabled early mankind to survive and flourish. However, some humans survived through cheating and exploiting others—the alternative life strategy.
Grant et. al. write that from childhood, psychopathic personalities are fundamentally different from others, but the differences are not the result of a medical failure or injury. They point out that pregnancy difficulties can be related to schizophrenia and mental retardation, but not psychopathy. “While many adverse medical conditions and injuries lead to antisocial and violent behavior, our selectionist hypothesis suggests that they do not cause psychopathy,” they write.
The early psychopaths—cheaters then as now—put a lot of energy into acquiring sexual partners, and were willing to use deception and coercion to do it. As a result, they produced a lot of offspring. Even if early psychopaths died young because then, as now, they probably engaged in high-risk behavior, their liberal procreation was enough to get the hereditary train rolling.
Sex and criminal behavior
Psychopaths first have sex at a young age, have many partners, and are uncommitted in sexual relationships. Studies show that people who have this approach to sex also are more likely to engage in criminal and violent behavior.
Some people, called life course persistent offenders, Grant et. al. write, “begin aggressive and antisocial conduct at very young ages and persist at rates higher than any other offenders throughout the lifespan.”
People tend to think that their problem is poor social learning, that individuals who break laws against crime and violence also break social norms regarding sex. But research has also shown that delinquency and antisocial behavior are associated with early onset of puberty and sexual activity. Young people don’t learn, or decide, when to mature sexually. So why is there a connection between early onset of puberty and crime?
The study
Grant et. al. believe that “coercive and precocious sexuality” is not a result of the psychopathic personality, but a key to defining it. For the study described in the paper, the researchers predicted “early onset, high frequency and coercive sexuality would be a key, unique and diagnostic feature of psychopathy.”
The researchers studied the case histories of 512 male sex offenders. (Sex offenders were selected because their files generally contain detailed information about their sexual history.) They established the scores of the offenders on the Psychopathy Checklist-Revised (PCL-R). They also looked at the sexual histories of the offenders prior to age 15. A statistical analysis revealed correlations between early and frequent sexual behavior and sexual coercion with general antisocial behavior and elevated PCL-R scores.
“We propose that interpersonal sexual and nonsexual aggression are not best conceived of as the consequence of psychopathic personality traits, but as fundamental aspects of the condition itself,” the authors wrote.
Genetic history
The researchers’ expected that coercive and precocious sexuality were indicators of psychopathy because of their original hypothesis—psychopathy is an alternative life strategy.
“From a theoretical perspective, the present results lend some support to a selectionist hypothesis that psychopathy exists because it has been a heritable and reproductively viable condition during human evolution.”
Psychopaths, in other words, are not physically defective or medically ill. These researchers believe that they are just different, and, because they engaged in a lot of sex, were able to pass on their genes through the millennia.
Read the complete study:
Coercive and Precocious Sexuality as a Fundamental Aspect of Psychopathy
They are what they are
It’s shocking to think that there may be nothing medically wrong with these “intraspecies predators.” But in a way, the idea that psychopaths are pursuing an “alternate life history strategy” dovetails with what we often say here on Lovefraud. Psychopaths are what they are. They are cheaters and exploiters. They take advantage of others because that’s what they do.
Did nature intend this? I don’t know, but they survived.
While researching this story, I came across another paper with an interesting perspective on what to do about it, which I’ll discuss next week.
As I read the first post in this thread I realize there is some truth to that. My ex started having sex at age 11.
Polly (and to anyone else who is worried about me),
I think you didn’t believe me when I said I welcome this. Processing is hard, yes. But what makes it hard is resisting it. We don’t like the feelings. We don’t like the perspectives it opens. We keep spending energy not liking it, until we finally give up and face the feelings, then what they’re telling us about what we’re facing, then the truth. And then how the truth affects everything else.
I once told my Buddhist friend that I sometimes felt like a reed through which the breath of God breathes. That was when I was talking about healing work I did with other people, so it’s not exactly the same thing. But something like it.
Eventually we have to digest reality. Take it into ourselves and let it become part of our understanding. And let go of the all the bits of stuff that are really about resisting it. Reality isn’t good or bad. It just is. Ultimately the meaning of everything is just about where we stand when we view ourselves and life. And the wonderful thing about this whole process is that more we come to accept reality, the more we come to accept ourselves, and the more we appreciate the patterns and how they really do make sense, if we can just detach a bit and get some perspective.
I saw something in myself this week that I’ve known about for a long time. Something that troubled me, but that I thought I’d adequately addressed in my previous self-work, so that it wasn’t going to be a problem anymore. But this time, when I saw it, I saw more than I’d ever seen before. Patterns of behavior, driven by deep hungers, shaped by old damage that had affected every relationship in my life. And they were going to affect every future relationship, until I followed them down to wherever they began and learned what it was I needed so badly. What I’d lost that I still hadn’t come to face in myself.
I said this was a big one. It is. I’m not giving specifics, because I’m still working around it, trying to get it to gel. But I found it in writing to someone else here on LoveFraud. I started speaking from a part of myself that was so well-formed, such a system with its own experiences and beliefs and concrete reality, that I walked away from the computer that night as shocked as if I’d met a time-travelling version of myself on the street.
It’s not that this came out of nowhere. There have been a lot of harbingers. When something is about to surface, there usually are. Challenges that suddenly seem to have lessons inside them, but not quite within reach. Concerns about behaviors that seem to be outside of ordinary logic. A few weeks ago, I bought a half-dozen new textbooks on psychological issues and treatment, because I started to get curious about disassociation and theories of emotional structure. I’ve been edging up to this for a while.
One of the things I’ve written about here is that we are constantly cycling through this path. When we’re getting over a traumatic relationship, it’s easy to see that. We work on the big picture, and get to a certain place with that, and then some new memory pops up that throws us back into the cycle again, because there’s something new we need to learn from it. Getting to acceptance and learning with any of it is a good thing. But these relationships tend to be layered, as we are. One insight opens up something else behind it. Sometimes it’s an ah-hah moment, but often it’s something troubling, and we have to go through the whole process of releasing resistance again so we can get to know it, and learn another part of ourselves or another piece of reality about the world.
I know that I’ve written lately about the inadequacy of children to fully process through trauma in the way that an adult can. Our brains are not fully developed, and we don’t have the capacity for perspectives that go beyond primitive need. It’s one of the reasons that caring nurture and a safe environment are so crucial to personality development in our early years. And why it can be so difficult to even imagine being different when we’re older.
It’s one of the reasons that I write here. To open your minds to the possibly of deep recovery, and to draw a map, as best I can, of a path. My objective is to give you confidence that wherever you are on this path has meaning in terms of opening the way to who you are really meant to be.
I am not afraid of this. I’m grateful. Grateful that whatever inner wisdom is at the center of me decided that I was ready for this. Hopeful that this means that I will ultimately be that much closer to the ability to love as I’d like to love. Because that is what this is really about. Love and its meaning in my life.
There will be anger. There will be tears. I sometimes wonder if recovery is not a kind of progression of emotional rooms, that is also a kind of pathway up from the most primitive survival-level processing in our brains, or perhaps the most child-like thinking, up through the part of our brains that are most open and connected the world around us, and also the most able to hold on to and make sense of the wisdom of all the other levels. I sometimes feel like a pilgrim, making a journey through all the layers of myself, carrying this thing that I’m trying to understand and make peace with.
I know you love me. Our gratitude for each other is one of the things that lights up this place. And I hear you worrying about me. But think about this: I am not worried. I know where I’m going, though I don’t know all the adventures I’m going to have getting there. I know that I’m made to get there, no matter how dark some of those rooms may seem or how hard I have to work to learn my way out them. The only thing that could possibly stop me is despair, giving up. And I’m not worried about it. I’ve been there too, and I know that sometimes giving up on ever having a good idea again is necessary to free us.
I know I can’t tell you not to be afraid. But I can tell you that you don’t have to be. It’s one of the main things we learn from all this. It’s fear that makes it scary. Reality is what it is. And we’re built to survive until we don’t. Most of us are going to live a long, long time. And even if we weren’t, the next day or the next five minutes are going to be a lot better if we recognize that our fear is just part of our survival mechanism, something to take seriously if we need to do something to take care of ourselves, but otherwise just one of the may layers of consciousness. It’s one the caring voices inside of us, but there are more fun places to hang out.
Love —
Kathy
Oh fear.
That’s what I’m running from. I guess I do need to go hang out there, and see what’s going on.
Thanks Polly.
Another brilliant therapist on the site.
Kathy,
When do you have time to grocery shop?! It would take me days to even think up some of the stuff you write, let alone write it. And then there is the reading and the comtemplation. I do love your generosity of sharing, and your brillance…..and though I feel I generally have little to offer you by way of new ideas, I am, along with all the other’s here, buoying you with my love as you journey along.
Slim
Hey Miss Hawk –
Glad to hear your tirggered/ once again willing/ having space to be out and about one has gifts for you. I hope the two of you spend some deep time with one another.
Layer after layer of beliefs and behaviors, supports and reasons have been pealed away through your attention – and thankfully, it is possible to come to the stem cell – and vibrating it with love, change it.
I am glad you get to hang with each other. We have so much to share and understand about/with our bits.
all the best for the journey, for the ride,
one step
lightsaber – the best one liner reply to a spath is ‘ you don’t say’
Kathy in thinking of the rising rate of autism.
1990: 1 in 10,000
2000: 1 in 500
2007: 1 in 150
today: 1 in 91
Basically i have to consider it would be responsible to assist in paving the way for the next generation of autistics that will soon become adults, or to consider selfish self preservative, i can just leave it for someone else to do and i myself just hide in an autistic friendly environment only.
but then considering at this rate it’s looks like it’s just a matter of time that every family will be affected by some form of autism in the very near future, so i guess the sooner people get used to seeing me in the workplace the better.
And remaining in an autistic or autistic friendly setting isn’t realistic since according to Martha Stout, sociopaths numbers are far more impressive than ours, 1 in 25. so avoiding them just doesn’t seem realistic. it seems like everyone will meet some form of sociopath in their life. so they still outnumber us auties. But we are catching up.
So i am leaning on going back to work. Although it is a fear thing for me too and that just might win out too.. Mike
http://www.findingdulcinea.com/news/health/2009/jan/California-s-Autism-Increase-Is-No-Myth–Study-Says.html
http://www.autismspeaks.org/press/autism_nchs_prevalence_study_1_in_91.php
One Step wrote: “…Layer after layer of beliefs and behaviors, supports and reasons have been pealed away through your attention…”
this reminds me of a book i read some time ago.: “The Dimensional Structure of Consciousness: A Physical Basis for Immaterialism, and some others along the line in a way to find words explaining my dream worlds.
that whole layering concept is what i’m writing about in a sci fi fiction book.
the main characters separate themselves from the Source and fragment themselves into different levels of organic and incorporeal selves and then visit or create different worlds and realities and multiverses sort of like time travelers only they are multi verse travelors. but when the characters visit different worlds and realities which is like layers of themselves in different settings which is basically all the same place only they don’t always realize it because it’s like visiting the quantum universe and the cosmos, and internal universes, virtual universes and physical universes which is expanding because of their imagination and they can easily too often tend to lose track of themselves and their somewheres and their whens.
well hopefully i’ll write it where readers will be able to conceptualize it.
Mike
autisticsouls:
please, what is a ‘quantum universe’;
WHY are they visiting different worlds;
how/ why have they separated themselves from the source;
‘they separate themselves from the source – is this consciously done, a positive choice, or a reaction to _______?.
I understand that the exponential multiplication of imaginative potential/ possibilities could lead to losing track of ‘themselves and their somewheres and their whens. ‘ That one would become less ‘tehtered the further one got from the ‘source’. Are there other outcomes possible?
Could the creativity not lead them to finding a way to track the selves/ somewheres and whens instead of infinitely expanding the same scenario?
Could the universe/ their understanding of their internal worlds expand in such a way that a shining dynamic and accurate knowledge (a matrix) of exactly where/ when/ what they are in and who they are in it, all times and directions, is what arises in the expansive universe model? I suppose that might be a type of evolution. And what would cause/ trigger that evolution?
…and how about just rejoining the source? 😉
one step
autisticsouls:
The 16th Karmapa (head) of the Karma Kagyu lineage of Tibetan Buddhism was reported to have laughed aloud, with no apparent provocation.
When questioned as to why he laughed, his answer was thus:
‘one of my other emanations has rather comically tripped down the stairs.’