Can You Call a 9-Year-Old a Psychopath?

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/13/magazine/can-you-call-a-9-year-old-a-psychopath.html?_r=2&pagewanted=all

by gruseom • 14 years ago

119 139 14 years ago

pazimzadeh• 14 years ago

One day this kid will make a reddit account and a few months later he'll be the Hegemon.

jerf2• 14 years ago

The only unique attribute this particular kid has is that he happens to have gotten picked for a NYTimes article. Psychopathy's/Sociopathy's incidence rate is hard to nail down due to both definition and detection problems, but estimates are generally 1% of the population, give or take a bit. It's not that rare.

planetguy4• 14 years ago

And yet, I've never met anyone who claimed to be one. I've never read an article entitled "Here are what my experiences are like, as a psychopath". There has never been a reddit "IAMA psychopath, AMA".

If it's that common surely there should be more first-person accounts of it? Or at least interviews with psychopaths?

I remain unconvinced that "psychopath" is actually a real thing, rather than a label we stick on people who are really just plain ol' jerks.

StuffMaster• 14 years ago

Locke registered a long time ago...maybe he'll go straight to hollywood!

javert6• 14 years ago

Reddit is way too stupid for an intelligent person to make progress there. Much more likely, the kid will create a Hacker News account and become the Hegemon.

philwelch8• 14 years ago

On the contrary, it takes a lot of intelligence, of a certain kind, to bend a mass of common idiots to your side. It takes dishonesty as well, but certainly there is some skill involved.

unimpressive2• 14 years ago

>the Hegemon.

Okay, after searching the web I give up. Can you please explain what that is? (I get a general gist from related words but it would be nice to know what you're specifically referring to.)

andrewflnr• 14 years ago

Of course, Reddit would be only one of the channels he worked through. As long as you know you're working with stupid people, you can work on manipulating them. But maybe that's more of a Demosthenes thing.

nazgulnarsil2• 14 years ago

I don't believe in cures for anti-social personality disorder. I think the children who go on to display no symptoms in adulthood are the ones who have learned to successfully fake it. I say this as someone with many symptoms of ASPD who has learned to fake it.

w1ntermute• 14 years ago

> the children who go on to display no symptoms in adulthood are the ones who have learned to successfully fake it

This is one of the reasons why Dexter is simultaneously disconcerting and fascinating to so many people - it alerts us to the (very real) possibility that we are surrounded by psychopaths who pretend to be normal people.

VMG6• 14 years ago

Dexter is in no way a psychopath by the clinical definition. He is clearly pictured as very emphatic.

VMG6• 14 years ago

That may be good enough. A psychopath doesn't necessarily have to understand the rules of society intuitively, it would suffice if he accepted and followed them.

xal• 14 years ago

Right, this just sounds like a more extreme version of introverts who have learned to "act" extrovert in huge crowds. E.g. Nixon

emcl• 14 years ago

That's true. We all do it in different ways to counter our own psychological quirks. To say that our social behavior is a reflection of our true tendencies would be a lie. A psychopath is more honest when he is acting one than when he is pretending to be like the rest of us. People are different from each other. Some more so than others. It's evolution at work. Acknowledge it and get over it.

FaceKicker2• 14 years ago

I don't know much about psychopathy, but is it generally accurate to say that psychopaths don't "understand" the ethical rules of society or the motivation for having said rules? I thought it was more that they didn't feel any sense of personal moral obligation to follow these rules or any sense of guilt when they don't follow them (while they still might completely understand the rules and their philosophical justifications, and may even be completely in favor of these rules existing and everyone else following them).

(Like I said though, I know very little about the disorder and am mostly conjecturing based on superficial familiarity)

zanny• 14 years ago

We lose so much potential in these people to change social norm from conventions nobody else is willing to question. Especially when you drug them from a young age into a continuous waking stupor.

A lot of aged traditions that will not mesh with an instantaneously connected, constantly communicating and sharing global society will not work in the next several decades, and some of the textbook "unbalanced" will hopefully be the ones to push change to match changing realities.

kcl2• 14 years ago

I see a danger here. It isn't with this child and his problems, but with the continued progress of the media and other political groups in co-opting psychological diagnoses for their own ends. The terms "psychopath" and "sociopath" are already bywords for "doesn't share my politics or worldview". You can see this clearly in the article and the comments. The article mentions "financiers and business people", and the first comment covers explicitly naming the opposing political party. In fact, how many articles from the last few years manage to bring up the subject without casually slipping in a reference to businessmen? I am guessing not many.

The problem is made worse by the highly subjective nature of psychiatry. When practiced in good faith, it seems to be beneficial for some people. Of course, as a science, it is particularly soft. It has a long history of shifting its positions, and a long history of debunked and discredited bodies of theory. (Why do we continue to teach Freud and Jung in college English departments?) Psychology is the sort of thing that works only when you can trust the person employing it, and sometimes not even then.

I am not a psychologist, I am more of a computer scientist. Using leeway in statistics and figures, I can show you any result I want to. For instance, I could present a compelling argument that Facebook will expand extraordinarily over the next decade. I could also present an argument damning the possibility of Facebook expanding at all. Don't you think that, with a few weeks of study, I could apply any subset of mental disorders from the DSM-IV to any person I wished?

Would you trust a court-ordered psychologist to make an accurate appraisal of your psyche? I don't know that such an appraisal is even possible. And I am worried about the increasing confidence in these sorts of appraisals. It sounds like, very soon, anyone interested in furthering American business aims will be suspect for mental disorders. The pretext is already here in America's paper of record. How long before this movement grows to having real influence in our judicial system?

When Tom Cruise begins to sound more sane than the psychology he criticizes, you know something is wrong.

gwern• 14 years ago

> The terms "psychopath" and "sociopath" are already bywords for "doesn't share my politics or worldview". You can see this clearly in the article and the comments. The article mentions "financiers and business people", and the first comment covers explicitly naming the opposing political party. In fact, how many articles from the last few years manage to bring up the subject without casually slipping in a reference to businessmen? I am guessing not many.

They've slipped in because that's where the research is pointing, after decades of anecdotes. One of the main instruments for diagnosing psychopathy is the HARE checklist, as in Robert D. Hare; guess what Hare's latest book is called? _Snakes in Suits: When Psychopaths Go to Work_. Yeah.

(I could finish by accusing you of baselessly accusing your opponents of twisting psychology to fit one's worldview, but I don't think most people would appreciate the irony.)

javert6• 14 years ago

that's where the research is pointing

Are you defending the claim that businessmen and Republicans are psychopaths? I'm sorry, but that's generally untrue, and no amount of valid research will ever prove it.

kcl2• 14 years ago

It's easy to examine the situation by flipping it around.

Suppose the research centered on people who care too much. And the implicit assumption is that people who care too much cause problems, because they make suboptimal decisions for the group. Should we begin to stigmatize these people? Was Mother Theresa psychologically defective? Is your overly caring boss causing problems in the workplace because he won't fire the underperformer nobody likes? What should be done about this endemic problem of overly caring bosses? How can we begin to classify and nullify these people?

In both cases the behavior is nightmarish. Here in stark relief for one kind of bias.

philwelch8• 14 years ago

It's hard enough to trust any research than can simply be turned around and used as a political weapon. Research that supports a blanket tarring of some group's political enemies is very suspect.

stfu• 14 years ago

Interesting way of highlighting the subjectivity inherent in any social sciences, and the dangers that come with claiming to know the "truth". As long as culture changes, people change and ultimately what is defined as normal and "ill" is going to change. No matter what wonderful data one is able to generate, it is most likely trying to project something from the past to the future. And no matter how scientific it may look, in the end calculating the future of society tuned out to be mostly numbers based fortune telling. The evolution of society is an exciting thing, but as soon as someone make the claim to carry the "only truth", I get very, very skeptical.

sliverstorm• 14 years ago

The terms "psychopath" and "sociopath" are already bywords for "doesn't share my politics or worldview".

You sure about that? I mostly hear them used as:

psychopath: dysfunctional thought processes, turns violent

sociopath: hates people, turns violent

celer• 14 years ago

Dysfunctional thought processes = religion

Turns violent = expansionist, militaristic.

Hates people = Anti-American, War on Religion, War on Marriage, War on America, _____(s) hate(-s) America.

I am sad to say that I see them getting used to describe opposing worldviews or political preferences all too often.

Edit: Did people think that I believed them? I don't think that they are accurate in the slightest. I noted useages that I have seen before.

harshreality• 14 years ago

Not even psychologists and psychiatrists agree on what sociopath/psychopath/ASPD (anti-social personality disorder) means.

http://helpingpsychology.com/sociopath-vs-psychopath-whats-t...

That article proposes that while most people consider the terms interchangeable, some people consider sociopaths to be psychopaths with additional personality disorders; from the description that additional disorder could be in the schizoid spectrum or something else like bipolar disorder that would cause them to be under-socialized.

Exhibit 2. http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/05/07/us-brains-psychopa...

Those English psychiatrists are trying to redefine ASPD to mean hot-headed with poor impulse control, which is the opposite of my understanding of what it is: lacking empathy or deep emotions. Those shrinks want that to be called "psychopathy", and distinguish it from their redefined ASPD, even though psychopathy/sociopathy/ASPD currently, according to many psych professionals, refer to the same general thing.

I can see how some hot-headed criminals might seem to fit the clinical definition of ASPD, but I don't see how any reputable shrink would diagnose poor impulse control as ASPD. Borderline personality disorder, for instance, could be a better fit for many "hot heads".

Dn_Ab2• 14 years ago

It is not clear that what you have to say has anything to do with the article. This article is about a child who is clearly intelligent, manipulative and possessive of unhealthy behaviors outside the norm. Instead it appears that you prefer to broadly tar the field of Psychology by arguing that facts can be distorted with careful presentation of statistics.

>It has a long history of shifting its positions, and a long history of debunked and discredited bodies of theory

This is not a bad thing on its own. It just means the search space is large and complex with many potholes and convergence will take a while yet.

> Don't you think that, with a few weeks of study, I could apply any subset of mental disorders from the DSM-IV to any person I wished?

No I don't think so. Not in any substantial way that couldn't just as accurately be replicated by a markov chain with the specificity of a fortune cookie. You can't just trivialize an entire branch of study like that. Certainly there is a lot of room for improvement and terms like disorder, psychopath, multiple personality, schizophrenic are abused and misused but there are behavioural patterns and characteristics by which people can be clustered. The mistake most people make is to think these clusters are static and disjoint.

Your ideas on Psychology are outdated. What Freud believed is nonsense and without experimental feedback he could do little better. Things are better these days, there is cross-talk between areas like Machine Learning, Psychology and neurobiology. Here is a better example of what the future of Psychology will be like: http://videolectures.net/icml09_niv_tnorl/

Also: http://www.med.wisc.edu/news-events/news/psychopaths-brains-...

6ren• 14 years ago

"Being sane in insane places", the 1973 Rosenhan experiment, concluded "we cannot distinguish the sane from the insane in psychiatric hospitals" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rosenhan_experiment

njs123452• 14 years ago

> Why do we continue to teach Freud and Jung in college English departments?

Freud and Jung are taught to English students because their work, while thoroughly debunked, has indeed influenced a lot of authors.

Also, at least in the case of Freud, he was a fairly prolific literary critic in his own right, with his contributions in this field being quite separate from his psychoanalytic efforts (if perhaps influenced by them at times).

pbhjpbhj7• 14 years ago

Can you point me to some reading on the debunking of Freud's tripartite model of the mind (id, ego, superego). I find it a useful description, it often seems apposite in describing my internal mental machinations and conflicts of thought and desire so hearing that it is apparently clearly debunked is interesting ...

Do you mean they've been shown not to be scientific? That just sounds like psychology as a whole to me ...

pessimizer2• 14 years ago

I agree, and take it further. Psychopathy is a label looking for a definition. It's defined as the opposite of any of the qualities that we associate with the root "human".

They're normal people except that they can't be humane, they can't show any humanity, they completely lack compassion and normal human emotion. They don't share our motivations, their motives are alien and disruptive. They are "other". How do we diagnose them? Each of us decides what is morally repugnant to us, then when other people don't find it repugnant, we label it as sick and speculate whether it's genetically irredeemable. Did they have a mutation in their morality gene? Or are they just the descendants of Cain?

It's 100% culturally bound. Some people think that profit is morally repugnant - does that mean we live in a world of psychopaths? If they were the majority it would.

It's an ugly, dehumanizing term, and reveals a lot of psychology as a moral system rather than a scientific one - being its equivalent of evil. Labeling a 9-year old a psychopath is part of the same cultural process that causes children to be tortured and killed as witches in Nigeria.

btw: support http://steppingstonesnigeria.org :)

btw2: this doesn't mean I believe in Xenu.

loopdoend2• 14 years ago

If the majority believed profit to be morally repugnant and the person in question didn't understand why due to a lack of empathy, then yes, perhaps they would be a psychopath. I think most anarchists would agree that it is not that the majority of the population is emotionless and uncaring, they just haven't been educated about the alternatives in an open-minded, truthful fashion.

wiggins37• 14 years ago

I think that a lot of it stems from an ignorance in the general population of what mental disease is. Practising psychiatrists don't use the words psychopath or sociopath when describing people, at least not in my experience (a relatively new internal medicine doctor), and I'm going to disagree that psychiatry is "highly subjective", although there is definite a large component of subjectivity, since it mostly deals with things that are difficult to objectively measure (although there are examples such as the PHQ-9 score for depression).

I agree with you that psychiatry has a history of being soft, but modern psychiatrists are medical doctors and there are very few living one's that I know who use aspects of Freud or Jungian theories in the way they treat psychiatric diseases. Nowadays, just like the bulk of medicine, the focus on is on evidence based therapeutics. Unfortunately, how the brain works is still much of a black box and for many of the medications we use we have no idea how they work. We have some inkling of what they do in general, but on a directly mechanistic level it's still at a point where we try things based on what we think might work, and then if it's shown to work in a large population better (or maybe as well as, with less side effects) then we keep it.

I do think that you could apply some subsets of various aspects of the DSM to anybody, but if you read it, these diagnosis have time courses, and based on the current way they are diagnosed (which is soon to change when DSM V comes out), you have to have symptoms present for a specific amount of time before you can be labelled.

Anyways, the feeling I get from your post is a concern about psychiatric diagnosis being applied too liberally. In my experience I see so many people with the really big psychiatric issues, such as people who have just had a luckily unsuccessful suicide attempt or are actively hallucinating from schizophrenia. The psychiatrists I work with are overwhelmed (especially in child psychiatry) with these kinds of patients and aren't out to change abnormal behaviors into pathologies.

But, I see your point about people dropping psychiatric diagnosis on things they don't agree with which is wrong. I'm just defending the field of psychiatry, which I don't think has any interest in redefining what is normal/abnormal.

rbanffy• 14 years ago

> Would you trust a court-ordered psychologist to make an accurate appraisal of your psyche?

That's not what happens. They are asked very specific questions about the person being evaluated.

> When Tom Cruise begins to sound more sane than the psychology he criticizes, you know something is wrong.

Luckily, that hasn't happened yet.

Tichy5• 14 years ago

Sure, there must be something wrong with their brains. Never blame the parents, after all, they did everything by the book.

There exist theories about why people suppress their emotions. I recommend reading some Alice Miller.

Funny, I suppose as long as the diagnosis is "Depression" or something, the reaction is probably "oh noes, what have we done, what can we do", but I suspect for psychopathy it might be "a heck, but at least he'll become a badass boss and make millions on Wall Street".

Didn't read the story to the end, but where there even acts of "liking" by the mum? Not just "don't bounce the ball", "stop it" or "share your toys, honeys"?

Zak• 14 years ago

When I was 5 years old and starting kindergarten, I met another boy the same age who I quickly decided would end up in jail as an adult. He certainly wasn't the only one who misbehaved frequently or did cruel things to other children, but I could tell he was different somehow. He never seemed to need to feel justified in his cruelty.

In 1998, at age 19, he took part in a murder. He was sentenced to 20 years with 5 suspended. I think he's out on parole now.

K2h• 14 years ago

i have had similar thoughts about kids i knew growing up, and a few have had a tough time in life. kids (peers) may be better at identifying warning signs than adults.

PaperclipTaken5• 14 years ago

If this is true (and it might be), it would be only because most adults are completely oblivious when it comes to children. Adults in our society are notoriously good at seeing only what they want to see (I'm not talking about the HN type of person, I'm talking about your general population adult), and often this means overlooking certain characteristics in children. Or only seeing aspects of ADHD, or bipolar. Or not seeing that a parent is a really awful parent, etc.

Kids generally do not have as many biases as adults, and as a result they have less expectations. They don't see their peer as some angel, because they don't expect him to be an angel. They don't expect anything at all, so their perceptions aren't clouded.

But in general adults are much better at picking up on things like social cues and odd behavior.

siculars• 14 years ago

If there are 9-year-old prodigies then there are also 9-year-old psychopaths.

gavanwoolery• 14 years ago

Son of two Psychiatrists here. Psychopathy and Sociopathy are two fairly broad conditions. Socio/Psychopaths (henceforth, SPs) can actually function pretty normally (I have worked with one before)...Hollywood tends to portray them as ruthless killers (a select few are). To answer the title's question, you can determine if a kid is a psychopath at a relatively young age...and you should take whatever precautions necessary. In particular, you should be careful if your kid wets his bed at a later age and is cruel to animals -- two symptoms of more agressive SP archetypes.

personlurking• 14 years ago

I just saw a film about this topic last night called "We Need to Talk About Kevin."

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1242460/ Trailer http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZLRgAe2jLaw

vchoi• 14 years ago

Perhaps the article is lazy with elaborating on its normative perspectives onto a mass. The primary danger is when normative behavior is hegemonic and enforced with a uniform acceptance on what a person/child should behave like.

Stories of 'psychopathic' children reminds me of the following, but there are probably many more examples of stories about children being cruel and how people have responded to such cruelty (what are others you have seen?): Cidade de Deus (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/City_of_God_%282002_film%29) Akira (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Akira_%28film%29) Léon: The Professional (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L%C3%A9on_%28film%29) Monster (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monster_%28manga%29) GTO (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Teacher_Onizuka) Dogtooth (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dogtooth_%28film%29) Heathers (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heathers)

robwgibbons• 14 years ago

Kill them with fire

gfody• 14 years ago

The Onion was on to this years ago: http://www.theonion.com/articles/new-study-reveals-most-chil...

mratzloff• 14 years ago

This kid is a textbook psychopath. I can't even imagine being a parent in that situation. What can you do, even if you think he may someday hurt someone else? I mean, you can't just drive them out to the desert and push them out of the car and speed away.

josscrowcroft• 14 years ago

I imagine it should be similar to having a kid with a physical disability - I might be wrong, but as I understand it, psychopathy is said to be caused by some kind of physical deficiency in the brain. I suppose it has to be taken as something like a debilitating medical condition...

... but then how do you know?

PaperclipTaken5• 14 years ago

In my rather controversial yet experienced opinion (I work with many kids), these kids develop the way they do as a result of bad parenting and improper/inadequate attention from adults. The majority of kids who display anti-social behaviors also tend to be the most intelligent students. This is even more true of the kids who exhibit highly manipulative behaviors.

I've worked with hundreds of students, and I've never come across a student who I would pin as incapable of empathy. They might be able to turn that empathy switch off, but with appropriate attention from an adult, they can turn it on just as easily. And keep it on if they want.

I think a lot of the behaviors exhibited by the kid in this article are rooted in basic human emotion and tendency. First of all, manipulation is something that is enjoyable. You might claim me to be a psychopath for that statement, but who doesn't enjoy a good troll every now and then? Especially when the manipulations are harmless, it can be fun to toy with somebody else for a bit. Second, these kids 'are good at getting what they want.' That's another obvious benefit to manipulation: you can get most situations to work out in your favor. Furthermore, the behaviors of anger and revenge are typical human behaviors.

These kids stand out in the way that their emotions are much more extreme, and they rarely exhibit empathy (at least, in front of the researchers. In my experiences with hundreds of kids, I've found that everybody has the capacity for empathy). But I see this mostly as a result of their intelligence. Initially, they get bored with the standard activities. So they find other ways to entertain themselves, for example, they take apart the gate that keeps them from leaving their room.

The problems start happening when the adults respond in frustration and anger. Yes, this kid broke the rules, and yes, this kid is doing something that you don't want him or her to be doing, but that's because you aren't stimulating this kid properly. S/he got bored.

These kids start to lose their empathy when they are repeatedly told to 'sit down and behave.' or 'do this for this long and you'll get a reward.' Ultimately, they stop caring about the reward, because they are human and they eventually conclude that freedom is more enjoyable than a piece of candy (or a gameboy, or anything you want to offer them in return for docile behavior. A gameboy might do the trick if the kid isn't used to big rewards, but in all liklihod, if you're offering the kid a gameboy for 1 weekend of good behavior, you've struggle through this route before and the kid already has something that's comparable to a gameboy). And so the kid remorselessly misbehaves. The kid knows what they are losing out on, but they don't care because they ALSO realize what they are gaining by doing their own thing.

The real problem, in my (once again, experienced but controversial and incomplete) opinion, occurs when you take a highly intelligent child and try to mold them into a specific shape, and tell them to do specific things. These kids have creative energy that they want to spend, and if you don't give them an outlet, they will find their own outlet. And then the REAL problems start to occur when their 'creative output' is met with anger and frustration. These kids start to become hateful and antisocial (we're talking over the course of years, not months or weeks) because that's all they are ever treated with. Showing them compassion for behaving doesn't do anything for them, because they don't want to behave, they want to get creative and do their own thing.

And I've found that taking these kids and giving them a creative way to spend their energy, and then rewarding them for doing what they want to do goes miles and miles with these kids. (I'm not talking about physical rewards here, I'm talking about approval.)

The other thing I've found that really helps is being sympathetic towards a kid after he's done something wrong. For example, when a kid deliberately lets all of the family pets run away or does something else destructive, you can win tons of respect from the kid simply by not blowing up at him, and not punishing him. When you take the side of the kid, and start working to help him, he starts to reciprocate your empathy.

I'd be happy to argue this point with anybody who has doubts or counter points. I have some formal education in psychology (3 college level courses), but most of my comfort comes from being around kids all of the time, and having common situations where a kid tells me I'm the only adult that understands them.

brazzy2• 14 years ago

What you can do is teach him rational thinking and explain social and moral rules in terms of how they create an environment that is safer and more pleasant for everyone to live in, and how breaking the rules for personal gain tends to be risky. Then try to make him risk-averse.

Drbble5• 14 years ago

You are deeply missing the difficulty. If a kid would listen to reason or threat, this problems would never existing. Or worse, he could rationally know the profit in evil.

mynameishere3• 14 years ago

Psychopaths exist for an evolutionary reason. The fact that the military essentially screens for them in order to make the most of the mounted 50 calibers suggests why. But they are less important now, and given the demographics of the prison population, it's clear why.

It's actually best not to treat such a thing. Just evict them from the gene pool via the justice system and the problem will solve itself.

etherael• 14 years ago

> the military essentially screens for them in order to make the most of the mounted 50 calibers

Citation needed, not calling bullshit necessarily but I can't imagine selecting for pyschopaths in the military does wonders for unit cohesion / morale.

philwelch8• 14 years ago

> The fact that the military essentially screens for them

No, no they don't. What makes you think that they do?

mynameishere3• 14 years ago

Because it's a huge field.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military_psychology

It's actually pretty common sense. Pulling a trigger is not easy when it's aimed at another creature, and I've seen people refuse to shoot deer. When training infantry costs a million dollars, you have to economize by distinguishing who will be a state-sponsored killer, and who will shoot in the air out of compunction.

http://www.amazon.com/Men-Against-Fire-Problem-Command/dp/08...

I maybe wouldn't believe it, but I've seen it.

giardini• 14 years ago

Children such as the one portrayed in the article are the reason I believe that the age at which abortion can be performed should be extended to 18 years.

bjornsing• 14 years ago

I know it must be the most difficult job on earth being Michael's mother, but I can't help thinking how it would feel to have a mother say in public that you will grow up to be a serial killer... How ever their relationship got to this point, and I agree a personality disorder on Michael's part seams likely, it's sure not an easy situation to turn around, even for a healthy kid. :/

I hope it works out...

tokenadult• 14 years ago

Reading into the article is good for finding an important point often lost in discussions of issues like this: "While the chance of inheriting a predisposition to psychopathy is high, Lynam noted, it is no higher than the heritability for anxiety and depression, which also have large genetic risk factors, but which have still proved responsive to treatment. Waschbusch agreed. 'In my view, these kids need intensive intervention to get them back to normal — to the place where other strategies can even have an effect. But to take the attitude that psychopathy is untreatable because it’s genetic' — he shook his head — 'that’s not accurate. There’s a stigma that psychopaths are the hardest of the hardened criminals. My fear is that if we call these kids "prepsychopathic," people are going to draw that inference: that this is a quality that can’t be changed, that it’s immutable. I don’t believe that. Physiology isn’t destiny.'"

The key issue, of course, when a child's behavior is already as off-track at age nine as the child profiled in the article, is to figure out what to do about it. My own sense after reading the article is that grouping kids with these kinds of behavioral characteristics is a distinctly bad idea. But giving them very close adult supervision by prevention-minded adults like the psychologists profiled in the article is a first step to figuring out what can put the kids on the track to being empathetic and better able to control their own behavior for the good of others as well as for their own desires.

From further along in the article: "In the 1970s, the psychiatry researcher Lee Robins conducted a series of studies on children with behavioral problems, following them into adulthood. Those studies revealed two things. The first was that nearly every psychopathic adult was deeply antisocial as a child. The second was that almost 50 percent of children who scored high on measures of antisocial qualities did not go on to become psychopathic adults. Early test scores, in other words, were necessary but not sufficient in predicting who ultimately became a violent criminal."

leot• 14 years ago

If the mind/brain is relatively modular (as is widely believed), then it's entirely likely that compassion is subserved by a particular (perhaps widely distributed) subsystem.

One irony, then, is that sociopathy or psychopathy might arise not only from too little empathy, but as a way of coping with an empathy "subsystem" that is overactive -- one easy way to deal with this is thus to turn the gain on this signal "way down".

In other words, it would be ironic if psychopaths suffer not from too little empathy, but from so much that it's disabling, and needs to be shut off.

runeks3• 14 years ago

We are missing the solution because we don't understand the problem.

If I break my leg the cure is obvious: don't do anything for a month. Conveniently, it will hurt when I move my leg, so I won't try to move. The cure is only obvious because what actually constitutes the ailment (a broken leg) is obvious.

Now transfer this to psychological disorders. We don't know what exactly is wrong. Imagine if that were the case with the person with the broken leg. Current practice would be that the person goes to a doctor complaining that he doesn't feel like moving (because his leg hurts). The patient doesn't understand why, the doctor prescribes pain killers and - lo and behold - the patient feels like moving again. It worked! Great. But as soon as the patient tries to get off the medication, he finds that the pain returns (because the root cause of his symptoms has not been solved at all, he's probably worse off than he was before). In this example the so-called disease (leg pain, lack of willingness to be active) is not a disease at all. It is actually a part of the solution to the disease.

We are trying to 'cure' a disease without knowing what it is. When we try to solve problems without understanding their cause, we are bound to fail.

Human beings have accumulated enormous amounts of pent up emotion, that we began accumulating when thought activity started to appear in us hundreds of thousands of years ago. Before thought, emotion was solely the body's response to its physical environment, or more precisely: the body's response to its five senses. The body's natural response to emotion - fear, anger - is action which seeks to eliminate the threat: escape, fight (respectively). When thought activity starts creating emotions, this approach no longer works. The mind can neither be escaped from, nor can we fight it. Well, we can fight it with alcohol, which many people resort to, but this is obviously not a real solution.

We have been trying to escape all these emotions that have pent up over the many many generations that have passed since thought first appeared in us, but are still stumbling because we don't understand what is happening. In some people emotions simply break out because it needs to. The body can simply no longer hold back the massive amount of emotional energy that has amassed in us since the birth of thought. Many people become insane when this happens; they are simply not able to handle the power of the emotions being released. Some jump off a building, others turn to drugs and alcohol, and yet others discover what is actually happening. They find out that there is nothing wrong with them, what is happening is actually quite healthy. They discover that they don't need to do anything; they are not sick. The symptoms that might be perceived as a disease (the massive out-flux of emotion) is actually the cure.

Resisting this process is what causes insanity. Emotional energy held back energizes the mind instead (it can't be held back) and the hyperactive mind creates more emotion, thus creating a vicious cycle that ends in either death, self-medication or a realization of what is happening. There is nothing wrong with anger, sadness or fear. Treating emotions as a disease is the actual disease.

ZenPsycho3• 14 years ago

The idea that emotions are a kind of gas that you build up and need to release has been debunked for quite a long time. In fact it has been shown to be actively harmful. If you think carefully about what emotions are, that is, a nervous response to stimulous- it is a thing that happens. Not a substance. Emotions aren't a physical thing you can collect in a canister. The idea is kind of silly and outdated.

Tichy5• 14 years ago

Of course emotions have a long lasting effect. Unless you are a psychopath, you probably know that. Have you never been disappointed and wrestled with that for a long time? Like being left from a girl-friend or whatever?

That may be no "building up" (ie 10 times being left from a girl-friend does maybe not build 10 times the emotion from being left once), but it is not just a fleeting response to stimulus either.

runeks3• 14 years ago

My experience says otherwise :). But we can agree to disagree.

Regarding your bicycle metaphor: just as a balloon releases gas into its surroundings, a bicycle - when we stop adding to its kinetic energy - transfers energy from itself to its surroundings until it stops. I think it's largely irrelevant whether we use the release of a physical substance or energy as a metaphor, but whatever works for you.

I also realize that I missed an important point in my previous post, which is gaining the ability to stop thinking when thinking isn't needed. This is basically the development of an awareness of thought activity. Since, as you correctly say, thoughts create emotions and vice verse, releasing emotional energy will not work if you keep creating new emotional energy through unconscious thinking. But this is really an integrated part of the release of emotions; the two things happen simultaneously. Indeed, some emotions cannot even be released/experienced until you become conscious of the previously unconscious thought patterns that held them back.

> The correct analogy is not of a balloon releasing gas, but a bicycle slowing down.

I guess part of my point was that just as the bicycle wheel doesn't stop immediately after we stop propelling it, emotions don't disappear immediately either even if thought activity subsides completely. There is an inertia left that can make us experience emotions related to an incident long after it has happened (even with no thought present). Very much like the remaining momentum of the bicycle wheel in the analogy.

DanBC6• 14 years ago

As ZenPsycho says, this idea has been debunked and is harmful.

Take, for example, anxiety. Therapists used to think that there was a root cause, some deep-seated trauma. They thought that to treat the anxiety you needed to find and uncover the trauma, and get the patient to deal with it, and only then would the patient be free to deal with their anxiety. They thought that treating the anxiety directly would not help; that the trauma would cause further problems.

People would spend a long time in treatment.

Then cognitive models began to be introduced. Cognitive Behaviour Therapy was developed, and researched, and found to be effective. There's now a lot of evidence to support CBT.

A course of CBT lasts between 8 to 14 weeks, with one hour guided work per week and some hours of "homework" per week.

runeks3• 14 years ago

I'm not discounting Cognitive Behaviour Therapy at all. I haven't tried it myself, but I can see why it would help, since it deals with thoughts, which can create new emotions. As I wrote in reply to ZenPsycho, I really missed an important point in my post above, which is that unconscious thought activity creating new emotions is definitely a part of the condition.

Another way to explain the process I outlined above is to say that as a person becomes aware of his own thoughts, unconscious thought patterns are broken up and dissolved, and the emotions that were held back by these thought patterns are released/experienced. This is another, just as valid, perspective on the same process. So you are completely right to say that emotional release isn't the chief cause of the relief of symptoms; it's simply a part of the process that unfolds as we become more conscious of our thoughts.

Shenglong• 14 years ago

Reading this article was oddly reminiscent, as he sounds like me when I was younger. In fact, I can seem to relate to a large portion of the article. Let me try and shed some light on several points:

His gaze settled on Allan. Grabbing a wooden chair, he hoisted it overhead as though to do violence but paused for several seconds, giving Miguel a chance to yank it away.

Right - first, psychopaths (let's just call it that for now) absolutely understand reward and punishment. The question, however, becomes more "can I avoid the punishment?" rather than "oh no, if I do that, will I be punished?" It's not entirely conscious - it's natural. Maybe this only happens with a certain degree of intelligence, but if his parents made it clear that he'd have no way of weaseling out of a punishment, and would be caught for sure, then it would deter his behavior. That is, of course, unlikely. His parents are emotional, and I'm sure he knows it. Either that, or the punishment just isn't affecting him. He just screams and pretends, so they won't try something new. All tactics I've used. He realizes that if he throws the chair, he will ACTUALLY get in trouble. He just wanted to get a point across. He overreacts, and his parents respond accordingly, and lectures his brother. Win-win.

Some, including Michael, were actually worse; one had begun biting the counselors.

This is probably misrepresented. When a kid throws a tantrum, often the counselors will try to restrain him. Yes, this happened to me (twice). If the kid cannot use his arms or legs, it should really be expected that he's going to bite. He believes he has a logical reason for throwing a fit - restraining him isn't going to change that.

Coldblooded, callous-unemotional children, by contrast, are capable of being impulsive, but their misbehavior more often seems calculated. “Instead of someone who can’t sit still, you get a person who may be hostile when provoked but who also has this ability to be very cold. The attitude is, ‘Let’s see how I can use this situation to my advantage, no matter who gets hurt from that.’ ”

I'd argue that psychopaths have both 'hotblooded' and 'coldblooded' elements. Which they display at any given time, is simply a question of which has the most reward. If the situation is hopeless, even the most hotblooded psychopath will return to being coldblooded. They'll probably never swallow their pride, but they'll win, one day. The trick is understanding their logic - because their logic is more cause-effect, than reflecting on societal norms we've grown up with.

So they don’t develop the same aversion to punishment or to the experience of hurting someone.”

That's not true at all. My parents used to beat me (Chinese family, accepted norm) when I threw tantrums and did something wrong. I used to hate it, but I doubt I would've grown the same way without it. Rather than having to form my own mental punishment, I could relate "if I do this, I'll get beat". Then the question became, "is it worth the potential of a beating, and can I prevent them from finding out?" Psychopaths understand punishment just fine... at least intelligent ones do. When I entered high school, however, I found out that any suspensions go on my record for University. I also heard that good universities don't accept people with bad records. I was suspended over 50 times in elementary/junior high, but since high school, I've had excellent behavior. It's easy to trick your parents into thinking you're remorseful... it's harder to convince an organization that deals with thousands of applications.

In another study, the researcher Mark Dadds found that as C.U. children matured, they developed the ability to simulate interest in people’s feelings.

It's not just simulating interest - it's simulating emotions altogether. It was difficult as a child, but over the years, I've learned what emotions are supposed to be, when people display them, and what degree they should be displayed. Hence, if a psychopath starts to live two different lives, they can easily switch between different levels of emotional display. It makes adaptation a lot easier, and people don't really consciously notice.

It's like programming. if(situation) { respond(situation.severity)} Eventually, you get to see enough situations, and can extrapolate responses for situations you haven't seen. Once in a blue moon, you're completely off. That isn't to say ALL emotions are restricted. Shame, guilt, fear, sadness, and love may be difficult, but happiness, boredom, and anger come easily.

All in all, I feel people really misunderstand psychopaths. If you're a parent, and have psychopathic children, find something they inherently cannot live without, and threaten it. Beatings may work, but it's not fool proof. You can't starve them, because they realize it'll hurt you more than it'll hurt them, and mutually assured destruction (up to a point) is acceptable. Remember - it's not how they inherently behave. It's how they behave, given the circumstances. Instead of trying to fix the root problem, go after a symptomatic treatment. Just because they misbehave, doesn't mean they won't be productive members of society later on.

VMG6• 14 years ago

> > So they don’t develop the same aversion to punishment or to the experience of hurting someone.”

> That's not true at all.

So you are not a psychopath.

Tichy5• 14 years ago

"it's simulating emotions altogether."

Find a good therapist. You do have emotions, they are just buried. Or again, even if I was downvoted in another thread, at least read Alice Miller.

Tichy5• 14 years ago

So how come the supposed psychopaths allegedly can't feel, but they can hate?

To me the story (stories) doesn't really add up so far.

Can You Call a 9-Year-Old a Psychopath?

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