I recently read Robert Hare's book 'Without Conscience'. He's a leading psychologist on the issue of psychopathy, having devised the currently most used 'Hare Psychopathy Checklist'. The book is about psychopaths and the underawareness that people in general society have of the problem. He goes on to describe in detail what they are, what they're not, what they're capable (and incapable) of.
It's a very eye-opening book, because it elucidates in a very clear, insightful and unequivocal manner in how people can be so fucked up. You know all those news stories where we end up asking ourselves... how the fuck? How can a human being do something like this?
In many cases, it's because the perpetrator is psychopathic.
Anyway, let's talk about it, because society as a whole isn't really aware enough about this problem to understand the extent of its threat. I'll give a brief introduction into the problem as I understand it, what it's (or at least might be) like to be psychopathic, and perhaps spin out scenarios of what society would be like if we had better awareness/detection/solution for these individuals.
What is psychopathy?
Psychopathy/Sociopathy (Hare believes that they're interchangeable terms - while some other psychologists dispute that - citing a difference in the causality of the symptoms... but the symptoms between both classes are largely similar) is a poorly understood mental disorder that in succint terms, causes its sufferer to act like a giant wanton asshole. More specifically, they are people that have genetic developmental disorders in their emotional centres of their brain. Given that emotions play a large role in empathy, socialization and decision making, the damage to those areas leaves psychopaths in a large deficit when interacting with and been members of society.
Colloquially, the term psychopathy is reserved for application to the most heinous sorts of psychopaths. Crazed serial killers, that kill because they enjoy it. While it's important to note that psychopaths are indeed much more violent than both normal people and people in prison*, and that most (if not all) serial killers are psychopathic - that most psychopaths are not violent criminals... (or at least violent criminals that have been caught and entered into the system).
The point here is that, most psychopaths fly under the proverbial radar. They number 1 in 200 people in general population - enough for some 1.5 million of them in America. Enough so that most people probably know a psychopath or two, without realizing it. Giant, wanton assholes occupying all sorts of positions within society - because these people aren't mentally impaired in the traditional sense.
They're not slow, they're not dumb. But they are emotionally impaired. That doesn't mean they're stoic, it doesn't mean they're emotionally reserved - it means that they have problems with the emotional parts of their brain - an arrested development in the part of our brain that is fundamentally important to social interaction and development in normal people.
Because of this emotional impairment - most importantly, impairment to the emotional centres that provide fear - which in a normal person interacts with other cognitive developments to turn into discipline, respect, boundaries, understanding of long term consequences, etc... psychopaths are really difficult to 'teach' and 'rehabilitate'. They have a huge rate of recidivism (80%), and in the attempts to try teach and rehabilitate these people... by putting them through the same counselling sessions and group work sessions that normal people take, we don't actually help them - so much as equip them with more tools and a greater understanding of how to better manipulate us.
In terms of figuring out what a psychopath is - the Hare Psychopathy Checklist provides a number of personality traits, such as glibness, superficial charm, pathological lying, parasitic lifestyle, criminal versatility (I quite like the idea behind that one)... and that scoring a large number of these traits (rather than scoring highly in one or two, or even a few - some people are just assholes, even without developmental disorders) show a strong indication of psychopathy.
To find out more on (and get an overview this under-researched, underconsidered field), just goto wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychopathy
The book I read - Robert Hare's authoritative book on psychopaths (written for the lay person, although widely cited by professionals).
http://www.amazon.com/dp/1572304510/?tag=neogaf0e-20
What's it like been a psychopath?
Full disclosure - these are my own views, synthesized from reading Hare's description of psychopaths and their developmental disorder. I find the analogy gives a chilling insight into people that would otherwise be difficult to empathize with.
Because of the developmental disorder of emotion in psychopaths, they don't develop a lot of important social cognitive traits that depends on that system been in place. Critically, psychopaths are lacking in empathy. They don't think about the position of others, because they can't really consider it. They don't understand sorrow, pain, fear, joy, loyalty, duty or any number of complex social emotions that we take for granted.
But curiously, one of the traits of psychopaths is that they're superficially charming. They're adept at social manipulation, despite their grave social deficit. Intuitively, you'd think that empathy would be critical in figuring out what people liked and what would be likeable.
The reason is - psychopaths view other human beings not as we view human beings... but as complex machines. Give them a certain input, and we'll get a certain output. It's strangely dehumanizing thinking about people that way... act a certain way, and we'll most likely act a certain way in return. Yet it's an effective and upon consideration a very true rule of thumb and describes human behaviour.
So by not giving a shit about other people, they can simply continue to test and iterate interactions with people until they get the desired responses out of them. Maximum compliance is a combination of superficial and glib charm, and startling violence. It's what humans respond to.
Think about situations where we interact with human-like objects that we think of as complex machines...
Video-games. Psychopaths treat other humans as though they were characters in a video-game. I know some of us feel bad doing stupid shit to video game characters... but I don't think many of us can say that we haven't experienced the thrill of doing bad shit to video game characters for our own cheap amusement. Especially in more realistic sandbox games like the GTA series - watching our characters sleep with then beat the crap out of hookers to get back 50 bucks. We do it because it *is* amusing. But also because they're video game characters. They don't feel anything. Or just think about all the crazy shit you did to NPCs in Skyrim.
Well, psychopaths know that humans are a little more complex then that. They may even acknowledge that the feelings of others are been hurt. But what they feel when interacting with another person, is not dissimilar to how you or I feel when interacting with a video game character.
Compounding the effectiveness of that analogy is that in video games, we have save and load functions. We often act out because we know that the consequences aren't permanent. We can simply reload before the stupid stuff, and we'll be fine. Obviously, psychopaths can't save or reload - but that ability, gives you an understanding of their inconsideration for long term consequences. The base emotion of fear that through complex cognitive interaction, turn into effective planning behaviour in normal people (i.e. fear of loss later is balanced against desire for gain now) never properly activates in psychopaths, leaving them with the inability to appreciate consequences beyond the immediate.
They don't care if killing the NPC pisses off the entire town. Or that people will react badly to their betrayal at a later point. If you're emotionally invested in them - as a parent, child, lover, person conned by their superficial charm... your intuitive reaction to be patient and give them more chances, will in most circumstances leave you open to continued abuse. If a videogame character kept giving you coins after abusing them/beating them, I think you might be tempted to continue doing the same as well. I know I would - treat them as a coin dispensing machine.
Psychopaths - disproportionately devastating on society
Given what you now know, you probably have an inkling of why it is so important to be aware of the idea of psychopaths. They are disproportionately deleterious to society.
Not just in terms of violent criminal behaviour (although they're definetly disproportionately deleterious there), but also in terms of white collar criminality. Studies have shown that psychopaths from upper social classes are less criminally violent... but are otherwise no less harmful or injurious to those around them. Although not stated explicitly by Hare - I'd suggest that this is due to the fact that upper social class psychopaths simply have more resources to directly engage in hedonistic behaviour (or whatever it is that they want to do), without having to resort to violence (if they can't charm, they pay - a poorer psychopath might attempt charm, then bash).
Point is, these guys can get educated... and they can get clued in to the power of money - move into areas of the economy that best suit their talents - their superficial charm, their lack of empathy. Roles like Lawyers, financial industries, etc.
In these positions, they can do really wanton damage. In these positions - the culture celebrates their selfishness - overall society celebrates their accomplishments - the wealth that they gain is all too often conflated as wealth that they generate.
Because of the lack of societal awareness of this issue, these guys can fly under the radar for much longer then they should. Finding their way into social niches that employ their strengths at the expense of others, or guarded by well meaning and patient friends and families.
But the biggest problem these guys create in my view... is that they sow discord, distrust and misunderstanding on human behaviour in society in general. Much of the misanthropic views on criminals (and indeed human nature in general) may stem from both the heinous nature of psychopathic crimes (microwaving babies, throwing bricks on them to shut them up, raping and killing, etc, etc), as well as the seeming inability to rehabilitate them.
If there was an understanding that there was a sizeable group of people that required us to treat them completely differently to other people - we would be able to properly provide the rehabilitation for those that could be rehabilitated (normal people in shitty circumstances), while properly isolating/treating differently (different rehabilitation/treatment procedures) the set that couldn't be.
Essentially, because these guys throw off our model of understanding human nature - they're the unaccounted for outlier, we fail to develop models of response and action that is appropriate to the two relatively discrete groups of them and everybody else.
Societal solutions for psychopaths
So the big thing about psychopaths is that they're almost alien to us as far as social interaction goes. In trying to help these guys, or rehabilitate them, or make them useful functioning members of society... we cannot apply models of normal learning and education to them. It would be like trying to teach a colorblind person to paint a rainbow - with blue, red, green.
Also worthwhile noting is that psychopathy is something that has a strong genetic component, that it 'expresses' (rather, emotional development fails to express) early on (4-5 yr old+).
Because of this, it would seem to me that it's very important to raise general societal awareness on the issue - and that people are willing and actively taking their children to be tested for psychopathy.
The emotionally unmalleable nature of psychopaths makes them difficult to educate, to teach, to create empathy and the necessary cognitive skills that make them functional social citizens. This early detection would allow parents and caretakers to realize early on what they're dealing with, so that they can take the appropriate steps to ready themselves and innur themselves to the unresponsive nature of psychopaths.
Further research is needed in order to figure out how to best treat this group of people - but knowing what we know here... it seems irresponsible, on a societal level, to let them roam freely, interact freely with the rest of the world.
At the very least, we need specialized institutions that have people trained specifically to deal with them - educational facilities, as well as incarceration and rehabilitation. I don't doubt that much of their more damaging traits could be quelled, given the appropriate interaction... but we won't get there without awareness and keen identification.
I feel... without the undue influence of undetected psychopaths operating within society, we may have a much clearer and lucid vision of the societal landscape. A much more positive world, unhindered by clever but obfuscatory people that are in it for themselves, because lack a shred of conscience.
Bonus Read through (or re-read) this thread...
http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showthread.php?t=465915&highlight=serial+killers
...and you'll have a spine-tingling feeling, an understanding, even an 'empathizing' of how these men could be as evil as they are.
Disclaimer:
It's a very eye-opening book, because it elucidates in a very clear, insightful and unequivocal manner in how people can be so fucked up. You know all those news stories where we end up asking ourselves... how the fuck? How can a human being do something like this?
In many cases, it's because the perpetrator is psychopathic.
Anyway, let's talk about it, because society as a whole isn't really aware enough about this problem to understand the extent of its threat. I'll give a brief introduction into the problem as I understand it, what it's (or at least might be) like to be psychopathic, and perhaps spin out scenarios of what society would be like if we had better awareness/detection/solution for these individuals.
What is psychopathy?
Psychopathy/Sociopathy (Hare believes that they're interchangeable terms - while some other psychologists dispute that - citing a difference in the causality of the symptoms... but the symptoms between both classes are largely similar) is a poorly understood mental disorder that in succint terms, causes its sufferer to act like a giant wanton asshole. More specifically, they are people that have genetic developmental disorders in their emotional centres of their brain. Given that emotions play a large role in empathy, socialization and decision making, the damage to those areas leaves psychopaths in a large deficit when interacting with and been members of society.
Colloquially, the term psychopathy is reserved for application to the most heinous sorts of psychopaths. Crazed serial killers, that kill because they enjoy it. While it's important to note that psychopaths are indeed much more violent than both normal people and people in prison*, and that most (if not all) serial killers are psychopathic - that most psychopaths are not violent criminals... (or at least violent criminals that have been caught and entered into the system).
*I believe the stat is something like 40% of violent crimes committed by prison inmates are attributable to psychopaths, who represent around 10% of prison population... and in turn account for 0.5% of general population. I know I have the specific numbers off, but those figures are at roughly the right scales, which should provide you with an understanding of how problematic they are by numbers alone...
The point here is that, most psychopaths fly under the proverbial radar. They number 1 in 200 people in general population - enough for some 1.5 million of them in America. Enough so that most people probably know a psychopath or two, without realizing it. Giant, wanton assholes occupying all sorts of positions within society - because these people aren't mentally impaired in the traditional sense.
They're not slow, they're not dumb. But they are emotionally impaired. That doesn't mean they're stoic, it doesn't mean they're emotionally reserved - it means that they have problems with the emotional parts of their brain - an arrested development in the part of our brain that is fundamentally important to social interaction and development in normal people.
Because of this emotional impairment - most importantly, impairment to the emotional centres that provide fear - which in a normal person interacts with other cognitive developments to turn into discipline, respect, boundaries, understanding of long term consequences, etc... psychopaths are really difficult to 'teach' and 'rehabilitate'. They have a huge rate of recidivism (80%), and in the attempts to try teach and rehabilitate these people... by putting them through the same counselling sessions and group work sessions that normal people take, we don't actually help them - so much as equip them with more tools and a greater understanding of how to better manipulate us.
In terms of figuring out what a psychopath is - the Hare Psychopathy Checklist provides a number of personality traits, such as glibness, superficial charm, pathological lying, parasitic lifestyle, criminal versatility (I quite like the idea behind that one)... and that scoring a large number of these traits (rather than scoring highly in one or two, or even a few - some people are just assholes, even without developmental disorders) show a strong indication of psychopathy.
To find out more on (and get an overview this under-researched, underconsidered field), just goto wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychopathy
The book I read - Robert Hare's authoritative book on psychopaths (written for the lay person, although widely cited by professionals).
http://www.amazon.com/dp/1572304510/?tag=neogaf0e-20
What's it like been a psychopath?
Full disclosure - these are my own views, synthesized from reading Hare's description of psychopaths and their developmental disorder. I find the analogy gives a chilling insight into people that would otherwise be difficult to empathize with.
Because of the developmental disorder of emotion in psychopaths, they don't develop a lot of important social cognitive traits that depends on that system been in place. Critically, psychopaths are lacking in empathy. They don't think about the position of others, because they can't really consider it. They don't understand sorrow, pain, fear, joy, loyalty, duty or any number of complex social emotions that we take for granted.
But curiously, one of the traits of psychopaths is that they're superficially charming. They're adept at social manipulation, despite their grave social deficit. Intuitively, you'd think that empathy would be critical in figuring out what people liked and what would be likeable.
The reason is - psychopaths view other human beings not as we view human beings... but as complex machines. Give them a certain input, and we'll get a certain output. It's strangely dehumanizing thinking about people that way... act a certain way, and we'll most likely act a certain way in return. Yet it's an effective and upon consideration a very true rule of thumb and describes human behaviour.
So by not giving a shit about other people, they can simply continue to test and iterate interactions with people until they get the desired responses out of them. Maximum compliance is a combination of superficial and glib charm, and startling violence. It's what humans respond to.
Think about situations where we interact with human-like objects that we think of as complex machines...
Video-games. Psychopaths treat other humans as though they were characters in a video-game. I know some of us feel bad doing stupid shit to video game characters... but I don't think many of us can say that we haven't experienced the thrill of doing bad shit to video game characters for our own cheap amusement. Especially in more realistic sandbox games like the GTA series - watching our characters sleep with then beat the crap out of hookers to get back 50 bucks. We do it because it *is* amusing. But also because they're video game characters. They don't feel anything. Or just think about all the crazy shit you did to NPCs in Skyrim.
Well, psychopaths know that humans are a little more complex then that. They may even acknowledge that the feelings of others are been hurt. But what they feel when interacting with another person, is not dissimilar to how you or I feel when interacting with a video game character.
Compounding the effectiveness of that analogy is that in video games, we have save and load functions. We often act out because we know that the consequences aren't permanent. We can simply reload before the stupid stuff, and we'll be fine. Obviously, psychopaths can't save or reload - but that ability, gives you an understanding of their inconsideration for long term consequences. The base emotion of fear that through complex cognitive interaction, turn into effective planning behaviour in normal people (i.e. fear of loss later is balanced against desire for gain now) never properly activates in psychopaths, leaving them with the inability to appreciate consequences beyond the immediate.
They don't care if killing the NPC pisses off the entire town. Or that people will react badly to their betrayal at a later point. If you're emotionally invested in them - as a parent, child, lover, person conned by their superficial charm... your intuitive reaction to be patient and give them more chances, will in most circumstances leave you open to continued abuse. If a videogame character kept giving you coins after abusing them/beating them, I think you might be tempted to continue doing the same as well. I know I would - treat them as a coin dispensing machine.
Psychopaths - disproportionately devastating on society
Given what you now know, you probably have an inkling of why it is so important to be aware of the idea of psychopaths. They are disproportionately deleterious to society.
Not just in terms of violent criminal behaviour (although they're definetly disproportionately deleterious there), but also in terms of white collar criminality. Studies have shown that psychopaths from upper social classes are less criminally violent... but are otherwise no less harmful or injurious to those around them. Although not stated explicitly by Hare - I'd suggest that this is due to the fact that upper social class psychopaths simply have more resources to directly engage in hedonistic behaviour (or whatever it is that they want to do), without having to resort to violence (if they can't charm, they pay - a poorer psychopath might attempt charm, then bash).
Point is, these guys can get educated... and they can get clued in to the power of money - move into areas of the economy that best suit their talents - their superficial charm, their lack of empathy. Roles like Lawyers, financial industries, etc.
In these positions, they can do really wanton damage. In these positions - the culture celebrates their selfishness - overall society celebrates their accomplishments - the wealth that they gain is all too often conflated as wealth that they generate.
Because of the lack of societal awareness of this issue, these guys can fly under the radar for much longer then they should. Finding their way into social niches that employ their strengths at the expense of others, or guarded by well meaning and patient friends and families.
But the biggest problem these guys create in my view... is that they sow discord, distrust and misunderstanding on human behaviour in society in general. Much of the misanthropic views on criminals (and indeed human nature in general) may stem from both the heinous nature of psychopathic crimes (microwaving babies, throwing bricks on them to shut them up, raping and killing, etc, etc), as well as the seeming inability to rehabilitate them.
If there was an understanding that there was a sizeable group of people that required us to treat them completely differently to other people - we would be able to properly provide the rehabilitation for those that could be rehabilitated (normal people in shitty circumstances), while properly isolating/treating differently (different rehabilitation/treatment procedures) the set that couldn't be.
Essentially, because these guys throw off our model of understanding human nature - they're the unaccounted for outlier, we fail to develop models of response and action that is appropriate to the two relatively discrete groups of them and everybody else.
Societal solutions for psychopaths
So the big thing about psychopaths is that they're almost alien to us as far as social interaction goes. In trying to help these guys, or rehabilitate them, or make them useful functioning members of society... we cannot apply models of normal learning and education to them. It would be like trying to teach a colorblind person to paint a rainbow - with blue, red, green.
Also worthwhile noting is that psychopathy is something that has a strong genetic component, that it 'expresses' (rather, emotional development fails to express) early on (4-5 yr old+).
Because of this, it would seem to me that it's very important to raise general societal awareness on the issue - and that people are willing and actively taking their children to be tested for psychopathy.
The emotionally unmalleable nature of psychopaths makes them difficult to educate, to teach, to create empathy and the necessary cognitive skills that make them functional social citizens. This early detection would allow parents and caretakers to realize early on what they're dealing with, so that they can take the appropriate steps to ready themselves and innur themselves to the unresponsive nature of psychopaths.
Further research is needed in order to figure out how to best treat this group of people - but knowing what we know here... it seems irresponsible, on a societal level, to let them roam freely, interact freely with the rest of the world.
At the very least, we need specialized institutions that have people trained specifically to deal with them - educational facilities, as well as incarceration and rehabilitation. I don't doubt that much of their more damaging traits could be quelled, given the appropriate interaction... but we won't get there without awareness and keen identification.
I feel... without the undue influence of undetected psychopaths operating within society, we may have a much clearer and lucid vision of the societal landscape. A much more positive world, unhindered by clever but obfuscatory people that are in it for themselves, because lack a shred of conscience.
Bonus Read through (or re-read) this thread...
http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showthread.php?t=465915&highlight=serial+killers
...and you'll have a spine-tingling feeling, an understanding, even an 'empathizing' of how these men could be as evil as they are.
Disclaimer:
I don't claim to be an expert on the subject matter of psychopathy. Rather, this is a dissemination of my understanding and thoughts after been introduced into the concept by Robert Hare's book. If there's dispute or debate, or you are able to better elucidate/clarify on various fine points, please do so. Always up for a good discussion.
