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Can You Call a 9-Year-Old a Psychopath?
- pazimzadeh 14y agoOne day this kid will make a reddit account and a few months later he'll be the Hegemon.
- jerf 14y agoThe 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.
- planetguy 14y agoAnd 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.
- drumdance 14y agohttp://www.reddit.com/search?q=iama+psychopath http://www.reddit.com/search?q=iama+psychopath
- planetguy 14y agoWell, I guess I walked into that one. Even reading those, though, I'm not convinced that being a psychopath is a real thing -- that is, a difference from normal human behaviour that is one of kind, not of degree.
- lerouxb 14y agoSo what real thing does this kid have, then? Or what _degree_ is it?
- planetguy 14y agoHe's a brat. He's also a brat who has learned he can get more of a reaction out of adults by acting in a certain way that they find unsettling, thus reinforcing that behaviour. From the sounds of things, his bad behaviour has been getting reinforced by feelings of specialness ever since he got sent to a psychiatrist at the age of three for being a little more bratty than usual. At this point, being a brat has got him all the way to being profiled in the New York Times, so I doubt there's much hope for him now. He's internalized "I am a kid who misbehaves, misbehavior makes me special".
- amalter 14y agoAnd kids, like one who grew up on my block, who got their kicks dunking people's cats in gasoline and throwing fireworks at them? Was that just being a brat?
- planetguy 14y agoNo, he was an asshole.
- amalter 14y agoNow your dancing around the wording. This one boy got pleasure bullying the rest of us neighbor kids, and more disturbingly, killing and maiming animals for fun. This was elementary school since he was shipped off to some special place by middle school. He had two really nice brothers who seemed as relieved as the rest of us when he was gone. As already recommended in this thread, I urge a viewing of "We Need to Talk about Kevin" Asshole, brat, jerk ... We all might fall in and out of these fugues as we mature. But, very few of us are evil. You do disservice to those trying to understand these conditions (whether biological or environmental) by minimizing them.
- deleted 14y ago[deleted]
- joshu 14y agoThere have been several claimed sociopath IAMAs.
- Dn_Ab 14y agohttp://www.med.wisc.edu/news-events/news/psychopaths-brains-show-differences-in-structure-and-function/32979 http://www.med.wisc.edu/news-events/news/psychopaths-brains-... The study showed that psychopaths have reduced connections between the ventromedial prefrontal cortex (vmPFC), the part of the brain responsible for sentiments such as empathy and guilt, and the amygdala, which mediates fear and anxiety.
- jerf 14y agoIn the end, there are no bright shining lines in psychology. It is likely that psychopaths are on one end of a bell curve rather than being a distinct, binary pathology. Neveretheless, we are free to observe that there is such a dimension and discuss those on the extremes in certain ways using certain terms, just as we do with depression or OCD, both of which have the same characteristic of not having a "bright line", yet clearly existing. One of the most powerful ways to understand psychology is to see its history, like math's history, as one long attempt to create and refine definitions that let us discuss the field. Except where math is using those definitions to create the field from scratch and the effort is to build up useful systems from the bottom, psychology is trying to understand an incomprehensibly complicated system from the top down and using those definitions to try to break things into comprehensible and consistent pieces in a landscape that is being aggressively fuzzy and resistant to classification. I do find myself wondering if you have not encountered any apparent interviews or research on psychopaths not because it doesn't exist, but because you've never gone looking for it. There's quite a bit of it. There's still some professional skepticism on the topic of it being something distinct, but that's rather different than the skepticism you seem to be expressing. The phenomena aren't so much what the debate is about as what the best way to slice and dice it up with the definitions are. For them to professionally agree that psychopathy is a real thing carries additional implications beyond just what Merriam-Webster writes in their next dictionary edition, but it's easy for a layman to misread that as an argument about whether the phenomena described by the debated term exists. So, of course it's a label. But it's used to describe something far more different-than-baseline than just being a plain ol' jerk. In fact, psychopaths are often not jerks at all. "Jerk" is usually used to describe someone openly abrasive and simply randomly hostile, and that's not what a psychopath is. At least, not as an adult. As the article says, they lack emotional empathy but develop a cognitive empathy, and generally learn by adulthood the thing that jerks never do, which is that open hostility really has no advantages to anybody. They learn far, far more subtle manipulation techniques than that. (We all learn how to manipulate; I'm not convinced they are "extra skilled" at that. They simply learn how to do it with one less constraint than most of us.)
- StuffMaster 14y agoLocke registered a long time ago...maybe he'll go straight to hollywood!
- javert 14y agoReddit 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.
- philwelch 14y agoOn 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.
- javert 14y agoI thought this would come up. I think redditors are too stupid even for that. I mean, there is a certain point where you're preaching the Gospel to a group of orangutans, no? Anyway, it matters not.
- unimpressive 14y 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.)
- mdanger 14y agoI believe it's a reference to the Ender's Game series (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enders_Game http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enders_Game, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shadow_of_the_Hegemon http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shadow_of_the_Hegemon), as lampooned here: http://xkcd.com/635/ http://xkcd.com/635/
- javert 14y agoIt's a reference to this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ender%27s_Game_(series) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ender%27s_Game_(series) More specifically, a pair of kids (neither of which is the main character) create online pseudonyms ("Locke" and "Demosthenes") and eventually use them to convince the world of their great ideas (that they post in online forums). One of the kids eventually becomes "Hegemon," or the world leader. By the way, I'd extremely highly recommend "Ender's Game" (the first book). Besides being an utterly awesome book, I even got a friend who "hated" reading to try it, and even he liked it. I mean, it's that good.
- joeycfan 14y agoI recall several 8-10 years olds I have known who were seriously evil. They knew it and they liked it.
- nazgulnarsil 14y agoI 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 14y 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.
- VMG 14y agoDexter is in no way a psychopath by the clinical definition. He is clearly pictured as very emphatic.
- nazgulnarsil 14y agoyes, this is very annoying. The author is a classic case of "mental illness as fashionable attire."
- VMG 14y agoThat 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 14y agoRight, this just sounds like a more extreme version of introverts who have learned to "act" extrovert in huge crowds. E.g. Nixon
- emcl 14y agoThat'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.
- kcl 14y agoI 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 14y 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.)
- Tichy 14y agoSure, 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 14y agoWhen 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 14y agoi 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.
- PaperclipTaken 14y agoIf 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.
- Drbble 14y agoKids are also more likely to accept their environment as normal because they have never seen different, and so don't think to complain about abuse, neglect, religion (if you think that is vrainwashing), etc
- PaperclipTaken 14y ago
- siculars 14y agoIf there are 9-year-old prodigies then there are also 9-year-old psychopaths.
- gavanwoolery 14y agoSon 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 14y agoI just saw a film about this topic last night called "We Need to Talk About Kevin." http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1242460/ http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1242460/ Trailer http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZLRgAe2jLaw http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZLRgAe2jLaw
- vchoi 14y agoPerhaps 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 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/City_of_God_%282002_film%29) Akira (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Akira_%28film%29 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Akira_%28film%29) Léon: The Professional (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L%C3%A9on_%28film%29 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L%C3%A9on_%28film%29) Monster (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monster_%28manga%29 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monster_%28manga%29) GTO (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Teacher_Onizuka http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Teacher_Onizuka) Dogtooth (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dogtooth_%28film%29 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dogtooth_%28film%29) Heathers (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heathers http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heathers)
- robwgibbons 14y agoKill them with fire
- gfody 14y agoThe Onion was on to this years ago: http://www.theonion.com/articles/new-study-reveals-most-children-unrepentant-sociop,2870/ http://www.theonion.com/articles/new-study-reveals-most-chil...
- mratzloff 14y agoThis 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 14y agoI 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?
- PaperclipTaken 14y agoIn 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.
- mynameishere 14y agoPsychopaths 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 14y 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.
- philwelch 14y ago> The fact that the military essentially screens for them No, no they don't. What makes you think that they do?
- mynameishere 14y agoBecause it's a huge field. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military_psychology 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/0806132809 http://www.amazon.com/Men-Against-Fire-Problem-Command/dp/08... I maybe wouldn't believe it, but I've seen it.
- philwelch 14y agoBeing willing to effectively fight in combat isn't equivalent to being a psychopath. It's something most men can be trained to do. Once you've in an actual combat situation it's either you or them--at that point it's just a rational manifestation of self-preservation. Even more to the point, people will kill in order to defend each other, which certainly favors empathy towards one's comrades over psychopathy. I'm sure some psychopaths get through, but for anything important the military tries to screen against them, and for good reason--the foundation of an effective military is teamwork, and military culture strongly honors heroism of the self-sacrificial sort, certainly not the stuff psychopaths are made of.
- giardini 14y agoChildren 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 14y agoI 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 14y agoReading 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 14y agoIf 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.
- runeks 14y agoWe 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.
- Shenglong 14y agoReading 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.
- Tichy 14y agoSo 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.