bezsenny
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Why Do Some People Become Psychopaths?
When children with certain genetic tendencies are raised in the wrong environment, they can grow up without compassion.
By Maia Szalavitz for MSN Health & Fitness
When most people think of psychopaths, they think—with a shudder—of serial killers like Ted Bundy, who seem to show no remorse or even understanding that what they do is morally wrong.
Psychopathy —also called sociopathy—is indeed defined by lack of empathy, callousness and complete disregard for anything or anyone else other than one's selfish needs. But although all psychopaths meet the criteria for what the diagnostic manual calls "antisocial personality disorder"—of which psychopathy is the most extreme case—not all of them are ruthless murderers.
"People don't realize that there are hundreds of sociopaths walking around [who] aren't criminals," says child psychiatrist Bruce Perry, M.D., Ph.D. "They end up manipulating people to get into relationships; they're the kind of people at work that you ultimately learn are sleazy. They're right on the edge, but [are] not criminal."
Some refrain from violence because they can get what they need without it, but many, of course, do cross the line into crime. Almost always their manipulation skills are exceptional. A study just published in the journal Legal and Criminal Psychology found that even though they are more likely than other criminals to re-offend, psychopathic criminals are two and a half times more likely than others to charm parole boards into releasing them.
The root of the problem
Many researchers now believe that the core defect in psychopathy—and what most distinguishes it from other antisocial behavior disorders—is what are called "callous/unemotional traits." A child who kicks another child because he's angry and can't control himself but feels terrible afterwards may be antisocial, but he's not psychopathic. It's the kid who does it and feels no remorse—or even gets angrier because the other child's crying is annoying—who's most worrisome.
What causes this lack of empathy? Many—but not all—psychopaths were abused or neglected as children. Being treated poorly early on can set up a child to see everyone else as selfish and cruel, causing them to replicate that kind of behavior as a way to cope with a nasty, uncaring world. However, the vast majority of abused and neglected children grow up to be caring, and some are even especially sensitive—far from psychopathic.
James Blair, Ph.D., studies troubled children as chief of affective cognitive neuroscience unit in the mood and anxiety disorders program at the National Institute of Mental Health. He says that post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), which can be one result of childhood trauma, can be seen in some ways as the opposite of psychopathy.
"There's one core structure in the brain that's over-responsive in PTSD—that's the amygdala," he says. This region is critical for perceiving and responding to threats. In PTSD, the amygdala is hypersensitive to threats, producing fear in situations that wouldn't seem to be frightening to most people.
But in brain scans of people who have high levels of callous or unemotional traits, "We see a reduced response of the amygdala to threat," says Blair.
That doesn't mean that the psychopaths weren't exposed to trauma—a brain faced with overwhelming stress can respond either by becoming hypersensitive or insensitive, depending on a multitude of factors, including genetics.
Indeed, callous and unemotional traits do seem to be highly genetic. About 70 percent of the variance between people on this dimension seems to be inherited. However, a study of sons of criminals found that those who had a highly responsive stress system were far less likely to become criminals themselves than those whose stress system was less responsive.
Lack of empathy
The orbitofrontal cortex—which is involved with decision-making and considering whether the consequences of an action are likely to be good or bad—is impaired in those with psychopathy.
"[Psychopaths] don't show normal emotional reactions to dangerous things, to negative emotion and to punishment. They don't feel the same arousal when others get hurt or punished." says Paul Frick, Ph.D., chair of the psychology department at the University of New Orleans.
Blair gives the example of being offered a million dollars to steal an ordinary pen from your office. That's a lot of money and it's not even necessarily a crime, so most people wouldn't rule it out. But if the situation involves shooting someone to get the pen, people who aren't psychopathic don't even think before saying no, as moral disgust makes vivid to them the pain of the victim, the loss to the family and the probable punishment.
Sociopaths don't feel those negatives as intensely. "They're just not coding aversive consequences as strongly as a normal individual does," he says.
Preventing psychopathy
Children who rate high on callous traits are not necessarily destined to become psychopaths. Although not many studies have followed such children, one found that 20 percent of who were the most callous and unemotional at age 12 were still that way as adults. "One way to look at it is that the vast majority didn't grow up to be psychopathic," says Frick, "However, these kids are at high risk for very serious outcomes."
Frick published a study in 2007 that looked at preschoolers who were starting to show such characteristics. He found that they respond best to very consistent parenting. "For the parents who were most consistent, [children's] conscience development went up," he says.
Interestingly, the study found that while both the typical and sensitive kids responded poorly to strict, authoritarian parenting, callous kids were more likely to develop a conscience when parents used that style. "While the other kids did a lot worse, they did better," he says, noting that corporal punishment had a negative effect on conscience development for all types of kids.
However, another study found that children with callous and unemotional traits respond as well to rewards of good behavior as other children, offering another clue about what might help.
"Focus on teaching through rewarding appropriate behavior—so that they see a reason for not hurting others," says Frick, explaining that it is easier for these kids to learn this way because they don't feel the pain of others naturally.
Thankfully, no matter what, most of the children with these traits will not become the next Ted Bundy. But a lot more research is needed to discover what works best to help those who might.
http://health.msn.com/health-topics/mental-health/articlepage.aspx?cp-documentid=100233968
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Have the courage to want the very best for yourself.
- Meditation for The Day of Mastery (my birthday)
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Apr/23/2009, 2:39 am
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butterflylove
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Re: Why Do Some People Become Psychopaths?
bezsenny,
This is a great artcle, thank you 
It really hits home with me. I believe we all have traits and/or genes of everything and it is trauma that causes P's, N's BPD, all of them.
Ted Bundy and Charles Manson, yeah they acted out and are known but there are so many that are not known.
The P forum on MSN used to scare me, I figured out why, my mother, I could easily say she is an N yes but...
quote:
It's the kid who does it and feels no remorse—or even gets angrier because the other child's crying is annoying—who's most worrisome.
My N/P mother took pleasure in beating me, I know she was actually beating herself, I was a mirror to her, she does not like herself, still it did not feel good when she beat the hell out of me and then said "This hurts me more than it hurts you"
OK. Beating a child is a very selfish act, it not out of discipline, it is out of self satifisfaction, it is self gratification.
I remember everytime my N/P mother and I got into it, I would ball my hands into a fist and squeeze them tight, I wanted to hit her back subconsciouly. I have only hit 1 person in my life, an ex boyfriend who I found with another woman. It felt good for about a second, I bruised one of my fingers and was in pain for weeks after that. Hitting is not the way to go about things....I knew that as a child and still know it..
quote:
Focus on teaching through rewarding appropriate behavior—so that they see a reason for not hurting others," says Frick, explaining that it is easier for these kids to learn this way because they don't feel the pain of others naturally.
YES, when I first starting seeing my counselor she said to me "Your FOO is so screwed up, how did you turn out to only have neurosis?" I have asked myself that as well, I have a few answers, 1 being that I had my grandmother as a positive archeytype.
My grandmother never hit me, I can see my grandmothers hands in my mind right now, I remember sitting in her lap, I did that a lot, she would hold me. I remember, holding her hands, she was in her 80's, her hands were soft, hand many wrinkles. she was very gentle with me, calling me her little monkey.
I remember my N/P mother would pick me up from my grandmothers house and my N/P mother would ask "How was she today?" My grandmother would say "She was an angel"
My grandmother is and will always be my angel.
My N/P mother I remember her hands, it was always a hard slap to the face, very degrading, slapping to the face is a way to disrespect and say "I AM YOUR MOTHER FEAR ME"
The only type of rewarding behavior I received from my N/P mother was through food, she cooked me spaghetti, I was conditioned to love her spahetti and when she wanted me to prasie her she made the spaghetti. So in the end even that had nothing to do with me and all about her.
I just wanted to say that children are our future, how we show them love is how our future will be.
We have not done so good, sometimes a shining star will rise, Mother Teresa, Ghandi, Lady Diana, Maya Angelou, we need those types cause we are starved.
There are some many unsuspecting P's, N's and disordered out there and they are Mothers, Fathers, Sisters, Brothers, Aunts, Uncles, Priests. Heck even the basis of religion is founded on FEAR and the cycle of abuse.
Abuse is about silence keeping the abuse a secret as the movie the Da Vinci code says...."The Dark Con of Man"
Children again are our future.
((((((((((hugs)))))))))))
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If anyone will not receive you or listen to your words, shake off the dust from your feet when you leave that house or town. Matthew 10:14
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Jun/21/2009, 8:52 am
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lola3
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Re: Why Do Some People Become Psychopaths?
 sooooo scary, michael myers comes to mind
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Jul/15/2009, 6:23 am
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Black Butte
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Re: Why Do Some People Become Psychopaths?
Here's another article published on Yahoo News today:
http://news.yahoo.com/s/livescience/whatmakesapsychopathanswersremainelusive
What Makes a Psychopath? Answers Remain Elusive
Charles Q. Choi
Special to LiveScience
livescience.com – Mon Aug 31 [2009], 12:06 pm ET
As exaggerated as many popular depictions of psychopaths often are, many nevertheless do pose a genuine danger to others. So what makes psychopaths the way they are?
Scientists are now working toward uncovering the roots of this disorder in the brain. Their research could lead to ways to intervene against the disorder and hopefully prevent it from manifesting.
But answers remain elusive, in part because it's no easy (or safe) task to study the brain of the typical psychopath.
"Psychopaths are often big trouble for those around them," said clinical psychologist Joseph Newman at the University of Wisconsin. "If we can find out what underlies their problems, we might be able to identify what kinds of interventions might be able to work for them."
Who they are
Psychopaths are thought to make up as much as roughly 1 percent of the general populace and up to 25 percent of the prison population.
"Criminal psychopaths are about three times more likely to commit violence than other offenders and about two-and-a-half times more likely to commit other antisocial acts such as lying and sexual exploitation," Newman explained.
"Although not all psychopaths are violent, their kind of behavior is very destructive socially, and hurts our trust of other people," he added. "And many people in prison who might otherwise be treated sympathetically aren't given the chance they deserve because people have trouble distinguishing them from true psychopaths."
Scientists investigating the disorder commonly agree that psychopaths are often marked by the following traits:
* Lack of empathy, guilt, conscience or remorse
* Shallow experiences of feelings or emotions
* Impulsivity and a weak ability to defer gratification and control behavior
* Superficial charm and glibness
* Irresponsibility and a failure to accept responsibility for their actions
* A grandiose sense of their own worth
"There are people who are impulsive, at high risk of substance abuse, who are high in emotionality, whom many people call psychopaths, but that is more what we'd call an externalizing syndrome," Newman said. Many scientists researching psychopathy see it as an emotionally cold disorder.
What's going on
When it comes to locating the areas in the brain where psychopathy might have its roots, scientists have a number of suspects. One brain region less active in psychopaths is the amygdala, which is normally linked with fear.
"There's a lot of history regarding psychopathy as a disorder of fear," Newman said. "Fear is what keeps the rest of us in line, helps us learn what society wants us to do and not do to keep us out of trouble, and the idea is that psychopaths do whatever they want to do."
Another brain area that scientists have probed in psychopaths is the orbital frontal cortex or regions within it, as damage there leads to poor decision making, "which could be a plausible model of psychopathy," Newman explained.
Neuroscientist Kent Kiehl at the University of New Mexico suggests psychopathy is rooted in the "paralimbic system." Included within this network of brain regions are the amygdala and orbital frontal cortex, as well as other areas involved with emotions, inhibitions and attention.
Although regions linked with feelings often receive a great deal of attention in research into psychopathy, there are hints the disorder impacts more than just emotions. "Studies have shown psychopaths can have trouble processing words dealing with abstract concepts or emotional content," Newman said. "When investigating psychopathy, you want to look at the full range of deficits that are present, not just the emotional ones, to really account for what might be going on."
Nature vs. nurture
Past research, including studies with twins, suggest there is a genetic predisposition to psychopathy. Still, it remains uncertain how much their environment influences the development of the disorder. "Just because one has a predisposition doesn't mean that they have to end up behaving that way," Newman said.
It remains hard to get to the root of psychopathy, since the most recognizable group of psychopaths are criminals, "and bringing prisoners out to get their brains scanned puts a lot of people in risk, so it's very complicated to do," Newman said.
Still, understanding the roots of psychopathy in the brain hopefully will lead "to an ability to identify and negate the problem,," Newman said. "By finding out what predisposes someone toward psychopathy and how these vulnerabilities interact with the environment to give rise to a full-blown case of the disorder, I believe one might be able to prevent the unfortunate development of psychopathy."
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Aug/31/2009, 5:44 pm
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