THE CRIMINAL PSYCHOPATH: HISTORY, NEUROSCIENCE, TREATMENT, AND ECONOMIC
Kent A. Kiehl and Morris B. Hoffman
[https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4059069/, extracts from above follow. ]
Abstract
The manuscript surveys the history of psychopathic personality, from its origins in psychiatric folklore to its modern assessment in the forensic arena. Individuals with psychopathic personality, or psychopaths, have a disproportionate impact on the criminal justice system. Psychopaths are twenty to twenty-five times more likely than non-psychopaths to be in prison, four to eight times more likely to violently recidivate compared to non-psychopaths, and are resistant to most forms of treatment. This article presents the most current clinical efforts and neuroscience research in the field of psychopathy. Given psychopathy’s enormous impact on society in general and on the criminal justice system in particular, there are significant benefits to increasing awareness of the condition. This review also highlights a recent, compelling and cost-effective treatment program that has shown a significant reduction in violent recidivism in youth on a putative trajectory to psychopathic personality.
Psychopaths consume an astonishingly disproportionate amount of criminal justice resources. The label psychopath is often used loosely by a variety of participants in the system—police, victims, prosecutors, judges, probation officers, parole and prison officials, even defense lawyers—as a kind of lay synonym for incorrigible. Law and psychiatry, even at the zenith of their rehabilitative optimism, both viewed psychopaths as a kind of exception that proved the rehabilitative rule. Psychopaths composed that small but embarrassing cohort whose very resistance to all manner of treatment seemed to be its defining characteristic.
Psychopathy is a constellation of psychological symptoms that typically emerges early in childhood and affects all aspects of a sufferer’s life including relationships with family, friends, work, and school. The symptoms of psychopathy include shallow affect, lack of empathy, guilt and remorse, irresponsibility, and impulsivity (see Table 1 for a complete list of psychopathic symptoms). [ . . . . ]
Table 1
The 20 Items Listed on the Psychopathy Checklist-Revised (Hare 1991; 2003)
The items corresponding to the early two-factor conceptualization of psychopathy,89 subsequent three-factor model,90 and current four-factor model are listed.91 The two-factor model labels are Interpersonal-Affective (Factor 1) and Social Deviance (Factor 2); the three-factor model labels are Arrogant and Deceitful Interpersonal Style (Factor 1); Deficient Affective Experience (Factor 2), and Impulsive and Irresponsible Behavioral Style (Factor 3); the four-factor model labels are Interpersonal (Factor 1), Affective (Factor 2), Lifestyle (Factor 3), and Antisocial (Factor 4). Items indicated with “–” did not load on any factor.
Item 2 Factor Model 3 Factor 4 Factor 1 Glibness-Superficial Charm 1 1 1 2 Grandiose Sense of Self Worth 1 1 1 3 Need for Stimulation 2 3 3 4 Pathological Lying 1 1 1 5 Conning-Manipulative 1 1 1 6 Lack of Remorse or Guilt 1 2 2 7 Shallow Affect 1 2 2 8 Callous-Lack of Empathy 1 2 2 9 Parasitic Lifestyle 2 3 3 10 Poor Behavioral Controls 2 — 4 11 Promiscuous Sexual Behavior — — — 12 Early Behavioral Problems 2 — 4 13 Lack of Realistic, Long-Term Goals 2 3 3 14 Impulsivity 2 3 3 15 Irresponsibility 2 3 3 16 Failure to Accept Responsibility 1 2 2 17 Many Marital Relationships — — — 18 Juvenile Delinquency 2 — 4 19 Revocation of Conditional Release 2 — 4 20 Criminal Versatility — — 4 Psychopathy is astonishingly common as mental disorders go. It is twice as common as schizophrenia, anorexia, bipolar disorder, and paranoia,5 and roughly as common as bulimia, panic disorder, obsessive-compulsive personality disorder, and narcissism.6 Indeed, the only mental disorders significantly more common than psychopathy are those related to drug and alcohol abuse or dependence, depression and post-traumatic stress disorder.
[. . . .]
A BRIEF HISTORY OF PSYCHOPATHY
A. Emptied Souls
The idea that some humans are inherent free riders without moral scruple seems to have become controversial only in the postmodern era, when it has become fashionable to deny that any of us have a “nature” at all. For as long as humans have roamed the Earth, we have noticed that there are people who seem to be what psychiatrist Adolf Guggenbühl-Craig called “emptied souls.”17 One of Aristotle’s students, Theophrastus, was probably the first to write about them, calling them “the unscrupulous.”18 These are people who lack the ordinary connections that bind us all and lack the inhibitions that those connections impose. They are, to over simplify, people without empathy or conscience.
Psychopathy has always been part of human society; that is evident from its ubiquity in history’s myths and literature.19 Greek and Roman mythology is strewn with psychopaths, Medea being the most obvious.20 Psychopaths populate the Bible, at least the Old Testament, perhaps beginning with Cain. Psychopaths have appeared in a steady stream of literature from all cultures since humans first put pen to paper: from King Shahyar in The Book of One Thousand and One Nights;21 to the psychopaths in Shakespeare, including Richard III and, perhaps most chillingly, Aaron the Moor in Titus Andronicus; to the villain Ximen Qing in the 17th century Chinese epic Jin Ping Mei, The Golden Vase.22 More recent sightings in film and literature include Macheath, from Berthold Brecht’s Three Penny Opera, Alex DeLarge in Anthony Burgess’ A Clockwork Orange, and Hannibal Lecter in Silence of the Lambs.23
No cultures, or stations, are immune. One of the modern fathers of the clinical study of psychopathy, Hervey Cleckley, famously opined that the Athenian general Alcibiades was probably a psychopath.24 And of course there was the Roman emperor Caligula. But psychopaths much more typically come from the ranks of the ordinary. Cleckley wrote extensively about ordinary patients he classified as having severe forms of psychopathy and whom he opined were almost all “plainly unsuited for life in any community; some are as thoroughly incapacitated, in my opinion, as most patients with unmistakable schizophrenic psychosis.”25 But he also examined patients who were highly functioning businessmen—men of the world as he put it—scientists, physicians and even psychiatrists. These people were able to navigate the demands of modern society, despite having the same clinical constellations as their less-functioning brethren, including grandiosity, impulsivity, remorselessness and shallow affect. These functioning psychopaths have become the objects of much recent attention.26
Although in this article we will focus on research efforts in the U.S. and Canada, psychopathy is a worldwide problem. In 1995, NATO commissioned an Advanced Study Institute on Psychopathic Behavior, the scientific director of which was Robert Hare, whose seminal clinical assessment instrument is discussed in detail in Part II below.27 One of the important collections on psychopathy, cited throughout this article, was the product of a 1999 meeting held under the auspices of the Queen of Spain and her Center for the Study of Violence.28 Also discussed below29 is the British practice of expressly addressing the problem of the psychopath in commitment statutes in ways that have been generally more aggressive, at least theoretically, than is done in North America.
Psychopaths also appear in existing preindustrial societies, suggesting they are not a cultural artifact of the demands of advancing civilization but have been with us since our emergence as a species. For example, the Yorubas, a tribe indigenous to southwestern Nigeria, call their psychopaths aranakan, which they describe as meaning “a person who always goes his own way regardless of others, who is uncooperative, full of malice, and bullheaded.”30 Inuits have a word, kunlangeta, that they use to describe someone whose “mind knows what to do but he does not do it,” and who repeatedly lies, steals, cheats, and rapes.31
While the capacity to identify with the thoughts and feelings of fellow human beings undoubtedly has innumerable cultural variations, it is beginning to be clear that evolution has built into the human brain a central core of moral reasoning that is more or less universal.32 It is that central core that is missing in psychopaths.
[. . . .]
The Path Whisperer 
attacking Syracuse. This was the end of Athens. Here’s what Plutarch had to say about him.
“…He had, as they say, one power which transcended all others, and proved an implement of his chase for men: that of assimilating and adapting himself to the pursuits and lives of others, thereby assuming more violent changes than the chameleon. That animal, however, as it is said, is utterly unable to assume one colour, namely, white; but Alcibiades could associate with good and bad alike, and found naught that he could not imitate and practice. 5 In Sparta, he was all for bodily training, simplicity of life, and severity of countenance; in Ionia, for p65 luxurious ease and pleasure; in Thrace, for drinking deep; in Thessaly, for riding hard; and when he was thrown with Tissaphernes the satrap, he outdid even Persian magnificence in his pomp and lavishness. It was not that he could so easily pass entirely from one manner of man to another, nor that he actually underwent in every case a change in his real character; but when he saw that his natural manners were likely to be annoying to his associates, he was quick to assume any counterfeit exterior which might in each case be suitable for them…”
Story of Alcibiades
http://penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/E/Roman/Texts/Plutarch/Lives/Alcibiades*.html
100% Spath. If you read about him, it’s glaring if you know this sort.
I think psychopaths have had a great deal of influence on history and particularly on the fall of civilizations. I have a couple of theories about Spaths.
One, there is a general 250 year cycle of rise and fall of empires. We are right this minute in the middle of the fall of the US empire. Look at the people running things. I suspect Spaths through straight up aggression move up over time into power, but they care not at all about actually running things successfully so the whole thing implodes. They are great at gaining power because it excites them to do the maneuvering it takes to get to the top, but they haven’t a clue nor do they care to do anything useful with it. There are scientific studies that social domination comes from sheer aggressiveness.
“…Researchers have created a brain implant that stimulates persistent aggression. Winners in social dominance experiments are mice that are not stronger but are just more persistently aggressive…”
http://science.sciencemag.org/content/357/6347/162
I think another trait they have that helps them is they can lie without any sort of stressors. I think most people unconsciously have a trait that recognizes stressors in normal humans, who have trouble lying without some of these unconscious stressors being present. But this is bypassed by psychopaths/Spaths and the complete assurity in how they express the most blatant lies, combined with a finally tuned Spath ability to read humans to see if what they are saying is going over, allows them to get over on people.
My other theory, and I really believe this is true, is that Spaths were the norm before history began. If you look at wild animals of all sorts, they have a lot of Spath traits. Why do I believe this. There is a huge mystery about how humans over hundreds of thousands of years all of a sudden starting building civilization. Best as I can tell, I’m the only person that has any credible explanation for the rise of human civilization. It happened very fast compared to the timeline of our emergence. All of a sudden we started building cites, monuments. All sorts of stuff. The only one whose even taken a shot at explaining this wrote a book called, “The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind”
https://www.julianjaynes.org/about/about-jaynes-theory/overview/
Her theory is good in that it makes the point that the mind changed but bad in that she didn’t really get right what the change was.
I came about this conclusion in what has got to be one of the most significant scientific studies ever. The study of the Russian foxes that were bred over time to be tame, (civilized). Comparison to civilized humans now and lots of other stuff is what influenced me on this.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Domesticated_silver_fox
In the fox experiment, a normal fox when you get near his cage will snarl and snap viciously at you. The scientist used foxes raised for fur and only let the ones that snarled less breed. They did this for several decades. They changed quite a bit. They gained different colors, droopy ears and got to be happy to hang around humans. Maybe not as much as dogs but way more than the wild. I came to recognize that like dogs, these tamed animals were beginning to have empathy. They wanted to have their owners or those around them to feel good, and they began to see the “other” as something that was a part of a bigger thing. A society, if you will. Empathy. The ones snarling in the cages could not see this. It was only THEM. Sure a wild animal will look after it offspring, and its close relatives, pack, tribe, but will have zero empathy for other tribes, people, etc. They are not aware nor care about the big picture.
This is what psychopaths are. Animals with no sense of empathy or for it, and no care for the wider world. You must admit, this scenario fits like a glove. I believe that in the past all humans, and Neanderthals, which I never believe really became civilized, were all animals. All of them had great intellect, and yet they really did not do much of anything but fight each other and roam around. They had no empathy, so…there was no society to take care of. They never even recognized it as being a thing.
Psychopaths are just a throwback to the primeval primitive human. The area in the brain that supports empathy is not there. It’s nonexistent or greatly diminished.
So how did we get civilized? It could have been forced, or it could have been any tribe who had greater empathy within the tribe could work together much better. Working together is an enormously powerful tool. Look at all that has been built in such a short time since humans have cooperated. It’s astounding.
Spaths can’t build or maintain anything because they have no sense of “us”, there is only “them”.
They are born this way and other than people who become psychopaths through serious abuse and trauma, they can not be cured or changed. It’s genetic.
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I also note the authors of this study believe there is effective treatment for some psychopaths. They admit this is only applicable to young/juvenile psychopaths (at least for now).
I imagine the paradigm of psychopathy is according to 2 groups: “born that way” and “made that way”. In other words, what these authors consider the old school paradigm of nature (psychopaths) and nurture (sociopaths). I think this paradigm is still valid (and I know the MK Ultra researchers believe this too).
I imagine this paradigm as a chart with these 2 column headings, and with the rows being Hare’s scale of “low level” psychopathy up to “high level”.
Thus you could have a young low to moderate level sociopath that may still be able to respond to intense treatment, which in a sense is deprogramming his environmental programming (e.g., being sexually/physically abused, being in a gang). But a higher level sociopath might not respond to these treatments, and the entire category of natural born psychopaths would not respond to any treatment.
Thus, 3 out of the 4 boxes would be considered untreatable.
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“There are studies galore that correlate the neglect and abuse of children to those children growing up with increased risks of depression, suicide, violence, drug abuse and crime. But there are currently no studies that correlate these environmental factors to psychopathy.”
I think you will find those studies exist in the classified archives of the DoD and CIA. Consider projects Artichoke, MK Ultra, and Monarch…
“On the contrary, a paper Hare and his colleagues presented in 1990 shows that on average there is no detectable difference in the family backgrounds of incarcerated psychopaths and non-psychopaths.”
Right. And no doubt all these psychopathic inmates volunteered the fact they were sexually abused by their families/relatives.
I understand that doing research on sexual abuse is extremely difficult since few people want to admit or talk about it. But the researchers should at least have the insight to suspect it and to recognize the walls of emotional/intellectual/behavioral protections the victims build around these memories.
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