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Psychopathy. Video. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6V7EL-Yg8Gg. Historical Overview. The origins of the concept of psychopathy probably originate in the writings of Pritchard (1837).
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Video • http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6V7EL-Yg8Gg
Historical Overview • The origins of the concept of psychopathy probably originate in the writings of Pritchard (1837). • Pritchard developed the concept of ‘moral insanity’ to account for socially damaging or irresponsible behavior that was not associated with known forms of mental disorder.
Historical Overview • The classification of psychopathy was introduced by Hare (1980; 1991) and has proved to be a useful predictor of future risk (Hare, 1991). • The classification involves both affective-interpersonal (e.g. such as lack of empathy and guilt) and behavioral components (e.g. criminal activity and poor behavioral controls)
Psychopathy • Psychopathy is a term that was created by Hervey Cleckley in 1941. This word was initially used to discuss individuals that possessed artificial charisma and intellect, and that were non-empathetic, deceitful in nature, careless, incapable of guilt or real concern for people, and fearless (Larsen & Buss, 2010).
Psychopathy • Psychopathy, described as the oldest mental disorder, has caused much controversy in psychiatric history. • The most troublesome issue has been the lack of clear criteria for its diagnosis, and many have confused psychopathy with dissocial or antisocial personality disorder. • Today's classification systems do not accept psychopathy as a diagnostic entity, although the upcoming classification DSM V introduces it as a valid diagnosis. • In the diagnosis of psychopathy, the PCL-R is offered as a proven tool with respectable validity and reliability. Its application should certainly be indispensable in the accurate diagnosis of psychopathy.
Psychopathy • In childhood and adolescence, psychopathic tendencies are identified principally by either the use of the Antisocial Process Screening Device (Frick & Hare, 2001) or by the Psychopathy Checklist: Youth Version. • In adulthood, psychopathy is identified though use of the Psychopathy Checklist – Revised (Hare, 1991).
Psychopathy vs. Antisocial personality • In 1952; DSM-I: Sociopathic Personality Disturbance was a diagnostic category within the first edition of the DSM. • Four subcategories of SPD were included, as well: Antisocial Reaction, Dyssocial Reaction, Sexual Deviations, and Addiction. • The concepts of Psychopathy, as defined by Cleckley.s criteria and Antisocial Reaction were, virtually, the same.
Psychopathy vs. Antisocial personality • in 1968; DSM-II: Dyssocial Reaction was moved to be listed under conditions “without manifest psychiatric disorder.” • Sociopathic Personality Disturbance was replaced by Antisocial Personality. • Antisocial Personality did not, as yet, have any specific diagnostic criteria and instead was still used to refer to individuals who exhibited certain antisocial traits, such as impulsivity and irresponsibility, much like Psychopathy.
Psychopathy vs. Antisocial personality • In 1980; DSM-III: Antisocial Personality Disorder required the presence of 3 or more antisocial behaviors • Exhibited before age 15, and focused on persistent violations of social norms, such as lying, stealing, and arrests • There are more specific and distinguished criteria of psychopathic personality.
Psychopathy vs. Antisocial personality • The DSM-IV also listed Psychopathy, Sociopathy, and Dyssocial Personality Disorder as alternative names for ASPD, much like the ICD-10 does.
The proposed revision on the DSM-V • A new definition for personality disorder • First, the definition of what a personality disorder is, in general, has changed. The proposed revision suggests that instead of a pervasive pattern of thinking/emotionality/behaving, a personality disorder reflects "adaptive failure" involving: "Impaired sense of self-identity" or "Failure to develop effective interpersonal functioning".
Five personality types • Antisocial/Psychopathic types have inflated grandiosity and a pervasive pattern of taking advantage of other people. • Avoidant types are inhibited from forming and maintaining relationships out of fears of humiliation and rejection. • Borderline types show intense emotionality, impulsivity, internal feelings of emptiness, and fears of rejection. • Obsessive-compulsive types are hyperfocused on details and are excessively stubborn, rigid, and moralistic. • Schizotypal types are characterized by odd thinking and appearances or confused states.
Psychopathy • Psychopathy commonly is viewed as a personality disorder defined by a cluster of interpersonal, affective, lifestyle, and antisocial traits and behaviors, including grandiosity, egocentricity, deceptiveness, shallow emotions, lack of empathy or remorse, irresponsibility, impulsivity, and a tendency to violate social norms.
Cleckley's core personality traits • Cleckley proposed 16 core personality traits divided into three categories (originally published in 1941, this list is from 1976): • Positive adjustment • 1. Superficial charm and good intelligence • 2. An absence of delusions & other signs of irrational thinking • 3. An absence of "nervousness" or psychopathic manifestations • 14. Suicide is rarely carried out because of love of the self
Cleckley's core personality traits • Chronic behavioral deviance • 4. Unreliability • 7. Inadequately motivated antisocial behavior • 8. Poor judgment and failure to learn from previous experiences • 13. Fantastic and uninviting behavior with or without alcohol • 15. Sex life will be impersonal, trivial, and poorly integrated • 16. A failure to follow any kind of life plan
Cleckley's core personality traits • Emotional interpersonal deficits • 5. Untruthfulness and insincerity • 6. A lack of remorse or shame for their behavior • 9. Pathologic egocentricity and incapacity for love • 10. General poverty in any major affective reactions or emotions • 11. A specific loss of insight • 12. A general unresponsiveness to interpersonal relationships
Factors that are hypothesized to give rise to the basic pathology (emotion dysfunction) • Biological • Genetics • Socialization
Abuse and Psychopathy • Theorists have postulated that some variants of psychopathy result from childhood abuse and neglect. • Some have hypothesized that abuse relates primarily to the affective symptoms of psychopathy. Others have suggested that abuse more directly affects the impulsive lifestyle features of psychopathy.
Abuse and Psychopathy • The authors examined these hypotheses in a sample of 615 male offenders who had completed a retrospective self-report measure of childhood abuse, the Dissociative Experiences Scale, and R. D. Hare’s (2003) Psychopathy Checklist—Revised. • Abuse exerted no direct or indirect effect on the core interpersonal and affective features of psychopathy but was directly related to the facet of psychopathy associated with an impulsive and irresponsible lifestyle.
Myth Busting • Psychopaths are both male and female, but more men than women. • They represent all races, cultures, and socioeconomic backgrounds. • Some are intelligent, while others possess average or below-average intelligence. • They come from both single- and two-parent households and may themselves be married with children.
Myth Busting • Psychopaths understand right from wrong. • They know they are subject to society’s rules, but willingly disregard them to pursue their own interests. • They also are not out of touch with reality. • They rarely become psychotic unless they also have a separate mental illness or use drugs, such as stimulants. • Although usually manageable, psychopathy is not curable.
Presence In Society • Many psychopaths have little difficulty joining the ranks of business, politics, law enforcement, government, and academia. They exist in all lines of work, from executive to blue-collar professions. • However, psychopathy often is misread, misdiagnosed, minimized, or explained away by professionals whose jobs require regular interaction with psychopaths, namely in the mental health, judicial, and law enforcement communities.
Differentiating Narcissists and Psychopaths • Both narcissists and psychopaths share: a tendency to regard others as objects more than persons. Immediately this raises concerns: • you don’t have to empathize with objects; objects don’t have feelings worth recognizing. • You can toy with objects; manipulate and exploit them for your own gratification, with a paucity of guilt.
Differentiating Narcissists and Psychopaths • The narcissist will crave recognition and validation. He will demand that others notice and appreciate his special qualities. Disappointment leaves him feeling unappreciated, neglected. Anger and rage then surface in aggressive and passive-aggressive displays.
Differentiating Narcissists and Psychopaths • The psychopath is less obsessed with validation. Indeed the psychopath’s exploitation of others is more predatory than the narcissist’s. For the psychopath the world is something like a gigantic hunt, populated by personified objects to be mined to his advantage.
Differentiating Narcissists and Psychopaths • Narcissist has a dim notion of ethics; but his ethics are corrupted by alarming rationalizations , and he is expert at furnishing these rationalizations. • Psychopath has no ethics, and thus no need for rationalizations. Life, for him, is a game. The game is about figuring out how to get what he wants now, by whatever statagems necessary. And it’s a game without rules. Without rules, there is no violation, no exploitation; and even if there is, it’s part of the game and he is absolutely indifferent to, the damage he causes.
Sociopath vs psychopath: different characteristics • The sociopath is said to be more disorganized in his life. It's more difficult for them to maintain relationships, finish their academic studies or keep a steady job. They are said to live on the fringes of society and rarely have regular income.
Sociopath vs psychopath: different characteristics • While sociopaths may lack empathy and won't feel guilty about breaking the law and taking advantage of strangers, they may actually form bonds with those they have close relationships with. It is said that they can make decisions not to direct their crimes against those people that they care about, unlike psychopaths who will make decisions to abuse their families just as quickly as strangers.
Sociopath vs psychopath: different characteristics • The sociopath is said to have less emotional control than psychopaths, and may be very quick to express agitation or rage. The psychopath may display little emotion even under extreme threat. • The crimes of a sociopath are spontaneous and therefore quite disorganized. Those of a psychopath can be carefully thought out.
Sociopath vs psychopath: different characteristics • When many people think of sociopath vs psychopath, they tend to believe that psychopaths have the skills to hide themselves in society, to blend in. Even their families may not recognize a psychopath. Sociopaths on the other hand, are seen as wild, a bit dangerous, somewhat disturbed and/or frequently in trouble with the law.
Psychopath is always a Killer? • While it’s true that many coldblooded killers are psychopaths, most psychopaths are not killers. The majority of psychopaths would find a messy murder too inconvenient and personally unpleasant a task to assume. • This doesn’t make the non-murderous psychopath “less psychopathic,” or “more sensitive” than the murderous psychopath; it merely reflects the calculus psychopaths apply in their decision-making: how can I get, or take what I want, for maximum instant gain, at minimum personal inconvenience?
Psychopathy and Crime • In the past few years there has been a dramatic change in the perceived and actual role played by psychopathy in the criminal justice system. • Formerly, a prevailing view was that clinical diagnoses such as psychopathy were of little value in understanding and predicting criminal behaviors. • More recently, the importance of psychopathy, particularly as measured by the PCL-R and its derivatives, is widely recognized, both by forensic clinicians and by the courts.
Psychopathy and Crime • This is not surprising, given that many of the characteristics important for inhibiting antisocial and violent behavior – empathy, close emotional bonds, fear of punishment, guilt – are lacking or seriously deficient in psychopathic people. • Moreover, their egocentricity, grandiosity, sense of entitlement, impulsivity, general lack of behavioral inhibitions and need for power and control constitute what might be described as a prescription for the commission of antisocial and criminal acts
Psychopathy and Crime • Their impulsivity and poor behavioral controls may result in “reactive” forms of aggression or violence, but other features (e.g., lack of empathy, shallow emotions) also make it relatively easy for them to engage in aggression and violence that is more predatory, premeditated, instrumental or “cold-blooded” in nature.
In Cold Blood: Characteristics of Criminal Homicides as a Function of Psychopathy • This study investigated the relationship between psychopathy and the characteristics of criminal homicides committed by a sample of 125 Canadian offenders. It was hypothesized that the homicides committed by psychopathic offenders would be more likely to be primarily instrumental (i.e., associated with premeditation, motivated by an external goal, and not preceded by a potent affective reaction) or “cold-blooded” in nature, whereas homicides committed by nonpsychopaths often would be “crimes of passion” associated with a high level of impulsivity/reactivity and emotionality. The results confirmed these predictions; homicides committed by psychopathic offenders were significantly more instrumental than homicides by nonpsychopaths. Nearly all (93.3%) of the homicides by psychopaths were primarily instrumental in nature compared with 48.4% of the homicides by nonpsychopaths (Woodworth & Porter, 2002).
Types of Aggression • Psychopaths are at increased risk of engaging in both reactive and instrumental aggression. • Instrumental aggression (sometimes called proactive or predatory aggression) is planned, controlled, and purposeful, and is used for a particular aim—for example, to get drugs or sex, or just to establish dominance. The primary goal is not necessarily to injure others but simply to obtain the desired outcome. This isn't aggression that arises from an emotional reaction; it's the calculated use of aggression as a tool.
Types of Aggression • Reactive aggression, on the other hand, is much more impulsive and emotion driven and arises from a perceived threat or attack or uncontrolled anger. • The two types of aggression, instrumental and reactive, are not mutually exclusive. People can and do engage in both. The mob hit man may commit murder as part of his job but, like others, can experience road rage after a bad day at work. The point is that the reliance on instrumental aggression to get what they want is one of the things that distinguishes some psychopaths from the general population.
Forensic • Criminal psychology is the study of the wills, thoughts, intentions and reactions of criminals, all that partakes in the criminal behavior. • Psychological criminology is the science of behavior and mental processes of a criminal. Focuses on individual criminal behavior and how it is acquired, evoked, maintained, and modified. Environmental and personality influence on criminal behavior are considered along with the mental processes that mediate that behavior.
Psychology's role in the legal system • The question of sanity/insanity or criminal responsibility is an assessment of the offenders state of mind at the time of the crime. This refers to their ability to understand right from wrong and what is against the law.
Treatment • Unlike most other offenders, psychopaths appear to suffer little personal distress, see little wrong with their attitudes and behavior, and seek treatment only when it is in their best interests to do so, such as when seeking probation or parole. • They appear to derive little benefit from prison treatment programs that are emotion-based, involve ―talk therapy,‖ are psychodynamic or insight-oriented, or are aimed at the development of empathy, conscience and interpersonal skills
Treatment • Recent findings from behavioral genetics, developmental psychopathology, and neurobiology, that psychopathy is characterized by personality and behavioral propensities that are strongly entrenched and presumably difficult to change. • Till now it is untreatable disorder!!!
