Can You Call a 9-Year-Old a Psychopath?

I 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.

When 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.

I 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.

Reading 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."

The Onion was on to this years ago: http://www.theonion.com/articles/new-study-reveals-most-chil...

This 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.

One day this kid will make a reddit account and a few months later he'll be the Hegemon.

Son 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.

If there are 9-year-old prodigies then there are also 9-year-old psychopaths.

If 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.

I 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...

Reading 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.

Psychopaths 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.

I just saw a film about this topic last night called "We Need to Talk About Kevin."

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1242460/ Trailer http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZLRgAe2jLaw

Sure, 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"?

So 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.

We 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.

Kill them with fire

Children 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.