The Neuroscientist Who Discovered He Was a Psychopath
blogs.smithsonianmag.com
blogs.smithsonianmag.com
It's worth pointing out that there is also such thing as an Antisocial personality style, meaning that a person has antisocial traits, but can keep them in check well enough to function in society. They tend to do well in roles that require aggression, and can make excellent entrepreneurs, attorneys, and politicians. In fact, people are frequently surprised to find out that some of their most prized traits are Antisocial, they have some antisocial friends, and that they probably have one or two Antisocial heroes. Martin Luther King Jr and Mother Theresa leap to mind.
TL;DR - It's simplistic to say "Trait A bad, Trait B good". There are plenty of narcissists, sociopaths, and paranoids that have done great things for society.
Just because somebody isn't a serial murderer doesn't mean they are beneficial to society. Ruthless businessmen and politicians can cause far more damage than Ted Bundy ever did.
Unless these ruthless business men tortured, raped and murder people, then no, they did not do more damage than either of these two serial killers.
I get where you're coming from the moral relativism is going overboard.
That's what he's getting at. Of course, there's also the question of whether there are businessmen who have done such a harm, and whether they have done so intentionally, the measure of their blame for it, etc.
Easy. Next question?
To take your comment at face value -- it's as if the question at the core of thousands of years of philosophy, public policy, and politics has suddenly been resolved. Much more likely that you are unaware of the nuance, and also unaware of your own unawareness. Thus you feel perfectly comfortable making bold, sweeping statements like this as if nobody has ever considered before today the matter at hand.
The truth is that there are many valid ways to measure the good/badness in a thing.
They may not have done so themselves but they paid people who did. Look at all the rape, torture and murder going on in places like Central African Republic. The place is loaded with mineral resources and yet the population starves and has to flee for their lives from press gangs and militias. Behind all of this you will find businessmen and politicians profiting immensely.
this is heavily contested.
Unfortunately I'm predestined to incorrectly ignore your arguments, maintaining my misplaced belief in free will.
Exactly this. Psychopaths may not have empathy or desire for social approval prevent them from becoming murderers, but they still don't want to be punished or become outcasts and lose all the things they need from society. They can even develop their own rational morality, arguably in many ways better than the instinctive emotional morality most people have.
Psychopaths typically only become murderers if they're either stupid, live in a defunct society or have some other metal issue that compels them to kill. Fortunately, that combination is rare.
One of the striking things about psychopaths, and I'm talking about the obvious anti-social types, not the ones like Fallon from the article, is how they are able to talk and abstractly reason about morality. Based on words alone, they can often be judged as shining examples of virtue. The interesting thing about it is that they're not lying (no evidence that they do) or trying to deceive (well, it certainly depends on the situation, of course they won't have problems deceiving people when needed). They just can't relate on a fundamental level to rational analysis they are able to make. It is in fact the absence of emotional component in moral reasoning, which neurotypical people have, that leads them to behave in ways opposite of their stated abstract moral standards.
> ...are there millions of Ted Bundys out there who never actually killed anyone and even lead productive lives?
I think the answer to this is probably yes-ish. The thing about people like Ted Bundy is that he wasn't JUST a psychopath. He was also sadistic, and probably some other characteristics [2]. The reason I say "yes" though is that there are certainly a lot of psychopaths (however you want to define the parameters of the definition) out there leading productive and "normal" lives without killing anyone.
Now, if I may indulge my own pet ideas...
Psychopaths have certainly been with us forever. Having no empathy, conscience or remorse and also being sexually promiscuous makes for a fairly effective survival and reproductive strategy outside of the modern context (see the Ghengis Khan effect [3]). On the flip side, they also probably killed each other off pretty regularly too (which would have had some possible cyclical effects). This leads one to ponder what role the psychopath might play in modernity. And it doesn't take too long to get some unsurprising / interesting results [4][5]. I'd say that one of the features of capitalism is that it can effectively (but not perfectly) convert volatile/psychopathic personalities into value for society. Where a psychopath might have been an Attila the Hun in historical past, he might be Steve Jobs today. Of course, as someone else pointed out, he might also be Dick Cheney too. Thankfully, nations have adopted political and governing structures designed to mitigate the damage one psychopathic person can do. When I see things like extreme inequality in America I wonder what role psychopaths are playing and if perhaps we're entering a phase where we may have to institute some enduring controls on the more emergent(?) psychopathic tendencies in our economic systems (as presaged by "The Corporation"?[6]). Anyway, don't want to beat a dead horse. Suffice to say, I find it amusing (and admittedly dangerous) to view history and current events through a lens of who-are-the-likely-psychopaths. Thought I'd share.
[1] http://www.amazon.com/The-Wisdom-Psychopaths-Killers-Success...
[2] There are groups of traits that, when combined, don't form Captain Planet. Instead they're associated with bad mojo. See the Dark Triad (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dark_triad) and the MacDonald Triad (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Macdonald_triad).
[3] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Descent_from_Genghis_Khan#DNA_e...
[4] http://www.spring.org.uk/2013/07/which-professions-have-the-...
[5] http://www.fbi.gov/stats-services/publications/law-enforceme...
To my knowledge, no such correlation has been established.
While there is a lot of literature on psychopathy and crime, one must bear in mind that the definition of psychopathy being used includes past criminal history. So there is obviously going to be a link!
In science, skepticism rules -- these brain scans might indicate something entirely separate from the object of the study, but something that produces a similar scan. A scientist would rule out all other possibilities before jumping to the conclusion that a person is a sociopath, which is just one of many explanations for the scan outcome.
Most important of all, nature requires genetic diversity for evolution to work. Psychologists try to tell us there's only one "normal", but that's a myth put forth by people who don't understand evolution. "Normal" is anyone who has something to offer the world. Albert Einstein certainly had widely recognized gifts, but psychologists branded him mentally ill, as they did Thomas Jefferson, Bill Gates and many others -- using a "mental illness" label that has since been abandoned due to public protest.
Sloppy science is a longstanding trademark of the field of psychology, and it would be a shame if the same sloppiness infected neuroscience also.
To his credit, the author of the article expresses some of the same doubts as he tells the story.
Of course there's room for scepticism here and a lot of doubt about what the scans actually indicate, and this 'illness' has fallen out of favour due to concerns about its fuzzy definition, but the author is absolutely not claiming that the scans are meaningless or not associated with psychopathy.
No they do not. Psychologists tell us that "normal" covers a very wide range of behaviours and experiences. They tell us that we only need to treat people who are not "normal" if those people have trouble functioning in their day to day lives.
Thus, a person hearing voices can go on hearing those voices if they are okay with it. But when the person reports distress at the voices psychology and psychiatry step in to help that person. (I use hearing voices as an example, it could be OCD or anxiety or depression or any other mental health problem).
> No they do not.
Check your facts.
Title: "Determining What Is Normal Behavior and What Is Not"
Link: http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/fighting-fear/201305/det...
There are ten thousand more just like it.
> They tell us that we only need to treat people who are not "normal" if those people have trouble functioning in their day to day lives.
False. Homeless people are automatically given a diagnosis -- automatically and without consent -- in order to receive public assistance. You're living in a dream world. Modern psychology doesn't ask us what's wrong with us, it tells us. More evidence:
Quote: "... according to the more recent NCS-R data, it’s not really 1 in 4 Americans who could be diagnosed with a mental disorder in any given year — it’s 1 in 3!"
Link: http://psychcentral.com/blog/archives/2010/05/03/mental-heal...
> Thus, a person hearing voices can go on hearing those voices if they are okay with it.
Not if he has any property -- his relatives will have him committed. You are very clearly not conversant with modern psychological practice.
The above abuses explain why the DSM is being abandoned, and by abandoning the DSM, society is rejecting all current psychological practice.
Link: http://www.nimh.nih.gov/about/director/2013/transforming-dia...
Quote: " While DSM has been described as a “Bible” for the field, it is, at best, a dictionary, creating a set of labels and defining each. The strength of each of the editions of DSM has been “reliability” – each edition has ensured that clinicians use the same terms in the same ways. The weakness is its lack of validity."
-- from the current director of the NIMH.
Also, even if he did find such a link, I can't find any publications by him on this link.
More recently, a lot of interesting research is being done now on the physical basis of psychopathy, using various non-invasive means [2].
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hare_Psychopathy_Checklist
[2] http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2008/11/10/081110fa_fact_...
Would that be the same DSM that's being abandoned by those who know it best? Consider this position taken by the sitting director of NIMH:
http://www.nimh.nih.gov/about/director/2013/transforming-dia...
Quote: "While DSM has been described as a “Bible” for the field, it is, at best, a dictionary, creating a set of labels and defining each. The strength of each of the editions of DSM has been “reliability” – each edition has ensured that clinicians use the same terms in the same ways. The weakness is its lack of validity."
Given the present widespread changes in the field of mental health, it might be better to find a more reliable source for views on this topic -- if they exist.
As to psychopathy, the linked article says it all -- a researcher finds out he's a dangerous person by reading a brain scan, with no other supporting evidence and copious contraindications.
Pretty much no, that's not what the article says at all. He didn't find he's dangerous, he found out his brain is lacking in capacity for "empathy, morality and self-control" (which is what he self-observed in the first place). These traits are central to psychopaths, but that does not mean a person with such traits is necessarily violent or actually doing anything overtly anti-social. And that's what the article actually says and tries to explain. A brain scan which shows dysfunction in ventromedial frontal cortex does not mean you're looking at a brain of an anti-social maniac, it's somewhat more nuanced.
EDIT: I forgot to mention a very relevant finding: it has been shown that intelligence has a non linear and interesting interaction with psychopathic personality traits. Basically, very high level intelligence can and does act like a defensive factor, extremely intelligent people with such traits are able to compensate the lack of empathy, self-control etc. (the relation is not so simple with lover levels of intelligence, as I said it's not linear). I wish I could give you some reference, but ATM I don't have anything in English at hand, sorry.
On the contrary, that is exactly what the article says.
> He didn't find he's dangerous, he found out his brain is lacking in capacity for "empathy, morality and self-control"
That wasn't an insight he had in advance, that was an interpretation forced on him by the test results. In other words, he was cornered into accepting a picture of himself, clearly at odds with reality, through personal dedication to his experiment and its outcome.
Science history contains any number of similar stories, in particular in psychology, where what one feels a need to believe becomes the evidence for the very thing being "objectively" studied.
> ... it has been shown that intelligence has a non linear and interesting interaction with psychopathic personality traits.
I think your use of "it has been shown" is completely overboard, given the level of evidence in this field. It has also "been shown" that Albert Einstein was mentally ill, on the ground that he wasn't a well-adjusted and boring member of society, but someone who focused his attention on a small handful of things that had no obvious utility at the time, and ignored his wife and family. By the way, Thomas Jefferson, Bill Gates any many others have been labeled mentally ill on the same ground -- unconventional thoughts and choices. "It has been shown" indeed.
Meanwhile, in reality, evolution requires diversity -- all sorts of people with all sorts of behaviors, some of which are very useful. Without diversity, we have a perfect psychological world, but no innovation and no unconventional ideas.
The evidence for evolution, and what evolution requires in order to function, is vastly better than the evidence for psychology's set of beliefs. If we accepted modern psychology's basic premise -- that there is a normal behavior toward which we should all aspire -- evolution would grind to a halt, as would science. It has been shown. :)
Whether he in particular is a well adjusted psycho is actually irrelevant. He's trying to sell a book, he may even be completely lying about how he behaves just in order to spice up the story and sell more books. The point is that what he is describing is based on solid current knowledge about psychopathy. The behaviour he is describing is congruent with current best scientific knowledge on the topic. His behaviour and brain scan, whether true or just imagined, is not evidence to support anything and he isn't implying it is. It's just an illustration.
> If we accepted modern psychology's basic premise -- that there is a normal behavior toward which we should all aspire [...]
Just what on earth are you talking about? Please, stop the nonsense.
What? There is no "solid current knowledge about psychopathy." This is why the DSM is being abandoned, or have you not been keeping up with current events?
> The behaviour he is describing is congruent with current best scientific knowledge on the topic.
Well, that's certainly true. It's true because there's no science in this field. Prove this wrong -- point to a clear, testable psychological claim (a claim about the workings of the mind) that was falsified using empirical evidence, ever, anywhere.
> His behaviour and brain scan, whether true or just imagined, is not evidence to support anything and he isn't implying it is.
That would explain why he sincerely wondered whether he was a psychopath. You know, it's customary to read an article before offering learned views abut its content.
>> If we accepted modern psychology's basic premise -- that there is a normal behavior toward which we should all aspire [...]
> Just what on earth are you talking about?
Shall I quote from the vast psychological literature that tells us how many of us are sick and need therapy, or will you educate yourself? Shall I tell you the story of Asperger Syndrome, now abandoned for cause, that submitted any number of bright youngsters to pointless therapy before being laughed off the stage of public opinion?
Title: "Determining What Is Normal Behavior and What Is Not"
Link: http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/fighting-fear/201305/det...
There are ten thousand more where that came from.
> Please, stop the nonsense.
You have two choices: learn this topic, or stop posting your ignorant views in this public forum.
With no moral aversion to such behaviour, I had basically assumed all psychopaths would establish some kind of predatory behaviour in their lives. Manipulation, plagiarizing, discrediting, blackmailing, ect.
On one level, it's not surprising to me to see an outlier such as Mr. Fallon, but I can't shake it. When you have those tendencies as part of who you are, then the question really becomes "why didn't you act on them?" Oh your mother loved you a whole bunch? I see. The human spirit is just indomitable isn't it? Uh huh.
I suspect the simplest answer is: "he did."
It would raise my spirits to know that pro-social psychopaths exist. Seeing as the incidence of psychopathic symptoms on average is about 1/100 people. I've also learned not to believe something because I wish it to be true.
I fall on the nature side of the debate. It's a scary world.
Then you might wonder, "why does/doesn't every member of the species have that variation?". A suitable answer as I have come to understand is, it depends on whether it is evolutionary stable for every one to have the variation or not have it. Plus you can expect some error margins.
For example, while every one can farm, every one can't be pillaging, a society of all pillagers cannot be stable. You can also see that in a society of all farmers, a randomly introduced pillager will have a blast while not necessarily upsetting the balance. But start introducing more pillagers and the stability will break down at some ratio of pillagers to farmers.
Please note that this is not "selecting what is good for the species", that is only a consequence.
Just like how honey bees produce an abundance of honey. The moment you have any kind of abundance, something will be created to take advantage of that abundance. Nature tries everything.
All farmers - Not nihilistic, Not stable
All pillagers - Nihilistic, Not evolutionary stable
Some ratio of pillagers:farmers - Not nihilistic, Evolutionary stable
Where nihilism means that the society is very self defeating that it collapses instantly. And evolutionary stable means that the society can maintain it's general composition for a long enough time period.
P.S: There is probably a better word than nihilism for what I have chosen it to mean.
Maybe he should revisit his initial hypothesis that brain scans are quackery...
In a scan like Dr. James Fallon (low frontal lobe activity) he could be impulsive and absent minded but not psychopathic. It all depends how the imaging data is normalized and interpreted. Also the PET scan doesn't show connective activity between neurons.
Disclaimer: I'm not a PhD neuroscientist.
Maybe, despite the evidence pointing in that direction, he just didn't manifest a psychopathic brain.
maybe.
I think a good answer is "if you care about the answer, then probably not - all a psychopath would care about is whether anyone found out".
Raymond Smullyan is a fun guy; really good logic/puzzle books.
This is the exactly same reason why the FDA makes you form your hypothesis before you run a clinical trial, not after.
You can't run a clinical trial and say you're looking X, not find it, but then find Y (something you never thought you'd find) and have the FDA approve your drug. It's weak science.
If he understands he's an a-hole because he doesn't let his grandkids win, probably means that he has enough empathy to understand that his grandkids should win sometimes in order to let them gain some confidence, etc.
from what i get from reading about the stuff, it seems like a real psychopath would not even be able to comprehend that he is a jerk.
The guy says he had to check the PET machine before he removed the blinding.
He says his parents showed him a lot of love. he would have to understand how love plays out in other families to really claim that.
little things make me feel skeptical. but it's possible that he's a psychopath.
One wonders how many people "discover" they are psychopaths when they do something psychopathic and it gives them a huge endorphin rush and then they want to do it again? If this guy got into a competitive situation and ended up literally beating his opponent into a bloody pulp, would his brain chemistry make it feel to him like the best sex [1] he had ever had? And then would he be able to not do it again? That is the interesting bit for me, while I am a big fan of the nurture hypothesis, can nature override it? And does it?
[1] Pick what ever primal rewarding activity you want here, sex seems to be a fairly common one.
The point is that there's a difference between temperament personality. Some people are just wired to act a certain way and yet are raised to be a totally different way.
E.g. people often associate psychopathy with criminality, and yet only the part of the psychopathy test that directly relates to past criminal behavior, is predictive of future criminal behavior.
I feel like psychopathy as a category is almost made for people who want an easy answer for the relationship between science and morality.
"Pitiless indeed are the processes of Time and Creative Thought and Logic; they respect the convenience of none, nor the love of things held sacred. Yet their work is the increasing glory of a world, - the production of psychic light, - the growth of knowledge, - the advancement of understanding, - the enlargement of human life, - the emancipation of Man."
How about that?
The family thing was probably an approved part of the study. When looking for something with a suspected genetic component it makes a lot of sense.
He talks about how his brain has this same scan as a psychopath, but doesn't tell us how many people have this same scan in the general population.
It is all glossed over for a good talk.
This science has now evolved into books. I saw him on NOVA originally. Who would know who he is outside his academia world, if not for this silly discovery ?
This is such poor science. I'd question if having him look over a stack of brain scans to find correlations with certain behaviors to be of value. Seems like you'd be better off finding some layperson, teach them how to read these heat map type things and let them find the correlations. Like A/B testing for the brain. Then you don't have all these biases leading to book deals. chuckle.
What, from psychologists? You do understand, don't you, that most of psychology is based on anecdotes, yes? Consider the term "sociopath" itself -- is there a thermometer or a high-tech scanner that flashes a red warning when a sociopath is under the sensor? Or is the label a matter of opinion?
To give you a feel for how loose psychology is, for decades psychiatrists and psychologists treated a condition called "Asperger Syndrome", marked by a tendency to focus one's attention on very few things, even just one, and poor social skills. Eventually people complained that what was being described might be normal, even advantageous behavior, as a result of which a split took place -- half the psychologists begin making lists of famous, very successful people who were supposedly mentally ill with the condition (Albert Einstein, Thomas Jefferson, Bill Gates and many more), and the other half petitioned to have the condition removed from the profession's diagnostic guidebook.
The critics won that battle, Asperger's has been removed, and in a delicious irony, there is now a new therapy meant to get people to focus more, show more intense dedication to a few pursuits, or even just one. Sound familiar? The new fad is called "Grit", and it extols the virtue of the same behaviors that the Asperger's people thought marked one as mentally ill and in need of treatment.
In short, until about five years ago, people paid psychologists to be treated for the defect of too much focus and concentration on too few activities. Now they pay psychologists to develop that very ability -- it's now fashionable to be focused.
To see how psychology works, all you need to do is read its history, see how many fads come and go without any serious science being done. But this era is drawing to a close -- people are beginning to abandon psychiatry and psychology, including some heavyweights like the sitting director of the NIMH:
http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/elements/2013/05/the-s...
I don't know if there is a name for that fallacy but you seem to be disputing an entire field of science because of a single controversy over another unrelated issue.
It's not a question of it being real, it's a matter of science and objectivity. If we can't reliably measure it, it doesn't matter that it exists, because anyone can claim to have, or not have, the condition.
> ... you seem to be disputing an entire field of science because of a single controversy over another unrelated issue.
I'm not doing that. The director of the NIMH is doing that. His reasons are excellent -- psychology is not a science and cannot be relied on to produce repeatable results.
Article: http://www.nimh.nih.gov/about/director/2013/transforming-dia...
Quote: "While DSM has been described as a “Bible” for the field, it is, at best, a dictionary, creating a set of labels and defining each. The strength of each of the editions of DSM has been “reliability” – each edition has ensured that clinicians use the same terms in the same ways. The weakness is its lack of validity."
I couldn't have said it better myself -- the DSM, the "Bible" of mental health, is simply not valid, and cannot be used for scientific investigations.
> I don't know if there is a name for that fallacy ...
Paying attention to evidence, or the lack thereof, is not a logical fallacy. Ignoring an absence of evidence, and of scientific discipline, is.
What's ironic about this exchange is that the linked article makes the same point. Its author was forced to the conclusion that even the high-tech scans that led to his conclusion, far removed from ordinary psychological practice, are very questionable and sometimes flat wrong.
I'm not entirely certain what you are claiming or disputing here.
>It's not a question of it being real, it's a matter of science and objectivity. If we can't reliably measure it, it doesn't matter that it exists, because anyone can claim to have, or not have, the condition.
That's really misleading. Psychological symptoms are not that subjective. Behavior is directly observable. And even subjective measurements are still data points. Not to mention things like brain scans.
False, and false. Psychology is not science (defined as a discipline steered by empirical evidence) and has not produced any repeatable, testable, empirical, falsifiable evidence or theories. Why? Because psychology's topic is the mind, and the mind is not -- cannot be -- a source for empirical evidence.
For psychology to become a science, it would have to study an empirical organ like the brain. Instead, psychology relies on self-reporting by the owners of the minds under study. This has always been, and is now, an impenetrable barrier to entry into the world of science.
Title: "Why psychology isn't science"
Link: http://articles.latimes.com/2012/jul/13/news/la-ol-blowback-...
Quote: "But to claim it [psychology] is 'science' is inaccurate. Actually, it's worse than that. It's an attempt to redefine science. Science, redefined, is no longer the empirical analysis of the natural world; instead, it is any topic that sprinkles a few numbers around. This is dangerous because, under such a loose definition, anything can qualify as science. And when anything qualifies as science, science can no longer claim to have a unique grasp on secular truth."
"That's why scientists dismiss psychologists. They're rightfully defending their intellectual turf."
No, it could just study an empirical thing like behavior (which, incidentally, it does.)
> Instead, psychology relies on self-reporting by the owners of the minds under study.
Some branches of psychology study the relationship between other empirical facts and people's self-described experience of mental states, but both the other fact and the descriptions are empirical facts.
> >No, it could just study an empirical thing like behavior (which, incidentally, it does.)
Anthropologists study behavior. Psychologists study behavior, then come to unsupportable conclusions about the mental sources of that behavior. It is the second step that (a) distinguishes psychology from anthropology, and (b) prevents psychology from taking any claim on science.
In a nutshell, psychology studies the mind. The mind, not a physical organ, cannot provide empirical evidence, evidence gathered from reality in a way that forces agreement about its meaning between similarly equipped observers. Science requires empirical evidence. Therefore psychology is not a science.
> Some branches of psychology study the relationship between other empirical facts and people's self-described experience of mental states, but both the other fact and the descriptions are empirical facts.
So which part of "Psychology's topic is the mind" are you not getting? No mind, no psychology. Everything that psychology studies relates to the mind, the field's topic of study.
"Why psychology isn't science" : http://articles.latimes.com/2012/jul/13/news/la-ol-blowback-...
Quote: "But to claim it [psychology] is 'science' is inaccurate. Actually, it's worse than that. It's an attempt to redefine science. Science, redefined, is no longer the empirical analysis of the natural world; instead, it is any topic that sprinkles a few numbers around. This is dangerous because, under such a loose definition, anything can qualify as science. And when anything qualifies as science, science can no longer claim to have a unique grasp on secular truth."
"That's why scientists dismiss psychologists. They're rightfully defending their intellectual turf."
The mind is a name given to a collection of epiphonemena of various physical sources, included, but not limited to, the brain and other physical organs. As such, it is no less a valid subject of empirical investigation as any other collection of physical phenomenon.
> Science requires empirical evidence.
And psychology gathers empirical evidence from environmental facts and their relation to physical behaviors.
Does this apply to people experiencing pain?
> Does this apply to people experiencing pain?
Yes, because pain has been shown to be very subjective -- disappearing when a pain-relieving drug was claimed to have been administered but wasn't, as many studies have shown, or appearing out of nowhere with no empirical cause.
So yes -- most certainly. Pain is not a reliable form of scientific evidence, because it relies on self-reporting (among other reasons).
But I do agree the DSM is useless. I think psychiatry is a reductionist framework that tries to mechanize everything about a person, treating them like a engineering problem. But it is only useful in limited circumstances, much less than it claims, and from that follows all the controversy around anti-depressants, the overuse of powerful psychiatric drugs in children, etc.
To use a bad analogy, thinking everything can be viewed through a psychiatric framework is like trying to debug software errors by analyzing each of the individual chips of the motherboard. People are a lot more complex than that, and so psychology is the more appropriate framework to handle this fuzziness. Psychiatry is only useful when the person's biology is definitely out of spec and most people's aren't.
You're not biased, and that shouldn't be a disclaimer. You just know what you're talking about. ;)
Not really. Psychiatrists and psychologists receive the same psychological training. Psychiatrists hold a medical degree, psychologists don't. Psychiatrists can prescribe drugs, psychologists cannot. In a nutshell.
> Psychiatry is only useful when the person's biology is definitely out of spec and most people's aren't.
Wait, what? If a person's biology is out of spec, a mental doctor is the wrong choice. The mind is not part of biology, but biology can certainly play havoc with the workings of the mind. Therefore if a biological problem is suspected, one would want to consult a real doctor, a practitioner in the biological realm.
Treating a biological problem with mental therapy would be like giving a cancer patient a more comfortable pillow -- someone will surely argue that it's beneficial, but it's equally obvious that it's missing the point.
Also, surely you have noticed that more and more "mental" conditions have turned out to be physical ailments with mental symptoms, yes? There will be more of those, and I predict that, in the final analysis, no purely mental illnesses will remain.
This seems like a reasonable starting assumption when talking about a personality trait, doesn't it? Especially one that is sometimes but not always advantageous to the possessor.
I've met people that seemed to me to be moderate sociopaths, and a great many people--maybe all people--seem to be able to turn off their empathy in particular circumstances.
Humans are good at rationalization, and bad at self-reporting. "No guilt" and "no empathy" can be explained by bravado and self-delusion.
Instead, my model goes something like this: there's a spectrum of selfishness. The people we label psychopaths have certain selfish desires that outweigh (for them, sometimes) your human rights. E.g. in an extreme case, an abuser's desire for sexual gratification is more important to them than your right to not be molested.
Dialing it back, consider people who text while driving, or who rush through a yellow light when they could easily stop. In that moment, they aren't seeing the vehicles around them as being occupied by people with all the same rights as themselves. They see vehicles ... nuisances ... obstacles to be routed around. They temporarily lack empathy.
If you go looking for it, there's a lot of sociopathic behaviour on display in daily life, from people who we would never label psychopaths, nor completely lacking empathy.
So, I think that psychopaths are people who are extremely selfish in some specific ways, but that they are not fundamentally "other".
Everyone acts sociopathic to strangers. Empathy can't be felt towards an abstract concept. A normal person is capable of feeling empathy. They could get to know the person or even just learn a little about them and imagine them being in their place. A true sociopath wouldn't be able to do that.
My point is that we don't know that. We're taking that on authority. I'm questioning the basic premise that there are a significant number of people who don't feel any empathy. More than people who congenitally don't perceive pain, say.
None of the actions / behaviours I've seen that are attributed to psychopaths require a total absence of empathy. Instead, just extreme selfishness, impulsivity (delay connecting actions to consequences) and a strong ability to rationalize one's own actions post-facto.
That is always the hard part because at some point pretend empathy always slips up and isn't as deep as real empathy. Some people are able to make up the gap using manipulation (not myself).
1) Most people who have read about genetic influences on human behavior have not read the masters, but rather their disciples. The masters of behavior genetics research take care to write about the concept of "reaction range," the variety of possible behavior patterns that MIGHT arise from an individual with a given genotype under differing environmental influences. It is apparent that the reaction range for many human behaviors is very broad even if genotype is fixed.[1]
2) Simply adding some brain-scan data to some hypothesis pulled out of a hat will make even the most wild and crazy hypothesis more plausible to lay readers. Neuroscience is hard, and so far there are not a lot of neuroscience conclusions about human behavior that are well replicated and well backed up by theory.[2]
[1] The review article Johnson, W. (2010). Understanding the Genetics of Intelligence: Can Height Help? Can Corn Oil?. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 19(3), 177-182
http://apsychoserver.psych.arizona.edu/JJBAReprints/PSYC621/...
looks at some famous genetic experiments to show how little is explained by gene frequencies even in thoroughly studied populations defined by artificial selection.
"Together, however, the developmental natures of GCA [general cognitive ability] and height, the likely influences of gene-environment correlations and interactions on their developmental processes, and the potential for genetic background and environmental circumstances to release previously unexpressed genetic variation suggest that very different combinations of genes may produce identical IQs or heights or levels of any other psychological trait. And the same genes may produce very different IQs and heights against different genetic backgrounds and in different environmental circumstances. This would be especially the case if height and GCA and other psychological traits are only single facets of multifaceted traits actually under more systematic genetic regulation, such as overall body size and balance between processing capacity and stimulus reactivity. Genetic influences on individual differences in psychological characteristics are real and important but are unlikely to be straightforward and deterministic. We will understand them best through investigation of their manifestation in biological and social developmental processes."
[2] The book Brainwashed: The Seductive Appeal of Mindless Neuroscience by Sally Satel and Scott O. Lilienfeld
http://www.amazon.com/Brainwashed-Seductive-Appeal-Mindless-...
explains the gaps in current knowledge about neuroscience of human behavior and why a few brain scans in a few subjects don't tell us much about brain function before other study methods are applied to the problem.
One article I read was cleverly headlined something like, "You are what your grandpa eats."
In blind trials of new medications doctors can break the blinding at will (patent seems to be having an adverse reaction, was their treatment real or placebo?) as long as they record having done it and exclude the subject from the final results.
If the scans were required to be anonymous for subject privacy, they wouldn't have kept the records needed to break the blinding.
He has also attempted to profit personally.[3]
He seems to have the expertise to know that this story is flimsy, and not well-founded in science. Using an unvalidated method in this way could be considered unethical itself. [4]
Dr. Fallon's record of behavior might suggest a pattern of anti-social behavior. His job as a tenured UC professor is, in part, to educate the public. Instead he seems to give us sci-fi.
Of course, I'm just being totally silly, and so is he (not sure about all the writers he has duped over the years.)
[1] http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=1278889...
[2] http://www.ted.com/talks/jim_fallon_exploring_the_mind_of_a_...
[3] http://www.amazon.com/The-Psychopath-Inside-Neuroscientists-...
[4] http://neurocritic.blogspot.com/2013/01/the-ethics-of-public...
>You just wouldn't be able to achive anything approaching a decent level of statistical confidence from studying a single subject, no matter how many anecdotes you cite about them.
Therefore, no one can be found guilty of murder beyond a reasonable doubt given that it's "just one person"?
Yes, someone is very confused here and wasting people's time, but it's not me.
That stops being a valid debating tactic after around the age of six.
It's not every day that I hear someone argue that scientific standards aren't applicable to an issue potentially resolvable with science.
> Your argument would likewise "prove" that therapists can't diagnose patients with anything because they "only have anecdotal evidence" about "one person".
But that is true, and it's been proven over and over again. Psychologists cannot reliably diagnose mental illnesses -- this is a matter of public record and scientific evidence. Tom Widiger, who served as head of research for DSM-IV, says, "There are lots of studies which show that clinicians diagnose most of their patients with one particular disorder and really don't systematically assess for other disorders. They have a bias in reference to the disorder that they are especially interested in treating and believe that most of their patients have."
This is why psychology and psychiatry are being abandoned. Read this from the sitting director of the NIMH:
http://www.nimh.nih.gov/about/director/2013/transforming-dia...
Quote: "While DSM has been described as a “Bible” for the field, it is, at best, a dictionary, creating a set of labels and defining each. The strength of each of the editions of DSM has been “reliability” – each edition has ensured that clinicians use the same terms in the same ways. The weakness is its lack of validity."
Well put, Doctor Insel.
This is like saying: "This is why biology and [insert-some-unreliable-medical-procedure] are being abandoned." (because said procedure was found unreliable). Without going into debate about DSM and psychiatric clinical practice, psychology has little to do with this. Terminology should be used properly, and we should be aware what words mean, especially if we criticize sloppy science or health care.
A wise choice, since that debate took place, psychology was found wanting, and is being abandoned as a result. Which part of this are you not clear about?
> ... psychology has little to do with this.
Psychology has everything to do with this. Psychology's basic premise is that there is a normal behavior, a "good thing", and we should all aspire to it. Meanwhile, in reality, evolution requires diversity to function. Diversity stands at odds with the idea that there is a single correct model for behavior.
The important thing to understand about evolution is that it's strongly backed by scientific evidence, unlike psychology's belief system. One piece of evidence in favor of evolution, by no means the only piece, is us -- we arose by way of natural selection, and this happened by way of innumerable failed experiments. No natural selection, no humans. That's strong evidence for how badly psychology pictures reality.
> Terminology should be used properly, and we should be aware what words mean, especially if we criticize sloppy science or health care.
Don't tell me, tell the director of the NIMH and the highest-ranking psychiatrist in the country, who is arguing for the abandonment of the DSM:
http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/elements/2013/05/the-s...
I cannot impress on you strongly enough that the present criticism of the field of psychology is entirely justified by facts.
As for the DSM, I'm afraid the highest ranking (what they have ranks in psychiatry now? ;)) psychiatrist's idea will lead to even more quackery. DSM isn't perfect, there is a lot to complain about theoretically and practically, but it was at least a working attempt at objectivity. Abandoning the idea of having a list of (at least somewhat well) operationally defined disorders and working to improve that will again lead psychiatry to a state where a psychiatric diagnosis is no better than a random choice of an arbitrary label (it really was like that in the first half of 20th century, later things stated getting a little better).
Please stop confusing psychology and science. A psychiatrist is a psychologist with a medical degree. Which part of this is in any way confusing? The reason for the special category "psychiatrist" in modern times (wasn't always true) is to allow drug prescribing, which is what psychiatrists now do (psychologists do most of the talk therapy).
> DSM isn't perfect, there is a lot to complain about theoretically and practically, but it was at least a working attempt at objectivity.
To aspire to objectivity, the DSM's editors would have had to allow evidence for causes of mental disturbances, not just effects (the DSM only lists symptoms, effects, not one cause is listed). But when given a chance to accept a cause-effect relationship, the editors rejected it, a story told in "Book of Woe" by therapist Gary Greenberg.
Imagine a medical text that only lists symptoms, not causes. Modern medicine would collapse. And modern psychiatry/psychology has collapsed.
According to the director of the NIMH and many others, psychology will be replaced by neuroscience, a field that will tie causes and effects. I hasten to add that neuroscience isn't ready for this burden yet, but it's not tainted in the way that psychology is.
This is false. While causes are usually not the primary focus of the DSM given its intended purposes, a number of diagnosis do include causes (particularly, those that where the presence or absence of a particular cause is relevant to diagnosis.)
There are many very legitimate criticisms possible of the processes behind the DSM in general or any particular edition of the DSM in particular, but this is not one of them.
> Imagine a medical text that only lists symptoms, not causes
The DSM isn't a general manual of psychiatry, its -- first and foremost -- a diagnostic guide.
> According to the director of the NIMH and many others, psychology will be replaced by neuroscience, a field that will tie causes and effects.
Neuroscience doesn't differ from psychology in tieing causes and effects, it differs in modelling lower-level, intermediate causes and mechanisms -- which are fundamentally very important to psychology.
OTOH, its unlikely to replace psychology (rather than simply informing and refining it) for the same reason that chemistry is still around after various domains of physics did more to reveal the lower-level, intermediate processes underlying the higher-level effects studied within chemistry.
> This is false.
Check your facts. Here is what the sitting director of the NIMH had to say about the DSM and the issue of symptoms, as he announced his decision to abandon it:
http://www.nimh.nih.gov/about/director/2013/transforming-dia...
Quote: "Unlike our definitions of ischemic heart disease, lymphoma, or AIDS, the DSM diagnoses are based on a consensus about clusters of clinical symptoms, not any objective laboratory measure. In the rest of medicine, this would be equivalent to creating diagnostic systems based on the nature of chest pain or the quality of fever."
Circle the word you didn't understand and raise your hand.
> Neuroscience doesn't differ from psychology in tieing causes and effects ...
That is exactly, precisely how neuroscience differs from psychology. Psychology does not address causes, only symptoms, as the above quote demonstrates, and as any honest appraisal of modern psychology shows.
> OTOH, its unlikely to replace psychology ...
Yes, I agree with this. Neuroscience won't replace psychology, for the same reason astronomy didn't replace astrology: stupid people who need to believe in things that have no empirical basis.
But in the future, unfortunately not any time soon, neuroscience will become the preferred treatment for non-imaginary ailments.
I've actually read substantial portions of the DSM-III, -IV, IV-TR, and -5. The facts are exactly as I stated them.
> Here is what the sitting director of the NIMH had to say about the DSM and the issue of symptoms, as he announced his decision to abandon it
None of that supports your claim about causes. Nor does it support your claim that psychiatry or psychology are somehow not science. What it does suggest is that pyschiatry is less well-developed than other fields of medicine, which is well understood.
> Psychology does not address causes, only symptoms
Repeating this doesn't make it true. Psychology in its current state doesn't have a lot of information on low-level mechanisms, to be sure, and that weakness is widely recognized; but to the extent that information is available on causes, it incorporates them. Neuroscience informs pscyhology by investigating low-level mechanisms, in much the same reason that physics informs chemistry.
> as the above quote demonstrates
The quote you are referencing doesn't mention "causes" at all, nor does it address "psychology".
What it does address, when taken in its full context (to which you provide the link) is the problem that comes when allowing the existing symptom based categories to limit research to develop a better understanding of psychiatric diagnosis to support better treatment.
> But in the future, unfortunately not any time soon, neuroscience will become the preferred treatment for non-imaginary ailments.
Neuroscience isn't a treatment.
And its been quite important to developing psychiatric treatments for some time, its not a future contributor.
So, in other words perfect ...?
There has never been a diagnosis called "psychopathy" in either the DSM or ICD.[contradiction] The first edition of the DSM in 1952 had a section on sociopathic personality disturbances, then a general term that included such things as homosexuality and alcoholism as well as an "antisocial reaction" and "dyssocial reaction". The latter two eventually became antisocial personality disorder in the DSM and dissocial personality disorder in the ICD
http://www.psychiatrictimes.com/antisocial-personality-disor...
But you say, "Culture and social context are mere extensions of biology." Bullshit, I say.
The whole of popular "neuroscience" is so corrupted and bereft of real science one would be best served to ignore it for a decade or two.
It will basically reinforce your intuition though.
Like a publishing trend, where people are riding on the success of some other book.
kind of like that 10,000 hours thing came out and many books about it all came out at once.
it makes me wonder if that's all that it is, a trend in publishing.
Each house also knows what the other ones have in production and they tend to stack their releases, like with movie studios.
In other words, there was probably a lot more hidden momentum behind Gladwell's books than anyone might admit or even recognize from the inside.
“I’m obnoxiously competitive. I won’t let my grandchildren win games. I’m kind of an asshole, and I do jerky things that piss people off,” he says. “But while I’m aggressive, but my aggression is sublimated. I’d rather beat someone in an argument than beat them up.”
I think the takeaway is that sociopathy might be more normal than we thought.
so maybe roughly 100% of humans?
Not at all. Some humans "argue" or "debate" to understand the truth of an issue, rather than to "win." In "losing," I actually learn more. I see that as the difference between mathematicians (truth-seeking) and lawyers (win-seeking.)