Psychopathy is a personality disorder characterized by a lack of empathy and remorse, shallow affect, glibness, manipulation and callousness. Previous research indicates that the rate of psychopathy in prisons is around 23%, greater than the average population which is around 1%.
To better understand the neurological basis of empathy dysfunction in psychopaths, neuroscientists used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) on the brains of 121 inmates of a medium-security prison in the USA.
Participants were shown visual scenarios illustrating physical pain, such as a finger caught between a door, or a toe caught under a heavy object. They were by turns invited to imagine that this accident happened to themselves, or somebody else. They were also shown control images that did not depict any painful situation, for example a hand on a doorknob.
Participants were assessed with the widely used PCL-R, a diagnostic tool to identify their degree of psychopathic tendencies. Based on this assessment, the participants were then divided in three groups of approximately 40 individuals each: highly, moderately, and weakly psychopathic.
When highly psychopathic participants imagined pain to themselves, they showed a typical neural response within the brain regions involved in empathy for pain, including the anterior insula, the anterior midcingulate cortex, somatosensory cortex, and the right amygdala. The increase in brain activity in these regions was unusually pronounced, suggesting that psychopathic people are sensitive to the thought of pain.
But when participants imagined pain to others, these regions failed to become active in high psychopaths. Moreover, psychopaths showed an increased response in the ventral striatum, an area known to be involved in pleasure, when imagining others in pain.
This atypical activation combined with a negative functional connectivity between the insula and the ventromedial prefrontal cortex may suggest that individuals with high scores on psychopathy actually enjoyed imagining pain inflicted on others and did not care for them. The ventromedial prefrontal cortex is a region that plays a critical role in empathetic decision-making, such as caring for the wellbeing of others.
Taken together, this atypical pattern of activation and effective connectivity associated with perspective taking manipulations may inform intervention programs in a domain where therapeutic pessimism is more the rule than the exception.
Altered connectivity may constitute novel targets for intervention. Imagining oneself in pain or in distress may trigger a stronger affective reaction than imagining what another person would feel, and this could be used with some psychopaths in cognitive-behavior therapies as a kick-starting technique, write the authors.
Comment: Therapeutic pessimism is certainly warranted given what's been learned about psychopaths. Dr. Robert Hare, a leading expert on psychopathy discusses the issue below:
"So many of these awkward questions would vanish if only there were a functioning treatment program for psychopathy. But there isn't. In fact, several studies have shown that existing treatment makes criminal psychopaths worse. In one, psychopaths who underwent social-skills and anger-management training before release had an 82 percent reconviction rate. Psychopaths who didn't take the program had a 59 percent reconviction rate. Conventional psychotherapy starts with the assumption that a patient wants to change, but psychopaths are usually perfectly happy as they are. They enroll in such programs to improve their chances of parole. "These guys learn the words but not the music," Hare says. "They can repeat all the psychiatric jargon -- 'I feel remorse,' they talk about the offence cycle -- but these are words, hollow words."
Hare has co-developed a new treatment program specifically for violent psychopaths, using what he knows about the psychopathic personality. The idea is to encourage them to be better by appealing not to their (non-existent) altruism but to their (abundant) self-interest.
"It's not designed to change personality, but to modify behaviour by, among other things, convincing them that there are ways they can get what they want without harming others," Hare explains. The program will try to make them understand that violence is bad, not for society, but for the psychopath himself. (Look where it got you: jail.) A similar program will soon be put in place for psychopathic offenders in the UK.
"The irony is that Canada could have had this all set up and they could have been leaders in the world. But they dropped the ball completely," Hare says, referring to his decade-old treatment proposal, sitting on a shelf somewhere within Corrections Canada.
Even if Hare's treatment program works, it will only address the violent minority of psychopaths. What about the majority, the subclinical psychopaths milling all around us? At the moment, the only thing Hare and his colleagues can offer is self-protection through self-education. Know your own weaknesses, they advise, because the psychopath will find and use them. Learn to recognize the psychopath, they tell us, before adding that even experts are regularly taken in.
Psychopaths Among Us
Story Source
Materials provided by Frontiers. Note: Content may be edited for style and length.
Journal Reference
- Jean Decety, Chenyi Chen, Carla Harenski and Kent A. Kiehl. An fMRI study of affective perspective taking in individuals with psychopathy: imagining another in pain does not evoke empathy. Frontiers in Human Neuroscience, 2013 DOI: 10.3389/fnhum.2013.00489
Reader Comments
Kill Anything that Moves: Seeing the sickening reality of the Vietnam war, 50 years late
How Did the Gates of Hell Open in Vietnam? A New Book Transforms Our Understanding of What the Vietnam War Actually Was For half a century we have been arguing about "the Vietnam War." Is it...Several of Netflix's most popular true crime documentaries, like The Confession Tapes and The Confession Killer, have these scenes where this happens again and again.
Obviously, if the suspect is truly guilty of these crimes, he or she is a psychopath and will not actually have a conscience.
Similarly, as part of any TV-show (true crime or not) where someone is missing or have been kidnapped, the police and the missing person's family go on TV and appeal to the kidnapper's conscience to return the victim unharmed. What a waste of time! Someone who is willing to commit such a crime is of course also a psychopath, so in addition to no conscience, there is also no remorse and empathy.
The psychology/psychiatry establishment falls in the same trap. They are simply put teaching the psychopaths have to don a more convincing mask of sanity, a Silence of the Lambs-style human face that will enable them to pass as human in the humans' society. But they are not actually human, other than in the strictest biological sense.
No act of goodness ever goes unseen, no act of evil ever goes un-karme-ed
Are you unaware of the 'game' called 'spin the bottle'?*
RC
*For some reason, in my youth . . . . . . I would routinely get invited by the girls to such. (BLUSHING typing this!)
RC
Graeme... not fixable the psychos... not by us. Run away from them... or from the study of them, keep away.
Why on earth would a gorgeous soul like you waste his day on the study of garbage?!? I dont get it. Man! I opt for love n fun n health n growth in a heartbeat.
My reference about addiction to spinning. (There is nothing else to comprehend.) Study Study Study non-stop is an addiction, an excuse for not getting wet and experiencing newness, adventure, and embody true love true living.
The question is ... what is so vip or even minimally interesting about studying study. Round n round we go covering huge time and space like the donkey tethered to a mill wheel, having gone no where... all day long.
THE answer has been there all along.
(There exists nothing to reap from filth - not for me, not for you. (.. and few more )
For example, psychopaths have infiltrated and taken over just about everything. Politics, science, religion, psychology, media, education, business, finance, the official account of history, culture, the new age movement (actually, they spawned it), medicine, etc, etc, etc.
Don't you understand the ramifications of this LindaMay?
To acquire knowledge is not addiction. One is beyond the addiction to self when one truly acquires knowledge, and it is a natural position on the learning curve. All addictions are addictions to self . All of them! Big difference...
To quote the Cs, the ALL blinks at neither the darkness or the light. The new age people are serving the darkness, and typical in this function, they are unaware. They wrongly believe that the darkness is an error in Creation that needs to be fixed. Look at this! Some ignorant new age types believe they can fix Prime Creators errors! That is the ultimate arrogance, ignorance and hubris. Service to Self in the extreme. So, they send the darkness their love and light, although the darkness doesn't want it or asked for it . They believe Creation should be aligned with their vision of how it should be. That is Service to Self, serving the darkness. Of course, reality will always win in this encounter every time.
True growth in knowledge and being only can occur with knowledge of the self and world, as it is!!!
Since we are on this topic again, I pulled 3 tarot cards and guess what came up? Justice, The High Priestess, Strength. I know you are interested in this stuff, and I quite like the tarot, although I don't live by it. Anyone with some knowledge of the tarot and who can see a little should know what that signifies. How appropriate eh?
Life can be studied or lived.
Life is experience not data collection.
Experience is data collection also. Otherwise it would be forgotten and thus useless.
When you live you remember therefore you know (and share when applicable). Then comes the next so if one does not let go (of the previous) one becomes too heavy i.e. distorted and cannot experience pure experiment therefore... the mind gets in the way.
Study feeds the mind aka ego.
Experience nourishes the heart n soul n mind.
n.b. .. i dont know how to read Tarot but as an example... what came to mind was what I remember from experience. PLUS it was bullseye spread. Thank god for giving you the perfect trio
Btw today Sun dances with Pluto and tomorrow Mercury n Pluto.
Btw... i have noticed and remembered (not studied, not seeked) that you and i experience communication on BIG-hitter Star days graeme
[Link]
I guess it does want out now
Conscious suffering = awareness = 'no need' of suffering (in word nor in experience).
Awareness is study embodied if you will.
How about that Graeme
Awareness implies the struggle or joy, (you use pleasure not I), the reading, and the comprehension.
Rumi
I have ceased to exist. Only you are here my beloved, only you are here.
You are playing with words Graeme.
Awareness is the state of being conscious of something. More specifically, is the ability to directly know and perceive, to feel, or to be cognizant of events.
We have two forms of self-awarenessavailable to us. One is conceptual self-awareness: what we think about ourselves, which may include judgements, evaluations, logical conclusions, and things that are easy to put words to. The other is embodied self-awareness, which includes registering varioustypes of inner states.
Conscious suffering is entirely different. That is the point. Forget awareness. What about conscious suffering?
Justice = Libra card (My Sun sign)
High Priestese = female Magician
Strength = Leo card (Mt Rising sign)
That sure was FULL ON!!
High Priestess = The inner world and the subconscious mind. Intuition. Past experience, conditioning etc.
Strength = Moral force, patience, righteousness, consciousness directing will power. Self control. Consciousness above materialism etc.
I think one is on shaky ground when trying to link tarot cards to astrological signs.
suffering is a state of mind... and our state of mind is our choice, unconsciously or consciously.
Dont think for a flash of a millisecond that i am or was oblivious to pain. The lord knows the bites i ve chewed and still am chewing.
Awareness of struggle or joy is integration of the teaching or experience of IT . And practice makes perfect.
Watching is not seeing.
Hearing is not listening.
Talking is not walking.
Tarot, as Gurdjieff, are instruments/channels... that still have potential for 'expansion'. Neither is god.
Suffering implies being "sub" (put under) as some form of ..enslavement... controlled, forced against one's capacity to choose. This is erroneous as we CAN CHOOSE.
ALSO... suffering implies "bad" a.k.a. judgement of being bad -- and that is erroneous as well. Nothing is bad, nothing is good -- judgement needs to be released for surrendering to the present to be possible.... hense my perspective behind all that i have exchanged with you today.
QUOTE
suffer (v.)
mid-13c., "allow to occur or continue, permit, tolerate, fail to prevent or suppress," also "to be made to undergo, endure, be subjected to" (pain, death, punishment, judgment, grief), from Anglo-French suffrir, Old French sofrir "bear, endure, resist; permit, tolerate, allow" (Modern French souffrir), from Vulgar Latin *sufferire, variant of Latin sufferre "to bear, undergo, endure, carry or put under," from sub "up, under" (see sub-) + ferre "to carry, bear," from PIE root *bher- (1) "to carry," also "to bear children."
Replaced Old English รพolian, รพrowian. Meaning "submit meekly to" is from early 14c. Meaning "undergo, be subject to, be affected by, experience; be acted on by an agent" is from late 14c. Related: Suffered; sufferer; suffering.
Suffering ______! as an exclamation is attested from 1859.
suffer (v.)
undergo or be subjected to;
Many saints suffered martyrdom
He suffered the penalty
Synonyms: endure
suffer (v.)
undergo (as of injuries and illnesses);
She suffered a fracture in the accident
Synonyms: sustain / have / get
suffer (v.)
experience (emotional) pain;
Every time her husband gets drunk, she suffers
suffer (v.)
put up with something or somebody unpleasant;
Synonyms: digest / endure / stick out / stomach / bear / stand / tolerate / support / brook / abide / put up
suffer (v.)
get worse;
His grades suffered
suffer (v.)
feel pain or be in pain;
Synonyms: hurt
suffer (v.)
feel physical pain;
Synonyms: hurt / ache
suffer (v.)
feel unwell or uncomfortable;
She is suffering from the hot weather
suffer (v.)
be given to;
She suffers from a tendency to talk too much
suffer (v.)
undergo or suffer;
suffer a terrible fate
Synonyms: meet
suffer (v.)
be set at a disadvantage;
This author really suffers in translation
Synonyms: lose
Eckhart Tolle
He further says to address conscious suffering:The suffering is just because the suppressed being is always longing.
โSuffering drives you deeper โฆ A lot of it is caused by the ego, although eventually, suffering destroys the ego โ but not until you suffer consciouslyโฆ. Suffering has a noble purpose: the evolution of consciousness and the burning up of the egoโฆ. The truth is that you need to say yes to suffering before you can transcend it.โ
Conscious suffering is always deeper than unconscious suffering, but it is good, at least you are conscious about it. As long as you donโt become conscious, the suffering will always remain.
Graeme to which all i have to add... is that is impossible, being the vehicle which runs on soul, the gasoline.