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Originally posted by Fremdfirma:

(Advisement, I am not sure how well imma be able to get this across, since it deals with issues *I* barely understand, and modern "mental health" has not a damn clue about, but I shall try - feel free to ask for clarification, etc..)

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Originally posted by Wulfenstar:
Oh, please.....

SHUT UP, HIPPIES!

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So, Wulfie - Are these people "monsters"? Or are tehy "doing the right thing"?

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But we love 'ya, yes we do...

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Originally posted by SignyM:
Huh.

Okay, I see a big difference that needs explanation and prolly more thought. Guilt and forgiveness, punishment and reward, behavior and modification. They're not always tied together.

The question is: how do we modify violent criminal behavior?

Most of us are constrained by guilt and some of us are constrained by fear, but that constraint requires a number of mental processes.

1) You have to be able to put yourself in another's shoes. But if you're like my daughter, who is brain-blind to different points of view, you'll lack that capacity. (BTW- she doesn't lack sympathy. If someone is hurting, right in front of her, she responds.)

2) You have to remember the past. Some peeps don't. Nuff said.

3) You have to be able to project the future. Children younger than about five, and people who're brain-damaged (again, like my daughter) lack the capacity.

4) You have to be able to learn from pain. According to Rue, sociopaths don't. They don't even apply it to themselves.

5) You have to acknowledge a social hierarchy.

Guilt is a complex emotion. It doesn't work for many people for a variety of reasons. The MAIN reason, I believe, is that most people with PTSD... basically, people who've been abused when young and/or grew up in life-threatening circumstances... often don't even care about themselves. Its that nihilistic POV which says - when you confront a gang-banger wannabe with the horror they are creating- I don't think I'm gonna live past 25 anyway and I don't care. But, as I listed, there are many other reasons why guilt (which is self-punishment) and punishment don't work.

You'd think... wouldn't you?... that if you had to spend a week in jail, much less a year... that you'd do everything in your power not to repeat the experience! The mistake that people make is that they keep projecting themselves and their responses on others. But if you look at the recidivism rate of violent criminals, it's CLEAR that punishment doesn't work for them!

I had to take a parenting class bc my dd was so terribly ADHD when young. I had to learn that I couldn't treat her like a "normal" kid because her responses weren't "normal": ADHD kids crave attention and excitement, even punishment, if that's the only attention they get. We had to modify her behavior through reward. And yanno what??? In my experience as a parent, as a supervisor AND as an employer, reward works quite well.

Anyway, my point is that while punishment and self-punishment work for a lot of people... I daresay even most... they don't work for everybody, and if you want to modify violent criminal behavior you have to look for a new paradigm. Something not involving guilt and forgiveness

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Originally posted by Fremdfirma:

Hmm, well it's good that someone finally brought up the distinction between Psychopathy and Sociopathy.

Back in the late 80's our already pathetic "mental health" system/concept rolled them into a single diagnosis for some reason, I've never really understood why because while some of the behavior might be the same, the motivations for it are entirely different.

A psychopath HAS INTERNAL RULES - while a sociopath does not.

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Originally posted by Bytemite:
I didn't mean to suggest I think Wulf is a psychopath, he hasn't indicated that he has these psychological imaginings of violence and gratification. Wulf's problems may not be psychological, I don't know him well enough to say. When I compared myself to him, I was trying to keep the comparison STRICTLY on the manner in which both of us have experienced a sense of being heroic, or wanting to be.

I've heard about the anti-social personality disorder, which fits me very well, I just don't have the manipulative aspect. I'm really just not very good at lying.

Psychopath as born with it and sociopath as being "created" is a definition I infer just from the names, in that "psycho" means the mind or spirit, and psychological disorders can be genetic and chemical in nature. Socio, meanwhile, comes from "society" which to me suggests a person with anti-social personality disorder traits that have been created in them through their environment.

There was nothing in my environment to cause me to exhibit these traits. I had depression, which perhaps made me self-pitying, and thus the sense of emotional neglect. The emotional neglect was not real.

Since I have plenty of other things wrong with me, like anxiety, depression like I just mentioned, paranoia, and possibly psychosis, I think probably I was born with chemical imbalances. As an infant, I was not reactive. But once I learned to walk and talk, I became a very difficult child, emotions and behaviour wise.

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Originally posted by rue:
I've sometimes wondered if depression or other neurological disorders can mess with the 'reward' function. After all, if nothing makes you feel good, or even a bit better, how are you supposed to associate loving human interaction with the pleasure it normally sparks ?

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Silence is consent.

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Originally posted by SignyM:
I'm a human genetic experiment. I share with someone the exact same genes and (presumably) in utero environment. My clone and I have many traits in common- sometimes scarily so. Our biomechanics are almost exactly the same: we laugh the same, we have the same gestures, we both have problems with "stuck song", and often the same phrase will pop into our heads at the same time if we're looking at the same situation. We're both shy. But we have some surprising differences. She has always been taller, stronger, and smarter than me. And when it comes to temper and attention-span, we're very very different.

Things happen during development not at all related to genes or even in utero environment. And I believe that, yes, kids... even "normal" kids... ARE born with a personality, however that personality came to be. Some kids are quiet and reflective, others are boisterous. Some are observant. Some hear well, some are sensitive to the feelings of others, some blunder through their environment looking for excitement, some are shy, and some can't sit still and are frustrated. That personality interacts with the caregivers' personalities in negative or positive ways, which many times creates self-reinforcing cycles- a depressed child may stress already depressed parents who then withdraw, a defiant child may elicit the force/ resistance cycle from an authoritarian parent. Its a complex interaction, like diabetes in an environment full of addictive junk food. I can't claim to understand even a fraction of it, but this complex interaction goes a long way to explaining why many abused children grow up pretty average while others who grew up in average circumstances may not feel average when they grow up.

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One thing not mentioned is "attachment disorder" (not sure if that's the right term), of children who don't get nurturing early on and how it can affect them to the point where it can't be changed. I think that's something accepted as being behind psychopathy; the inability to empathize, etc. But is it a brain/chemical disorder, or behavioral?

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There is also absolutely no evidence (that I have seen) that one is born with these traits - only that a combination of both nature (temperament) and nurture (parenting or lack of it) may result in these personality traits being evident.

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Using violence is not necessarily a sign of sociopathy - aggression is a survival trait that we all have. If we live somewhere that demands aggression to survive, then a normal response is to be aggressive. That is definitely a learned behaviour.

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I think we've had this conversation before, haven't we? I don't want to butt into your experiences in any way, I'm talking theoretically what I know through my work and training. You've indicated that you have had a difficult past, with plenty of tough stuff to deal with. However, though what you have indicated, you don't seem like you fit any definition of sociopath/psychopath that I have come across, given your insight, capacity to change, remorse, lack of lying and manipulation.

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I didn't mean to suggest that you thought Wulf was a socio/psychopath either. I don't think he is - he's expressing a populist view that's ill informed. Perhaps it seems to him that by focusing on the perp and what they have been through, we lose sight of the victim's experience. That's probably true. I believe victim's of crime do need to receive justice of some kind for their suffering - as well as trying to address underlying causes of criminal behaviour. Restorative justice is one way that this can happen.

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Frem, your mentioning of the Hypothalamus/Amygdala and Pituitary kind of strikes me, I've thought for a while that I might have something wrong there.

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we lose sight of the victim's experience. That's probably true. I believe victim's of crime do need to receive justice of some kind for their suffering - as well as trying to address underlying causes of criminal behaviour. Restorative justice is one way that this can happen.

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Originally posted by rue:
"Most of your innards are hooked up to the autonomic nervous system ..."

Despite knowing about conditioned reflexes for decades (Pavlov), it just occurred to me about 10 years ago how weird they are.

Here you have a brain - which takes in and interprets stimuli - directly and reflexively influencing the autonomic nervous system over time. When you take into account that for people words are another form of stimuli, you can tap into the autonomic nervous system 'artificially'. A person who has no concept of a gun will not be afraid if one is pointed at them. A person who has never been shot or even shot at, who has no direct negative sensory experience, but who has been TOLD what one is, will. And they will experience all the attendent hormone secretions.

I find that very strange.

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So I guess we all agree... except maybe Wulf... that there are no monsters, just people with different neurologies, hormone sets and life experiences?

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When I interviewed that boy, I knew what he was capable of doing. I had no expectation that treatment would help him, but that was the best suggestion I could come up with. I knew he would, sooner or later, do something horrible to some poor child.

Am I a moral failure in that I did not kill him?

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The second characteristic is lack of perception of the future. He has none. If you ask a kid like this, "What are you going to be doing next year?" you will get an absolutely blank stare. Not because he's stupid, but because he simply cannot conceptualize such a distance from right now. If you want to speak with this kid, you have to speak within his time frame, and that time frame isn't ever more than a few hours from the present.

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This kid does not relate behavior to consequences. He does not see a causal connection between his acts and a response. What do I mean? To this kid, life is a lottery. Everyone rolls the dice, but not everyone pays the price. He has no perception as to how the dice will come up. In his world, everyone commits crimes. Everybody. Some smaller percentage of that number are arrested. A still smaller percentage go to court; an even smaller percentage go to trial. A smaller percentage still are actually found guilty (or "adjudicated delinquent" if you prefer), and a smaller percentage of that group are committed to a youth authority. Lastly, an even smaller percentage are actually incarcerated.

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In order to create the kind of sociopathic, non-empathetic, violent human being I've been talking about, you need an institution. You need a controlled environment. You need an environment where might makes right.

You need an environment where there is a hierarchy of exploitation; where the rule is "be exploited or exploit others." For many, many years we have run our institutions on a jungle model where the strong not only survive, but thrive. And when the beast is released, we all pay.

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I don't agree with your claim (or what I think you are claiming) that some people are born evil or with the capacity to do evil.

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Originally posted by Fremdfirma:
Oh, bleh - I cannot receive PMs, PERFERSSERGEE - the email addy attached to this account has been dead for years.
If it *really* needs privacy I can sort a dead-drop box for ya, maybe.



-Frem
"A curse on upon you... a curse upon you all.."

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