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... per from doing so at some point of his life or that, generally, these signs have been distributed in spare quantity, the individual will develop psychopathic tendencies since he lacks the ability to relate himself to the world in a proper way. One quick look at the background of Charles Manson, one of the most famous psychopaths, is enough to understand the role played by environmental factors in his rearing and the consequent deviant personality he developed through the years. In the book abnormal behavior on p. 488, it is showed that Manson s mother modelled a life of prostitution, irresponsibility and crime. She probably provided little in the way of cognitive structuring about rules, consequences, or values. For the young boy there was little left to model his life on.
What he became later; that is, a dangerous psychopath, has been certainly influenced by the poor education he received which, in turn, resulted in a subsequent failure to internalize society's prohibitions. The biological approach provided the theory of environmental factors as shaping the future personality with a number of interesting clues. Franz Kallman found that a high percentage of children of psychopaths ended up themselves with psychopathic disorders. The main reason was that their parents were indeed institutionalized for psychopathic symptoms and once left alone, these children experienced the deprivation of external warnings consequent to the familial structures withdrawal. As a result of this lack of guidance, they ended up psychopaths. Moreover a study focusing on children who spend their early years in institutions where, of course, there is less love offered than in a familial structure, revealed that they later showed an aggressive behavior toward both humans and animals.
However the assertions have to be manipulated cautiously in the sense that if those children later displayed a criminal behavior though vandalism, truancy and antisocial activities, not everyone of them ended up psychopath. The antisocial behavior category of the DSM- 3 distinguishes between the criminals who are able to feel guilt and empathy from those who are deprived of such feelings- the psychopaths. Seventy to 85 percent of individuals classified as criminals meet the criteria for anti- social personality disorder. By contrast only 15 to 25 convicted criminals meet the criteria for psychopathy. The concept of psychopathy in itself sometimes tends to be a wastebasket.
However, fortunately enough, not every criminal turns a psychopath. All experiments stated above have shown how the characteristics of psychopathy as a disease are dramatically profound. Generally, the subjects clear lack of conscience diminishes dramatically their concrete chances of effective treatment. Nevertheless, science has built its success on an attempt to improve on common limitations, constantly challenging even the most irremediable cases.
In that perspective, through the years, several approaches to the treatment of psychopathy have been designed. From a biological point of view, if we assume that psychopathy is a disease which has its physical causes in an abnormal brain activity, that physiological deficiency can be corrected by drug treatment. However, the implications of such treatments have to be considered carefully for whoever is aware of the ethical implications involved by such manipulations. For a long time, psychopaths have been treated with a variety of drugs such as dilantin, sodium, amphetamine sulfate. Occasional recoveries have been reported.
However, the lack of follow-up studies once the subject stopped to take drugs has called into question the overall efficiency of the treatment. Generally, patients do show improvement while they take these drugs, but, most of their time, they go back to their destructive habits while they stop their treatment. Moreover, if the drug treatment effectively alleviates the pain, it involves a passive approach to that disease. Indeed, to give a psychopath a pill for lack of real structures adapted to his particular disease represents an easy way to deal with the problem. One illustrative case concerns the use of such drugs treatments in the late 70 s. In that time, assuming that psychopathy was an incurable disease, certain institutions distributed those drugs too generously, which, in turn, led the patients suffering from psychopathic symptoms to experience a general apathy.
This process raised an ethical question: To what extent should the pain be alleviated? Were these drugs administrated in order to help the patients or simply to put them in a great situation of passivity, making sure they would not hurt anyone? Still, this passivity was better than the manifestation of psychopathic symptoms in which the patient could have an uncontrollable outburst of rage. However, drug treatment generally tries to stabilize the situation rather than look for dynamic solutions which involve an active participation both of the doctor and of his patient. In any case, the use of drugs has to be manipulated cautiously in order to avoid such excesses.
Doctors should use them only when it has been established case per case that the violent behavior is clearly related to a brain dysfunction. From a psycho dynamic perspective, the treatment of psychopathic disorders through psychoanalysis is inadequate. Psychoanalysis tends to analyze the conflicts between the id, the ego and the superego. These internal conflicts are at the basis of the personality.
On the contrary, a psychopath doesnt experience these underlying conflicts. Indeed, he has become psychopath precisely because he lacked a superego which could have provided him social standards. Whereas most of us are able to sit in an armchair and express our remorse, the psychopath is not likely to expand himself in sorrowful complaints about all the damages he caused to his surrounding. In fact, if his disease is a result of a poor internalization of moral values, he is not able to be lucid and clear about himself. This lack of clarity related to a lack of conscience is one of the reasons why Freud refused to cure a certain category of patients, precisely those who manifested a clear distortion of reality although they were fully aware.
Among this category were the schizophrenics but also the psychopaths. Similarly, in the Mask of Sanity, Cleckley concluded that psychotherapeutic treatments to treat psychopathy have been disappointing in the sense that they failed to provoke changes to the psychopaths daily behavior Therefore, the best approach to the treatment of psychopathy is that which takes into consideration the environmental factors and attacks the problem from its basis by providing the child with psychopathic tendencies a secure environment where he can learn to anticipate his negative instincts by developing a positive sense of the self. In the book Abnormal Psychology, changing conceptions, (1972) it is reported that McCord and MCCord believed hat the control of psychopathy lied in institutional programs (P 316). From January 1954 to February 1955, they undertook a study at the Wiltwyck school In New York. The institutional program at work in the school emphasized a loving permissive environment which gradually replaced permissiveness by efforts to teach social control and responsibility. As a result, the children developing psychopathic disorders responded positively to the treatment.
They showed an increase in the internalization of social standards which allowed them to re- experience feelings of guilt and shame. In conclusion, considering the fact that there is no real treatment which has proven to be effective on a larger scale, it is dangerous to let the psychopaths operate in everyday life by lack of social structures. Hare notes the connection between psychopathy and domestic abuse. Psychopaths are generally intelligent, superficially charming which make them good candidates to exploit others weaknesses. In a culture that promotes superficial values, the psychopath will thrive.
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Research essay sample on A Study Of Psychopathic Behavior
