Hi Mike- I worked as a prison psychologist for ten years and I met (and diagnosed) a large number of psychopaths. Based on this experience I can tell you that psychopaths are no more dangerous to prison staff than are other inmates. As a graduate student I worked with Bob Hare at UBC studying psychopath's reactions to various stimuli. I was convinced back then that psychopaths were "wired differently". Their autonomic responses to stressful events were quite quite different from those of "normals".
As to treatment, I have seen nothing in the literature and nothing in my practice that suggests that psychopaths are treatable. However, that doesn't mean that one should impose the death penalty. If a mentally handicapped person committed a murder would you want to execute them? In most cases the McNaughton rule would preclude that. Personally, I think that the imposition of a death penalty is morally repugnant. Given the large number of people who are falsely convicted each year it is a certainty that an innocent person will be executed. That is one of the reasons that most civilized countries have abolished the death penalty. -Don. ----- Original Message ----- From: "Mike Palij" <[email protected]> To: "Teaching in the Psychological Sciences (TIPS)" <[email protected]> Cc: "Michael Palij" <[email protected]> Sent: Friday, April 18, 2014 10:17:29 AM Subject: [tips] Are Psychopaths' Brains Different From Nonpsychopaths? The website for Wired has an interesting interview with the researcher Kent Kiehl who has studied psychopaths for 20 years; the interview is here: http://www.wired.com/2014/04/psychopath-brains-kiehl/ The interview is partly a shill for Kiehl's new book "The Psychopath Whisperer" which is geared for the general public (i.e., it is a "money book", that is, a book a scientist writes not for a limited scientific or academic audience but to appeal to a broad audience and is expect to make a fair amount of money -- most popular science books are money books though not all of them make a lot of money). Anyway, Kiehl has his own mobile MRI scanner (there is a picture of him next to trailer that contains the scanner) so he's not doing too badly. When asked how psychopaths' brain differ from "normal" brains he says the following: |WIRED: What is known at this point about what’s different |about their brains? | |Kiehl: We’ve found that psychopaths have 5 to 10 percent | reduced gray matter density in and around the limbic regions | [a network deep in the brain that's important for emotional | processing]. We’ve also found — and a group in Germany | has published a similar finding — that the tissue that connects | the limbic system to the frontal lobes is disrupted. There have | also been lots of studies published showing reduced responsivity | in those circuits during emotional processing and moral decision |making. An interesting question that arises from this research is that a number of psychopaths also engage in serious crimes, such as serial killing and worse (anyone who has read about what Ted Bundy did before and after he killed his female victims will know what I'm talking about) and whether psychopaths should be held responsible for such crimes if they have a brain abnormality. This becomes a critical issue in murder trials and Kiehl was apparently the first to use fMRI evidence for the defense of a man who had raped and killed a 10 year old girl (this was during the sentencing phase because the defendant had pleaded guilty and he was already spending time in jail for other murders he had committed). The prosecutors wanted the death penalty while the defense wanted life in prison. Some details about this trial and the jury's decision can be read here: http://news.sciencemag.org/2009/11/fmri-evidence-used-murder-sentencing The question that arises here is if psychopathy is shown to be "associated" with specific brain abnormalities should this condition be treated as "insanity" (i.e., being unable to tell the difference between "right" and "wrong" and not being able to appreciate the consequences of one's actions)? But here is the more important point: even if such a brain abnormality does exist which judgment is more just: (1) life in prison: to keep the person out of open society and hope that prison controls will prevent the psychopath from killing someone within prison or outside of prison by proxy (Kiehl talks about how an imprisoned psychopath that he interviewed thought that he snitched on him and through his network got someone on the outside to try hurt or kill him). or (2) death penalty: if the brain abnormality is not modifiable by various treatments and the psychopath remains a danger to others even while in prison, isn't the best way to minimize future risk is by executing the person? A number of factors (scientific, moral, legal, etc.) enter into this consideration but from a scientific perspective I think that one consideration is the degree to which one really believes in neural plasticity and how modifiable brain structures are if they have been implicated in conditions like psychopathy. If a psychopath turns serial killer and engages in such activity for a long period of time (e.g., Ted Bundy), is there any chance that he can be changed from desiring to kill and do the terrible things he did to not wanting to engages in those behaviors again? The so-called Ludovico technique in the book and movie "A Clockwork Orange" is a fictional example of such a treatment but is any treatment really possible? If effective treatments for psychopathy can be developed, does it make more sense for putting them in prison for life for crimes like murder? If no effective treatments can be found, does it make more sense to execute them? Or should one be skeptical of neuroscientists peddling their research results and opinions in courts and just not seriously consider them? -Mike Palij New York University [email protected] --- You are currently subscribed to tips as: [email protected] . To unsubscribe click here: http://fsulist.frostburg.edu/u?id=13157.966b795bc7f3ccb35e3da08aebe98f18&n=T&l=tips&o=36217 (It may be necessary to cut and paste the above URL if the line is broken) or send a blank email to leave-36217-13157.966b795bc7f3ccb35e3da08aebe98...@fsulist.frostburg.edu --- You are currently subscribed to tips as: [email protected]. To unsubscribe click here: http://fsulist.frostburg.edu/u?id=13090.68da6e6e5325aa33287ff385b70df5d5&n=T&l=tips&o=36220 or send a blank email to leave-36220-13090.68da6e6e5325aa33287ff385b70df...@fsulist.frostburg.edu
