Without Conscience: The Disturbing World of the Psychopaths Among Us

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In Without Conscience, Robert Hare posits that there are some 2million psychopaths in the United States (and approximately 20% of the prison population is comprised of psychopaths). It’s something that doesn’t necessarily correlate with childhood abuse; some people are just bad, down in their bones. Of course, there are the exceptional serial killer cases like Ted Bundy, but most psychopaths are more banal in their wrongdoing: they just lie and cheat their way through life remorselessly. Hare appeared in the 2003/4 award-winning documentary film The Corporation, discussing whether his criteria for psychopathy could be said to apply to modern business as a legal personality, appearing to conclude that many of them would apply by definition. [28] However, in a 2007 edition of Snakes in Suits, Hare contends that the filmmakers took his remarks out of context and that he does not believe most corporations would meet all the necessary criteria in practice. [29] Not all psychopaths become criminals of course, they often become successful business people as they can be quite ruthless, so there were was also a chapter or two about those types of psychopaths, which was very insightful. Especially for those who are trapped in romantic relationships with such individuals. Dr Hare is very clearly an expert in his field, and he relays all the information in a very accessible manner, using anecdotes and research to demonstrate his points.

Without Conscience: The Disturbing World of the Psychopaths

Hoffman, M. L. (2000). Empathy and Moral Development. Implications for Caring and Justice. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. doi: 10.1017/CBO9780511805851 I recently finished Without Conscience, which is essentially a handbook for psychopathy. There’s lot of interesting information in here, from the different personality traits psychopaths have, to how to protect yourself from one and the fact there is essentially no effective treatment for psychopathy. Which is absolutely terrifying. Fonagy, P., Gergely, G., Jurist, E., and Target, M. (2002). Affect Regulation, Mentalization and the Development of the Self. New York, NY: Other Press.Ok, disclaimer first. I'm not a PHD or MD, I've not taken advanced classes in sociology, psychiatry, biology, or anything similar. I'm just a reader with an amateur interest in the various aspects of the human psyche.

Without Conscience: The Disturbing World of the Psychopaths Without Conscience: The Disturbing World of the Psychopaths

What one thinks is right is not always the same as what others think is right; no one can be always right.” In Section “Reconceptualization of the ‘superego’ into ‘conscience’,” we saw that the first self-experiences take shape in attachment and emotion regulating processes between caretaker and child, leading to an implicit self that is basically relational. It is thus obvious that, from a developmental perspective, the capacity for empathy is the first mental activity that triggers evaluation of the self. Empathy is not an emotion or feeling itself, but a specific mental activity, closely associated with mentalising but differing from it ( Allen et al., 2008). It is being able to adequately experience the emotion of another as separate from one’s own emotions ( Bolognini, 2004; Aragno, 2008). Empathic activity is dominated to a greater or lesser extent by cognitions or by feelings, leading to the conceptual differentiation between cognitive and affective empathy ( Hoffman, 2000; Meissner, 2009b). In the reality of daily emotional life, empathic activity is naturally often a mixture of the two: empathy is a layered phenomenon, a synthesis of knowing the other’s perspective and feeling the compassion to help. Murrie, Daniel C.; Cornel, Dewey G. (December 2002). "Psychopathy Screening of Incarcerated Juveniles: A Comparison of Measures". Psychological Assessment. Washington, D.C.: American Psychological Association. 14 (4): 390–396. CiteSeerX 10.1.1.177.1113. doi: 10.1037/1040-3590.14.4.390. PMID 12501564.

Which Psychic Systems Contribute to the Functioning of the Conscience?

The contribution of hormones like cortisol, testosterone, and oxytocin to the functioning of the conscience is another interesting field of research ( Fragkaki et al., 2017). For example, oxytocin seems to enhance the quality of empathy in subjects with a secure attachment style, whereas it might even disturb and affect regulation in subjects with insecure attachment ( Decety, 2011). Nathanson, D. L. (1986). The empathic wall and the ecology of affect. Psychoanal. Study Child 41, 171–187. doi: 10.1080/00797308.1986.11823455 Research into hormone levels and brain functions is important with respect to, among other things, answering the question of which biological functions serve to facilitate transgressive violence. For example, it appears that individuals with lower cortisol levels have fewer signals of physical arousal in tense situations ( Popma, 2006). Normally, the thought of violent behavior is accompanied by an increase in physical tension, which potentially leads to one recoiling from acting out the thought; the body sets a boundary, as it were. For those who feel less tension, however, it is easier to turn to violence. Testing Hypotheses Of the three domains of the conscience, empathy has been researched most. The functioning of mirror neurons is being hyped as the neural substrate for empathy; however, mirror neuron pioneer Gallese (2008) warns strongly against this simplification. Neuropsychoanalytically, one would expect empathy to be associated with the right brain implicit self-system, leading to empathic processes which take place in implicit, non-verbal communication, while the left right brain self-system is associated with more cognitive, conscious processes. Fonagy et al. (2002) have indeed proposed the existence of two separate Internal Interpretative Mechanisms (IIM) for interpersonal understanding of emotions and belief states. The cognition-focused IIM (IIM-c), associated with the theory of mind is characterized by activation of medial prefrontal foci around BA8, whereas the affect-focused IIM (IIM-a) is associated with the amygdala and orbitofrontal areas. In experiments with face recognition, affective empathy involves a primitive, automatically activated, fast-firing neural circuit functioning alongside a more developed, cognitive, and relatively slow-firing circuit ( Adolphs, 2002).

Conscience Frontiers | A New Conceptualization of the Conscience

Oh. Now I’m embarrassed how casually I’ve dropped the word “psychopath" without knowing the true meaning of the word. Dr. Hare points out there are more of them than you might think. A few will become the violent offenders we typically think of as psychos. (Think Ted Bundy.) Some end up in jail for other types of criminal activity. Still others live leisurely at the expense of friends, family, or unwitting victims of their cons. The ones who manage not to crash and burn tend to end up in positions of authority as police officers, soldiers, lawyers, surgeons, CEOS, and politicians. Emphasis on CEOs and politicians. In other words, careers fit for the supremely confident, glib, and ruthless. Walters, Glenn D. (April 2004). "The Trouble with Psychopathy as a General Theory of Crime". International Journal of Offender Therapy and Comparative Criminology. Thousand Oaks, California: SAGE Publications. 48 (2): 133–148. doi: 10.1177/0306624X03259472. PMID 15070462. S2CID 40939723. Here is a cheery thought. The percentage of psychopaths in our society may be increasing. Part of psychopathy may be genetic, and psychopaths, being irresponsible, tend to reproduce at a higher rate than the rest of us. Ergo, more psychopaths! Meissner, W. W. (2009b). Toward a neuropsychological reconstruction of projective identification. J. Am. Psychoanal. Assoc. 57, 95–129. doi: 10.1177/0003065108329564But Peter and John answered and said to them, "Whether it is right in the sight of God to give heed to you rather than to God, you be the judge; for we cannot stop speaking about what we have seen and heard." A lo largo de las paginas el autor nos ira explicando de manera sencilla las características principales de los psicópatas, su modo de pensar y sus técnicas de manipulación. El libro tiene varias anécdotas sobre psicópatas que supuestamente han tenido relación con Robert o con conocidos de él, y aunque no dejan de ser pequeñas historias sin demasiada base creo que la mayoría son buenos ejemplos de lo que puede ser la actitud tomada por un psicópata en la vida real, además de eso toda la información relacionada con la personalidad psicopática cuenta con sus respectivas fuentes, así como distintos puntos de vista sobre el origen del trastorno, por lo tanto no es algo que Robert D. Hare se inventé o salga de la nada. For conceptualizing the self in relation to the conscience, the work of Allan Schore and Daniel Stern on the nature of the self is of paramount importance. Adolphs, R. (2002). Recognizing emotion form facial expressions: psychological and neurobiological mechanisms. Behav. Cogn. Neurosci. Rev. 1, 21–61. doi: 10.1177/1534582302001001003