The Neuroscientist Who Discovered He Was a Psychopath 241
Hugh Pickens DOT Com writes "Joseph Stromberg writes at the Smithsonian that one afternoon in October 2005, neuroscientist James Fallon was sifting through thousands of PET scans to find anatomical patterns in the brain that correlated with psychopathic tendencies in the real world. 'Out of serendipity, I was also doing a study on Alzheimer's and as part of that, had brain scans from me and everyone in my family right on my desk,' writes Fallon. 'I got to the bottom of the stack, and saw this scan that was obviously pathological.' When he looked up the code, he was greeted by an unsettling revelation: the psychopathic brain pictured in the scan was his own. When he underwent a series of genetic tests, he got more bad news. 'I had all these high-risk alleles for aggression, violence and low empathy,' he says, such as a variant of the MAO-A gene that has been linked with aggressive behavior. It wasn't entirely a shock to Fallon, as he'd always been aware that he was someone especially motivated by power and manipulating others. Additionally, his family line included seven alleged murderers, including Lizzie Borden, infamously accused of killing her father and stepmother in 1892. Many of us would hide this discovery and never tell a soul, out of fear or embarrassment of being labeled a psychopath. Perhaps because boldness and disinhibition are noted psychopathic tendencies, Fallon has gone in the opposite direction, telling the world about his finding in a TED Talk, an NPR interview and now a new book published last month, The Psychopath Inside. 'Since finding all this out and looking into it, I've made an effort to try to change my behavior,' says Fallon. 'I've more consciously been doing things that are considered "the right thing to do," and thinking more about other people's feelings.'"
Or, perhaps the test is not 100% selective (Score:4, Interesting)
If he were a psychopath, he'd not be disturbed by it. Of course, maybe he's only faking being disturbed by it to promote his career.
Most doctors (Score:1, Interesting)
In the US are psychopaths. The med school selection process encourages it. The pay/power scales back it up.
Re:Or, perhaps the test is not 100% selective (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Or, perhaps you just demonstrated a Catch 22 (Score:5, Interesting)
maybe psychopaths are not as one-dimensional as you think.
Behaviour change due to social pressure? (Score:5, Interesting)
The most troubling aspect of this story is that the person felt that he needed to change his behaviour when he learned society would diagnose him as abnormal, despite having been a functional member of society and a respected scientist for several decades with his behaviour as-is.
Re:Or, perhaps the test is not 100% selective (Score:3, Interesting)
Med school selects for people with these tendencies. The "feely. friendly" crowd that actually CARE for the patient are driven from the profession, early on.
Is there a source for this idea?
Re:Or, perhaps you just demonstrated a Catch 22 (Score:5, Interesting)
Spot on.
We ALL have psychopathic tendencies, empathic tendencies, etc ad nauseum. All of us learn, from the cradle, what is "acceptable" behavior, and what is not. We are all born with the potential to become almost anything, good or bad. Some of us have to work hard to learn some things, others of us just follow our natural inclinations.
We actually NEED all of these traits, IMHO. Consider the doctor - if he's psychopathic, then he's probably a cold, analytical, unfeeling kind of guy. Is that necessarily a "bad thing"? Absolutely not - those traits are good things in a scientist. He isn't going to allow stupid feelings, opinions, or emotions stand in the way of his research.
Sure, there is probably some point, or degree, at which being psychopathic makes you totally worthless to society. Where is that point?
Lizzie Borden probably had some value, up until she committed murder. PERHAPS had she been properly evaluated, and received counseling, she might have understood herself, and the people around her better. Being better able to relate with her family and acquaintances, she may have made more intelligent decisions. Or not - each person remains an individual after all. We each make conscious decisions to get along with people, or not to get along.
IMHO, we, as a race, developed all of our traits and tendencies for a reason. Even our worst traits have value under certain conditions and circumstances. Our best traits can actually work against us in other conditions and circumstances.
I wonder how many slashdotters have ever taken a test, only to learn things about themselves that they didn't know. A leadership course in the Navy included a self-evaluation test, that was never turned in to the instructors. The purpose of the test was to reveal to the student which type of leadership he could use most effectively. You may, or may not, imagine my surprise to learn that I was primarily an authoritarian. (note that being 'primarily' authoritarian doesn't preclude other tendencies) Once I understood that somewhat important fact, I was able to improve my leadership ability tremendously.
We could probably all benefit from a little self analysis.
Re:Or, perhaps the test is not 100% selective (Score:2, Interesting)
Hmmm lettsee now. Scientists using themselves as test cases in psych research....Leary & Dass, Lilly, inadvertantly Hoffman, don't think they received proper credit personally, but most don't recognize their credibility BECAUSE of the first person testing. Unfortunately, because of the subject of scrutiny , requirements of detatchment as an observer instead of subject, do not apply , therefore falling outside the stodgy, antiquated procedure of method. Thinking like this, decreases my faith in science in general, as being unable to service itself or evolve (without even mentioning frequency of corruption from outside interests). So take no notice if I scoff and chortle at various "findings" the herd accepts blindly as lemmings without GPS.
Re:Or, perhaps the test is not 100% selective (Score:5, Interesting)
Even normal people can turn empathy off under certain circumstances or through conditioning.
Like modern military training. [/sad-fact]
Nonsense. Military training, modern and traditional, doesn't teach empathy disconnection except in one narrow way, which is that combat training teaches soldiers to view their targets as "targets", not as people. It's always been done that way, because it's necessary to get soldiers to overcome the natural antipathy most of them have for killing. What military training is mostly about, besides building strength and stamina and teaching particular skills, is building esprit de corps, a sense of solidarity with fellow soldiers as well, of course, as a habit of obedience to orders (though post WWII most militaries leaven that with classes on the distinction between lawful and unlawful orders).
Actually, the most modern trend for US military training, as in the last 5-10 years, is exactly the opposite; it's training to increase empathy. The Marine Corps in particular has established a very interesting program training Marines that they should be "Ethical Marine Warriors". The catchphrase of this program is "The Ethical Warrior is a protector of life. Whose life? Self and others. Which others? All others." It's taught with the aid of stories like this one.
In one particular country in Asia Minor, the unrest was beginning to have strategic implications during that delicate time of détente. The trouble centered on the presence of an American missile base there. The local people said that they wanted the base closed and the Americans to go home. Humphrey’s job was to find a solution to the conflict.
The basic problem was plain old culture shock. The Americans working in that poor ally country thought that the local people were ‘dumb, dirty, dishonest, lazy, unsanitary, immoral, violent, cruel, crazy, and downright subhuman,’ and what’s more, they let them know it. No matter what he did, Humphrey couldn’t stop the negative talk—partially because some of it seemed true!
One day, as a diversion, Humphrey decided to go hunting for wild boar with some people from the American embassy. They took a truck from the motor pool and headed out to the boondocks, stopping at a village to hire some local men to beat the brush and act as guides.
This village was very poor. The huts were made of mud and there was no electricity or running water. The streets were unpaved dirt and the whole village smelled. Flies abounded. The men looked surly and wore dirty clothes. The women covered their faces, and the children had runny noses and were dressed in rags.
It wasn’t long before one American in the truck said, ‘This place stinks.’ Another said, ‘These people live just like animals.’ Finally, a young air force man said, ‘Yeah, they got nothin’ to live for; they may as well be dead.’
What could you say? It seemed true enough.
But just then, an old sergeant in the truck spoke up. He was the quiet type who never said much. In fact, except for his uniform, he kind of reminded you of one of the tough men in the village. He looked at the young airman and said, ‘You think they got nothin’ to live for, do you? Well, if you are so sure, why don’t you just take my knife, jump down off the back of this truck, and go try to kill one of them?’
There was dead silence in the truck.
Humphrey was amazed. It was the first time that anyone had said anything that had actually silenced the negative talk about the local people. The sergeant went on to say, ‘I don’t know either why they value their lives so much. Maybe it’s those snotty nosed kids, or the women in the pantaloons. But whatever it is, they care about their lives and the lives of their loved ones, same as we Americans do. And if we don’t stop talking bad about
Critical thinking. (Score:5, Interesting)
Most doctors in the US are psychopaths.
It would be worth studying why assertions like this get an instant mod-up from the geek without a single citation to support them.
Types, not degrees, of Psychopathy (Score:4, Interesting)
Granted, my knowledge of psychopathy is based in psychology and not neurology, but rather than degrees of psychopathy it's better to think of types of psychopaths. While there is a scale or spectrum of psychopathy, measured by the Revised Psychopathy Checklist (PCL-R, or PCL-YV for the Youth Variation), subjects are generally extremely psychopathic or not at all. To be deemed a psychopath a subject need a score >= 30, 40 is the maximum. For a simple comparison, the typical 'career criminal' scores, on average, a 20 on the PCL-R. For the true psychopaths, it is the type of psychopathy that is of primary importance. Of the ten basic subtypes of psychopaths, only two --malevolent psychopaths and tyrannical psychopaths-- are characterized by overt anti-social behavior and violence, the two rarest but the two most commonly associated with the term 'psychopath' in popular culture. The rest are more driven by material gains (this isn't necessarily 'better', but it is much more common and probably, given my extremely limited knowledge of the subject, what drives Dr. Fallon if he is a true psychopath). The two violent subtypes are predominantly characterized by sadism and extreme self-aggrandizement, respectively (murderous variants of these two types rarely kill only one victim, as the violence amuses them). For example, sexually sadistic serial killers such as Ted Bundy are malevolent psychopaths; a serial killer like the Zodiac Killer who taunts authorities and views his (not a sexist pronouns, 80% of psychopaths are men) victims as inferior i.e.: the Zodiac 'hunting people' and his belief that after his death "ALL THEI [sic] HAVE KILLED WILL BECOME MY SLAVES."
But, again, this understanding is psychological not neurological. However, there is most likely a genetic component, as psychopathy appears equally across social classes and family environments. Further, psychopaths cannot be successfully treated psychologically. In fact, treatment generally exacerbates their qualities and makes them better psychopaths be teaching them to recognize, and thus better mask, their distinctive psychopathic traits.
Re:Too cute a story (Score:3, Interesting)
He explains in his TED talk that a relative informed him of his family's history of psychopathy after he developed an interest in the topic - this prompted him to perform neural scans of himself and family members. Whether he became interested in psychopathy because he had some suspicions about himself (as a neuroscientist, he would've had a course or two in psychopathology in grad school, and would have had a reasonable understanding of how antisocial personality disorder is formally defined; this isn't to mention the likelihood of other exposure to this topic) is another question altogether. If someone with a doctorate in a subdiscipline of psych showed antisocial personality disorder traits that qualify him as having this disorder under DSM criteria, it's pretty hard to believe that he wouldn't have been able to give himself a provisional diagnosis in accordance with these traits, although as a neuroscientist, being able to associate the neural scans to the symptoms probably helped him to convince himself.