Monsters.

C'mon guys, you're not helping.

Wulf is looking for someone to fight, and you're just obliging him. You're behaving just like him, and feeling just as righteous about your responses as he does about his. (They/ he started it.) How can anyone ever get to the point of not reflexively reacting when everyone around him is doing the same thing?

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I wasn't fighting. I was trying to accurately put into words what I think is going on.

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Silence is consent.

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Quote:

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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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Actually, research demonstrates that punishment is not as effective as reward. ALL children should be treated as per the recommendations for ADHD and other behaviourally challenged kids.

Punishment tends to reinforce bad behaviours and leads to manipulative behaviour such as lying, blaming others etc. Parenting/teaching using rewards for good behaviour, setting firm limits, and choosing natural consequences have had the best results.

The same generally applies to perpetrators of crime. Punishment isn't effective at modifying behaviours, it reinforces them. But that's not why we lock people up. Generally, the population wants perps to suffer rather than be rehabilitated. You actually can't do both.

Incidentally, the link between perps and abuse is not based on defense testimony, but research on the backgrounds of prisoners. It's reasonably conclusive that violence and abuse begets violence and abuse. If you are really serious about reducing crime stats, you need to think about the social/economic conditions that foster such behaviours - and then think about how you might address those issues. Of course, to many that will smack of social engineering and socialism.

Niki - you are spot on re attachment disorders - it's the major reason for p

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Quote:

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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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I'm not sure where you base the evidence for your claims. Everything I've read suggests that both terms are interchangeable, and in fact, neither exist as a mental health diagnosis, which instead uses the diagnostic terms of anti-social personality disorder, or one of the other personality disorders (violent, narcissistic or combination).

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.

All personality disorders are very, very difficult to treat - often because of the lack of insight of people with such a diagnosis.

I'd also disagree with the claims that sociopathic traits can be learnt later in life. You miss the point of these traits and their causes. 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.

We don't know anything about those rapists or what the circumstances around the case - it is possible that some of them were motivated by a number of factors (fear, need for approval, cultural or societal attitudes to women and sex). None of which excuses their behaviour, just pointing out that we don't know if any of them would fit the definition of sociopaths.

Plenty of 'normal' people use violence, soldiers, police officers, people defending themselves - they may, for a brief period of time, be able to clamp down their empathy - usually by means of dehumanising the other, much like Wulf does - but it doesn't mean that they generally demonstrate behaviour traits of a sociopath.

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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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Quote:

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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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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.

The nature vs nurture debate is ongoing - I guess I tend to lean heavily towards a combination of the both, with an emphasis the impact of attachment in early infancy. That's because so much of our brain develops after birth - almost all of the connection between the neurons takes place - and it's human reactivity that creates these connections - fascinating stuff - but painful too.

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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