The Sociopath Next Door (31 page)

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Authors: Martha Stout PhD

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We raise our children, especially girls:
See D. Cox, S. Stabb, and K. Bruckner,
Women's Anger: Clinical and Developmental Perspectives
(Philadelphia: Brunner-Routledge, 1999); L. Brown,
Raising Their Voices: The Politics of Girls' Anger
(Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1999), p. 166; L. Brown, “Educating the Resistance: Encouraging Girls' Strong Feelings and Critical Voices” (paper presented at the 20th Annual Conference of the Association of Moral Education, Calgary/Banff, Canada, 1994); C. Gilligan, “Women's Psychological Development: Implications for Psychotherapy,”
Women and Therapy
11 (1991): 5–31; and L. Brady, “Gender Differences in Emotional Development: A Review of Theories and Research,”
Journal of Personality
53 (1985): 102–149.
As for the boys:
See D. Kindlon and M. Thompson,
Raising Cain: Protecting the Emotional Life of Boys
(New York: Ballantine Books, 2000), p. 99.

Chapter 6. How to Recognize the Remorseless

in the 1945 interrogations that preceded the Nuremberg War Crimes Tribunal:
Reported in R. Overy,
Interrogations: The Nazi Elite in Allied Hands, 1945
(New York: Viking Penguin, 2001), p. 373.

Chapter 7. The Etiology of Guiltlessness: What Causes Sociopathy?

studies on twins have shown that personality features:
For a detailed discussion of such findings, see L. Eaves, H. Eysenck, and N. Martin,
Genes, Culture and Personality
(New York: Academic Press, 1989).
A number of such studies have included the “Psychopathic Deviate” (Pd) scale:
For a review of twin studies that have used the Pd scale, see H. Goldsmith and I. Gottesman, “Heritable Variability and Variable Heritability in Developmental Psychopathology,” in
Frontiers in Developmental Psychopathology,
eds. M. Lenzenweger and J. Haugaard (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996).
In 1995, a major longitudinal study:
M. Lyons et al., “Differential Heritability of Adult and Juvenile Antisocial Traits,”
Archives of General Psychiatry
52 (1995): 906–915.
Still other studies have found:
See T. Widiger et al., “A Description of the DSM-III-R and DSM-IV Personality Disorders with the Five-factor Model of Personality,” in
Personality Disorders and the Five-factor Model,
eds. P. Costa and T. Widiger (Washington, D.C.: American Psychological Association, 1994), and C. Cloninger, “A Systematic Method for Clinical Description and Classification of Personality Variants,”
Archives of General Psychiatry
44 (1987): 579–588.
The Texas Adoption Project:
See L. Willerman, J. Loehlin, and J. Horn, “An Adoption and a Cross-Fostering Study of the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory (MMPI) Psychopathic Deviate Scale,”
Behavior Genetics
22 (1992): 515–529.
a heritability estimate of 54 percent can be derived:
For more on how heritability estimates are derived for psychopathic deviance and other characteristics, see P. McGuffin and A. Thapar, “Genetics and Antisocial Personality Disorder,” in
Psychopathy: Antisocial, Criminal, and Violent Behavior
, eds. T. Millon et al., and D. Falconer,
Introduction to Quantitative Genetics
(Edinburgh: Churchill Livingstone, 1989).
Some of the most interesting information about cortical functioning in sociopathy:
See S. Williamson, T. Harpur, and R. Hare, “Abnormal Processing of Affective Words by Psychopaths,”
Psychophysiology
28 (1991): 260–273, and J. Johns and H. Quay, “The Effect of Social Reward on Verbal Conditioning in Psychopathic and Neurotic Military Offenders,”
Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology
26 (1962): 217–220.
In related research using single-photon emission-computed tomography:
J. Intrator et al., “A Brain Imaging (SPECT) Study of Semantic and Affective Processing in Psychopaths,”
Biological Psychiatry
42 (1997): 96–103.
In fact, there is some evidence that sociopaths:
See R. Hare,
Without Conscience.
This arrangement promotes a sense of order and safety:
J. Bowlby,
Attachment and Loss
(New York: Basic Books, 1969).
Research tells us that adequate attachment in infancy:
For a discussion of attachment theory, see D. Siegel,
The Developing Mind: How Relationships and the Brain Interact to Shape Who We Are
(New York: Guilford Press, 1999).
In 1989, when the Communist regime in Romania fell:
For further discussion of Ceauşescu reproductive policies, see G. Kligman,
The Politics of Duplicity: Controlling Reproduction in Ceausescu's Romania
(Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998).
And then a couple in Paris would discover:
See P. Pluye et al., “Mental and Behavior Disorders in Children Placed in Long-Term Care Institutions in Hunedoara, Cluj and Timis, Romania,”
Santé
11 (2001): 5–12, and T. O'Connor and M. Rutter, “Attachment Disorder Behavior Following Early Severe Deprivation: Extension and Longitudinal Follow-up. English and Romanian Adoptees Team,”
Journal of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry
39 (2000): 703–712.
In Scandinavian child psychiatry:
See M. Lier, M. Gammeltoft, and I. Knudsen, “Early Mother-Child Relationship: The Copenhagen Model of Early Preventive Intervention Towards Mother-Infant Relationship Disturbances,”
Arctic Medical Research
54 (1995): 15–23.
As an illustration, psychiatric anthropologist Jane M. Murphy:
J. Murphy, “Psychiatric Labeling in Cross-Cultural Perspective: Similar Kinds of Disturbed Behavior Appear to Be Labeled Abnormal in Diverse Cultures,”
Science
191 (1976): 1019–1028.
Intriguingly, sociopathy would appear to be relatively rare in certain East Asian countries:
See P. Cheung, “Adult Psychiatric Epidemiology in China in the 1980s,”
Culture, Medicine, and Psychiatry
15 (1991): 479–496; W. Compton et al., “New Methods in Cross-Cultural Psychiatry: Psychiatric Illness in Taiwan and the United States,”
American Journal of Psychiatry
148 (1991): 1697–1704; H.-G. Hwu, E.-K. Yeh, and L. Change, “Prevalence of Psychiatric Disorders in Taiwan Defined by the Chinese Diagnostic Interview Schedule,”
Acta Psychiatrica Scandinavica
79 (1989): 136–147; and T. Sato and M. Takeichi, “Lifetime Prevalence of Specific Psychiatric Disorders in a General Medicine Clinic,”
General Hospital Psychiatry
15 (1993): 224–233.
The 1991 Epidemiologic Catchment Area study:
See L. Robins and D. Regier, eds.,
Psychiatric Disorders in America: The Epidemiologic Catchment Area Study
(New York: Free Press, 1991), and R. Kessler et al., “Lifetime and 12-Month Prevalence of DSM-III-R Psychiatric Disorders in the United States,”
Archives of General Psychiatry
51 (1994): 8–19.
Robert Hare writes:
R. Hare,
Without Conscience
, p. 177.
Sociopaths are fearless and superior warriors:
See D. Grossman,
On Killing
, p. 185.

Chapter 8. The Sociopath Next Door

The good news is that having social support:
See T. Blass, ed.,
Obedience to Authority: Current Perspectives on the Milgram Paradigm.

Chapter 9. The Origins of Conscience

Since we have it on excellent authority that nature is red in tooth and claw:
A. Tennyson, “In Memorium, A.H.H.,” in
Alfred, Lord Tennyson: Selected Poems,
ed. M. Baron (London: Phoenix Press, 2003). It is noteworthy that Tennyson wrote this poem in 1850, nine years before the publication of Darwin's
The Origin of Species.
According to psychobiologist Frans de Waal:
See F. de Waal,
Good Natured: The Origins of Right and Wrong in Humans and Other Animals
(Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2001), and F. de Waal and P. Tyack, eds,
Animal Social Complexity: Intelligence, Culture, and Individualized Societies
(Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2003).
In 1966, George C. Williams:
G. Williams,
Adaptation and Natural Selection
(Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1966).
And ten years later, in 1976:
R. Dawkins,
The Selfish Gene
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1976).
biologist W. D. Hamilton's notion:
See W. Hamilton, “Selection of Selfish and Altruistic Behavior,” in
Man and Beast: Comparative Social Behavior,
eds. J. Eisenberg and W. Dillon (Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1971).
Naturalist Gould reexamines the evidence from paleontology:
S. Gould,
The Structure of Evolutionary Theory
(Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2002).
As evolutionist David Sloan Wilson has said:
See D. Wilson and E. Sober, “Reintroducing Group Selection to the Human Behavioral Sciences,”
Behavioral and Brain Sciences
17 (1994): 585–654.
Swiss psychologist Jean Piaget:
J. Piaget,
The Moral Judgment of the Child
(New York: Collier Books, 1962).
psychologist and educator Lawrence Kohlberg:
L. Kohlberg,
The Philosophy of Moral Development
(New York: Harper & Row, 1981).
in 1982, in a groundbreaking book by Carol Gilligan:
C. Gilligan,
In a Different Voice: Psychological Theory and Women's Development
(Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1982).
In the last twenty years, newer studies:
See, for example, J. Walker, “Sex Differences in Moral Reasoning,” in
Handbook of Moral Behavior and Development,
eds. W. Kurtines and J. Gewirtz (Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 1991).
One illustration of the significance of context and culture:
See J. Miller and D. Bersoff, “Development in the Context of Everyday Family Relationships: Culture, Interpersonal Morality, and Adaptation,” in
Morality in Everyday Life: Developmental Perspectives,
eds. M. Killen and D. Hart (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), and J. Miller, D. Bersoff, and R. Harwood, “Perceptions of Social Responsibilities in India and in the United States: Moral Imperatives or Personal Decisions?”
Journal of Personality and Social Psychology
58 (1990): 33–47.
An overall perception of good and evil as a duality in human life:
For additional findings and theories concerning this ubiquitous feature of human relations, see J. Crocker and A. Miller, eds.,
The Social Psychology of Good and Evil
(New York: Guilford Press, 2004).

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