Can someone be born evil?

I watched Horizon on BBC 2 last night titled Are You Good Or Evil.

The famous expert on psychopathy was on there, Dr Hare. He showed that psychopaths are born not made. Brain scans showed that a psychopath's brain was significantly different from normal.

Environment does have a influence, a non criminal psychopath on the program said he had an exceptionally good childhood, he thinks it saved him from being a killer. When he looked into his family's history there were 16 killers in it!
His close relatives did say they had always felt he was 'different' and admitted he had scared them at times. He admitted to a lack of empathy, saying he didn't really give a s##t about most things.

You can still watch it online, try to catch it if you can. Very interesting.

ljustcantdothathal wrote:I watched Horizon on BBC 2 last night titled Are You Good Or Evil.

The famous expert on psychopathy was on there, Dr Hare. He showed that psychopaths are born not made. Brain scans showed that a psychopath's brain was significantly different from normal.

Environment does have a influence, a non criminal psychopath on the program said he had an exceptionally good childhood, he thinks it saved him from being a killer. When he looked into his family's history there were 16 killers in it!
His close relatives did say they had always felt he was 'different' and admitted he had scared them at times. He admitted to a lack of empathy, saying he didn't really give a s##t about most things.

You can still watch it online, try to catch it if you can. Very interesting.

Someone here once had a very interesting signature. I don't remember it word for word; but it went something like, "Genetics loads the gun but environment pulls the trigger" and I personally believe that environment plays a major role in things.

Who had 16 killers in their family?
Hare or the other guy?

I think he's referring to this guy. He studied criminal minds for his whole life and he was surprised to discover that he had this sort of mind himself, and he is related to a lot of killers.

That's really interesting

I'm gonna ask my neurologyst if we can do a PT scan of my brain- just for fun
I wonder how mine would look???
Would it be normal or 'abnormal' and if so, how???

I already have a pattern of abuse and all the environmental stuff that goes into my rage, violence, aggression and perversions; but being adopted I'm at a complete loss as to the genetics.

Has anyone here ever had a PT scan done?

AliceWonders wrote: "Genetics loads the gun but environment pulls the trigger"

I think this is simplistic and doesn't apply for many disorders. for example, severe enough trauma can give ANYONE ptsd regardless of their genes no?

crystal_r wrote:

AliceWonders wrote: "Genetics loads the gun but environment pulls the trigger"

I think this is simplistic and doesn't apply for many disorders. for example, severe enough trauma can give ANYONE ptsd regardless of their genes no?

Most certainly, YES!

It doesn't apply to all situations by any means. Depression can hit any one at any time, so can things like anxiety, eating disorders, even PD's are free flowing in their choosing of who gets them and who doesn't. Just because someone has a genetic tie to any or all of these things doesn't mean they will get them, or that that they won't.

The thing with the 'warrior gene' and the PT scans merely shows that what has been determined to be 'the biological factors of psycho/sociopathy' are indeed present in this person; but the theory is that due to his upbringing and way of life- these things weren't triggered into 'motion' causing him to become violent and classically 'pathic' in either way.

Schitzopherenia has the hypothisis in it's genetic predisposition and environmental factors.
Many say that 'shizt' is a genetic condition, some say that there have to be certain factors/triggers in place to set the condition into motion, others still say that it's souly genetic and completely uncontrolable.
Some say the same thing about psychopathy too though...


I tend to be of the socioglogical mind in my own personal views on how these things happen, for the most part (schitzophrenia is still a bit of a mystery to me- so there I'm on the fence) but you never know- genetics could be a bigger part than we realize.

When dealing with brain matter though- it becomes a question of what came first? The chicken (disorder) or the egg (brain abnormalities)?

What do you think Crys?
Do you think we are born 'normal' and then become disordered, or do you think it' sall in our genes and predetermined at conception/birth?

I'm gonna ask my neurologyst if we can do a PT scan of my brain- just for fun

No, because that costs a pretty penny. Unless you want to pay from your own pocket, I don't think any public medical service would allow it without any reason.

Environment does have a influence, a non criminal psychopath on the program said he had an exceptionally good childhood, he thinks it saved him from being a killer. When he looked into his family's history there were 16 killers in it!

Hmm... I don't think i have any criminal killers in my family history.
Having said taht, everyone in my family's WW2 generation was involved - some were partisans, other soldiers, one guy was a high ranking officer during the warsaw uprising. One rather distant relative performed executions orderd by teh underground justice system. Some were partisans after the war, one was an armed communist paramilitary official during the early post war yers who forced people at gunpoint to vote for the reforms...

Come to think of it, living in a country with a history like mine, who needs criminal killers?

Seriously however, It is entirely possible that someone in the older generation may have been a subcriminal psychopath too.

you took something seriously called "Are You Good Or Evil." - OK, maybe the programme wasn't as bad as the title, but seriously, #######5 title. - ...horizon ? thought they were usually not too bad .

there is only one way you can show psychopaths are born not made:

1. Scan the brains of a lot of newborn babies.
2. 25 years later, scan the brains of all the adults whose brains were scanned as babies. You could also scan their brains intermittently as they were growing up.
3. look at all the results. see if all the babies who showed "psychopathic brains" as adults show the same as babies, or if this develops/some brain areas don't develop as well.

I can't say there is no such thing as biological psychopathy. What i can say, is that unless a part of these people's brains is literally MISSING, brain scans are not proof! lol.

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AliceWonders wrote:"Genetics loads the gun but environment pulls the trigger" and I personally believe that environment plays a major role in things.

This is my thought too. I might have more to say on this later in the week, i've ordered some stuff to read.

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First I'm going to say I haven't yet seen this, didn't even know it was on. i will watch in on BBCi in a min, (just DLing) and probably comment more after that.

But i want to comment on what i know and what i think as a result of that before i watch too:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/6198704.stm wrote:There are biological brain differences that mark out psychopaths from other people, according to scientists.

Psychopaths showed less activity in brain areas involved in assessing the emotion of facial expressions, the British Journal of Psychiatry reports.

In particular, they were far less responsive to fearful faces than healthy volunteers.

The Institute of Psychiatry, Kings College London team say this might partly explain psychopathic behaviour.

Reason why this is a stupid conclusion:

If a person responds unemotionally, using thought to assess an image of another person instead of, i.e. has no empathy, the areas of their brains that will light up under a CT/MRI etc, are going to be the ones they are using.

That above is an older article, but its been established that if psychopaths are shown images of people suffering, areas that "light up" in the brain are those associated with thought processing not the emotional areas that light up with others.

Again, a degree of difference in brain area activation is going to happen with any person struggling without empathy for whatever reason, because what brain scan show is brain activation. if you don't activate certain areas of your brain because of the way you are using your brain, that is going to show up on a scan.

Going into yet more detail; where it becomes more interesting:

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/08/090804090946.htm wrote:To date, nobody has investigated the 'connectivity' between the specific brain regions implicated in psychopathy.

Areas that have shown up with different activation are:

The Amygdale, (emotions, fear, agression;)
The OFC -Orbitofrontal Cortex; (decision making.)

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/08/090804090946.htm wrote:There is a white matter tract that connects the amygdala and OFC, which is called the uncinate fasciculus (UF). However, nobody had ever studied the UF in psychopaths. The team from King's used an imaging method called in vivo diffusion tensor magnetic resonance imaging (DT-MRI) tractography to analyse the UF in psychopaths.

They found a significant reduction in the integrity of the small particles that make up the structure of the UF of psychopaths, compared to control groups of people with the same age and IQ. Also, the degree of abnormality was significantly related to the degree of psychopathy. These results suggest that psychopaths have biological differences in the brain which may help to explain their offending behaviours.

This is really interesting and useful stuff, except for one thing - the attitude taken in assessing what they've learned.

Here's my explanation:

Brain Scans Clarify Borderline Personality Disorder

Brain Imaging Shows Brain Changes in Depression

Possibility Of Brain Scan-Assisted Diagnosis For PTSD A Step Closer

Brain Activity Reflects Differences In Types Of Anxiety

I'm not going to run through every single disorder out there.

*Basically, how we think influences brain activitity.
*The brain learns constantly.
*Learning creates connections in the brain.
*Brain activity shapes how the brain specialises its function.
*What we don't use, we often lose the ability to use.
*What we can't yet do, we can learn through practice.
*Thinking influences the brain.

brain plasticity.

This is why CBT works for people with problems like persistent negative thought patterns causing depression.

And why people with ALL personality disorders, developmental trauma, and any long-standing mental illness are likely to exhibit brain differences related to their disorder.

It suggests its very unlikely differences aren't going to show up on scans for people with AsPD and for sociopaths and psychopaths.

from what was found in that study from Kings, London;

People with high PCL-r scores showed differences relative to their PCL-r scores.

What does that tell us? That people with high PCL-r scores exhibit this difference. That's all it tells us.

It doesn't prove all those people are born psychopaths.

It could mean all of them were.
It could mean some of them were.
It could mean none of them were.

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I'm defining things like this:

sociopathy = aquired & complex PD where early developmental stages are resolved incorrectly so a person cannot develop empathy or conscience.

pychopathy = inborn inability to develop emotional empathy or conscience.

Aquired Sociopathy:

Early psychological developmental stages not resolved correctly
-> Lack of parental Attachment, inability to relate self-other,
-> different experience to others of interpersonal relations
-> inability to internalise social norms, different perceptoions and disordered thinking,

-> disordered thinking bolsters inability to connect to others.

fix the incorrectly resolved developmental stage, and what results is still going to leave AsPD to be fixed, but it will make it possible to fix.

The brain stuff comes in because how we learn growing up shapes our brains.

The same is true e.g. for people with BPD (emotional dysregulation). Its equally possible what we're seeing is essentially the effect of AsPD on peoples' brains.

That what we are seeing could potentially be the "biological component" of AsPD.
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What does it mean?

In aquired sociopathy, it means *CBT*. Brain Plasticity again.

Repairing the original psychological damage and correctly resolving that developmental stage, then something like Schema Therapy might be necessary combined with CBT which over time should succeed in improving tissue integrity in the UF.

In biological psychopathy... what does it mean ? different areas of the brain can kick in to take over from others, so its possible other areas could theoretically take over from the ones which don't work/exist/whatever is causing it.

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Its not much of a secret that i loathe Hare and his work. But its not cause he hurt my feelings or something, lol.

Its because I believe that its possible to refute a lot of his work using existing psychological and neurological research.

Stuff that is known and used in treating AsPD, research on the human brain, using common sense to interpret that research etc.

i'm not being big-headed about this stuff thinking i know something others don't, this is all other people's work. i haven't seen it tied together and applied to sociopathy and psychopathy. but its all there, for any academic who's able,

i.e. its nothing special for an expert in their field to figure out... the only thing i can do that's different to (some) of these academics, is either "thinking outside the box" or not buying into a one-track biopsychiatry-obsessed model of approaches to interpreting scan results and the brain.

i've ordered Baron-Cohen's latest book, cause im interested in what he has to say about it, it might be this (or more) is exactly what he's done.

i'll let you know when it arrives and i've read it...

OK, gonna go watch that programme now!

1. Scan the brains of a lot of newborn babies.
2. 25 years later, scan the brains of all the adults whose brains were scanned as babies. You could also scan their brains intermittently as they were growing up.
3. look at all the results. see if all the babies who showed "psychopathic brains" as adults show the same as babies, or if this develops/some brain areas don't develop as well.

Even that won't prove anything. We have some genetical traits that start to influence our biology or behavior only at a certain age. For example: some forms of breast cancer or diabetis that are hereditary affect only women past the age of 35-40something.
Some inherited diseases "appear" only after sexual maturity is reached. Some inherited diseases affect teh person at a certain period of body growth (like 3-4 year olds etc).

So you can be born a psychopath, but start to show psychopathic-style brain waves only at for example age 3, because your brain is not developped enough at a younger age to display such patterns.

"I" was born pretty much born evil, though I have no idea if he was present at the moment of birth or if he appeared later on ib life...