Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind from how Stuff
Speaker 1: Works dot com. Hey you welcome to Stuff to Blow
Speaker 1: your Mind. My name is Robert Lamb and I'm Julie Douglas.
Speaker 1: And today we're talking about bad kids, but not just
Speaker 1: bad kids. That this idea of the evil child or
Speaker 1: the psychopathic child. To use the French the enfante teri
Speaker 1: blay right, which comes from the title of the gene
Speaker 1: cock to the novel that's en fonts Terry blows from.
Speaker 1: It's a trope that we see again and again in fiction.
Speaker 1: Just to name a few, There's Damien from the Omen
Speaker 1: bad Kid, not really his fault. He's the anti Christ, right,
Speaker 1: it can't be helped. They are the kids from the
Speaker 1: Village of the Damned. I seem to remember they were
Speaker 1: aliens or something. Spoilers all around here. Sorry, there's the
Speaker 1: bad Seed personal favorite. As a little about this one. Okay,
Speaker 1: so this is I guess maybe did start as the
Speaker 1: stage play, but I have seen the movie and it
Speaker 1: is set up stage play, and it's very kitchy, and
Speaker 1: it centers around this little girl. I don't know, maybe
Speaker 1: she's seven years old. I don't remember the details. I
Speaker 1: can't remember her name. But she's terrifying because here is
Speaker 1: this little blonde, perky girl with long braids. You know,
Speaker 1: she's got the checked dress on and kind of like
Speaker 1: a dream child. The dream child. Yeah, I mean she
Speaker 1: talks to adults and she smiles and she's so sweet.
Speaker 1: But then you began to see that this child is
Speaker 1: like cold and calculating, and she wants some of their
Speaker 1: kids pin like the pen lapel pin, and she murders
Speaker 1: for it. It is very convincing, even though it's you know,
Speaker 1: at the time, it's very kitchy. But what I think
Speaker 1: it's fascinating about that movie is that it definitely captures
Speaker 1: an era in which society was starting to look more
Speaker 1: inward and really looking at the dark side of the
Speaker 1: human nature. You've got the Betty Page going on. You
Speaker 1: begin to see more images of what people are thinking
Speaker 1: about that's not some nineteen fifties. Yeah, you know, the
Speaker 1: shades of Santa Masochism coming out, or at least people
Speaker 1: beginning to say like, well, this is an interesting part
Speaker 1: of our experience or what we're thinking anyway, there's this
Speaker 1: sort of delving into the human mind, into the psyche,
Speaker 1: and all of a sudden, people start to consider children
Speaker 1: as not necessarily these innocent butterflies of our human nature,
Speaker 1: but possibly you know, containing the seeds of well, in
Speaker 1: this case, the bad seed of psychopathy. Yeah, and this
Speaker 1: idea too, that the child is the seed of a
Speaker 1: bad person to come, that all the things that are
Speaker 1: immoral are corrupt in the eventual adult, are present in
Speaker 1: the child. Other examples from fiction that are kind of fun.
Speaker 1: There's the good Son I believe that was Macaulay Culkin. Yes, psychopath.
Speaker 1: There's The Ring where the character in the ring video
Speaker 1: is a ghost of a rather troubled child. There's Peter
Speaker 1: Wiggan and orson Scott Cards Game, who likes to torture
Speaker 1: animals to death and physically and mentally torment his siblings
Speaker 1: highly recommended his game. By the way, if you haven't
Speaker 1: read that, Ray Bradberry had a couple of short stories
Speaker 1: Small Assassin personifies concept I've read. If we look to
Speaker 1: Harry Potter, there's good old Tom Riddle and pretty much
Speaker 1: most of the Slytherin Gang. I guess, yeah, varying shades
Speaker 1: of bad seededness. In the doone universe, there's Aaliyah and
Speaker 1: Stephen King's The Dark Tower series there's Mordred at least
Speaker 1: early on when you've seen as a kid, and then
Speaker 1: on Family Guy, they're Stewiet Griffin, kind of a comedic
Speaker 1: take on the idea of the nefarious, uber intelligent and
Speaker 1: uber manipulative youngster. You forgot the Full House twins? Oh yes,
Speaker 1: those girls that grew up to be actresses right right, right?
Speaker 1: Or actually they just billionaires, that's where they grew up
Speaker 1: to be. We want to look into this idea, this
Speaker 1: idea of nature versus nurture, about whether or not this
Speaker 1: is something that's hardwired in individuals. And this came to
Speaker 1: our attention recently because we read an article from New
Speaker 1: York Times called Can You Call a nine year old
Speaker 1: a Psychopath? Yeah? By Jennifer con Nice, long in depth
Speaker 1: article excellent reading. Will include a link to it in
Speaker 1: the blog post that accompanies this podcast, and it raised
Speaker 1: a lot of questions, like I saw spinoff blog post
Speaker 1: spinoff stories about this in other in US because it
Speaker 1: really examines the idea, is it possible that a child
Speaker 1: that has various emotional and behavioral problems is in fact
Speaker 1: not just an eventual psychopath, that they already have the
Speaker 1: psychopathic qualities, right, and we'll talk about that a little
Speaker 1: bit more and why that's actually problematic to even ask
Speaker 1: the question. But let's discuss psychopathy and the fact that
Speaker 1: on some level we are all psychopaths. Right, not all
Speaker 1: the time, because that would actually make us true psychopath
Speaker 1: but all of us are guilty of lying at one
Speaker 1: time or another, or manipulating someone, or feeling a lack
Speaker 1: of empathy in a situation. But these are usually fleeting
Speaker 1: moments for most of us. It's not a constant state. Well,
Speaker 1: the more you look at psychopathy, it it kind of
Speaker 1: feels like like we're on a board game. Like society
Speaker 1: is this board game, and they are rules, they're hard
Speaker 1: and fast rules about what you can do, and then
Speaker 1: there's this layer of honor code on top of it.
Speaker 1: There's very much in tune with what we're ethically capable
Speaker 1: of doing and willing to do. And so to a
Speaker 1: certain extent, psychopathic sociopathic individuals are just sort of free
Speaker 1: of this top level of honor system, right right, Like
Speaker 1: they're free of the constraints in a way, you know,
Speaker 1: in a certain way, they are more free in society
Speaker 1: to exploit the lower level of rules and ignore the
Speaker 1: higher honor system level of rules. Well, that's what happens, right,
Speaker 1: if you don't react to shame, if you're not interested
Speaker 1: in how someone perceives you, if you don't have any empathy. Yeah,
Speaker 1: no impulse control, No impulse control, although you can still
Speaker 1: be calculating and have a measure of impulse control if
Speaker 1: if the reward is there, you just don't care about
Speaker 1: getting caught. Yeah, right, that's what you're saying. That's the
Speaker 1: sort of alternate game here. Like to put this in
Speaker 1: like twinkie terms, you would have no shame about eating
Speaker 1: six twinkies. Yeah, there would be no impulse control to
Speaker 1: kick in and say I shouldn't eat six twinkies. You
Speaker 1: would lie to get that fifth and six twinkie. You
Speaker 1: would steal the fifth and six twinkie from a friend,
Speaker 1: a co worker I supposed loved one, and then if
Speaker 1: confronted about it, you'd be like, yeah, I ate six twinkies,
Speaker 1: what are wow? So all we need really is such
Speaker 1: twin commater to see where we fall on this spectrum.
Speaker 1: You would charm somebody for the twinkie. You would kill
Speaker 1: for a twinkie because you're a getting removed from that
Speaker 1: top layer of rules concerning twinkie acquisition. All right, Okay,
Speaker 1: I think this this has legs that we need to
Speaker 1: explore later. But let's talk a little bit more about
Speaker 1: the cost of psychopathy. Recent estimate by the neuroscientists can't
Speaker 1: keep placed the national costs of psychopathy at four hundred
Speaker 1: and sixty billion dollars a year. It's about ten times
Speaker 1: the cost of depression. And in part that is because
Speaker 1: psychopaths tend to be arrested repeatedly. Again, lack of shame,
Speaker 1: lack of concern for getting caught. These tend to be
Speaker 1: elements that land people into jail, right, Yeah, because it
Speaker 1: comes down to there are things I want in life.
Speaker 1: I don't feel held back from doing what I need
Speaker 1: to do to get them, and then confronted by it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I did this, so I did this horrible thing. Also,
Speaker 1: it's worth pointing out psychopaths for estimated to make up
Speaker 1: one percent of the population the general population general population
Speaker 1: going to prison, however, the offenders, and that's a disproportionate
Speaker 1: the number of the brutal crimes and violent offenses and murders. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and let's unpack the definition of this. Broadly speaking, there
Speaker 1: are people who use manipulation, violence, and intimidation to control
Speaker 1: others and satisfy selfish needs. They can be intelligent and
Speaker 1: highly charismatic narcissistic, but they display a chronic inability to
Speaker 1: feel guilt, as we said, remorse or anxiety, and this
Speaker 1: is important anxiety. We'll talk about that about their actions.
Speaker 1: And as a result, they tend to why much of
Speaker 1: the time and sometimes for no reason at all. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, it's not like all psychopaths are gonna be murders,
Speaker 1: and many of them are going to lead train wrecked,
Speaker 1: self absorbed lives. Or they may be in the financial
Speaker 1: world exactly. There may be in a in a world
Speaker 1: where all of the things that are quote unquote wrong
Speaker 1: with them line up perfectly with the values of that
Speaker 1: given institution, right well, And there are some people who
Speaker 1: say that Bernie made Off, for example, is a good
Speaker 1: example of someone who is a psychopath just kind of
Speaker 1: cruising around in the financial world, certainly building people o
Speaker 1: their money, not feeling any shame. And it made me
Speaker 1: think about this documentary called The Corporation, and it talks about, well,
Speaker 1: if you were to take a corporation and run it
Speaker 1: through as a person through a battery and our personality
Speaker 1: according to them. According to the law, if you're to
Speaker 1: run them through a battery personality test, a corporation will
Speaker 1: come out as a just steal cold psychopath. There's no if,
Speaker 1: ands or buts about it. So it is interesting to
Speaker 1: know that there are some psychopathic personalities that do gravitate
Speaker 1: toward the financial world. That is not to say that
Speaker 1: people in the financial world, which is a vast widespread
Speaker 1: that everybody in it is a psychopath. That's far from
Speaker 1: what we're saying. We're just saying that, you know, it
Speaker 1: does line up a bit. Yeah, the quick aside, You know,
Speaker 1: we should really come back and do an episode on
Speaker 1: personhood at some point. There are number of different areas
Speaker 1: to explore there. So let us know if you're interested
Speaker 1: in that, Let's look at the brain. Let's look at
Speaker 1: the brain and psychopathy. What exactly do we think is
Speaker 1: going on in the mind that causes this rule breaking
Speaker 1: system of behavior to surface. Well, if we look at
Speaker 1: m r I scans on the brain and brains of
Speaker 1: adult psychopaths, we can see significant anatomical differences in certain areas.
Speaker 1: For instance, there's a smaller subgenual cortex and a five
Speaker 1: to ten percent reduction in brain density in portions of
Speaker 1: the paralympics system. These are regions of the brain associated
Speaker 1: with empathy and social values. So again very much that
Speaker 1: top level of honor system rules. Yeah, and really those
Speaker 1: are the parts that are active in moral decision making.
Speaker 1: According to James Blair, a cognitive neuroscientists at the National
Speaker 1: Institute of Mental Health, two of these areas, the orbitofrontal
Speaker 1: cortex and the caudate are critical for reinforcing positive outcomes
Speaker 1: and discouraging negative ones and callous, unemotional children. And we'll
Speaker 1: talk about this, that's the term for what you would
Speaker 1: maybe say pre psychopathic children. Blair says that connection may
Speaker 1: be defective, with negative feedback not registering the way that
Speaker 1: it would in a normal brain. And that's an interesting
Speaker 1: way to look at this. You know, the operating system
Speaker 1: is a bit off. Researchers have also linked coblad behaviors
Speaker 1: to low levels of cortisol and below normal functionings of
Speaker 1: the amigola. Always talked about the amigola before. This is
Speaker 1: a portion of the brain that processes fear and other
Speaker 1: aversive social emotions such as shame. We discussed there's a
Speaker 1: lack of shame six no shame, right, And we know
Speaker 1: that cortisol is there are hormone that is related to stress, right,
Speaker 1: So if you're fearful of something, if you have anxiety,
Speaker 1: of course your cortisol levels would shoot up. And that
Speaker 1: is what I think is so interesting about this is
Speaker 1: that these are below level, these kids and adults who
Speaker 1: will kids that maybe I should say psychopaths or pre psychopaths,
Speaker 1: and adults that have the profile, they actually have sort
Speaker 1: of insensitivity to this anxiety. There is one study that
Speaker 1: compared the criminal records of twenty three year olds with
Speaker 1: their sensitivity to unpleasant stimula at age three. And that study,
Speaker 1: the three year olds were played a simple tone and
Speaker 1: then exposed to a brief blast of unpleasant white noise.
Speaker 1: And though all the children developed the ability to anticipate
Speaker 1: this going on um, most of the toddlers who went
Speaker 1: on to become criminals as adults didn't show the same
Speaker 1: signs of a version. And we're talking about tensing or
Speaker 1: sweating when the advanced tone was played. So again here's
Speaker 1: this idea that it's physiological, that it is something in
Speaker 1: the brain that's just not processing fear, and in fact,
Speaker 1: we know too that in psychopath that it's harder for
Speaker 1: them to recognize fear and others as well. So there
Speaker 1: also is this idea that psychopathy might be a learning disability,
Speaker 1: which again is a different way to come at this subject,
Speaker 1: and I think it's really interesting to come in it
Speaker 1: this way because the consensus really is is that there's
Speaker 1: no treatment for psychopathy. Right, it's a dead end road.
Speaker 1: There's nothing that someone can do, behavioral or pharmaceutical, and
Speaker 1: that's really depressing, right. But Joseph Newman believes that it
Speaker 1: is a type of learning disability or informational processing deficit
Speaker 1: that makes individuals oblivious to the implications of their actions,
Speaker 1: but just when their focus on task that promised instant reward.
Speaker 1: So what we're saying here is that when there isn't
Speaker 1: that instant reward, they can sometimes engage in empathy or
Speaker 1: have a little bit more of an understanding of the situation.
Speaker 1: But if there is that instant reward, all bets are off.
Speaker 1: In a study he repeated in different prison populations, Newman
Speaker 1: observed how quickly psychopathic and non psychopathic individuals responded to
Speaker 1: a series of mislabeled images. So he'd have a drawing
Speaker 1: of a pig with a word dog on it super
Speaker 1: imposed on it, and then researchers would flash each image
Speaker 1: and then they would time how long it took for
Speaker 1: subjects to name what they saw. So the really interesting
Speaker 1: thing here is that non psychopathic subjects subconsciously stumbled on
Speaker 1: the mislabeled images and they took longer to name the images.
Speaker 1: But the psychopathic subdors barely noticed. The discrepancy wasn't important
Speaker 1: to them, and they consistently answered more quickly. So what's
Speaker 1: really cool about this cool interesting about the study is
Speaker 1: that it doesn't have anything to do with fear or anxiety,
Speaker 1: and this is what people have been for gusing on
Speaker 1: in the past. So the idea is that it supports
Speaker 1: this notion that a psychological deficit could be at play,
Speaker 1: and this is what Newman says. He says, people think
Speaker 1: psychopaths are just callous and without fear, but there is
Speaker 1: definitely something more going on. When emotions are their primary focus,
Speaker 1: we see that psychopathic individuals show a normal emotional response,
Speaker 1: but when they're focused on something else, they become insensitive
Speaker 1: to emotions entirely. So a lot of it is just
Speaker 1: what happens to be their focus. So again there's this
Speaker 1: idea that you could get in, you could intervene, you
Speaker 1: could change the hard wiring, especially if you get in
Speaker 1: there early enough. So we're gonna take a quick break,
Speaker 1: and when we come back, we're going to really get
Speaker 1: into the idea of callous and unemotional children and the
Speaker 1: idea that we could potentially find psychopaths while their children
Speaker 1: and actually do something about it while their minds are
Speaker 1: still forming. All Right, we're back. One thing that my
Speaker 1: mind kept coming back to is we were looking at
Speaker 1: this podcast was the show Madness, which I know you've
Speaker 1: seen a few episo as of um and I remained
Speaker 1: pretty current on it. Great television show, very deep, very
Speaker 1: into its characters. But the producer, Michael Winer has said
Speaker 1: in a few different interviews that his approach to the
Speaker 1: children on the show, the child characters on the show,
Speaker 1: is to approach them as creatures capable of the full
Speaker 1: range of human emotion. Their children. Yes, But and even
Speaker 1: if they're treated as this kind of second class creature,
Speaker 1: this unfinished person, uh, they're they're still there are things
Speaker 1: in life. They want their things in life. They're afraid
Speaker 1: of that. They're anxious about that, they're scared of that,
Speaker 1: they're trying to figure out, and so they're processing this
Speaker 1: adult world around them. They're trying to understand it, but
Speaker 1: they don't necessarily have all the tools, um all the
Speaker 1: emotional tools to deal with it that adults have. So
Speaker 1: I think it's important to really go into any examination
Speaker 1: of how children are thinking with that in mind, that
Speaker 1: there is a lot going on and and a lot
Speaker 1: more going on than just the surface level of childhood simplicity.
Speaker 1: It's easy to look back on our childhoods and just
Speaker 1: see it in the simple terms. Well, and a lot
Speaker 1: of child psychologists will say to that. The reason why
Speaker 1: it's so important to have a strong foundation for a
Speaker 1: child is that by age five, a lot of the
Speaker 1: way that they perceive the world and understand the world
Speaker 1: is already established really strongly. And it makes sense because
Speaker 1: just as you said, like you know, all that stimula
Speaker 1: is still going to bombard them, they're still going to
Speaker 1: have all the same abilities that the adults do in
Speaker 1: terms of Okay, I perceive this, I see this, but
Speaker 1: not a context and not the tools for it. So
Speaker 1: that is really why there is this level of flexibility
Speaker 1: to change your destiny right before this age five, and
Speaker 1: why it is so important that we create these positive blueprints.
Speaker 1: And that's why repetition is so important at that age too.
Speaker 1: And I see that in my own daughter. She's constantly
Speaker 1: playing out all these different scenarios because she's trying to
Speaker 1: get a hold on what reality is. So what happens
Speaker 1: when you have a kid and the idea hears that
Speaker 1: callous unemotional children again, this is the term for what
Speaker 1: you could say is pre psychopath that you can actually
Speaker 1: sort of identify them as young as five years old
Speaker 1: right now. One of the problems with any of this
Speaker 1: identification is of course that again children are capable of
Speaker 1: all these human emotions. They are very complex individuals. It
Speaker 1: is very easy to diagnose some of their actions as
Speaker 1: psychotic or psychopathic because they are going to have issues
Speaker 1: with anger and issues with testing their boundaries, and a
Speaker 1: lot of this just falls under the normal parameters of
Speaker 1: what it is to be a child. So you get
Speaker 1: into questions were like, all right, is this child truly
Speaker 1: a psychopath? I mean, are these actual callous unemotional traits
Speaker 1: in this child or are they simply lashing out an
Speaker 1: acceptable fashion? For instance, when you act out as a
Speaker 1: child and you're getting a rise out of people say
Speaker 1: you're angering your mom or your dad. You're exercising a
Speaker 1: certain amount of control in a universe that you may
Speaker 1: not feel that in control of. Again, it's a repetition
Speaker 1: to what if I do this over and over again,
Speaker 1: what's going to happen? It's testing the boundaries and you right,
Speaker 1: this like some of this is such a great area
Speaker 1: because kids are naturally narcissists and impulsive, So you can't
Speaker 1: look at a kid and say, oh, that's a psychopath
Speaker 1: right there. Yeah, but I mean up to a certain age,
Speaker 1: children are not really capable of empathy. They would fail
Speaker 1: that Blade Runner Android tests New play Runner coming out,
Speaker 1: by the way, really I just read that the other
Speaker 1: really Scott miss thinking about it anyway, Well, let's see
Speaker 1: how Prometheist does first. Yeah, Okay, here's the deal. There
Speaker 1: is no standard test for psychopathy and children, which probably
Speaker 1: isn't a surprise because this isn't really all that well
Speaker 1: studied and hasn't been studied long enough as well, because
Speaker 1: with any of these topics, you need to be able
Speaker 1: to look at a child's development over time or an
Speaker 1: individuals development over time, to actually accurately evaluate what's happening.
Speaker 1: But the psychologist do think it is a distinct neurological condition.
Speaker 1: The psychologist Dan Washbush, He's is the person in the article.
Speaker 1: Actually that's the main focus here. In terms of treatment.
Speaker 1: He uses a combination of psychological exams and teacher and
Speaker 1: family rating scales, including the Inventory of callous unimentional traits,
Speaker 1: the Child Psychopathy Scale, and a modified version of the
Speaker 1: Antisocial Process Screening Device. And these are all tools that
Speaker 1: are designed to measure the cold predatory conduct most closely
Speaker 1: associated with adult psychopathy. That is from the article that
Speaker 1: we talked about. And a lot of this is measuring
Speaker 1: some of these things we discussed earlier, for instance, so
Speaker 1: what extent are they manipulating people? And again you look
Speaker 1: at children, manipulation is part of it. It's testing, it's
Speaker 1: testing boundaries. And in some cases, take children who have
Speaker 1: spent any time in institutionalized care in an orphanage. There
Speaker 1: in a situation where you're having to employ survival tactics
Speaker 1: in this environment because you're dealing with in many cases
Speaker 1: with a certain amount of stimuli deprivation, be that emotional
Speaker 1: deprivation or sensory deprivation. So one may act out either
Speaker 1: in a manipulative fashion, so in a charming fashion and
Speaker 1: overly charming fashion to get some sort of an adult attention,
Speaker 1: or may act out in an adverse way because negative
Speaker 1: attention is still preferred. You no attention. It's endlessly complex.
Speaker 1: When you start looking at the behaviors of children in
Speaker 1: the formation of the childhood mind, you're absolutely right because,
Speaker 1: as you said, if you're in a situation you're a
Speaker 1: child and you don't, like say, an orphanage, and you
Speaker 1: don't ever have a deep connection with an adult that
Speaker 1: you can trust, that you feel like you can trust,
Speaker 1: then that's something to see if narcissism. Right there, we
Speaker 1: already know that. We know that if kids don't make
Speaker 1: that connection, they start to turn inward, and that's really
Speaker 1: what happens with budding narcissists. That's different from a psychopath, right,
Speaker 1: So again it muddies the waters. How do you really
Speaker 1: determine whether or not a child is pretty psychopathic. Let's
Speaker 1: have a couple of examples of what we're talking about,
Speaker 1: and these are both from that article, and the first
Speaker 1: one is talking about this woman Anne and her husband
Speaker 1: and their child, Michael and he is nine years old now,
Speaker 1: but at age five she began to see a very like, cold,
Speaker 1: calculating part of his personality emerge. And this is a
Speaker 1: good example. She says that she recalled one argument over
Speaker 1: homework assignment when her son, Michael, shrieked and wept a
Speaker 1: she tried to reason with him. Quote, I said, Michael,
Speaker 1: remember the brainstorming we did yesterday. All you have to
Speaker 1: do is take your thoughts from that and turn them
Speaker 1: into sences and you're done. He's still screaming bloody murder.
Speaker 1: So I say, Michael, I thought he brings from this
Speaker 1: so we could avoid all this drama today. He stopped
Speaker 1: dead in the middle of screaming, turned to me and said,
Speaker 1: in this flat adult voice, Well, you didn't think that
Speaker 1: through very clearly than did you. Okay, that's creepy, right, Well,
Speaker 1: I mean, but how many times has your child said
Speaker 1: something creepy? I mean, well inadvertently, But she's never turned
Speaker 1: to me said, mother, did you really think I'd eat
Speaker 1: the cream corn? You really think that through? I mean,
Speaker 1: you know, there's there's and I think what she's saying
Speaker 1: is that here's this child screaming completely out of control,
Speaker 1: right this is that impulse control thing, but then snaps
Speaker 1: to this other personality and is really attacking her parenting skills.
Speaker 1: So there's like this level of manipulation that's going on
Speaker 1: at a very young child that is a little bit odd, yes, now,
Speaker 1: And it's also important to its stress here that this
Speaker 1: is not like, oh, the kids started acting up one
Speaker 1: day and the next thing, it's this article in the
Speaker 1: New York Times. Exactly. They hadn't seen a number of therapists.
Speaker 1: They had gone to a number of different sources. They
Speaker 1: read book after book on the topic. So and the
Speaker 1: jury is still out. They're not saying that this kid
Speaker 1: is you know, they're saying he's callous, unemotional. But there's
Speaker 1: this idea because his father, and we'll talk about this
Speaker 1: heredity in this, that his father had some anti social
Speaker 1: leanings as a child too, So there's this hope that
Speaker 1: he can sort of change his course with some intervention.
Speaker 1: The second example is a nine year old boy named
Speaker 1: Jeffrey Bailey who pushed a toddler into the deep end
Speaker 1: of a motel swimming pool in Florida. As the boy
Speaker 1: struggled and sank to the bottom, Bailey pulled up a
Speaker 1: chair to watch. Questioned by the police afterward, Bailey explained
Speaker 1: that he was just curious to see someone drowned, and
Speaker 1: when he was taken into custody, he seemed untroubled by
Speaker 1: the prospect of jail, but was pleased to be the
Speaker 1: center of attention. Again, we're not trying to scare anybody,
Speaker 1: but we're just saying, like this, it's really hard to
Speaker 1: crack jokes in an episode like this. Yeah, you really
Speaker 1: want to say something funny, but what can you say
Speaker 1: about that? Yeah, this just I mean, you know that
Speaker 1: that's unsettling, that's chilling. But those are the markers of
Speaker 1: what we you would say, a kid who was really
Speaker 1: sort of off the charts in terms of callous, unemotional behavior.
Speaker 1: Here's the deal, though, Normally, when you have someone acting
Speaker 1: like that, they are going to respond to shame. Right
Speaker 1: the parent can say, don't do that, don't push your
Speaker 1: brother in the pool. That makes him feel awful, and
Speaker 1: the empathy kicks in, right, But we don't have that
Speaker 1: at play. Again, those rules of the game don't apply.
Speaker 1: And another thing that complicates this is again the hereditary
Speaker 1: aspect of it. If one parent has these genes, it's
Speaker 1: about likelihood that they will pass these on. And again
Speaker 1: that's why they were looking at this case study sort
Speaker 1: of in the article of um the father who again
Speaker 1: very anti special to child, but turned a new leaf.
Speaker 1: I guess he was probably about a teenager if I
Speaker 1: remember correctly. Again, it's controversial to even say to point
Speaker 1: to a child and say, you know what, you could
Speaker 1: be a psychopath? Why? Because that's just certainly is a
Speaker 1: societal death sentence, right, I mean, how can you navigate
Speaker 1: the world if you're labeled as such? Yeah, I mean
Speaker 1: we have to. The terminology is just so weighted down,
Speaker 1: especially currently, because on one level, psychopath it's a scary terminology.
Speaker 1: I mean, this is the horror movie stuff psychopath. Right.
Speaker 1: No child should have to go through life with that
Speaker 1: kind of a word attached to them. Like you said,
Speaker 1: it's a self fulfilling prophecy. You enter this scenario thinking, oh,
Speaker 1: my child has something deep wrong with them and there's
Speaker 1: no fixing it. To what extend are you're gonna try?
Speaker 1: And you can end up pulling away from that child
Speaker 1: And some of these days have shown, I mean, that's
Speaker 1: where they really want to focus on, and that's where
Speaker 1: you can actually work on treatment, especially in the early ages,
Speaker 1: to try and build that relationship between parent and child,
Speaker 1: not pull back and just give up. Yeah, you're right,
Speaker 1: there's an early study, but maybe a strong choice of words,
Speaker 1: but still the ideas you want to pull closer, yes,
Speaker 1: not pull apart. And there's some results from early stories
Speaker 1: that say that when kids who very least have behavioral
Speaker 1: problems most are callous, unemotional children. If they do get
Speaker 1: the care and loving, really strong baland from a parent
Speaker 1: as much as they possibly can, that there is some
Speaker 1: hope there and some results that show that the kids
Speaker 1: kind of change a little bit. Again, this is this
Speaker 1: is problematic in a sense because parents of those children
Speaker 1: who are sort of getting pummeled by them emotionally and
Speaker 1: sometimes physically, it's really hard to be like, hey, come
Speaker 1: over here and cuddle when you don't know how that
Speaker 1: kid is react to you. And in fact, I remember
Speaker 1: that the mother in this and this article said, you know,
Speaker 1: every time I go to talk to my child, I
Speaker 1: have to gird my loins because I know that at
Speaker 1: some level I'm about to be attacked. So definitely there's
Speaker 1: a lot of intervention that needs to happen. It's not
Speaker 1: something that parents could just go alone on they definitely
Speaker 1: need help. There's a summer treatment program that psychologist Dan
Speaker 1: Washbosh runs and this is his attempt to try to
Speaker 1: actually study this in earnest. I think he had about
Speaker 1: twelve kids last summer and he's doubling it this summer.
Speaker 1: But the idea is that you can really look at
Speaker 1: the behavior of callous, unemotional children and begin to pinpoint
Speaker 1: ways to effectively intervene. Here's this attempt, though, to really
Speaker 1: study it, because again, this is something that there's not
Speaker 1: a lot of money to say, Hey, let's study kids
Speaker 1: who may be psychopathic, especially if the stigma is that
Speaker 1: it's not treatable exactly. Here's the crux of it. Here's
Speaker 1: the question, can you teach empathy? Some people say that
Speaker 1: you can, but there is a famous study of an
Speaker 1: inmate therapy group that have the recidivism rate in violent prisoners.
Speaker 1: Recidivism meaning that you know their returned to prison. But
Speaker 1: it increased the rate of successful crimes in psychopaths because
Speaker 1: it improve their ability to mimic regret and self reflection.
Speaker 1: So on one level, it's making them easier to be
Speaker 1: around and uh and more a part of our world
Speaker 1: less of an obstruction, less of an obvious obstruction, but
Speaker 1: maybe more of a subversive obstruction in some cases. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and they have found that as these children have matured,
Speaker 1: they do develop the ability to simulate interest in other
Speaker 1: people's feelings, and that's what they call cognitive empathy. They
Speaker 1: can say what other people feel, they just don't care
Speaker 1: or really feel about it. But most researchers who study
Speaker 1: callous and emotional children hope to teach a kind of
Speaker 1: intellectual morality that's sort of hinged on this idea of
Speaker 1: cognitive empathy. So you know, even if they do have
Speaker 1: a decreased ability to process emotion, the end goal here
Speaker 1: is to avoid violence, right, the outcome that is usually
Speaker 1: present with a psychopath if a child does go in
Speaker 1: that path. So again the thought is that if treatment
Speaker 1: has begun early enough, you could rewire the brain to
Speaker 1: develop greater empathy. It's also worth noting that we've mentioned
Speaker 1: psychopaths in prison, a psychopath that live lives that are
Speaker 1: rather disorganized or self centered. But then there are also
Speaker 1: psychopaths or people that are diagnosed as psychopaths who do
Speaker 1: go on to live very successful and meaningful lives, one
Speaker 1: of which I encountered last year at the World Science
Speaker 1: Festival in New York. There's a neurobiologist by the name
Speaker 1: of James Fallon, and he gave an excellent talk at
Speaker 1: the Moth event last year. He was discussing his own
Speaker 1: investigation a genetic analysis of known psychopaths, and he ended
Speaker 1: up discovering all these markers in his own personal genetic
Speaker 1: history and really had to confront the fact that, well, yeah,
Speaker 1: actually I do line up very well with most of
Speaker 1: these markers for psychopathic behavior. And he's done a lot
Speaker 1: of great work. But even he himself points out, I'm
Speaker 1: a great guy to run into it a party, but
Speaker 1: maybe the closer you are to me in life, more
Speaker 1: problematic the relationship is, right, So you don't have to
Speaker 1: be a psychopath to Actually what I'm saying is that
Speaker 1: some unsomable we're all sorts of sociopath or psychopaths right there.
Speaker 1: There are levels that we can be close to other
Speaker 1: human beings. And I feel like sociopath is a term
Speaker 1: that everyone's a little more comfortable with throwing around in
Speaker 1: everyday conversation at someone who displays the slightest bit of selfishness.
Speaker 1: I feel like I've done that before myself, where I'll
Speaker 1: encounter somebody and they're guilty of at least one incidence
Speaker 1: of selfishness or some sort of callous behavior, and I'll
Speaker 1: be like, oh, that person is a clearly a sociopath. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm glad that you mentioned the World Science Festival, because
Speaker 1: it is more like a spectrum disorder. This is not
Speaker 1: something that you say that you're just labeled. And also
Speaker 1: he has the mark of Cain. He is going to
Speaker 1: go on to exactly exactly. Pediatric psycho pharmacologist Dr Allen
Speaker 1: Ravitt says that we should be really slow to diagnose
Speaker 1: sociopathy because sometimes it's just a stand in for our
Speaker 1: frustration at not being able to treat somebody, which I
Speaker 1: thought was interesting, right, because this happens with parents a
Speaker 1: lot when they're having problems with their kids, Like you
Speaker 1: just want to say what is it so I can
Speaker 1: treat it or go on the boundaries of it. And
Speaker 1: I think just in medicine in general, this is what
Speaker 1: we want to do, to say, label it so we
Speaker 1: can try to figure it out. But he's saying you
Speaker 1: should be really slow in trying to diagnosis, and he's
Speaker 1: also saying that we're just beginning to appreciate the genetic
Speaker 1: and neuro physiological aspects of the problem, and until we
Speaker 1: do more investigation, we're not really going to figure out
Speaker 1: what lever to pull. So I thought that was really
Speaker 1: interesting perspective on it. You have any more psychopathic thoughts,
Speaker 1: um No? I would close that with just a quick quote.
Speaker 1: I really love in the way it relates to how
Speaker 1: we grow into the people, into the adults that we
Speaker 1: eventually become. And it's from playwright Peter Brooks adaptation of
Speaker 1: the Hindu epic the Maha Barita. It goes like this
Speaker 1: birth is obscure and men are like rivers whose origins
Speaker 1: are often unknown. Well, let's crack open the mail back
Speaker 1: and speaking of the World Science Festival, by the time
Speaker 1: this episode airs, you will have returned from this year's
Speaker 1: World Science Festival. It's true. That'll be exciting. Got exit
Speaker 1: planets on the menu? Uh, some Internet related stuff, all
Speaker 1: sorts of good stuff. All right, Well, here is a
Speaker 1: little listener mail from James James rode in in response
Speaker 1: to our Summer Reading podcast, and he wanted to share
Speaker 1: his enthusiasm for a book titled Two Planets by Curd
Speaker 1: Loss fits getting a copy that should probably have to
Speaker 1: go through some used copies from Amazon. And uh, of
Speaker 1: course who knows. It's the kind of thing that might
Speaker 1: come out on kindle any day if it's not already.
Speaker 1: But this was a German science fiction book from and
Speaker 1: it in hired Verne von Braun to get into rocketry
Speaker 1: and uh and also apparently was looked at Walt Disney.
Speaker 1: It was rather keen on as well, of course, an
Speaker 1: acquaintance of Verne von Braun. As we've discussed, it sounds
Speaker 1: really cool, like it's you know, early dreams of space travel,
Speaker 1: early dreams of futuristic technology. And according to James, the
Speaker 1: story starts out with scientists traveling to the North Pole
Speaker 1: and discovering a Martian colony there. So all right, pretty cool.
Speaker 1: If you have anything you would like to share, if
Speaker 1: you would like to discuss psychopathy in adults or children,
Speaker 1: or if you have any thoughts in general about the
Speaker 1: mysteries of child and and the science of childhood development,
Speaker 1: early childhood development especially, let us know. You can reach
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