Can Psychopaths Be Cured?

Grok truly comes up with some interesting images. I gave it the prompt:

Create an image that represents the question, Can psychopaths be cured?

And it gave me this:

Really Grok? So I asked it:

Please make it less stigmatizing

And I got the image that I used. Of course LLMs are infected with the myths of psychopathy, because, why wouldn’t they be? Anyway, in the Armon Tamatea article, there was a reference to another article that he was a co-author on, and I asked if it was something that people would want me to write on. The answer was yes, so here we are.

This is the article:

Can Psychopaths Be Cured

It is often thought psychopathy is resistant to treatment but newer approaches provide grounds for optimism

They used an image of Donald Trump as the image for their article. I will not be doing so for three reasons.

1. There is no evidence whatsoever that he is psychopathic

2. There will not be any politics when it comes to my writing. You won’t get it from me, and anyone that tries to bring it into the comments section will have their comments deleted.

3. There is no way to surmise, guess, hypothesize, pretend to know, divine, psychically know, or anything else, whether a famous person is a psychopath. I do not allow for guesses, because it is an exercise in exactly what should not happen.

   Unless you are a mind reader, you have no idea what another person is thinking or how they interact with the world. You cannot know, especially when it comes to someone that you have never, and will never meet. For members of the American Psychiatric Association, there is a specific rule that forbids them from doing this at all called, The Goldwater Rule.

   The Goldwater Rule (formally Section 7.3 or Annotation 7.3 of the APA’s Principles of Medical Ethics With Annotations Especially Applicable to Psychiatry) was adopted in 1973. It states:

   “On occasion psychiatrists are asked for an opinion about an individual who is in the light of public attention or who has disclosed information about himself/herself through public media. In such circumstances, a psychiatrist may share with the public his or her expertise about psychiatric issues in general. However, it is unethical for a psychiatrist to offer a professional opinion unless he or she has conducted an examination and has been granted proper authorization for such a statement.”

   This rule applies to APA member psychiatrists. This is its core application. It governs their professional conduct when commenting publicly on individuals (typically public figures) they have not personally examined. It focuses on public figures (politicians, celebrities, or others in the public eye) and comments made in media or public forums.

   It arose after a 1964 Fact magazine survey where many psychiatrists publicly questioned Barry Goldwater’s mental fitness for president without examining him. The APA created the rule to protect the profession’s integrity, avoid stigmatizing mental illness, and uphold the ethical standard that psychiatric opinions require direct evaluation and consent. It was actually far worse that just questioning his mental fitness, these people tried to destroy this man’s life, and managed to in many respects. The rule exists for a

   very good reason, and it should be enforced with a heavy hand in my opinion.

   In short, if you’re an APA-member psychiatrist offering a professional opinion on a public figure’s mental health in public, the rule applies and generally prohibits it without a personal exam and authorization. General education about psychiatric concepts is allowed, but you don’t get to go around calling people psychopaths, narcissists, sociopaths, or whatever other stereotype they want to haul out of their bag of tricks.

   Even if you have met the person, that means nothing. Without an actual in depth examination, there is no way of knowing, and if that kind of examination was conducted, by you, then you would be violating their privacy by sharing the results. No in depth examination of said individual means that there is nothing to be added to the conversation by guessing.

Unfortunately, there are a number of so-called professionals that simply seem unable to help themselves, and decide that they are above that rule. I don’t care who they are attempting to apply it to, which side of the aisle that they are on, the moment that I see this behavior, I immediately know that individual has no credibility at all.

I am not a clinician, nor am I a member of the APA, so you might think that I shouldn’t take too much umbrage with this behavior, and may even find it amusing to guess about whether this celebrity or politician is a psychopath.

Nope. I don’t know anything about them, and public images are nonsense. They are crafted narratives that are put together by people with an agenda. I don’t care what someone wants me to think about someone else, and I am certainly not psychic. I have no idea how their mind works, and I am not interested in guessing.

On to the article.

This article is penned by:

by Associate professor Hedwig Eisenbarth, Aaron Hissey, Emma Buurmans, Armon Tamatea and Brianna Burt

This is not a long article, and that is too many people for even a lengthy article, this makes me think that each person was responsible for fifty words, and that was it. It also makes me think that they have something in the contracts that require them to put out a certain number of publications every year, and all of them were behind, so they got together at lunch, slapped this together, and called it a day.

Also also, it states under the caption of Donald Trump this:

Oxford psychologist Dr Kevin Dutton has ranked world leaders throughout history on the Psychopathic Personality Inventory, and awarded Donald Trump a score of 171 – two points more than Hitler.

A couple of things here.

1. Kevin Dutton is not immune from my criticism of playing this little, diagnose the celebrity BS game that he is playing here. He has no idea about Trump, and him being Kevin Dutton does not grant him special powers.

2. You cannot diagnose someone that you never examined. This goes for Trump, but also for Hitler. Hitler wouldn’t even rate on the psychopathy scale. While I cannot say that someone is a psychopath, I can certainly say that someone is not a psychopath. That is observable in their behavior.

   Hitler had many disqualifying traits from being psychopathic, one of the most notable would be his addiction, but also his severe paranoia that was present before the addiction. For someone to call Hitler a psychopath, that tells me that they are trying to sensationalize psychopathy for a narrative, and Dutton’s narrative is to try and bring attention to psychopathy as a whole. He may be correct in thinking that this is an effective strategy, he is incorrect for doing so. This is lying for clicks, and it is untoward.

   Do better Dr. Dutton. And yes, they do have a rule that is pretty much the same as the Goldwater Rule for the psychology/psychiatry professions in the UK, so he does not get that as an excuse. Even if they didn’t, this behavior should be looked down upon, not encouraged.

Opinion: Psychopathy is a concept regularly thrust into the media spotlight, with clickbait articles about whether your boss is a psychopath or whether you’re dating one.

But we swear, this is not one of those clickbait articles, so please read it!

We will see article, we will see.

Whether it’s in relation to a real person or a fictional character, ‘psychopath’ and ‘psychopathic tendencies’ are often used to describe someone with an extreme personality type and engaging in extreme antisocial behaviour.

But… you would never do that… would you? Not at all with the chosen image for this article.

Now, I have to point out here that the people that wrote this article almost certainly didn’t choose the image. That was done by the editorial staff at the website. I find it amusing that in choosing the image that they did, they essentially made this article into the very clickbait that they were sort of condemning in the opening paragraph. I wonder if the authors were disappointed by that choice?

It is also often implied that people high on psychopathy are resistant to treatment and are unlikely to change their ways. But research on this is not conclusive, and newer approaches provide grounds for a more optimistic outlook.

Oh my, what sort of new hose for huffing your own farts have you invested in?

No, psychopathy cannot be changed, nor cured. The only way our behavior shifts is if there is something in it for us, and I mean tangibly in it, not just “it’s the right thing to do”. Let me just conclude your research for you, because I am the neurotype that you are trying to decide whether we can be shaped into versions of you, because let’s be frank, that is what “treatment” means. Be more like you.

The conclusion is, no, we are not treatable, and what’s more, we do not want to be you. Ever. I get it, y’all think that everyone wants to be neurotypical and we “just don’t understand” how nifty and great it would be. I have been watching you run your own lives and the world around me for all of my years, and I can say very comfortably, I have no interest in joining your emotionally laden Alice in Hell tea party. Keep your treatment for yourselves.

From where I am standing, it is needed on your side of the aisle, not ours. For the antisocial psychopaths, lock them up. I have no compunction about that. I would say execute them and save ourselves the bother, but I do not believe the state can ever be trusted with the power to kill the citizenry. It never ends well.

What is ‘psychopathy’?

Oh, this should be fun. I wonder which one of the eight hundred names attached to this article got to write this section?

Psychopathy, unlike singular personality traits such as extraversion or honesty, is a group of related traits. It is primarily characterised by antagonism, lack of empathy, and impulsivity.

No, not antagonism. We are just low on agreeableness. Psychopaths don’t go out looking for trouble. That would mean that we both notice and care that there are other people about. We generally don’t notice, and certainly don’t care. Other people are their own problem, not ours. Otherwise, no real disagreement with this paragraph.

As with any aspect of personality, everyone falls somewhere on the continuum for psychopathy. But people who display to a strong extent many of the traits considered to be central to psychopathy could be described as being at the higher end of a psychopathy continuum.

Whoever wrote this section is doing a pretty good job. The antagonism part aside, this is factually correct. It may be that they consider “antagonism” in a different way than how I consider it. To me, it means to stir sh*t up for the sake of it. Maybe that is not how it is meant in psychology. Who knows?

Psychopathic traits can fit roughly into three main categories: interpersonal, emotional, and irresponsible traits.

Hmm, maybe, but the “irresponsible” part is giving, we only research psychopathy in prisons, so this trait is heavily skewed in a direction that misleads all the rest of research because we have polluted the waters so much regarding this topic that normal psychopaths are not interested in participating in our studies, vibes. You know, if you guys keep defining us in the shadow of the minority, none of us are going to want to deal with you. You guys all claim that it is super difficult to get psychopaths not in prison to participate in research, but then you define psychopathy in stupid ways that have nothing to do with us, and that leads to a few problems.

1. We aren’t interested in being told we are a certain way because you injected all your energy and funds into prisoners. We don’t look for your behavior in your criminal kin, but you do that to us, and then expect us to just take on the mantle of those crimes like they are a part of us. No thank you.

2. Those of us that do not know they are psychopathic, and that would be a lot of us, won’t see themselves in the stupid trait listing that you gleaned from the prisoner only debacle, and won’t ever consider that they might be psychopathic. This was how it was when I was diagnosed. I thought the dude was nuts. Psychopath means serial killer, a guy with a well in the basement (which I will admit is kind of cool, but I don’t want a whiny chick in my well, that’s just noisy. I just want the well).

   Once you have made psychopathy mean criminal traits, you have already lost the plot, and things like “irresponsibility” reads, Robert Hare had a hand in defining this list we are about to explain to you. Let’s see how right I am.

Interpersonal traits include manipulation and aggressiveness towards others, superficial charm, and deceitfulness.

Hmm. Everyone manipulates. Literally everyone. It is the basis for all human interaction. We aren’t aggressive toward anyone. That is a criminal thing, not a psychopath thing. I would even go so far as to say, this is an antisocial thing, not even a psychopath in prison thing. Again, there may be differing definitions here, but to me aggressive is, again, starting sh*t. I have no interest in any of that noise. I am doing what I want to do. The last thing I want to be bothered with is neurotypical drama. I get enough of that just having to deal with you on a daily basis. I am not instigating it. It does nothing but inconvenience me.

Superficial charm. Interestingly, no, but because it doesn’t go far enough. Superficial means that there is nothing underneath. I have found that people tend to be more drawn to me the more they are able to see beneath the mask. There is something about that calm world that they want to be inside of. I am very charming, mask on, but that doesn’t mean people aren’t enchanted with the mask off version as well, it’s just different. That isn’t to say that mask off is something that most people are going to have problems with, pretty much all of them do. It’s that mask off still has a draw. A draw with fallout, but a draw all the same.

Deceitfulness, I mean sure, yeah, the mask is a lie in and of itself. Build out from there.

Emotion-related traits include deficient emotional responses (e.g. lacking in depth or absent entirely), an impaired ability to empathise with others’ feelings, and a lack of remorse.

Man, does my spellcheck hate the English spelling of words. It gets so angry with the differences that my post looks like a warzone.

Yes, emotionally deficient responses. A huge part of my life is asking people, “Why do you care though?” It took me a lot of years to learn that just asking that question leads to problems, but I am curious by nature so often I had to ask. I genuinely do not understand why people care about this or that.

I am at the point of thinking no one actually empathizes with anyone. It is a reading of the world through your own experiences and a shared idea of how things work. Your kid dies, you’re sad. Someone else’s kid dies, you employ the reasoning that they are sad because you would be sad, and you comfort them because that is what you would want. Granted, there is a shared collectiveness that happens here. Normally people are sad, the assumption has teeth, but it doesn’t always work that way.

It’s so amusing to me, I will point this out to people that insist that they have the moral high ground because of their “empathy”. This is a comment that I got on an answer I wrote about this. The top quoted section is from what I wrote, the rest is the response to it:

“People think that they are feeling what the other person is feeling, but they aren’t. They are feeling what they believe the other person is feeling. How do I know this?”

The sociopaths I have known and loved have spent a lot of time and energy PRETENDING they have feelings. So, of course, if a sociopath pretends they have feelings most empaths would believe them and empathize. Psychopaths like you seem to believe Empaths should be able to see beyond the mask. We can’t. THAT is not our superpower. So perhaps Psychopaths should try doing the honest thing and come forward with who they really are. You might be surprised how things would change if Empaths knew who Psychopaths really are. For one thing. Empaths would eventually stop empathizing with you! Of course, you and I both know that if Psychopaths were honest about their non-feelings, they would stop receiving benefits they get from lying and hiding … benefits that they don’t deserve.

This is a demonstration of how to miss the point entirely while also proving my position. If empathy were real, if you were truly feeling what the other person is feeling, then you wouldn’t have the issue of the mask being in the way. You would know how the other person feels. You would understand that the emotions are not shared. You don’t, because you cannot and are not feeling what the other person is feeling. You are projecting what they should be feeling onto them. The mask shouldn’t matter if you could actually share another person’s emotions. It only matters because it demonstrates that the shared emotional experience is actually only one sided.

Lack of remorse. Yup. No notes.

Irresponsible traits include impulsive and inconsiderate behaviours, a failure to learn from negative consequences of one’s behaviour, and a tendency to take risks even in the face of threats.

All right, fair, if that’s what it means. Psychopaths can certainly and are certainly impulsive. No argument from me. Being inconsiderate, yes, definitely. This is not always intentional, but it is a real thing that happens. We project too. Remember what I spent a lot of my life asking? “Why do you care”? Well, that is inconsiderate of what someone else is feeling. It’s dismissive, or so I have been told. They do care, so I should be dealing with that, not the question of why they care.

We can learn the negative consequences of our behavior provided there is an adequate reward for doing so. There has to be something better than whatever that consequence is, and that is not always easy to find. Also, the idea that we might value our lives more than doing something, that means we first have to know and accept that our lives may well be in danger. That is not always a given with a psychopath. Overall, the irresponsibility trait is apparently quite accurate.

How does psychopathy develop?

There isn’t a simple answer to this question, and a growing body of research indicates it has complex origins.

Nope, it doesn’t. It’s genetic. That’s it, and that’s all. Environment can affect how a psychopath acts, but that is true of all humans, but it has nothing to do with psychopathy being present.

Several studies have suggested that individuals high on psychopathy often show specific differences in patterns of brain function, such as in the frontal lobe, the part of the brain important for planning, impulse control, and self-regulation.

Nooo, they don’t “suggest” it, they demonstrate it. Suggest means that you have some evidence that this is not the case. There is no evidence that these significant differences are not present, quite the opposite. Suggest is too soft a word.

The social environment also has a role to play. For instance, aversive childhood experiences, trauma, and harsh parenting can have a profound impact on emotional functioning in adulthood, potentially leading to a detachment of emotion from cognition and behaviour.

No, it doesn’t. Again, how a psychopathic person learns to behave in the world is certainly environmentally affected, the environment has nothing to do with psychopathy’s existence. It is a purely genetic thing. The reason that psychologists keep trying to insist that environment plays a role in psychopathy is that they need a reason to continue being involved. If it’s genetic, suddenly they have no role. There is no money in grants, and no fame to garner for themselves. Are there those that are really interested in the subject? Sure, but there is far more self-interest when it comes to these definitions over actual science.

Ultimately, it is likely that a range of biological, cognitive, social, and environmental factors contribute to the development of psychopathy.

Keep grasping at that ledge psychology. Your time in this space is probably coming to an end soon.

Can psychopathy be treated?

Many people with psychopathic traits come into conflict with the law. As such, much of what we know about this personality pattern comes from research conducted in prisons and secure forensic hospitals.

Nope, not how that works. You cannot make the claim that many people with these traits come into contact with the law, and therefore what you know is from studying those that do. No no no, you can say, some come in contact with the law, but based on our own math, this equates to around ten percent that circulate through the penal system, and we study this small percentage, and only have them to arrive at conclusions about. Therefore many of our conclusions are unlikely to have any sort of validity to the broader population of psychopaths.

However, that would require you to be honest with the general public, which also requires you to be honest with yourselves, and that is clearly not a strong suit.

Past studies suggested that conventional medications and psychological therapy were ineffective and this has led to a view that psychopathy can’t be treated.

Right, because medications do not change how our brain works, and also, we respond to medications differently than other people. Also, we, again, are not interested in being a part of your world, so why would psychological therapy have any effect on us? We don’t want to change ourselves. Unlike many humans, we actually like who we are. Why would we want to be other?

However, recent studies indicate it might be more effective to focus on changing specific symptoms and outcomes such as reducing aggressive behaviour, increasing emotional and behavioural stability, and helping people reintegrate into society after leaving prison.

Oh my good lord, you are all stupid, aren’t you? You must be, because you wrote a sentence with those words in it. Psychopaths are not aggressive, and do not have emotional instability. What literal crack are you smoking?

Just no.

If you are helping criminals reintegrate into society, you do you, but if these are the criteria you are working with, you have either never met a psychopath, you do not know what one is, or both. Either is concerning, both makes you unqualified for your job.

One such treatment programme is the high-risk personality programme, developed in New Zealand by Nick J Wilson and Armon Tamatea. This programme is designed to help high-risk offenders in New Zealand who generally have high levels of psychopathy. It focuses on reducing incidents of serious violent offending by targeting behaviours such as emotional reactivity and anti-social interpersonal behaviours.

I had Grok do a dive into this program, and basically it was about people who couldn’t/wouldn’t behave themselves in prison. There were only twelve males, and only eleven completed the program. In other words, it’s nothing. There is not nearly enough information with such a small cohort to arrive at any kind of conclusion. It may as well never have happened. Also, the only thing that determined their so-called “psychopathy” is the PCL-R. So, likely not an actual psychopath in sight, participating in a program that has so few participants that it may as well not exist.

My intention is not to disparage Dr. Tamatea’s work here. If whatever this program is, manages to make it so some prisoners go out into the world and not make it a worse place to be in for the rest of us, well done everyone. However, this is not indicative of psychopathy being treatable. It means that you can get antisocial people to behave like non feral d*cks. A feat, sure, but that has nothing to do with psychopathy.

This programme is designed to help high-risk offenders in New Zealand who generally have high levels of psychopathy.

No, high scores on the PCL-R mean nothing. They are antisocial, but to know if they are psychopathic, you actually have to do the work, and the Hare protocol is not going to cut it.

It focuses on reducing incidents of serious violent offending by targeting behaviours such as emotional reactivity and anti-social interpersonal behaviours.

Umm, tell me you aren’t working with psychopaths without telling me you aren’t working with psychopaths?

Seriously, how is this the criteria? If they are emotionally reactive, they are, by definition, not psychopathic, and people that work with psychopaths for a living should know that. The fact that they don’t… well, they need to find new employment. I hear Wendy’s is hiring. Maybe they should try there.

The programme has had measurable success, such as lowered risk ratings for 80 percent of participants.

Sooo… eight people? Seriously? There is a reason why they are dodging the number of participants in this program. Even if you click the link the article provides, they do not mention the number of participants. Also, let me reiterate that there were twelve people in this study, and only eleven made it through. Also, also, that means that eighty percent is a rounding statistic. Why are they even mentioning something that had eleven people in it? That is just… what are we even doing here? My word… all right, moving on.

Nope, we are not moving on, because I can’t help myself apparently. How long do you think they followed up with these study participants after their “program”?

1. One month

2. Six months

3. One Year

4. Three years

5. Ten years

Put your answer in the comments section. By the way, the program lasted eleven months, so make sure you consider that before guessing. You will get the answer next week, and please do not spoil it for others. Let people guess.