| Author | Message | ||
     Coral (Coral) Username: Coral Registered: 10-2008 Posted From: 90.220.218.237 |
I'm copying this reply I made wholesale from the other forum I belong to, as the question at the bottom is one I'd like to ask here as well. I think you're right there, if the soul could be translated as "conscience", or the ability to empathise with other people. The true psycopath does not have this ability, even non-psycopathic pattern offenders have less empathy and are able more easily to reason away the bit they do have to square things up with themselves. I've been looking at the nurture verses nature issue lately, and whether psycopathy that leads to violent physical or sexual offenses has any real biological basis. I've not quite assimilated all the information yet, but there definitely seems to be more of a "nature" problem than a "nurture" one. Serial killers brains do usually have faults from birth, or lesions from other later traumas on the frontal lobes, the "conscience" area that helps people modify their natural instincts. Obviously an abusive upbringing can bring out the worst in a child, or maybe surface later on in life, but the predisposition seems to already be there for these types, after all not all abused people go on to become abusive to others, physically or sexually, or even verbally. One "nurture" factor that does seem to have a bearing is whether the person in question was properly bonded as an infant. Serial killers have a much higher incidence of maternal non-bonding than other types of offenders. Perhaps the infant had to spend a great deal of time in a hospital or other institution, or was seriously neglected company-wise in the home. Infants that don't make a specific bond with their main carers have a much more difficult time connecting on an every day levelwith others. I'm not sure there can be one standard simple explanation for why a particular person becomes a serial killer, but there does appear to be a core of basic factors, the majority of which are biological, one or more of which are present in virtually every case of psycopathic pattern offense, particularly of a sexual type. Does anyone have more information on the study of the damaged frontal lobes, I'd be really interested to hear it? | ||
| Gary Fry (Gary_fry) Username: Gary_fry Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 129.11.77.197 |
I read a very good book on this issue by a guy called Joel Norris, I think. Worth seeking out. | ||
| Gary Fry (Gary_fry) Username: Gary_fry Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 129.11.77.197 |
As for the nature / nurture debate - it's all imponderably complex, but you touch upon the central issue above when you say that not all people who are abused become psychopaths, though they're far more likely to be psychopaths if they're abused. I simply can't imagine that biological dispositions aren't involved, though this shouldn't lead us to rule out experiential factors. We should resist choosing between either nature or nurture. Both are almost certainly involved. | ||
| Stu (Stu) Username: Stu Registered: 04-2008 Posted From: 86.29.99.194 |
"Genes + environment = This is your life." I got that from an old issue of X-Men so it must be true. | ||
| Giancarlo (Giancarlo) Username: Giancarlo Registered: 11-2008 Posted From: 85.116.228.3 |
Yes, Nature/Nurture, that's oppositional thinking even when the items are thought to be complementing each other, less of this, more of that. What about a third perspective? Jung's hypothetical transcendent function, for example, would only crumble back into oppositionalism, albeit dialectical, because of the radically oppositional workings of the mind he's postulating. Are we not fantasizing, maybe, the stuff of reality in too a concrete way? What's the Sky our own thougnts are residing in? I am reversing the attention from the "problem" to the perceiving (and the perceiver) of "there being a problem". Well... I don't mean a seminar. Greetings from Italy |