Pet Forum / Miscellaneous / Animal Health / August 2007

The INCURABLES <{}:~( >

HOWEDY FellHOWE Dog Lovers,

Jerry Howe, after dismally FAILING to educate our fellHOWE
dog lovers on these forums to the absurdity of their reliance
on their preferred use of bribery, avoidance, pain, fear, force,
intimidation, surgical sexual mutilation and "euthanasia" as
NECESSARY *(IN SOME CASES), came to the realization
that we HAD been dealing with SCHIZOPHRENICS.

PUNISHMENT ALWAYS DERANGES BEHAVIOR.

Therefore, PUNISHMENT often WORKS WELL to "CURE"
schizophrenia.

Consequently, Jerry Howe, despite his devHOWET
ABHORANCE of the use of PUNISHMENT, had become
The Sincerely Incredibly Freakin Insanely Simply AMAZING
Grand Puppy Wizard, relying steadfastly on HIS modified
hybrid koehler / Socratic method to identify, expose, and
discredit the dog abusing mental cases, SUCCESSFULLY
ridding these forums of their lies, abuse, and self gratifying
nonsense.

For that reason you DON'T FIND the "old regulars" posting
their lies, insanity and abuse here any longer. THEY
LEARNED THEIR LESSONS WELL!  My sincere
appreciation is EXXXTENDED to wm. koehler, drs. sidman,
dermer, plonsky, descartes, and of curse, Socratease!

HOWEver, what REMAINS are... THE INCURABLES!

The "regular" posters of today are NOT schizoid, they're
PSYCHOPATHS, a.k.a., CRIMINALLY INSANE and
PROBABLY INCURABLE <{}: ~ ( >

"It has been shown that punishment and behavior
modification techniques do not improve the behavior of a
psychopath. They have been regularly observed to respond
to both by becoming more cunning and hiding their behavior
better.

It has been suggested that traditional therapeutic approaches
actually make them, if not worse, then far more adept at
manipulating others and concealing their behavior. They are
generally considered to be not only incurable but also
untreatable.

Psychopaths also have a markedly distorted sense
of the potential consequences of their actions,
not only for others, but also for themselves.
They do not, for example, deeply recognize the
risk of being caught, disbelieved or injured as
a result of their behaviour."

Therefore, further use of PUNISHMENT would be CRUEL,
INHUMANE, and INEFFECTIVE. Henceforth, The Sincerely
Incredibly Freakin Insanely Simply Amazing Grand Puppy
Wizard MUST rely upon THE SAME techniques as HE
TEACHES for the rehabilitation of fear aggressive DOGS:

UNCONDITIONAL LOVE, TRUST, and RESPECT.

Subject: R.P.D.B. Syndrome

http://www.phule.net/mirrors/unskilled-and-unaware.html
http://www.apa.org/journals/features/psp7761121.pdf

             UNSKILLED AND UNAWARE OF IT:
  HOW DIFFICULTIES IN RECOGNIZING ONE'S OWN
                          INCOMPETENCE
        LEAD TO INFLATED SELF-ASSESSMENTS

Across 4 studies, the authors found that
participants scoring in the bottom quartile...
grossly overestimated their best performance
and ability. Although their test scores put
them in the 12th percentile, they estimated
themselves to be in the 62nd.

- Never attribute to malice that which
can be adequately explained by stupidity.

- Sufficiently advanced incompetence is
indistinguishable from malice.

- Insufficiently advanced malice is
indistinguishable from incompetence.

psychosis (si-ko'sis)
Plural psychoses (si-ko'sez)

A mental state caused by psychiatric or organic illness,
characterized by a loss of contact with reality and an
inability to think rationally. A psychotic person often
behaves inappropriately and is incapable of normal social
functioning.

psy·chop·a·thy /sa?'k?p??i/ Pronunciation[sahy-kop-uh-thee]
-noun, plural -thies. Psychiatry.

1. a mental disorder in which an individual
manifests amoral and antisocial behavior,
lack of ability to love or establish meaningful personal
relationships, extreme egocentricity,
failure to learn from experience, etc.

n.Mental disorder, especially when
manifested by antisocial behavior.

Main Entry: de·praved
Pronunciation: di-'prAvd
Function: adjective: marked by moral
corruption or perversion as shown by
a capacity for extreme and wanton
physical cruelty

Psychopathy

Psychopathy, or sociopathy, is currently
defined in psychiatry and clinical psychology
as a condition characterized by lack of empathy
or conscience, and poor impulse control or
manipulative behaviors.

It is a term derived from the Greek psyche
(soul, breath hence mind) and pathos (to
suffer), and was once used to denote any
form of mental illness, often being confused
with psychosis.

Though in widespread use, psychopathy has no
precise equivalent in either the DSM-IV-TR,
where it is most strongly correlated with
antisocial personality disorder, or the ICD-10,
where it is correlated with dissocial personality disorder.

Some experts are working toward listing
psychopathy as a unique disorder. However,
only a minority of diagnosable psychopaths
are violent offenders.

The manipulative skills of some of the others
are valued for providing audacious leadership.

Some have argued that psychopathy is adaptive in a highly
competitive environment, because it gets results for both the
individual and the corporations they represent. However,
these individuals will often cause long-term harm, both to
their co-workers and the organization as a whole, due their
manipulative, deceitful, abusive, and often fraudulent behaviour.

In current clinical use, psychopathy is most
commonly diagnosed using the checklist devised
by Emeritus Professor Robert Hare. He describes
psychopaths as "intraspecies predators who use
charm, manipulation, intimidation, and violence
to control others and to satisfy their own selfish
needs.

Lacking in conscience and in feelings for others, they take
what they want and do as they please, violating social norms
and expectations without guilt or remorse" . "What is missing,
in other words, are the very qualities that allow a humanbeing
to live in social harmony.

History

Research into a group of individuals that could
be described as psychopathic was first completed
by Philippe Pinel almost 200 years ago.

Pinel described patients as "insane without
delirium," which he characterized as a lack
of restraint and remorselessness for their
actions.

Pinel felt that his patients were morally
neutral, reflecting his humanistic approach
to mental illness.

The next most distinctive work on psychopaths
was done in 1941 by Hervey Cleckley in his book
The Mask of Sanity (significantly expanded in
the second edition of 1950). Cleckley offered
a broad range of case histories, from all
corners of society, all of which showed patients
with the common characteristic of "emotional emptiness."

Cleckley probed the psychopath's attitudes and thought
patterns in search of a meaning for their unusual behaviour;
however, according to Robert Hare, Cleckley's most
important contribution was in providing the framework of
emotion for most future research into this disorder.

What is a psychopath?

A psychopath has no concern for the feelings of
others and a complete disregard for any sense
of social obligation, though superficially they
seem like a normal person.

They can be charming and polite on the surface,
but this only disguises their lack of empathy.
They seem egocentric and lack insight of any
sense of responsibility or consequence.

Their emotions are thought to be superficial
and shallow, if they exist at all. They are
considered callous, manipulative, and incapable
of forming lasting relationships, let alone
showing any kind of meaningful love. They
typically never perform any action unless
they determine it can be beneficial for themselves.

Since psychopaths cause harm through their actions,
it is assumed that they are not emotionally attached
to the people they harm; however, according to the
PCL-R Checklist, psychopaths are also careless in
the way they treat themselves. They frequently fail
to alter their behavior in a way that would prevent
them from enduring future discomfort. Dr. Joseph
Newman contends that the behavior displayed by
psychopaths is the result of "an inability to process
contextual cues."

It is thought that any emotions which the primary psychopath
exhibits are the fruits of watching and mimicking other
people's emotions. They show poor impulse control and a
low tolerance for frustration and aggression. They have no
empathy, remorse, anxiety or guilt in relation to their behavior.

In short, they truly are devoid of conscience.

However, they understand that society expects them to
behave in a conscientious manner, and therefore they mimic
this behavior when it suits their needs.

Most studies of psychopaths have taken place among prison
populations. This remains a limitation on its applicability to a
general population but that has not prevented fiction writers
from popularizing psychopaths in the movies.

Cleckley defined psychopathy thusly:

1. Superficial charm and above average intelligence.
2. Absence of delusions and other signs of irrational thinking.
3. Absence of nervousness or neurotic manifestations.
4. Unreliability.
5. Untruthfulness and insincerity.
6. Lack of remorse or shame.
7. Antisocial behavior without apparent compunction.
8. Poor judgment and failure to learn from experience.
9. Pathological egocentricity and incapacity to love.
10. General poverty in major affective reactions.
11. Specific loss of insight.
12. Unresponsiveness in general interpersonal relations.
13. Fantastic and uninviting behavior with drink,
and sometimes without.
14. Suicide threats rarely carried out.
15. Sex life impersonal, trivial, and poorly integrated.
16. Failure to follow any life plan.

It has been shown that punishment and behavior modification
techniques do not improve the behavior of a psychopath.
They have been regularly observed to respond to both by
becoming more cunning and hiding their behavior better.

It has been suggested that traditional therapeutic approaches
actually make them, if not worse, then far more adept at
manipulating others and concealing their behavior. They are
generally considered to be not only incurable but also
untreatable.

Psychopaths also have a markedly distorted sense
of the potential consequences of their actions,
not only for others, but also for themselves.
They do not, for example, deeply recognize the
risk of being caught, disbelieved or injured as
a result of their behaviour.

Legal definitions

Psychopathy has quite separate legal and judicial definitions
that should not be confused with the medical definition.
Various states and nations have at various times enacted
laws specific to dealing with psychopathic offenders, and
many ofthese laws are active, on statute, today:

Washington State Legislature defines a "Psychopathic
personality" to mean "the existence in any person of such
hereditary, congenital or acquired condition affecting the
emotional or volitional rather than the intellectual field and
manifested by anomalies of such character as to render
satisfactory social adjustment of such person difficult or
impossible".

California enacted a psychopathic offender law in 1939 that
defined a psychopath solely in terms of offenders with a
predisposition "to the commission of sexual offenses
against children."

A 1941 law attempted to further clarify this to the point where
anyone examined and found to be psychopathic was to be
committed to a state hospital and anyone else was to be
sentenced by the courts.

In the United Kingdom, "Psychopathic Disorder" is legally
defined in the The Mental Health Act (UK) as, "a persistent
disorder or disability of mind (whether or not including
significant impairment of intelligence) which results in
abnormally aggressive or seriously irresponsible conduct on
the part of the person concerned."

Types of psychopathy

Cleckley also distinguished between two types of
psychopathy: primary and secondary. Primary psychopathy
was defined as the root disorder in patients diagnosed with
it whereas secondary psychopathy was defined as an aspect
of another psychiatric disorder or social circumstances.

Today, primary psychopaths are considered to
have mostly Factor 1 traits from the PCL-R
(arrogance, callousness, manipulativeness,
lying) whereas secondary psychopaths have a
majority of Factor 2 traits (impulsivity,
boredom proneness, irresponsibility, lack of
long-term goals) .

Mealey uses the term "primary psychopathy"
to differentiate between psychopathy that
is biological in origin and "secondary
psychopathy" that results from a combination
of genetic and environmental influences.
Lykken prefers sociopathy to describe the latter.

Sellbom and Ben-Porath (2005) describe
the distinction succinctly:

Some people who engage in violent behavior
possess psychopathic personality traits,
such as callousness, grandiosity, and
fearlessness, and presumably engage in such
conduct because they care little about others.

Others are impulsive and experience considerable anger,
anxiety, and distress and may commit violent acts as a
reaction to negative emotions, which are sometimes referred
to as "crimes of passion."

Indeed, the distinction between primary and secondary
psychopathy (including so-called neurotic psychopathy) has
long been noted in the psychopathy literature (Karpman, 1947;
Lykken, 1995).

This distinction closely resembles the distinction between
instrumental and impulsive/reactive crime/violence in the field
of criminology.

Joseph P. Newman et al. have validated David
T. Lykken's conceptualization of psychopathy
subtypes in relation to Gray's behavioral
activation system and behavioral inhibition system.

Primary psychopathy

On the MMPI-2 Restructured Clinical Scales (RC),
primary psychopathy (as measured by the Psychopathic
Personality Inventory, Factor 1) is negatively correlated with
RC2 (low positive emotions), RC7 (dysfunctional negative
emotions), RC4 (antisocial behavior), and RC9 (hypomanic
activation). On the MMPI-2 Personality Psychopathology
Five (PSY-5) scales, primary psychopathy was positively
correlated with aggression (Specifically, grandiosity and
interpersonal dominance, and instrumental aggression). and
DISC(onstraint) (specifically, fearlessness) while being
negatively correlated with NEGE (negative emotionality)
and INTR(oversion).

Newman et al. found measures of primary psychopathy to be
negatively correlated with Gray's behavioral inhibition system,
a construct intended to measure behavioral inhibition from
cues of punishment or nonreward.

Secondary psychopathy

Secondary psychopaths show normal to above-normal
physiological responses to (perceived) potential threats.
Their crimes tend to be unplanned and impulsive with little
thought of the consequences. They have hot tempers and
are prone to reactive aggression. They experience normal to above-
normal levels of anxiety but are nevertheless highly
stimulus seeking and have trouble tolerating boredom.

Their lifestyle may lead to
depression and even suicide.

For the secondary psychopath especially prominent are the
Factor 2 (in the two-factor model) PCL-R items of impulsivity,
weak behavioral controls, irresponsibility, lack of realistic long-
term goals, proneness to boredom/need for stimulation,
parasitic lifestyle, early behavioral problems, juvenile
delinquency, and revocation of conditional release (breaking
probation).

Sellbom and Ben-Porath (2005) found that secondary
psychopathy (as measured by the Psychopathic Personality
Inventory, Factor 2) shows opposite correlations to primary
psychopathy in many cases.

On the MMPI-2 RC, secondary psychopathy is positively
correlated with RC4 (asb), RC7 (dne), and RC9 (hpm). It
was also found to be correlated with the MMPI-2 PSY-5
scales of AGGR(ession) and DISC(onstraint).

Newman et al. found measures of secondary psychopathy to
be positively correlated with Gray's behavioral activation
system, a construct intended to measure sensitivity to cues
of behavioral approach.

Diagnostic Criteria, The PCL-R Assessment
The PCL-R has allowed for a differentiation
of individuals with psychopathy and antisocial
personality disorder (APD).

In contemporary research and clinical psychiatry |clinical
practice, psychopathy is most commonly assessed with the
PCL-R (Hare, 1991), which is a clinical rating scale with 20
items. Each of the items in the PCL-R is scored on a three-
point (0, 1, 2) scale according to two factors. PCL-R Factor
2 is associated with reactive anger, anxiety, increased risk of
suicide, criminality, and impulsive violence.

PCL-R Factor 1, in contrast, is associated with extroversion
and positive affect. Factor 1, the so-called core personality
traits of psychopathy, may even be beneficial for the
psychopath (in terms of nondeviant social functioning).

A psychopath will score high on both factors,
whereas someone with APD will score high only
on Factor 2.

Both case history and a semi-structured
interview are used in the analysis.

Psychopathy's relationship with
other mental disorders

Psychopathy, as measured on the PCL-R, is
negatively correlated with all DSM-IV Axis
I disorders except substance abuse disorders.

Psychopathy is most strongly correlated with DSM-IV
antisocial personality disorder. PCL-R Factor 1 is correlated
with narcissistic personality disorder and histrionic personality
disorder. PCL-R Factor 2 is particularly strongly correlated to
antisocial personality disorder and criminality.

PCL-R Factor 2 is associated with reactive anger, anxiety,
increased risk of suicide, criminality, and impulsive violence.
PCL-R Factor 1, in contrast, is associated with extroversion
and positive affect.

The official stance of the American Psychiatric Association
as presented in the DSM-IV-TR is that psychopathy and
sociopathy are obsolete synonyms for antisocial personality
disorder.

The World Health Organization takes a similar stance in its
ICD-10 by referring to psychopathy, sociopathy, antisocial
personality, asocial personality, and amoral personality as
synonyms for dissocial personality disorder.

Among laypersons and professionals, there is much confusion
about the meanings and differences between psychopathy,
sociopathy, antisocial personality disorder, and dissocial
personality disorder.

Sociopathy

The difference between sociopathy and psychopathy,
according to Hare, may "reflect the user's views
on the origins and determinates of the disorder.

Most sociologists, criminologists and even some psychologists
believe the disorder is caused by social conflicts, and thus
prefer the term 'sociopath.'

Those who believe as Hare does, that a
combination of psychological, biological,
genetic and environmental factors all
contribute to the disorder are more likely
to use the term 'psychopath'.

David T. Lykken proposes that psychopathy and sociopathy
are two distinct kinds of antisocial personality.

He holds that psychopaths are born with
temperamental differences such as impulsivity,
cortical underarousal, and fearlessness that
lead them to risk-seeking behavior and an
inability to internalize social norms; sociopaths,
on the other hand, have relatively normal temperaments;
their personality disorder being more an effect of negative
sociological factors like parental neglect, delinquent peers,
poverty, and extremely low or extremely high intelligence.

Both personality disorders are, of course,
the result of an interaction between genetic
predispositions and environmental factors,
but psychopathy leans towards the hereditary
whereas sociopathy tends towards the environmental.

Antisocial personality disorder

Comparing psychopathy to antisocial personality disorder is
a continuing source of debate within the psychological
community. The official stance of the American Psychiatric
Association as presented in the DSM-IV-TR is that
psychopathy and sociopathy are obsolete synonyms for
antisocial personality disorder (APD).

The World Health Organization takes a similar stance in its
ICD-10 by referring to psychopathy, sociopathy, antisocial
personality, asocial personality, and amoral personality as
synonyms for dissocial personality disorder.

Hare and others take the stance that psychopathy as a
syndrome should be considered distinct from the DSM-IV's
antisocial personality disorder construct. even though APD
and psychopathy were intended to be equivalent in the DSM-IV.

However, those who created the DSM-IV felt that
there was too much room for subjectivity on the
part of clinicians when identifying things like
remorse and guilt; therefore, the DSM-IV panel
decided to stick to observable behaviour, namely
socially deviant behaviours.

As a result, the diagnosis of APD is something
that the "majority of criminals easily meet.

Hare goes further to say that the percentage of incarcerated
criminals that meet the requirements of APD is somewhere
between 80 to 85%, whereas only about 20% of these
criminals would qualify for a diagnosis of psychopath. This
twenty percent, according to Hare, accounts for 50% of all
the most serious crimes committed, including half of all
serial and repeat rapists. According to FBI reports 44% of
all police officer murders in 1992 were committed by
psychopaths.

One study found that only 20 percent of those diagnosed
with APD qualified as psychopath on the PCL-R.

Another study using the PCL-R to examine the relationship
between antisocial behaviour and suicide found that suicide
history was strongly correlated to PCL-R Factor 2 (reflecting
antisocial deviance) and was not correlated to PCL-R factor
1 (reflecting affective functioning). Given that APD relates to
Factor 2, whereas psychopathy relates to both factors, this
would confirm Hervey Cleckley's assertion that psychopaths
are relatively immune to suicide. Sufferers of APD, on the
other hand, have a relatively high suicide rate.

Pseudopsychopathic personality disorder

It has been suggested that people can suffer apparently
psychopathic personality changes from lesions or damage
of the brain's frontal lobe . This is sometimes called
Pseudopsychopathic personality disorder or Frontal lobe disorder.

One well-known and dramatic case was that of Phineas Gage,
a 19th century railroad work supervisor, who had been
relatively mild-tempered before the damage to his brain
occurred.

According to Renato M. E. Sabbatini, an explosive charge
was set. When it detonated, a steel rod was accidentally
driven through Gage's skull from his left cheek to above the
ight brow.

Incredibly, he survived for many years. According to the
common account, his personality changed completely. He
became abusive, aggressive, deceitful, irresponsible and
incapable of insight and planning (a poor sense of
consequence). Computerized reconstructions of the possible
brain damage suggest that, from his known injuries he seemed
likely to have had a lesion on the ventromedial frontal cortex.

However, Malcolm Macmillian's recent research into the
Gage case shows evidence that many of the so- called
"psychopathic" features were never documented by physician
John Harlow, the primary source, or the Harvard physicians
who examined him intensively in Boston. No police records
or newspaper accounts can be found for Gage's alleged
drunken behavior or violence, nor any record of his mother
complaining to Dr. Harlow, despite being in contact for years.

Macmillan suggests that claims of deceitfulness, social
coarsening and loutish behavior, in Harlow's report to the
medical society, lack justification.

His research also showed that Gage was able to hold steady
work in two locations. His drifting from job to job happened
at the end of his life when he developed seizures, eventually
succumbing to status epilepticus in front of his family.
Macmillan concluded that, at worst, Gage was probably
guileless and lacked social skills. A hotel guest, basically a
stranger, convinced him to travel to Chile and manage a
Concord stagecoach, a difficult cognitive-motor task, which
he apparently mastered.

Childhood precursors

Psychopathy is not normally diagnosed in children or
adolescents, and some jurisdictions explicitly forbid diagnosing
psychopathy and similar personality disorders in minors.

Psychopathic tendencies can sometimes be recognized
in childhood or early adolescence and, if recognised, are
diagnosed as conduct disorder. It must be stressed that not
all children diagnosed with conduct disorder grow up to be
psychopaths, or even disordered at all, but these childhood
signs are found in significantly higher proportions in
psychopaths than in the general population.

Conduct disorder, as well as its subcategory Oppositional
Defiance Disorder, can sometimes develop into adult
psychopathy. However, conduct disorder "fails to capture
the emotional, cognitive and interpersonality traits -
egocentricity, lack of remorse, empathy or guilt - that are so
important in the diagnosis of psychopathy.

Children showing strong psychopathic precursors
often appear immune to punishment; nothing seems to modify
their undesirable behavior. Consequently parents usually give
up, and the behavior worsens.

The following childhood indicators are to be interpreted not
as to the type of behavior, but as to its relentless and unvarying
occurrence.Not all must be present concurrently, but at least
a number of them need to be present over a period of years:

* An extended period of bedwetting past the preschool years
that is not due to any medical problem.

* Cruelty to animals beyond an angry outburst.

* Firesetting and other vandalism. Not to be confused with
playing with matches, which is not uncommon for preschoolers.
This is the deliberate setting of destructive fires with utter
disregard for the property and lives of others.

* Lying, often without discernible objectives, extending beyond
a child's normal impulse not to be punished. Lies that are so
extensive that it is often impossible to know lies from truth.

* Theft and truancy.

* Aggression to peers, not necessarily physical,
which can include getting others into trouble or
a campaign of psychological torment.

The three indicators - bedwetting, cruelty to
animals and firestarting, known as the MacDonald
triad - were first described by J.M. MacDonald as indicators
of psychopathy. Though the relevance of these indicators to
serial murder etiology has since been called into question,
they are considered relevant to psychopathy.

The question of whether young children with
early indicators of psychopathy respond poorly
to intervention compared to conduct disordered
children without these traits has only recently
been examined in controlled clinical research.
The findings from this research are consistent
with broader evidence - pointing to poor
treatment outcomes.

Discrete taxon vs. continuous dimension

As part of the larger debate on whether personality disorders
are distinct from normal personality or extremes on various
dimensions of normal personality is the debate on whether
psychopathy represents something "qualitatively different"
from normal personality or a "continuous dimension" shading
from normality into severely psychopathic.

Early taxonometric analysis from Harris and
colleagues indicated that a discrete category
may underlie psychopathy, however this was only
found for the behavioural Factor 2 items,
indicating that this analysis may be related
to Anti-social Personality Disorder rather
than psychopathy per se.

John Marcus, and Edens performed some statistical analysis
on previously attained PCL-R and PPI  scores and concluded
that psychopathy may best be conceptualized as having a
"dimensional latent structure" like depression.

In contrast, the PCL-R sets a score of 30 out of
40 for North American male inmates as its cut-off
point for a diagnosis of psychopathy, however this
is an abitrary cut-off and should not be taken to
reflect any sort of underlying structure for the disorder.

Perceptual/emotional recognition deficits

In a 2002 study, David Kosson and Yana Suchy,
et al. asked psychopathic inmates to name the
emotion expressed on each of 30 faces; compared
to controls, psychopaths had a significantly
lower rate of accuracy in recognizing disgusted
facial affect but a higher rate of accuracy in recognizing anger.

Additionally, when "conditions designed to
minimize the involvement of left-hemispheric mechanisms"
were used, psychopaths had more difficulty accurately
identifying emotions.

This study did not replicate Blaire, et al.
(1997)'s findings that psychopaths are
specifically less sensitive to nonverbal
cues of fear or distress.

Also, in a 2002 experiment, Mitchell Blair et al.
used the Vocal Affect Recognition Test to measure psychopaths'
recognition of the emotional intonation given to connotatively neutral
words. Psychopaths tended to make more recognition errors than
controls with a particularly high rate of error for sad and fearful
vocal affect.

Kristina D. Hiatt, William A. Schmitt, Joseph
Newman conducted an experiment in 2004 to test
the hypothesis of overselective attention in
psychopaths using two forms of the Stroop color-
word and picture-word tasks: with color/picture
and word separated and with color/picture and
word together.

They found that in the separated Stroop tasks, psychopaths performed
significantly worse than controls; however, on standard Stroop tasks,
psychopaths performed equally well as controls.

When split into low-anxious and high-anxious groups, low-anxious
psychopaths and low-anxious controls showed less interference on the
separated Stroop tasks than their high-anxious counterparts; for low-
anxious psychopaths, interference was very nearly zero. They conclude
that the inability to integrate contextual cues depends on the cues'
relationship to "the deliberately attended, goal-relevant
information."

See also

Psychopathy Checklist-Revised (PCL-R)
Conduct disorder
Oppositional defiant disorder
Antisocial personality disorder
Crime
Serial killer
Narcissistic personality disorder
Sadistic personality disorder
Fictional portrayals of psychopaths in film
Fictional portrayals of psychopaths in literature
Malignant narcissism
Mind game

References
Further reading

Cleckley, Hervey M. The Mask of Sanity:
An Attempt to Reinterpret the So-Called
Psychopathic Personality, 5th Edition,
revised 1984, PDF file download.

Cooke DJ, Michie C (2001). "Refining the
construct of psychopathy: towards a hierarchical model". Psychological
assessment 13 (2): 171-88.

Hare, Robert D Without Conscience.

Hare, Robert D with Paul Babiak Snakes in Suits:
When Psychopaths Go to Work (2006) Hill CD, Neumann
CS, Rogers R (2004). "Confirmatory factor analysis
of the psychopathy checklist: screening version in
offenders with axis I disorders".

Psychological assessment 16 (1): 90-5.
Neumann CS, Vitacco MJ, Hare RD, Wupperman
P (2005). "Reconstruing the "reconstruction"
of psychopathy: a comment on Cooke, Michie,
Hart, and Clark". J. Personal. Disord. 19
(6): 624-40.

Patrick, Christopher J. (2006) Handbook of Psychopathy.

Michael H. Thimble, F.R.C.P., F.R.C. Psych. Psychopathology of Frontal
Lobe Syndromes.

External links

Without Conscience Official web site for
Dr. Robert Hare Malatesti, L, Psychopathy
in Psychiatry and Philosophy: An Annotated
Bibliography O'Connor, T, Antisocial Personality, Sociopathy and
Psychopathy RCMP Gazette Vol. 66,
Issue 3 2004, The psychopathic offender
Understanding The Psychopath: (Key Definitions & Research)

                    In Love And Light,
      I Remain Respectfully, Humbly Yours,
                       Jerry Howe,
The Sincerely Incredibly Freakin Insanely Simply
                    A-M-A-Z-I-N-G
                     G-R-A-N-D
Puppy, Child, Pussy, Birdy, Goat, Ferret, Monkey,
      SpHOWES And Horsey Wizard  <{) ; ~ ) >

        HOWE MAY I SERVE YOU <{}; ~ ) >