treating psychopaths

Kent A. Kiehl and Joshua W. Buckholtz in Delancey Place:

“Between the two of us [authors], we have interviewed hundreds of prison inmates to assess their mental health. We are trained in spotting psychopaths, but even so, coming face to face with the real article can be electrifying, if also unsettling. One of the most striking peculiarities of psychopaths is that they lack empathy; they are able to shake off as mere tinsel the most universal social obligations. They lie and manipulate yet feel no compunction or regrets — in fact, they don't feel particularly deeply about anything at all. “Psychopaths are curiously oblivious to emotional cues. In 2002 James Blair of the NIMH showed that they are not good at detecting emotions, especially fear, in another person's voice. They also have trouble identifying fearful facial expressions.

…”A man we will call Brad was in prison for a particularly heinous crime. In an interview he described how he had kidnapped a young woman, tied her to a tree, [abused] her for two days, then slit her throat and left her for dead. He told the story, then concluded with an unforgettable non sequitur. 'Do you have a girl?' he asked. 'Because I think it's really important to practice the three C's — caring, communication and compassion. That's the secret to a good relationship. I try to practice the three C's in all my relationships.' He spoke without hesitation, clearly unaware how bizarre this self-help platitude sounded after his awful confession. “Thanks to technology that captures brain activity in real time, experts are no longer limited to examining psychopaths' aberrant behavior. We can investigate what is happening inside them as they think, make decisions and react to the world around them. And what we find is that far from being merely selfish, psychopaths suffer from a serious biological defect. Their brains process information differently from those of other people. It's as if they have a learning disability that impairs emotional development.

More here.