Woa my poor little brain is wore out lol... this is a bit complex for me. At the risk of oversimplifying, it seems to me all personality disorders have in common a lack of empathy (or as Scott Peck explains in People of the Lie, a fundamental narcissistic willfulness). Which isn't to dismiss the complexities, differential diagnoses etc but I guess for my purposes (and for purposes of understanding and discussing KC and even criminal pathology in general) the bottom line is there lies at the heart of evil a lifelong pattern of deception, or strategy over a lifetime of choosing to appear righteous rather than becoming righthearted. This is essentially what Cloud and Townsend conclude in their book Safe People.
Imho, people who have been dx'd with a personality disorder do not necessarily "
lack empathy" rather, they "
ignore it" and/or "
rationalize it away" in the pursuit of underlying motivation which generally involves some form of self-gratification.
While I do believe there is a chemical basis to mood disorders, I'm not sure I'm buying this "missing empathy dna" any more than I am willing to accept any fatalistic "demon seed," or "psycho genes," (all-nature-no-nurture) explanation of psychopathy. Afterall our present system of clusters, types and subtypes ("anankastic," "self-defeating," et al, ad infinitum, ad nauseum) ultimately are just artificial constructs anyway, manmade theories representing one means of classifying or grouping--but limited in their application or real usefulness... please don't hate, JMHUO (unprofessional)
Nothing to hate, actually. After all, afaics, we are doing nothing more than having open discourse of which we may or not agree.
As for the genetic bit? Sometime in the late 1990s Hare proposed that he could identify psychopathy in youths as young as 11 years old (
sorry, don't have a citation handy, atm). Thus was born the PCL: YV (
psychopathy check list: youth version). This claim, btw, is based upon the genetic predisposition theory, which in turn is the bedrock of Hare's psychopathy research.
I admittedly have mixed feelings regarding this school of thought. Primarily due to the devastatingly negative consequences of mistakenly labeling a child with psychopathy. Or otherwise put, I am somewhat skeptical.
After all, children are still in the developmental stages of life and there's a great deal going on in their bodies & brains. The least of which involves physical, hormonal, and cognitive aspects. And these can play hell with a person's behavior, much less a child who is in the early stages of learning how to behave in a social context.
Furthermore, imnsho, the danger of labeling a youth a "
psychopath" (
even if the label is right on) carries with it the potential for a self-fulfilling prophecy. Recall, as I noted earlier, not all psychopaths engage in illegal and/or obscene behavior. Some, your ambulatory psychopaths, operate quite fine. They simply do not have the emotional connection. In other words, I think applying such a label to a youth has inherent dangers, the least of which involves the potential of becoming a "
hollywoodized" killer.
Btw, and as an aside, the above distinction is important and the reason that psychopathy (
or your Axis II, Cluster B personality disorders) do not meet the legal definition for insanity. To better understand the legal definition for insanity, I highly recommend the book, "
Knowing Right from Wrong: The Insanity Defense of Daniel McNaughtan" by Richard Moran. What, imho, makes his book stand out among others are the interesting observations and his challenge wrt the insanity defense. Def a good read for a rainy day.
That being said, why would such differentiations be important and how might they apply to this case? Well, for one, we do not know for certain whether KC actually falls into any of these categories (
aspd, sociopathy, or psychopathy). So, what we're doing is playing a game of "
what if," so to speak.
In other words, "
What if KC is a psychopath? How might that play out?" and so on, to include the various Axis II, Cluster B personality disorders (
i.e., NPD, ASPD, BPD, HPD). The goal? Better understanding the differences in presentation and applying these differences to various "
story lines" increases the potential for figuring out where Caylee might be. That is,
if she indeed meets the criteria for any of the aforementioned.
