Well, I agree with you on most points. Here's what the experts who focus on psychopaths agree on:
(I clipped the end of the article which is quite long)
Some researchers think that psychopathy is the result of some attachment or bonding difficulty as an infant. Dr. Hare has turned the idea around, after all his years digging into the background of psychopaths. He says:
In some children the very failure to bond is a symptom of psychopathy. It is likely that these children lack the capacity to bond readily, and that their lack of attachment is largely the result, not the cause, of psychopathy. [Hare]
In other words: they are born that way and you can't fix them.
To many people, the idea of a child psychopath is almost unthinkable. But the fact is, true psychopaths are born, not made. Oh, indeed, there is the psychopath that is "made," but they are generally different from the born psychopath in a number of ways.
One mother said: "We were never able to get close to her even as an infant. She was always trying to have her own way, whether by being sweet, or by having a tantrum. She can put on a sweet and contrite act
"
The fact is: childhood psychopathy is a stark reality, and failing to recognize it can lead to years of vain attempts to discover what is wrong with a child, and the parent blaming themselves.
Hare writes:
As the signs of social breakdown grow more insistent, we no longer have the luxury of ignoring the presence of psychopathy in certain children. Half a century ago Hervey Cleckley and Robert Lindner warned us that our failure to acknowledge the psychopaths among us had already triggered a social crisis. Today our social institutions - our schools, courts, mental health clinics - confront the crisis every day in a thousand ways, and the blindfold against the reality of psychopathy is still in place.[
]
The fact is, clinical research clearly demonstrates that psychopathy does not spring unannounced into existence in adulthood. The symptoms reveal themselves in early life. It seems to be true that parents of psychopaths KNOW something is dreadfully wrong even before the child starts school. Such children are stubbornly immune to socializing pressures. They are "different" from other children in inexplicable ways. They are more "difficult," or "willful," or aggressive, or hard to "relate to." They are difficult to get close to, cold and distant and self-sufficient.
I know a family who has more diagnosed "issues" than we could count. Young mom is bi-polar (her mother is also bi-polar). Young mom had her first DD at 16, then had 2 more - #2 DD is one of the most beautiful children I have ever seen - her nick name was "Angel-Face" and it absolutely fit, some of the time. This little girl has another side to her and when she was
"in a mood" she physically looked different - I can't explain it as I've never seen it in a child before, but it reminds me of the Chameleon quality in some psychopaths.
This lil girl put her 2 yr old baby sister on a swing, then climbed the swing-set and pulled the chain off the hook. The baby put her teeth all the way thru her lip and needed stitches. (The baby was often the victim of her sister's
"moods".)
She came to my house and punched DH
where it hurts most, when he answered the door - then tried to do it again, the next time she saw him.
For these acts her mother said she didn't know what she was doing (or didn't realize what she was doing would cause harm) - I had a little talk with her after the DH punching incident and asked her, "What if I go up to your daddy and punch him there?" She replied, "No! that would hurt!" She knew darn good and well what she was doing and I told her mother so!
At 5 years old, she was suspended from kindergarten until she had a psych eval after hitting, kicking or biting 3 other children, all in the first week of school. One of the children had the misfortune of being the first one in line when the bell rang, he got kicked in the shins. Another child was picked by the teacher to answer a question - he got a bite that drew blood. The child who got punched was just in the wrong place, at the wrong time. (Just like the first 2!)
The psychiatrist told her parents she has all the signs of a serial killer in the making. Mom continued to blame everyone but the child, all her acting out was because she had been hurt by others. DH
hurt her feelings by telling her I wasn't home; so the punches were his own fault - to mom's way of thinking.
When this child is older and ends up in trouble with the law - is it her fault because she is a bad seed or her mother's for refusing to make her take responsibility from the beginning? Or is it a combination of genetics and living in a family that is very dysfunctional and in some ways similar to the Anthony's?
ICA didn't become bad at 18 or 22. She had to have had some issues along the way - Were the A's in denial all those years of many misdeeds, while ICA robbed them blind? Were they in denial when she sat around the house, or hung out with various boys, instead of going to work? IIRC GA checked up on her "job" at the sporting goods store and found out she had never worked there - did CA say; "I don't know who to believe?" Like she did when GA tried to tell her about ICA's lies, while ICA told her a different story?
This is the MOTY, who only disciplined her daughter in the most loving way imaginable, ICA yelling and cursing at her mother, on more than one occasion - is the best daughter any father could have. According to ICA her brother violated her - yet her MySpace pictures identified him as, "The greatest brother ever!"
Here we are 2 1/2 yrs into this - Casey and Family
Psych Profile #10 we try and try to make sense, of a senseless situation! So many of us have shared the cracks in our own families - some situations, were potentially (or actually) so much worse than ICA's - not a baby killer among us!