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Whatsapp Traits in children such as lack of empathy, cold, predatory bullying and aggression ring alarm bells for child psychologists

Psychopathic traits might be more common than we think. Lynne Malcolm investigates the world of the psychopath, from a neuroscientist who diagnosed himself to psychologists searching for treatments for ‘callous and unemotional' children.

Neuroscientist James Fallon made a chilling discovery about himself by accident.

In 2005 he was conducting a study into psychopathy with a group of imprisoned murderers and serial killers by scanning their brains and observing their traits. At the same time, he’d done some brain scans on himself and his own family to test their likelihood of developing Alzheimer’s disease. One day, as Fallon describes it, Gandalf showed up at his door.

‘One of the things about these kids is that they don't pay attention to the deep emotions or the deep concerns of other people. They can just look at it in the face and go “whatever” and move on.

‘I found out that the pattern that was in those scans, one of the people, right at the bottom of the pile, was extremely abnormal and it looked exactly like one of the murderers' brains that I'd been looking at. It was like the pure form of the murderer... it turned out that it was me. And that was Gandalf.’

‘I just kind of laughed it off... because I briefly thought to myself, well geez, I'm not a psychopath, I haven't killed anybody, I'm not a rapist. And when ... I brought them home to show my wife, I said, “You've gotta check this out,” and she said, “It doesn't surprise me”.'

Then his mother informed him that their family had a number of murderers in their history, including Lizzie Borden, a notorious accused 19th century axe murderess. Genetic tests seemed to confirm Fallon’s suspicions.

‘I had a lot of the alleles associated with violence, aggression, low anxiety, low emotional empathy,’ he says. ‘So I had both biological markers, the genetics and the brain pattern of a psychopath, and the ancestral background of a lot of these guys converging in our family.’

It was not looking good, and it got Fallon thinking about how he might come across to others. His mother revealed to him that when he was going through puberty he turned unusually dark and introverted. His wife and children told him how they’d sometimes been hurt and disappointed by his behaviour towards them over the years and his psychiatrist colleagues said, ‘you’re not crazy, but you’re a borderline psychopath’.

Psychopathy itself is not recognised as a category in the psychiatric DSM—the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual—partly because the concept of personality disorders is controversial, as so many of the symptoms overlap, such as narcissism, antisocial behaviour and lack of empathy.

Canadian psychologist Robert Hare developed the best known psychopathy checklist of traits, which has been updated over the years since the 1970s. This list was developed more in relation to a prison population than a general one. Now the traits of a psychopath tend to be divided into two sets of factors; one is to do with how you relate to people, such as manipulativeness, lack of empathy, glibness and pathological lying, and the other covers antisocial behaviour and criminality.

According to Fallon, he falls into the first group.

‘People who are like me who are kind of borderline psychopaths are not criminals but we can be real jerks,’ he says. ‘And we're very manipulative. There's glibness, superficial charm, there's narcissism, pathological lying, lack of guilt, and callousness. You basically look at people as things to use and not as people.’

However, even though Fallon has the brain structure, the genetics and some of the personality traits often seen in psychopaths, he didn’t turn out to be a violent criminal as the stereotype would suggest.

After further research, he concluded that the thing that determines whether someone with his profile will go on to be extremely anti-social and violent is their early childhood environment; if it is violent and abusive they are highly likely to become violent criminals as adults.

So can you recognise a psychopath in childhood and if so, is there an effective form of treatment to prevent extreme behaviour from developing?

Mark Dadds is professor of clinical child psychology at the University of NSW and the director of the Child Behaviour Research Clinic. He has devoted his career to helping families deal with extremely challenging child behaviour, and encounters children, mainly boys, who are often described as 'callous and unemotional'.

‘There are children lacking in empathy, cold, tending to use predatory type bullying and aggression,’ he says, ‘and just have no sense that they're to blame and if something goes wrong they just don't care.’

‘We originally said, “okay, the best treatment in the world that exists for kids with conduct problems is really, really good parenting”. When we do that with the children with high levels of these callous traits we still get a shift, but it's not as strong and it's not as durable.’

‘One of the things about these kids is that they don't pay attention to the deep emotions or the deep concerns of other people. They can just look at it in the face and go “whatever” and move on.'

Dadds and his colleagues went on to observe that there’s something different about the eye contact between these children and their parents or other people.

Their treatment and research program is based on the idea that this eye contact is such a basic form of communication that it may eventually actually change the neural pathways.

Only a handful of families have been involved in the program so far, but Dadds says that he is seeing ‘changes that are much more about deep love processes than just kind of “time-out” and praise and all of those things we do with these kids’.

Despite many people’s view that so called ‘callous and emotional’ children—those that may already be displaying psychopathic traits—can never be treated effectively, Dadds still holds hope.

The psychopath within Listen to All In The Mind as it asks 'can we stop 'callous and unemotional' kids from becoming adult psychopaths'?

‘I've worked in the clinical treatment of children with behavioural problems for a long time now, and I've seen changes that are very heartening and quite extraordinary,’ he says. ‘You do get big changes with children. They're resilient. They're flexible. They can change. All we have to do is get the right environment in place for them.’

But can an adult like James Fallon be compelled to try to change some of their more difficult behaviours? He believes so.

‘I slowed my behaviour down and after about a month or two [my wife] says, “I don't know what you're doing but I like it”. And I did it to people in my family, my mother, my brothers, and they all liked it.’

‘I said, “You understand it's not sincere”. They said, “If you're trying enough just to change your behaviour, that's enough”.’

‘Some other people who didn't like me said, “See? I knew it. You're an SOB, you're a rat”. But frankly, after I'd found all this out I didn't care. So fundamentally I don't care, and I'm still the same person.’

‘I'm trying to use my narcissism to manipulate myself into becoming a regular guy.’

An exploration of all things mental, All in the Mind is about the brain and behaviour, and the fascinating connections between them.



