CHAPTER ONE: ADAPTIVE PSYCHOPATHY

PSYCHOPATHY: A NEW PARADIGM

"NEUROPSYCHOPATHY"


CHAPTER ONE of four chapters

By: Don Jacobs, Chair

Forensic Psychology & Forensic Science

Weatherford College, Weatherford, Texas USA

djacobs@wc.edu

This chapter addresses:

Simple & Changeable Beauty of Scientific Theory

Evo-Devo, Evolutionary Psychology, & Psychopathy

Parenting-In and Parenting-Out

Behind the Monster’s Eyes

Adaptive Personality Traits in Everyday Psychopathy



CH 1: “Adaptive Psychopathy”

Peer-review:

"The chapter on Adaptive Psychopathy, written by Don Jacobs, explores a concept that has existed for many years in the field of anthropology. Anthropological thought maintains that the Homo sapien brain is adapted for life 100,000 years ago. His skillful rhetoric and amazing insight alerts us to the fact that this 100,000 year old brain evolved mechanisms for adaptation and survival...

If our non-human primate cousins with which we share 98% of our DNA can use deception that provides others with false information (Cheney and Seyfarth, 1990), kill members of their own species for no reason except war (Goodall 1986), and hide physiological manifestations of anxiety from a rival (de Waal, 1982) why should Homo sapiens not process these same qualities. Well, of course they do as Mr. Jacobs so aptly points out...

What Don Jacobs has done in this chapter that no one else has is bring forth the astounding theoretical evidence of psychopathology as an adaptive mechanism.

I applaud this insight."

Peer Review: Dr. Susan Wallace
Associate Professor (retired)
Baylor University


Today, issues surrounding the scientific theory of evolution and evolutionary development—Evo-Devo—has no logical reasons whatsoever of being issues at all. If issues exist, they must be emotional or due to misunderstanding. What does all this “evolutionary talk” have to do with criminal mind analysis in the 21st century neuroscience? It has a lot to do with it, but first a look at what makes scientific theory so simple and so changeable.
—Don Jacobs
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Simple & Changeable Beauty of Scientific Theory

According the Kenneth Miller (2007) in Finding Darwin’s God, evolution is both a theory and a fact. As a theory, it has been denigrated and misunderstood from the day Darwin allowed the contents of Origin of Species (1859) to spill into publication, thereby sending his life’s work into the atmosphere of public opinion and peer review. Through it all, and nearly 150 years later, the theory and fact of evolutionary development (Evo-Devo) is today the backbone of modern biology.
However, even this could change, but not likely.
“In the real world of science, in the hard-bitten realities of lab bench and field station, the intellectual triumph of Darwin’s great idea is total. The paradigm of evolution succeeds every day as a hardworking theory that explains new data and new ideas from scores of fields. High-minded scholarship may treat evolution (and it should) as just another scientific idea that could someday be rejected on the basis of new data, but actual workers in the scientific enterprise have no such hesitation—they know it works as a historical framework that explains both present and past.
—Kenneth Miller
Finding Darwin’s God (2007)
.

That’s the simple and changeable beauty of scientific theory. Theory is not carved into stone tablets. With fresh scientific insight, theory changes until it becomes as sure as gravity, an indisputable, rock solid fact. Today, more scientists than not, agree that Evo-Devo is rock solid. Many citizens from all walks of life, are still unsure, or dodge the issue completely (as I did for 40 years); some contend that “evolution is just speculation” or “evil,” while others aligned with a scientific pedigree summarily agree “if it’s a theory, it’s a really good one”.

Maybe it’s time to get over all of the histrionicism of theory versus rock solid and move forward into the wonders of 21st century neuroscience. This can done by observing a lingering fact: Natural scientists have documented that living is a natural biological process that embraces modification, variation, and change. That’s evolution in a nutshell. No more, no less.
Modification

Ironically, this same lineup of evolutionary “first teamers”—modification, variation, and change—can be applied to another less understood construct known as psychopathy. Joined to the hip of Evo-Devo, it can be wrapped around a compelling theory to explain how individual brains come equipped by their genes to thrive and survive. More moderate versions of psychopathy may survive just north of what’s legal, or maybe not.

But first, let’s talk about a lightening rod.

In the past and continuing today, this natural biological process of change through modification has been, and continues to be, a lightning rod for those who are simply ill-informed, or those laden with personal beliefs and emotional agendas far afield from natural cause and effect—the twin pillars of science.

First off, let’s straighten out one of the most misunderstood Evo-Devo faux pas straight away: Homo sapiens (“smart people”) setting atop the food chain, DID NOT descend from apes or monkeys, but Darwin never said they did. Like racial and religious discrimination in western societies, evolution has been plagued by fanatics, radicals, and garden-variety moderate psychopaths; or those simply misinformed who misinterpret scientific theory and spread falsehoods around as though cataloging urban legends.

Evo-Devo: Eventually, We All Die Trying

Let’s take the pathway that evolution is a theory, and a really good one. Fundamentally, the theory of Evo-Devo is about three BIOLOGICAL processes amenable to modification in living tissue, namely,
• Heredity. Heredity injects genetic traits into familial gene pools that pass on traits to progeny generation after generation;
• Natural selection. Natural selection is a biological dynamic that favors helpful traits staying in the gene pool geared toward survival of the fittest;
• Descent by modification. This dynamic is explains adaptability and shows astounding variety in biological tissue of related species

The square peg of biological Evo-Devo was never intended to fit the round hole of theology, creationism, or any variation thereof. One requires biological pedigree while the other is sustained by rigorous, often passionate, belief systems.

Today, natural dynamics of Evo-Devo are robust and found everywhere in nature. Since the process is remarkably slow and tedious, it’s hard to comprehend ramifications in one’s lifetime; to help here are instances of speedy varieties:
• a disgusting worm in its pupa “changing room” morphs into a beautiful butterfly
• a stolen appendage regenerates back to life in a few weeks after a sea crab’s legs are separated from its body by the talons of a predatory bird
• birthdays chronicle how individuals age and change in physical and mental ways.

When genetically “selected” for long life, old timers get wrinkled and stooped nearing 100 years of age as bodily tissue wilts and brain tissue dements; genetic “good luck” allows some to continue, while others “died trying”.

Eventually, we all die trying to live.

Again, evolution is not a menace to celestial, theological, philosophical, or teleological (or an end-all debate issue) realms; it’s about a natural, biological process observed in living tissue documented in bones.
Beliefs Trump Science

Why would opponents of Evo-Devo (and its upstart sidekick, evolutionary psychology) try to make evolution more than it is? The answer is deceptively simple: it’s why beliefs trump science.

So, beliefs exude more powerful effects than facts?

Here’s a good example: smokers who know beyond any reasonable doubt that habitually smoking those disgusting ‘coffin nails’ will eventually kill them, so why not do the simple thing and just quit? Reason: smokers’ don’t want to. Harmful addiction aside, they have developed an emotional connection to the cylindrical tubes of nicotine-laced tobacco. The sensation that the poison (nicotine) produces becomes integrated into personality like a living appendage; it becomes part of the living tissue of brain at receptor levels. Just try telling a smoker otherwise; they get very defensive and very nasty, very quick.

So, beliefs become connected to emotion and reside in the brain and at one end of the spectrum of human experience, while theory and science are joined to the synapse of reason and logic and reside at the opposite end.
Earth’s Fossils: A Matter of Record

As all Homo sapiens should know, the study of evolutionary biology began in the mid-nineteenth century (1850s) with research into the earth’s fossil record suggesting diversity among living organisms. In the intervening years, evolutionary biologists (and increasingly, evolutionary psychologists) developed and tested theories to further explain cause and effect in species-wide variation—variation so striking it’s observable in side-by-side comparisons by anyone who cares to notice.

By empirical methods alone, scientists were summarily convinced that organisms did in fact change over time. Changed from what? This implies descent from a prior condition, that condition being common ancestors. Over extended periods of time, the fossil record documented this evidence beyond question—that’s stone cold fact, not theory. Biological evidence has today transformed evolution into a biological lab and fossil gathering field science—a kind of forensic fossil science. As everyone knows, life, at times, becomes violent when trying to survive; therefore, fossils have similarities to crime scenes.

In the early days of Evo-Devo, the mechanism driving species’ change and diversity remained unclear. Then, almost simultaneously, the theory of natural selection was independently proposed by Charles Darwin and fellow naturalist Alfred Wallace. Natural selection, a neuro-adaptive process, determines biological variation in light of helpful traits becoming more common in the genes (genotype—one’s inherited genes) in deference to harmful traits in phenotypes—observed physical characteristics—that may or may not encourage species to thrive and survive.

Advantageous traits, therefore, are more likely to be repeated. Natural selection is the biological process that drives and reinforces helpful traits—characteristics that increase chances of survival by passing on helpful genes to succeeding generations through familial gene pools.

Therefore, Evo-Devo can be summed up as descent through modification of living tissue guided by natural selection driving the engine of development over time. In contrast to natural selection, another genotype possibility, genetic drift, is a pure chance roll-of-the-dice, whether or not a given trait will be scattered into one’s gene pool; yet another way to explain biological diversity.

How could naturalistic and developmental aspects of species survival be outrageous or blasphemous to anyone? To borrow a college campus “map of buildings” metaphor, cherished belief systems reside in one building on campus—the theology building—while theory and science reside in another—the science building. Students freely walk across campus to receive instruction in both, one, or neither. One discipline—Evo-Devo—demonstrates how we biologically thrive and survive, while the other extols the virtues of being favored in created by a supreme and how personal choices determine, in part, our address for eternity.

Life is too grand (and short) to put every divergent idea into a cognitive “pressure cooker” for the sake of winning an argument (who’s right or who’s wrong). Ultimately, it wastes living time. What of substance has been accomplished by all the bickering over Evo-Devo?

As descent by modification aligns with biological sciences in living organisms, it does not apply or fit anywhere else in modern discourse, nor should it. It’s a gene thing. It’s a double helix Crick and Watson, DNA thing. It’s what allows one of psychology’s new products of mind, evolutionary psychology, to finally become a branch of neuroscience and part ways forever with the gothic novelist, Sigmund Freud, on the one hand, and pop psychologist Dr. Phil on the other.

Developmental modifications produced in any one generation (or over many), are indeed minuscule; but, differences accumulate over long spans of time (millennia) show substantial and observable modifications in a given species—a process that can result in the emergence of an entirely new species. That process is a logical outcome of natural modification in biological development. Life cannot survive and thrive without change! Imagine infants retaining their small and underdeveloped bodies and brains well into their 20s? Change is absolutely necessary as there’s always a next phase in development.

Physiological similarities among species suggest that all known species are descended from common ancestors developmentally “sculptured” through the biological process of gradual divergence. This is the crux of Evo-Devo. Therefore, over many generations, adaptations occur through a combination of successive, small, and often random changes that tend to encourage variations best suited for survival.

Since we’re living in a natural environment with competition at every turn, humans need as many biological advantages as possible to survive and thrive or, we “die trying” just like dinosaurs.

At the end of the day, Evo-Devo is nothing more than a neuro-adaptive, biological process of genetic inheritance that constantly introduces common or rare variations (gene mutation or genetic recombination) producing astounding variety. This does not threaten cherished belief.

Darwin’s Dilemma

In 1859 upon publication of Origin of Species, the fossil record was poorly understood as Darwin himself acknowledged: “Lack of transitional fossilization is the most obvious and most grave objection against my theory.”

Even Darwin acknowledged his own theory as theoretical. Today, of course, the fossil record of evolutionary change is evolution’s most compelling and affirming argument. In fact, Archaeopteryx, representing a classical transition between dinosaurs and birds, appeared just two years later in 1861 from Origins publication date of 1859. Many more transitional fossils have since been discovered and are considered other examples of the abundant evidence of how major groups of species are tangentially related and documented in transitional fossil remains.

The real story leading up to publication of his theory at age 50 years of age showed that Darwin (February 12, 1809 to April 19, 1882) was afraid to publish his landmark comparative biology book, On the Origin of Species (1859). He held on to what his research told him from over twenty years of gathering samples of beetles and everything else he could catalogue. Recipient of a theology degree himself, he once considered the ministry, but being a naturalist was his passion, so he followed his emotional connection.

Darwin’s greatest fear was the misinterpretation of his findings, which is exactly what happened. Again, we did not evolve from apes or monkeys, a preposterous and dead-wrong interpretation. In fact, we evolved AWAY from them, a fact that should be great news to those still fuming over the mere mention of the most misinterpreted word in the history of linguistics.

More than any one single factor, the loss of his daughter at age ten, moved him to such grief that the gamble of unleashing his theory could be tolerated; how could grief from his writings be more palpable than the loss of his beloved child? This one event changed him forever. He went ahead with Origins.

Yet, even in Charles’ lifetime, the gamble proved to be a worthy one. Everywhere, scientists overwhelmingly accepted the scientific validity of Origins; today, Evo-Devo has become the central organizing principle of biology driving research and providing a unifying explanation for the diversity of biological life on earth.

Upon his death, Darwin was entombed in Westminster Abby next to Sir Isaac Newton, who are universally considered by scholars and educated members of the general public to be two of the most influential men in history of human thought.

Evolution also documents the importance of brain nutrients: good nutrition, physical activity, bonding through socialization—components that promote healthy offspring that grow even stronger in loving families. In the process, good genes passed on generation after generation continues to survive and thrive in those individuals. In the end, Life finds many ways to survive—success or failure of which—is ultimately documented and preserved in the earth by anthropologists and archeologists.

That’s the beauty, simplicity, and changeability of scientific theory.
“Less than half of the U.S. public believes that humans evolved from an earlier species.”—Kenneth Miller in Finding Darwin’s God.

Evo-Devo, Evolutionary Psychology, & Psychopathy

“In the distant future I see open fields for far more important than research. Psychology will be based on a new foundation, that of the necessary acquirement of each mental power and capacity by gradation. Light will be thrown on the origin of man and his history. {If I may, “capacity of gradation” is precisely the point of the “mental power” of psychopathy for the sake of survival.}
—Charles Darwin

The quote above forecasts what has been hidden in plain sight over millennia. We can only scratch our heads in collective amazement: “How could we have we missed it”? One plausible answer for not making the connection earlier might be a kind of negative halo effect associated with all the flack that continues to swirl around anything remotely associated with evolution; a fact not lost on evolutionary psychology, a struggling academic relative to Evo-Devo and neuropsychology.

First, to set the stage for the conclusion of this pivotal chapter; let me offer an example, prefaced by a question:

In the struggle to thrive and survive, which of the following individuals would most likely survive?
• Would it be Lex, a person filled with narcissism and grandiose entitlement, who ultimately cares about no one but himself? He hides his true feelings under a handsome veneer using deception and lying to manipulate outcomes.
• Or is it Rex who is filled with empathy for the trials and tribulations of fellow humans? He goes out of his way to help others ease tears and fears of living?

Asked another way, who is the most vulnerable in a dangerous society characterized by competition and the absolute need to adapt to survive?

Recall that Rex puts himself last and the interests of others for whom he cares about, first. Recall that Lex displays only superficial interest in others while secretly targets others as prey by a carefully crafted persona of deception intended to manipulate other with compulsive lies.

The answer is easy—the person most likely to thrive and survive into old age is Lex—the individual displaying characteristics of psychopathic personality. This is true, of course, unless he never learns from experience (which some psychopaths never do) and becomes “unsuccessful” psychopaths.

Like everyone else, over my entire career in higher education spanning almost 30 years as a psychology professor, I had been trained to perceive psychopathologies, such as depression and anxiety, and more profound dysfunctions such as personality disorders, as dysfunctions by virtue of criteria within the pages of the DSM.

But missing from this academic training was the fact that I never understood evolutionary theory, not really. So, recently I started to wonder what if some of the characteristics in personality disorders were not disorders at all but neuro-adaptations mandated by survival strategies genetically packed within the brain against the competitive slings and arrows of life? Up against Evo-Devo and on balance from the new 21st century tools of criminal mind analysis, connecting all three together—evolutionary development, evolutionary psychology, and spectrum psychopathy—comprise the glue of neuro-adaptability.

Only appearing to care about others arm individuals with a deceptive ruse hiding darker intentions; gaining advantage (or getting ahead) by manipulation and subterfuge. Who’s more likely to survive? Predator or prey?

Look no further for examples than normal children and adolescents.

How narcissistic and self-absorbed do they appear? Five year-olds have to be taught to share, especially boys. Adolescents wear their narcissism and entitlement as “tribal badges.” From 2 year olds to 21 year olds, behavior characterized as mild can be documented everywhere.

For example, writing a personal biography about oneself was one of my longest running assignments for students in Introductory Psychology. I must have read 150,000 papers through the years. Students were instructed to share influences in their lives that they considered influential in how they viewed themselves. Lying and deception were common themes in biography, for instance:
• How parents had lied to them about certain events in their past (such as out of wedlock pregnancies).
• How students lie to parents about what they really did at parties versus what they told them.
• How “two-faced” friends spread lies to bring “friends” down
• How a boyfriend or girlfriend lied repeatedly about involvement with others.
Parenting-In and Parenting-Out
Must mild to moderate psychopathy be “parented-out” somewhat in childhood with firm and consistent discipline to guard against the brain developing more moderate versions? Also, does learning to get away with lies make deception, ironically, a positive personality trait? Might adolescents get really good at deception? How many troubled teens—deep into addiction, lying, stealing, elopement from school—must ultimately be turned over to agencies after fed-up parents throw in the towel on their own children?

It appears from anecdotal evidence alone that adolescents can get so entrenched in tribal kinship, punctuated by psychopathy among high school peers, they lose themselves. Parents and school administrators must stand resilient with courage to show them the way home.

Why would young adults (20s to 30 years of age) with brains naturally wired with narcissism and entitlement (and perhaps coddled as “the favorite child”) desire to change circumstances in adulthood? They have learned by now (as charming cons) they are far better equipped to survive in a highly competitive and dangerous world armed with deception than doing an “about face” and telling the truth.

Due to the genetic wiring of a mild psychopathic brain, enhanced by the tribal influence of older peers, young (mild) psychopaths are shown how deception and lies lead to acceptance and popularity (thriving and surviving). In this way, parent and child are dangerously disconnected; some bad decisions are inevitable make parenting of adolescents one of the stressful phases of life.

Coincidental to the connectivity of spectrum psychopathy to Evo-Devo is the perfect match to core premises of evolutionary psychology (Buss, 2001):

1. Manifest behavior depends on underlying psychological mechanisms, information processing housed in the brain, in conjunction with the external and internal inputs that trigger activation. {If I may, this information processing would be a dynamic mechanism strong enough to mold personality, such as psychopathy}.

2. Evolution by selection is the only known causal process capable of creating complex organic mechanisms {if I may, this premise suggests the complex construct (species-wide spectrum psychopathy) could be genetically wired into brains selected for survival}.

3. Evolved psychological mechanisms are functionally specialized to solve adaptive problems that recurred for humans over evolutionary time {If I may, psychopathy solves adaptive problems of living through the strategies of survival by deception evidenced in self-interest, entitlement, and lying that assure success through manipulation}.

4. Selection designed the information processing of many evolved psychological mechanisms to be adaptive influenced by specific classes of information from the environment.

5. Human psychology consists of a large number of functionally specialized evolved mechanisms, {If I may, spectrum psychopathy}; each sensitive to particular forms of contextual input that is combined, coordinated, and integrated with each other to produce manifest behavior.

Adaptive Personality Traits in Everyday Psychopathy

It is our theoretical perspective tied to my Brainmarks paradigm, that mild psychopathy has been there in the brain all along as a normal and neuro-adaptive constituent of brain evolution.
“The consensus among researchers in this area is that psychopathy stems from a specific neurological disorder which is biological in origin and present from birth.” {If I may, I agree that severe varieties (as well as cerebral trauma and developmental glitches) cause severe psychopathy, but mild psychopathy appears to be mandated by survival dynamics.}
—Robert Hare, Ph.D.
“Certainly, the traits and behaviors that define adult psychopathy begin to manifest themselves early in childhood, in some cases as a combination of two diagnostic categories—conduct disorder and attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder”.
Violence & Psychopathy
—Adrian Raine Ed. (2001)
Psychopathy of Everyday Life

In Psychopathy of Everyday Life, Kantor (2006) suggests a similar contention that psychopathy of the “everyday variety” (his term) deceives others by carefully crafted deception and thrives just below the radar of criminality; it’s observed everywhere, everyday. However, Kantor stops short of connecting spectrum psychopathy with evolutionary development, as a natural brain condition mandating survival. (There is no reference to evolution in Kanto’s references, nor can similar references be found in Hare’s publications.) But, even in a tangential acceptance of their views, our notion is written between the lines as suggested by Kantor who refers to a quote by Professor Robert Hare in his book, Without Conscience: The Disturbing World of the Psychopaths Among Us:
“Sub-criminal psychopaths are every bit as egocentric, callous, and manipulative as the average criminal psychopath; however, intelligence, family background, social skills, and circumstances permit them to construct a façade of normalcy and to get what they want with relative impunity.”
—Robert Hare, Ph.D.

It is clear from current theoretical and research-oriented literature unsuccessful psychopaths are the ones who attract the most attention from researchers; being unsuccessful, they end up warehoused in prisons and mental hospitals. Safely confined, clinicians meet with them and file reports that rival those generated by personality traits of the highly successful ones—the ones thriving and surviving—often more so, in fact, than individuals whose mild psychopathy has been “parented out”, so to speak.

Clinicians may never meet the ultra successful ones, who in “many-splendored ways” bilk hundreds of investors out of millions before being imprisoned as occurred with investment advisors Bernard Madoff and Alan Stafford. Or, through deception by the con of lying to manipulate—their genetic gift from psychopathy—actively participates in the following everyday activities, often punctuated by outrageous successes and influences:
• Cheating on taxes, if they pay them at all
• Billing insurance carriers for services not actually rendered
• Being professional “hired guns” who can argue just as easily for one side as the other thereby reaping big paychecks
• Religious televangelists who use fear of eternal damnation as a means to a rich and lavish lifestyle admonishing followers with this proviso: “God wants his children to be rich”
• Highly questionable business or marketing practices as a hedge to profiteering such as Anheuser-Busch “sponsoring” fraternity parties and “Drink Responsibly” advertising
• Professional politicians, lawyers, doctors, therapists, coaches, accountants, CEOs, and managers who use deception, masquerading as legitimate practices, so that lies and/or intimidation underlie procurement of a deal, service, or piece of legislation
• Most profiteering can be easily traced to M & M psychopathy
• Neighbors who appear “too good to be true” on the surface, yet who secretly spread hurtful gossip or rumors about neighbors
• Telling “white lies” to appear more trustworthy or honest
• Cheating on a spouse
• Mistreating children, peers, and pets
• Sexual lotharios (or adolescent Don Juan characters) who feign love in return for sexual favors only to abandon prey when a pregnancy occurs
• Substance abusers have been repeatedly shown to be M & M psychopaths
• Self absorbed life styles made possible by media celebrity
• Femme fatales: attractive and seductive females who cry “sexual assault”
• with a celebrity who can pay to keep her quiet
• Poison pen letters sent anonymously where self-righteous indignation is masked by “Christian principles”

With Evo-Devo principles underlying biology and reinforced by evolutionary psychology’s premises, it’s not a big leap in logic to posit spectrum (mild) psychopathy to be a genetic mechanism for adaptation and survival. Ample evidence for this theoretical assertion, some of which was presented above, exists everywhere in everyday life.

It is our view that pathology enters the equation with severe versions of psychopathy where psychopathy is mixed with violence and/or sexual sadism where violent psychopathic predators prey on others conning them out of their lives. This extreme version of psychopathy represents a perversion of nature’s intent.

The Late Arriving Prefrontal Cortex and Consequences

What genetic process might the brain engineer internally to stop the advance of psychopathy into young adulthood, especially in reference to rearing children? The answer is the maturation of the orbitofrontal prefrontal cortex. This may not occur until mid-20s to early 30s. My former student, now collaborator and colleague, Ashleigh Portales reaches a similar conclusion in her excellent paper closing out the chapter.

Behind the Monsters’ Eyes

The Role of the Orbitofrontal Cortex in Sexually Psychopathic Serial Crime

By: Ashleigh Portales Edited by: Don Jacobs
Decision Science News (2006) defines the orbitofrontal cortex as
“a small area of the brain located just behind the eyes. It is involved in cognitive and affective functions such as assessing emotional significance of events, anticipating rewards and punishments, adapting behaviors to changes in rule contingencies, and inhibiting inappropriate behaviors.”

In the dynamics of the prefrontal cortex, the orbitofrontal cortex (OFC) is the decision-maker, deciding whether or not to carry out the plans brainstormed in the adjacent dorsolateral cortex after emotional input from the ventromedial region.

As stated by Mackenzie, (Jacobs & Mackenzie, 2006) “individuals who have had damage to [this] area can observe social situations, but fail to respond to these situations in an appropriate manner.” Given this information, it is easy to see the implications of the OFC’s involvement in violent varieties of predatory psychopathy observed in adults with OFC lesions and other issues not the least of which might be lax parenting.

The Making of a Psychopath

In courtrooms and clinics across the globe, the debate has a long and drawn out conundrum over the cause of psychopathy: Is it due to nature or nurture? Are psychopaths born with genetically inherent tendencies or made by socialization in milieu? The most logical answer has always been both. While a person may be born more prone than another to develop a psychopathic personality, the way in which they are raised and their experiences in the world could trigger those already primed switches within their genetic code to produce what popular culture knows as a serial killer. This assertion is duly supported by research in the area of the orbitofrontal cortex.

Regardless of the severity, my theoretical position is psychopathy was already there from birth.

In his landmark neuroimaging study of 41 murderers, Dr. Adrian Raine found that, in an overwhelming majority, the prefrontal lobes of the murderers were underdeveloped and functioning far below normal levels required for self-responsibility tied to social behaviors. While the reasons for the cerebral malfunction in their brains were various (head trauma, physical abuse, emotional neglect, antisocial (toxic) parenting), the result was expected: stagnated prefrontal development and/or function showing a direct correlation to violent criminality. (Raine, et. al., 1994)

McDonald’s Homicidal Triad is a well known list of three major “red flags” of psychopathy shown in early adolescence: enuresis at an inappropriate age, cruelty to children and/or animals, and obsession with fire-starting (pyromania). While these impulsive actions may originate deep within the brainstem and midbrain/limbic system (MLS), the fact that the brain regions are interconnected one with the other implies dysfunction in the area charged with keeping such impulses at bay: the prefrontal cortex, specifically the orbitofrontal.

Studies have confirmed enuresis as a direct side effect of decreased function or injury to the orbitofrontal cortex. In the 1920s, 30s, and 50s, multiple researchers documented the commonality for patients with known orbitofrontal injuries to freely urinate or even defecate on themselves, not only while sleeping, but while watching television, eating in restaurants, or conversing with friends. More recently, researchers at the University of Pennsylvania used fMRI technology to image the brains of (a) six people with and (b) six people without good bladder control while filling and withdrawing liquid from their bladders. Those with good bladder control exhibited increased activity within the orbitofrontal cortex while those without it showed little activity. However, those with poor bladder control did register activity in other parts of their brain, evidence to support the theory that more primitive parts of the brain (for example, the brainstem) may take over with the intended “controller” is inhibited.

The other two criteria of McDonald’s Triad are repeated cruelty to children and/or animals and pyromania, both of which suggest a blatant disregard for consequences of one’s actions. This is often displayed by serial murderers who will return to the scene of the crime despite the knowledge that it is being watched, or who continue in their murderous ways even though they are under surveillance, believing their intelligence to be greater than that of the law enforcement officers In their grandiose sense of entitlement, they think they can get away with anything including multiple murder. But is there more to it than simple arrogance? Research suggests that there is: they have never been conditioned to behavioral suppression with fear of punishment as the consequence. According to Sabbatini (1998),
“normal humans learn very early in life to avoid antisocial behavior because they are punished for it and because they have the brain circuits to associate fear of punishment (feeling emotion) for behavior suppression…When there is no punishment, or when the person is unable to be conditioned by fear, due to a lesion in the orbitofrontal cortex, for example, or due to lowered neural activity in this area, then antisocial personality is developed.”

Due to the effects of antisocial or negligent parenting, they have developed the inability to register the severity of the consequences that their actions could bring and, as a result, their actions are governed by whatever whim they feel at the time. To quote New York University neurophysiologist, Dr. Elkhonon Goldberg,
“Orbitofrontal damage robs people of the ability to anticipate the consequences of their actions.”

Planning Crimes and Selecting Victims
Extensive research has shown that damage to the prefrontal cortex in general results in poor planning and judgment skills, which most would agree applies to just about anyone who seriously breaks the law. But could the word “poor,” when compounded by various risk factors, be substituted with “deviant” planning? Look at the sexual predator. With the planning mechanisms of his (or her) brain set to antisocial tendencies, a violent sexual crime is meticulously designed, step-by-step, in preparation for the day it will be carried over from fantasy into reality.

Running on the tracks of aberrant neurocognitive maps laid down by a steady diet of hardcore pornography and other sexually explicit and degrading materials, they go with what they know. As a corollary to Evo-Devo and psychopathy, sexually psychopathic violence has evolved from foundational brain wiring of M & M psychopathy to a superstructure of obsession mixed with the cement of violence and sexuality without the evolutionary brake afforded by the orbitofrontal cortex.

Once the plan is hatched, the perfect victim must be found. It has been suggested (Jacobs, 2003) that the selection of a specific victim hinges on whether or not that person peaks the phenylethylamine (PEA) of the predator. PEA is the neurotransmitter that creates the “romantic rush” we feel upon initial attraction to an individual. In the deviant mind of a sexual psychopath, the characteristics he desires in a victim triggers PEA. Once he decides, there is no turning back. Evidence suggests that the orbitofrontal cortex plays a large role in the selection of that victim. It has been documented that patients with damages to this area become very stimulus-bound and, once their interest is peaked by a certain object, they cannot shift focus to alternatives. This behavior is congruent with the sexual predator that will stop at nothing but fulfillment of his fantasy once he has set his eye on the prize (his desired victim). Only that victim will do.

Neural imaging studies confirm this assertion finding that the orbitofrontal cortex is activated in subjects who were presented with several desirable food choices and asked to choose the one most desirable to them. The orbitofrontal cortex seemed to be weighing the prospective incentive value of the stimuli in order to choose the one that would produce the most satisfaction. This is just how sexual predators select one victim from a world of many by assessing how well each one will fulfill his fantastic desires. (Arana, et. al., 2003, Tremblay & Schultz, 1999)

The results of this study are supported by a 2004 study on rats with orbitofrontal cortex lesions. These rats were able to resist less desirable but immediate stimuli when they knew that a more favorable alternative with a greater reward would come if they denied their impulses just a little while longer. Even when punishments were assigned to choosing the greater reward, the rats with the OFC lesions were unable to resist choosing (Winstanley, et. al., 2004) suggesting that a psychopath would be unable to resist his specific victimology stimuli regardless of the consequences associated with his choice. It is the orbitofrontal cortex that keeps the predator focused on his victim, according to the dynamic filtering theory proposed by Rule, Shimamura, and Knight (2002).
“The Orbitofrontal cortex (OFC) initiates control via reciprocal efferent projections that are used to maintain task-relevant activations and inhibit irrelevant or inappropriate neural activity.”

In a sense, the predator develops tunnel vision, able only to see his chosen course of action with the chosen victim on center stage. Thanks to his orbitofrontal cortex, which is already predisposed to sexually deviant stimuli, all other distractions are inhibited from reaching his attention until he completes that which he has set out to do.

The Thrill of the Kill
For the sexual predator, the actual commission of murder is the magical point where fantasy meets reality. Like all other aspects of his crime, this too can be scientifically linked to dysfunction in the orbitofrontal cortex. As reported in the American Journal of Psychiatry,
“patients with orbitofrontal lesions displayed behaviors that were more impulsive and inappropriate.” (Berlin, et. al., 2005) There is no behavior more socially inappropriate than the sexual torture, mutilation, and murder of an innocent victim. Also in the Berlin study, those with orbitofrontal lesions reported a faster perception of time (overestimated time) than did the healthy comparison subjects. Many serial killers have reported an unclear perception of the passing time as they committed their murders, almost as if they blacked out or were in a trance.

Interestingly, the orbitofrontal cortex may have a connection to yet another, more uncanny aspect of sexualized serial crime. In many cases, the offender will cannibalize parts of his victims either in an effort to keep some sort of a “trophy” with him or to completely control and devour the symbolic will and resistance of the victim. As reported by Joseph (2000), orbitofrontal damage can have adverse affects on the appetite. Some patients experienced insatiable cravings for all sorts of food, stuffing themselves even to the point of death, while others experienced the need to eat “non-nutritive objects.” It is not a large jump to see the correlation between these results and the need of a predator to cannibalize of his victims. Maybe, given the knowledge that the killer’s prefrontal cortices are functioning abnormally, these bizarre behaviors become logical.
Aftermath: No Regret and No Recovery

In a study by Camille, et. al. (2004), regret is defined as
“a cognitively mediated emotion triggered by our capacity to reason counterfactually. Regret is an emotion strongly associated with a feeling of responsibility.”

Sexual psychopaths do not experience this common human emotion because they do not feel that what they did was their fault; the victim had it coming. In the Camille study, subjects who had orbitofrontal lesions did not report feeling regret over their choices regardless of the outcome. When they did report experiencing emotion, it was with considerably less contrast than that seen in the normal test subjects. This effect of orbitofrontal dysfunction is mirrored by the Dull Hypothesis (Jacobs, 2006) which accounts for an “under-stimulated psychopath brain by a genetic predisposition for low autonomic arousal threshold.”

Psychopaths simply do not experience emotion the way normal individuals do, and lack the capacity either to perceive how their actions affect the lives of others, or to care how it affects them. Self-stimulation is their only concern.

Due to the fact that the brain does not regenerate, by the time the psychopath kills his first victim, he is too old (and by then too deep into severe psychopathy) to ever develop the brain regions in which he is lacking. Therefore, there is no chance that he will ever begin to feel the emotions of he now lacks. There is no hope of recovery or rehabilitation. Talk therapy actually make them worse.

From Samenow, (1987), it is impossible to be rehabilitated to something one was never habilitated to in the first place. However, because they are psychopathic and therefore inherently crafty cons, they have the ability to exhibit what is defined in the prison system as “good behavior” in order to obtain an early release so they can resume the only activity that brings them the perverse pleasure they crave: conning another person out of their life. As quoted in Joseph (2000), “if a patient (or orbital-lesioned animal) is purposefully distracted, e.g. via a novel stimulus, this pattern of attention is momentarily halted and the ability to shift response and attention is briefly regained.” However, evidence suggests that once the strict pattern of purposeful distraction is gone the focus returns again to the initially desired stimuli. This is perfectly applicable to prison life. When placed in a highly structured environment with no available source of stimuli, a psychopath often functions as a model prisoner, deceiving authorities into believing he is a changed man who is sorry for what he has done. Yet once he is released into society, he will return as quickly as possible to the stimulation his brain was always conditioned to: serial sexual homicide. Because brain anatomy is at the core of behavior, the rapacious mind will always be rapacious.

In the current age of neuroscience, it would be analogous to an ostrich sticking its head in the sand to deny the role of the brain and its anatomy in behavior, especially behavior that is sexually psychopathic in nature. Research has shown that right behind the eyes of the psychopath, which have ironically been romanticized as the windows to the soul, lies the orbitofrontal cortex, a prime agent in the development of psychopathy and the exhibition of its related behaviors.

Evidenced by the research of Dr. Jay Giedd of the National Institute of Health Clinical Center in Bethesda, MD, the prefrontal regions of the brain are the last to develop, and extensive evidence exists to show that the brains of sexual predators, for any of a myriad of reasons, never reach that final, most crucial stage in neurological development. According to Canadian scientist Dominique LaPierre, “Both the psychopath and the orbitofrontal (or ventromedial frontal) patients show an exaggerated preoccupation with sexual matters, acting in a promiscuous and impersonal maladaptive way. Both are remarkable for their lack of social and ethical judgment. Both neglect long-term consequences of their actions, choosing immediate gratification over careful planning”.

What lies behind the eyes of such a monster is the key to his severe psychopathy.