The Myth of The Born Criminal

THE MYTH OF THE BORN CRIMINAL
Psychopathy, Neurobiology, and the Creation of the

Modern Degenerate
By some estimates, there are as many as twelve million psychopaths

in the United States alone. Cold-blooded, remorseless, and strangely
charismatic, psychopaths commit at least half of all serious and violent
crimes. And by some definitions, not only serial killers but also large
numbers of corporate executives are considered to be psychopaths. In
the popular imagination, psychopaths are an inescapable yet fascinat-
ing threat in our midst.
But is psychopathy a brain disorder, as many scientists now claim?

Or is it just a reflection of modern society’s deepest fears? The Myth of
the Born Criminal offers the first comprehensive critique of the concept
of psychopathy, from its eighteenth-century origins to the latest studies
involving neuroimaging, behavioural genetics, and statistical research.
Jarkko Jalava, Stephanie Griffiths, and Michael Maraun use their ex-
pertise in neuropsychology, psychometrics, and criminology to dispel
the myth that psychopathy is a biologically based condition. Decon-
structing the emotive language with which both research scientists and
reporters describe the psychopaths among us, the authors explain how
the idea of psychopathy offers a comforting neurobiological solution to
the mystery of evil.
A remarkable combination of rigorous science and clear-sighted cul-

tural analysis, The Myth of the Born Criminal is for anyone who wonders
just what truth – or fiction – lurks behind the study of psychopathy.
jarkko jalava is a college professor of criminology in the Department

of Interdisciplinary Studies at Okanagan College.
stephanie griffiths is a college professor in the Department of Psy-
chology at Okanagan College.
michael maraun is a professor in the Department of Psychology at
Simon Fraser University.
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The Myth of the Born
Criminal
Psychopathy, Neurobiology, and the
Creation of the Modern Degenerate
J kk J v ,S G ,
ar
o
ala
a
tephanie
riffiths
M M
and
ichael
araun
U v T P
ni
ersity
of
oronto
ress
Toronto Buffalo London

© University of Toronto Press 2015

Toronto Buffalo London

www.utppublishing.com

Printed in the U.S.A.

ISBN 978-1-4426-5037-4 (cloth)
ISBN 978-1-4426-2836-6 (paper)

Printed on acid-free, 100% post-consumer recycled paper with
vegetable-based inks.
Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication
Jalava, Jarkko, 1970–, author

The myth of the born criminal : psychopathy, neurobiology, and the creation of

the modern degenerate / Jarkko Jalava, Stephanie Griffiths, and Michael Maraun.
Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 978-1-4426-5037-4 (bound). ISBN 978-1-4426-2836-6 (paperback)

1. Antisocial personality disorders. 2. Psychopaths. 3. Neurobiology.

I. Griffiths, Stephanie, 1975–, author II. Maraun, Michael, 1963–, author

III. Title.

RC555.J34 2015 616.85′82 C2015-902034-4

Portions of chapter 2 were first published in J. Jalava's (2006) article, “The odern

m
egenerate: Nineteenth- entury egeneration heory and odern sychopathy
d
c
d
t
m
p
esearch,” in Theory and Psychology, 16, 416–32.
r
This book has been published with the help of a grant from the Federation for the

Humanities and Social Sciences, through the Awards to Scholarly Publications
Program, using funds provided by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research
Council of Canada.
University of Toronto Press acknowledges the financial assistance to its publishing

program of the Canada Council for the Arts and the Ontario Arts Council, an agency
of the Government of Ontario.
University of Toronto Press acknowledges the financial support of the Government

of Canada through the Canada Book Fund for its publishing activities.
Contents
Introduction 3

Part I
1 The Moral Foundations of Psychopathy 19

Science, Religion, and the Enlightenment 24

On the Benefits of Being Unclear 28

2 The First Golden Age: Degeneration 32

The Nineteenth Century 33

Degeneracy 36

Psychopathy and Degeneration 41

The Adjustable Degeneracy Portfolio 45

3 The Second Golden Age: Psychopathy 47

The Consensus 56

Psychopathy and Law 57

4 The Politics of Psychopathy 65

iolent Crime 66
V

Serial Murder 66

Politics of Crime Science 71

On Scientific Fashions 71

Culture of Fear 74

5 The Adjustable Psychopathy Portfolio 79

The Corporate Psychopath 79

vi
Contents
Psychopaths, Politics, and Power 88

The Internet 90

Degenerate Society 92

The Useful Psychopath 95

6 The Culture of Psychopathy 97

Psychopathy as Cultural Critique 98

The Hipster Psychopath 98

The Postmodern Psychopath 101

The Ideological Enemy 103

Psychopathy as Identity 104

Part II
7 The Language of Persuasion 115

Medical Terminology 118

Dangerous nowledge 121

K

Public Emergency 123

The Historical Psychopath 125

Concept Flexibility 127

Equivocation 130

Paradoxes and Red Herrings 132

8 Neurobiology and Psychopathy 139

Patient Zero 139

Neurobiological Theories of Psychopathy 141

Early Theories 141

The Advent of Modern Neuroimaging 144

Limitations of Neurobiological Theories 148

Cause-and-Effect Problems 148

Correlation Masquerading as Causation 150

Patient Zero Revisited 162

9 Conclusion: The Parlour Game 163

On Sex and Litigation 163

The Harm 171

The Reptilian Stare 175

On Making Too Much Sense 181

Contents vii

Appendix A: Morality and Psychopathy 185

Appendix B: The Psychometrics of Psychopathy: On Factor Structures
and Heritability Coefficients 192

The Structure of Psychopathy 192

On Technique and Metaphysics 194

The Genetic Basis of Psychopathy 199

Notes 209

References 235

Index 264

THE MYTH OF THE BORN CRIMINAL
Psychopathy, Neurobiology, and the Creation of the

Modern Degenerate
Introduction
At the turn of the nineteenth century, two physicians discovered an

odd subset of criminals. The famous French mental health reformer
Philippe Pinel and the equally famous American psychiatrist Benja-
min Rush observed, independently of one another, that some crimi-
nals seemed strangely uninhibited and violent. What is more, these
criminals showed no remorse for their actions, no matter how ghastly
the crime. Pinel and Rush had a hunch that the problem – which Pinel
called manie sans délire, or insanity without delirium, and Rush moral
derangement – was a mental illness that selectively affected the moral
faculty while sparing all other cognitive functions. Rush hypothesized
that the condition had a biological cause. If he was right, his and Pinel’s
discovery had the potential to revolutionize our understanding of good
and evil. In time, Pinel’s and Rush’s patients would come to be known
as psychopaths, and as more scientists took to studying them, an increas-
ingly subtle picture of the psychopath’s character began to emerge. The
psychopath, the American sociologists William and Joan McCord wrote
in 1964, was “an asocial, aggressive, highly impulsive person, who
feels little or no guilt and is unable to form lasting bonds of affection
with other human beings.”1 The exact cause of psychopathy, however,
remained elusive until the end of the twentieth century, when new-
ly developed neuroimaging technology allowed researchers to study
psychopaths’ brains. These studies soon showed that, when measured
closely enough under the right experimental conditions, psychopaths’
and non-psychopaths’ brains showed striking differences. When one
researcher submitted a report of a particularly startling finding to an
academic journal, the editor wrote back: “Frankly, we found some of
the brain wave patterns depicted in the paper very odd. Those EEGs
4
The Myth of the Born Criminal
couldn’t have come from real people.”2 But they did come from real
people, and subsequent research supported the study’s findings – psy-
chopaths’ brains were unique in a number of ways. Pinel’s and Rush’s
intuition that psychopathy was a bona fide mental illness was right all
along, and the mystery of evil, it seemed, was gradually being solved.
Evil had a biological cause – which probably acted in combination with
environmental causes – and the most evil among us were those who
were born to be criminals.
By some estimates, there are as many as 12 million psychopaths in

the U.S. alone. At least half of all serious and violent crimes are com-
mitted by psychopaths, and their total economic cost could be as high
as $400 billion a year.3 Most serial killers are psychopaths, but surpris-
ingly, so are large numbers of corporate executives. Psychopaths are
drawn to power and excitement, and if blessed with intelligence and
education, they can wield devastating political and economic influence.
War, genocide, and large-scale financial mismanagement can result
from mild or severe cases of psychopathy. Psychopaths’ role in world
history, a leading researcher told an interviewer, is “a really big story.
It’s a story that could change forever the way people see the world.”4
This story, told with minor variations by many narrators, is the foun-

dation story of modern biological criminology. It is also myth. Although
some elements of it are true – studies have shown differences between
the neurobiology of psychopaths and that of non-psychopaths, and
psychopaths, by definition, cause suffering – its narrative core of sci-
entific hunches, impending threats, and empirical breakthroughs is
false. Pinel and Rush simply applied the vogue science of taxonomy
to describe deviations from the Judeo-Christian moral order, neurobio-
logical data on psychopathy remain inconclusive, and the reasoning
about the social harms caused by psychopaths is circular. The funda-
mental reason why the science of psychopathy remains inconclusive is
that the psychopathy concept, more than two centuries after it was first
proposed, has never managed to break free from its roots in the Judeo-
Christian theory of morality. The resulting mix of scientific method and
moral convention has, unsurprisingly, not produced a revolution in our
understanding of evil.
None of this, however, has prevented psychopathy from becoming

one of the great social science success stories of the late twentieth and
early twenty-first centuries, if we measure success by strictly non-sci-
entific criteria. Psychopathy research has blossomed into an impres-
sive international effort, complete with intense media coverage, law
Introduction 5

enforcement and defence endorsements, a scientific society, theoretical
orthodoxies and controversies, awards and recognitions, and truly in-
terdisciplinary academic research. The biological bases of criminal be-
haviour in general and psychopathy in particular have, by and large,
become accepted wisdom. In 2011 a prominent psychopathy researcher
told a reporter that “I think there’s no longer any question, scientifical-
ly, that there’s an association between the brain and criminal behaviour.
We’re beyond the point of debating that.”5 Another researcher said, “I
can spend the entire day going through the literature [on psychopathy]
– it’s overwhelming, and unless you’re semi-brain-dead you’re stunned
by it.”6 Philosophers, legal scholars, and social scientists have already
moved on to debating psychopaths’ moral and legal status. Psychopa-
thy diagnoses are increasingly entered as evidence in courts, and expert
witnesses now offer neuroimaging data to argue for psychopaths’ di-
minished criminal responsibility.
Such excitement over crime theory is not new. Another biological

theory of crime caused a similar sensation in the latter half of the nine-
teenth century. Degeneration theory, proposed in different variations
by Benedict Morel, Cesare Lombroso, and other well-respected mid-
to late-nineteenth-century thinkers, posited that criminals, vagrants,
prostitutes, the mentally ill, and other undesirables were evolutionary
throwbacks whose affliction was caused by a biological, hereditary
condition. What set these “degenerates” apart from the rest of human-
ity was their primitive physical and psychological makeup that dete-
riorated with each generation. In much the same way as psychopathy
today, degeneration theory offered an intuitive and empirically feasible
solution to a set of serious social problems. But the similarities did not
end there. Both theories spread quickly from scientific tracts to popular
media, and both were adroitly marketed to tap into contemporary fears.
Timing was critical: Europe and North America at the turns of both the
nineteenth and twentieth centuries were marked by rapid technologi-
cal innovation, economic expansion and integration, urbanization, the
relative absence of warfare, and moral panics over urban crime. By the
late nineteenth century, the European revolutions of 1848 had run their
course, an economic depression had begun to lift, and cultural ties be-
tween nations had steadily improved. In the late twentieth century, the
disintegration of the Soviet Union had eliminated a visible threat of
global warfare, and the financial exuberance of the late 1990s would
carry on into the early years of the twenty-first century. Both periods,
however, were also marked by real and imagined internal threats. The
6
latter part of nineteenth century saw a series of moral panics over va-
grancy, robbery, sexual offences, and murder. High-profile crimes like
those of Jack the Ripper achieved global news coverage and became
– rightly or wrongly – emblematic of problems in modern city life. In
the early 1990s, police reported crime rates in the U.S. and Canada had
reached historic peaks, and the serial killer entered popular culture.
The cultural iconography of serial killers reached its creative apogee
in Bret Easton Ellis’s novel American Psycho and Jonathan Demme’s
film The Silence of the Lambs, and retired criminal profilers began to pro-
duce popular books on serial and sexual homicide. Not surprisingly,
this gave social scientists an unprecedented beachhead in the battle for
public attention. As local crime replaced foreign threats in the popular
imagination, social scientists emerged as both public intellectuals and a
frontline defence against new, local threats.
Degenerates and psychopaths presented credible new dangers that

were, however, vague and fluid enough to encourage deep contempla-
tion and anxiety. The ambiguity inherent in the idea of the born psy-
chopath also guaranteed that it could be called upon to explain wider
social concerns. It inspired fear over personal safety but also uneasiness
about the future of political systems, nations, and even humanity. De-
generation was the key to understanding such things as the declining
fitness of military recruits, religious fanaticism, even unsightly art and
architecture. Psychopathy regularly features in discussions about mis-
behaving politicians, Internet fraud, and the sub-prime mortgage crisis
of 2008. Yet, the essence of the born criminal story was one of salvation:
scientists – particularly at the turn of the twenty-first century – were
at work on diagnostic tools for psychopathy, and the public could be
taught techniques for detecting the afflicted. Most serious treatises on
degeneration and psychopathy concluded with the assurance that sci-
ence was about to win the battle against evil. That the problem of evil
was scientific was beyond question. Even though most scientists con-
ceded certain gaps in their understanding of born criminality, few seri-
ously doubted either the gist of their theories or the ability of science to
deal with an essentially moral and social problem.
But the excitement over degeneration and psychopathy was not

solely due to history or scientific dogma. The idea of a shape-shifting,
subhuman malefactor has deep psychological and social roots. Degen-
eration and psychopathy tap into standard human fears, updating and
legitimizing them to reflect advances in science and shifts in popular
tastes. In the late 1800s, degeneration spawned a subgenre of scientific
Contents vii


Appendix B: The Psychometrics of Psychopathy: On Factor Structures
and Heritability Coefficients 192

The Structure of Psychopathy 192

On Technique and Metaphysics 194

The Genetic Basis of Psychopathy 199

Notes 209

References 235

Index 264

8
Darwinian conjecture did not arrive until the middle of the twentieth
century.
The empirical case for psychopathy seems comparatively stron-

ger. Psychopathy research now uses cutting-edge neuroimaging and
psychometric technology, and the data are extensive. Most published
neuroimaging studies report subtle neurobiological and behavioural
differences between psychopaths and non-psychopaths. As early as
1993, a prominent researcher argued that crime was so clearly a disor-
der that he placed “the burden of proof on those wishing to disprove
this position,”8 and psychopathy, a much more restrictive category than
crime, became increasingly harder to think of in any terms other than
those borrowed from medicine.
The biological theory of psychopathy is all the more powerful for be-

ing commonsensical. We tend to assume that abilities with the greatest
survival value in human societies, such as language and intelligence,
must be encoded in the brain in one way or another. It seems intuitive
to include morality in this list, because it would be difficult to imagine
a functioning society without it. As Lewis Terman, one of the founders
of modern intelligence testing put it in 1922, “There is nothing about an
individual as important as his IQ, except possibly his morals.”9
Also, some children seem to be born bad. A 2012 New York Times Maga-

zine article reported on cases of children with “underlying neurologi-
cal deficits” who, “like adult psychopaths ... seem to lack humanity,”10
and who occasionally end up committing inexplicably cruel crimes. If
some of these children – as one of the New York Times cases seemed to
illustrate – are raised in normal families, what other than a biological
disorder could explain this? Combine this with the finding that signs
of psychopathy can be detected in very small children, and the case for
born criminality seems obvious.
This book has two purposes. First, it describes the forces and argu-

ments that have made the born criminal theory both a cultural and a sci-
entific phenomenon. Second, we will show that modern psychopathy
research and theory – the modern version of the born criminal theory –
is in a number of ways logically dubious and contingent on more than a
few cultural, moral, and metaphysical assumptions. Degeneracy at the
turn of the nineteenth, and psychopathy at the turn of the twenty-first
centuries did not become popular because they were supported by data.
They became popular largely despite the lack of compelling data. What
made the born criminal theory scientifically compelling was the ease
with which the pieces seemed, at the time, to fit together. Degenerates
Introduction 9

did appear to possess ancestral characteristics, as long as those char-
acteristics were defined in contrast to prevailing middle-class ideals of
conduct, dress, company, occupation, and physique. Psychopaths, also,
seem like a unique human type, even biologically. Yet, a closer look at
the neurobiological and psychometric data shows no convincing evi-
dence that psychopathy is a biologically based disorder. The desire to
see the psychopath as a distinct, abnormal human type has, again, led
scientists to fit ambiguous data into pre-existing ideas of good and evil,
and these ideas are once more being put forth as expressions of com-
mon sense. The resulting medico/cultural/moral narrative of scientific
triumph has prevailed because it is deeply satisfying on a number of
levels, but as we will see in this book, it is not in fact true to data.
The historical arc of the born criminal theory shows that, as pressures

built for definitive answers to growing social problems to be provided,
scientific caution began at some point to give way to overinterpreta-
tion and unwarranted scientific claims. Degeneration galvanized on the
issue of lower-class unrest and crowd behaviour. The ensuing moral
panic allowed untested but intellectually and emotionally gratifying
explanations of deviance to flourish. In the late twentieth century, the
born criminal theory rode into prominence on record-high crime rates,
but it also had new reasons to thrive. Modern neuroimaging and statis-
tical methods began to produce complex and suggestive results, which
many social scientists – especially those who appeared in popular
media – optimistically interpreted as support for currently popular bio-
logical theories. As public spending on biological research increased
at the cost of other kinds of research, the implicit question became,
why look into the brain if you do not expect to find something there?
Neuroimaging research in the twentieth and early twenty-first centu-
ries suffered from a few well-known problems, but these were rarely
discussed in popular accounts of psychopathy. Most importantly, the
impairments observed in psychopaths were not specific to psychopa-
thy but were shared with any number of mental and physical abnor-
malities and adverse environmental effects. This was not unexpected,
however, as psychopathy was defined so broadly that the meaning of
any neurobiological correlates it yielded were by nature difficult, if not
impossible, to interpret. In short, research data on psychopathy was,
like most social science data, stubbornly inconclusive. It took concerted
effort of interpretation to see this data as supportive of any theory. The
central problem with psychopathy research, we argue in this book, is a
widespread bias toward seeing signals in the noise of real-world data.
10
The main problem with psychometric data was that none of it actually
supported psychopathy as a unitary entity. Multivariate models of psy-
chopathy’s heritability were equally inconclusive, not due to shortage
of data, but because of fundamental misunderstanding of what herita-
bility coefficients actually meant. While data interpretation evolved in
neuroimaging and behavioural genetics in other areas of social science,
many psychopathy researchers continued to promote simple reduc-
tionism that saw biological differences between psychopaths and non-
psychopaths as inborn characteristics that cause psychopathy.
Incentives to produce definitive knowledge came from outside ac-

ademia as well. Courts began to consider psychopathy diagnoses in
sentencing as both mitigating and aggravating circumstances. Law
enforcement agencies consulted psychopathy experts to shed light on
offender profiles. Large corporations hired psychologists to screen out
psychopathic employees. Finally, the entertainment industry had be-
gun in the 1990s to feature psychopaths in increasing numbers. Mental
health experts now had an expanding market for their input and analy-
sis, and the industry received what it wanted: simplistic, memorable
lines and anecdotes that combined what seemed like hard science with
potboiler sensibility. The result of all of this was a positive feedback
loop of scientific, legal, and public opinion, in which inconclusive data,
processed through several interpreters, eventually emerged with the
appearance of cutting-edge science with serious social implications.
Eventually, the biological theory of psychopathy – just as degenera-
tion theory had in its time – hardened into received wisdom. Fringe
claims about the “condition” began to grow ever more fantastical. De-
generacy was diagnosed in Plato and Charles Darwin, psychopathy in
Alcibiades and Winston Churchill. Degenerate art emerged, and so did
psychopathic corporations. Psychopaths were spotted in passing mo-
torists, and Jews were thought to cause degeneration. Psychopaths had
reptilian eyes, and a small number of strategically placed psychopaths
caused the sub-prime mortgage crisis of 2008.
A core requirement for the born criminal theory’s popularity is fear,

and so the theory’s acceptance as common sense tracks closely with the
way we assess threats. Researchers quickly adapted rhetorical strate-
gies most suited to this end: invisible threats and public emergencies,
law enforcement and serial killer references, victim testimonials, and
real and semi-fictional case vignettes. Over time, degenerates and psy-
chopaths seemed to grow ever more threatening and numerous, and
the need to intercept and understand them became more urgent. In
Introduction 11

the nineteenth century, Lombroso identified new types of criminals
throughout his career, some with biological defects, others without.
Psychopath subtypes also proliferated, with new types emerging as
situations demanded.
The fallacy of innate evil is as much a product of scientific claim-

making and marketing as it is evidence of the social acceptance of an
idea. The way we think about evil is a particular type of thinking – im-
pressionistic, wishful, and uncritical. Two historical periods had the
right mix of fear, politics, and technologies to elevate born criminal-
ity into received wisdom. Although it is critical to understand the his-
torical parallels between the late nineteenth century and the turn of
the twenty-first, this book is mainly about psychopathy, and about the
present. The story of degeneracy is well known, but the links between
degeneracy and psychopathy are poorly if at all understood, and so
it is illustrative to treat the present as a continuum of late-nineteenth-
century thought.
This book is organized into two parts. Part one is about the origins

of the born criminal myth as a scientific and popular idea. Chapter 1
describes the late-eighteenth- and early-nineteenth-century works of
Benjamin Rush and Philippe Pinel, who amalgamated a number of
vogue sciences with Christian thought, creating the prototype of to-
day’s psychopath. Chapter 2 details the first golden age of the born
criminal theory: mid- to late-nineteenth-century degenerationism, and
its links to modern psychopathy research. Chapter 3 is about the second
golden age in the late twentieth century. We illustrate psychopathy’s
contemporary popularity through a case study of high-profile sexual
homicide, and through the courts’ increasing acceptance of psychopa-
thy as evidence in judicial decisions. In chapter 4 we examine the roots
of psychopathy’s popularity in late-twentieth-century crime politics
and vogue sciences. We show how increasing crime rates, serial killer
fiction and non-fiction, and newly popular sciences (particularly evo-
lutionary psychology) fed into psychopathy’s acceptance. Chapter 5
examines the ever-increasing scope of psychopathy, from psychopathic
presidents and corporations to the “cyberpath” and the saintly psy-
chopath. We show how the psychopath has become an embodiment
of modern fears in liberal and conservative rhetoric alike. In chapter 6
we study how non-scientists have appropriated psychopathy for pop-
cultural applications. These applications have brought us the hipster
and postmodern psychopaths, as well as the psychopath as an object of
emulation and envy.
12
Part two is about empirical case-making. Chapter 7 describes the

rhetorical techniques researchers have used to bolster psychopathy’s
status as a bona fide mental disorder. Chapter 8 concerns modern neu-
robiological research on psychopathy. This chapter will show that the
medical model of psychopathy is based not on hard data but on a series
of conceptual confusions about how to interpret neuroimaging data.
In chapter 9 we give concluding thoughts on how groupthink, dogma,
and wishful thinking have led to the modern conception of the psycho-
path. Finally, appendices A and B deal with issues central to psychopa-
thy research, but both involve technical details which, if included in
the chapters, would interfere with the flow of the main argument. Ap-
pendix A concerns the relationship between a currently popular defini-
tion of psychopathy and morality. Here we show that the diagnostic
features for psychopathy are not about pure, naturally occurring per-
sonality style – the subject of objective science – but about deviations
from Judeo-Christian morality. Appendix B concerns psychometric re-
search on psychopathy. Here we concentrate on two lines of research:
factor analytic studies and the calculation of heritability coefficients.
Our arguments are that (a) linear factor analytic results have not – nor
can they even in principle – prove the existence of an entity called psy-
chopathy and (b) despite frequent arguments to the contrary, heritabil-
ity coefficients do not measure the relative contributions of genes and
environment to the development of psychopathy. Appendix B shows
that, logically, heritability coefficients of psychopathy are unrelated to
the question of causality.
Our critique of psychopathy comes with a few caveats. These are as

follows:
1. We do not deny the existence of psychopaths or the suffering they

cause, nor do we deny that it is worthwhile to study destructive people
and to find ways to minimize their effects on the world. But saying that
psychopaths – or whatever we choose to call them – exist does not mean
that their existence is due to a biological abnormality; describing a set
of traits and behaviours, and finding people who fit them is as com-
mon as it is ontologically inconsequential (hard-line communists, say,
or Internet trolls exist and have effects on the world, but their existence
is not reducible to neurobiology). What we criticize in this book are sci-
entific claims made about psychopaths, most importantly that they are
a biologically unique subspecies of humanity. We are not, however, op-
posed to biological explanations of crime, deviance, and personality in
principle, nor do we prefer any other form of explanation. Our critique
Introduction 13

is of the following form: relative to psychopathy, certain scientific claims
about certain things are unfounded.
2. Biological theories of psychopathy – the focus of this book – are the

key to understanding the modern psychopathy idea. However, it is dif-
ficult today to find a researcher who believes that biology alone causes
psychopathy; the current consensus is that environment and biology
act together to cause it. This is in fact the current and totally uncontro-
versial consensus on all behaviour. But it would be a mistake to think
that this interactionist account somehow undermines our critique. This
is for two main reasons. First, our contention is that the supposed bio-
logical causes of psychopathy have not actually been shown in any way
to be causal, whether alone or in combination with the environment.
Second, our critique is not simply about the usual correlation-cause
conflation. We will show that biological theories of psychopathy are
fundamentally unsound, and that current data on the disorder are not
even suggestive of causality.
Interactionist theories, it turns out, are deceptively simple. While a

biological determinist theory has only to explain how something bio-
logical can cause behaviour, an interactionist theory must explain how
something biological can interact with the environment, and how they
then jointly cause that behaviour. That is, a proposed interaction calls for
multiple layers of explanation, which are (a) the biological cause(s), (b)
the environmental cause(s), (c) the relationship between the biological
and the environmental cause(s), and (d) the relationship between all this
and behaviour. Since such explanations are infinitely difficult to con-
struct and prove, an interactionist theory is the consensus choice – not
because it is empirically proven, but because, demonstrably, neither of
its components is. That is, when we say that an interaction is at the root
of psychopathy we are both (a) probably right and (b) not saying much.
3. Three diagnostic terms – psychopathy, antisocial personality dis-

order, and sociopathy – refer to a very similar set of traits, and con-
siderable thought has been spent on the differences and similarities
between them. Many people use the terms interchangeably, and about
an equal number take exception to such usage. We will concentrate on
psychopathy in this book, for a few reasons. First, even though antiso-
cial personality disorder (APD, also ASPD) is included in the Ameri-
can Psychiatric Association’s Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental
Disorders – and psychopathy is not – and even though APD is the more
researched disorder,11 only psychopathy has become a significant part
of popular culture. Psychopaths in the popular narrative are interesting.
14
They possess special powers of perception, persuasion, illusion, and

camouflage, and there are, supposedly, psychopathic presidents, CEOs,
and, at least according to one researcher, even a psychopathic saint. An-
tisocial personality disorder, on the other hand, has by and large stayed
within the DSM. It resonates far less in popular culture than psychopa-
thy (and gives a little more than half as many Google search results as
“psychopath”), and references to APD and special powers are harder to
come by. An expert on psychopathy explains why:
We live in a “camouflage society,” a society in which some psychopathic

traits – egocentricity, lack of concern for others, superficiality, style over
substance, being “cool,” manipulativeness, and so forth – increasingly are
tolerated and even valued. With respect to the topic of this article, it is easy
to see how both psychopaths and those with ASPD could blend in readily
with groups holding antisocial or criminal values. It is more difficult to
envisage how those with ASPD could hide out among more prosocial seg-
ments of society. Yet psychopaths have little difficulty infiltrating the do-
mains of business, politics, law enforcement, government, academia and
other social structures ... It is the egocentric, cold-blooded and remorseless
psychopaths who blend into all aspects of society and have such devastat-
ing impacts on people around them who send chills down the spines of
law enforcement officers.12
Moreover, as the same author points out, APD is merely a less serious
variant of psychopathy. After reviewing an FBI report on people who
had killed law enforcement officers, the author concluded, “These kill-
ers were not simply persistently antisocial individuals who met DSM-
IV criteria for ASPD; they were psychopaths – remorseless predators
who use charm, intimidation and, if necessary, impulsive and cold-
blooded violence to attain their ends.”13 If one disorder were to make it
into popular culture, why not the more serious one?
There is another reason for psychopathy’s cultural appeal over APD.

APD, in the DSM tradition, is a disorder a person has. The DSM classi-
fies mental disorders, not people. Psychopathy, on the other hand, tends
to signify identity: you have antisocial personality disorder, but you are
a psychopath. The latter is a far more substantial and elementary at-
tribution, and it is rich with folkloric themes of strangeness, fate, and
evil. These themes, unsurprisingly, dominate the popular discourse on
psychopathy.
We have also chosen to concentrate on psychopathy because of its

proportionately stronger affinity with biological theorizing than APD.
Introduction 15

According to our database research, about 24 per cent of psychopathy
research makes some reference to neurobiology, whereas only about
16 per cent of APD research does.14 Perhaps because of the biological
theory’s role in psychopathy discourse, psychopathy also appears dis-
proportionately in discussions of law and criminal and moral responsi-
bility. There are in fact more journal articles, books, and book articles on
psychopathy and law than there are on APD and law, even though the
overall number of citations for antisocial personality disorder is more
than twice the number of psychopathy citations.15
This leaves us with sociopathy, which is often treated synonymously

with psychopathy. The term sociopathy has several connotations, in-
cluding a mid-twentieth century idea that psychopathy has a sociologi-
cal cause. Some writers have also defined sociopaths as those patients
who may behaviourally resemble psychopaths, but who confusingly,
and unlike psychopaths, have a sense of morality. Finally, some re-
searchers only use sociopathy in the context of “acquired sociopathy,” a
condition in which brain injury has given rise to antisocial behaviour.16
Because of this conceptual looseness, sociopathy does not appear fre-
quently in modern research literature, and it is also the reason we do
not concentrate on it in this book.
The definition of psychopathy is, however, not entirely settled either.

There are several measures of psychopathy, and debate over the exact
diagnostic criteria is ongoing.17 Nonetheless, the Hare Psychopathy
Checklist-Revised (PCL-R), developed by Robert Hare, has become the
prominent tool in psychopathy research and in the assessment of psy-
chopathy in the criminal justice system, and many of the other tests are
validated against it. It has been called “the gold standard,” “state of the
art,” “the measure of choice,” and “standard of practice instrument”18
for the measurement of psychopathy, and more research has been done
on the PCL-R than on any other test. Research into the use of psychop-
athy diagnoses in the criminal justice system also mostly concerns the
PCL-R. Popular discourse tends to associate the measurement of psy-
chopathy with the PCL-R as well. We reference the PCL-R more than
any other test in this book for these reasons. However, even though
the modern psychopathy concept is largely indebted to the PCL-R,
this book is essentially not about the PCL-R, but about the broader
concept of psychopathy, of which any test is only the most obvious
example.
4. For the sake of fluency, we refer to both clinical and experimental

psychologists as “psychologists,” whether they are officially registered
as psychologists or not.
16
5. We do not put forth an alternative, more “correct” way of studying

psychopathy. This book is a critique and a clarification of the psychopa-
thy phenomenon, not a manual for doing proper social science. If you
agree with our analyses here, correcting misconceptions in the research
should not be difficult to do. The most difficult task is not data produc-
tion, but explaining, coherently, two things: (a) what that data actually
means and (b) how, given the data, one comes to believe in a biologi-
cally based disorder called psychopathy.
6. Finally, as we show in chapter 9, psychopathy research can be a

controversial and even acrimonious business. One recent controversy,
a threatened lawsuit against two critics of a psychopathy test, raised
concerns about the possibility that critical research into psychopathy
may be suppressed in favour of a currently dominant conceptualiza-
tion of the disorder. Psychopathy’s reach – from death sentence delib-
erations to ad hoc diagnoses of foreign leaders – requires an animated
debate about its nature and social uses. What is remarkable and trou-
bling about modern psychopathy controversies, however, is their lim-
ited scope. For instance, the essence of the lawsuit controversy is about
whether criminal rather than antisocial behaviour is a central component
of the dominant, PCL-R-centric conception of psychopathy. A debate
like this reinforces the psychopathy concept rather than undermines
it, which is contrary to what some critics have argued. The debate as-
sumes that the scientific merits of psychopathy are by and large settled,
with only some aspects of it still to be determined, by whatever means.
One goal of this book is to show that psychopathy research suffers from
certain fundamental errors in logic, committed by many and for a rela-
tively long time. Technical debates like the one above are irrelevant to
this book, and we do not take sides on them. We also largely bypass
the question of psychopathy subtypes and the question of the relative
merits of various psychopathy tests. This book is written in the spirit
of logical and historical inquiry, not in the spirit of controversy, and
certainly not in order to deny a social scientist his or her opportunity
to conduct research or to publish and profit from psychopathy tests.
Also, it is important to point out that our main critique is not about the
technical aspects of the research, particularly neurobiological research.
Much of this research is methodologically sound, and many studies are
very sophisticated. Our main critique is about how their results are in-
terpreted to support the concept of psychopathy.
PART I
4
couldn’t have come from real people.”2 But they did come from real
people, and subsequent research supported the study’s findings – psy-
chopaths’ brains were unique in a number of ways. Pinel’s and Rush’s
intuition that psychopathy was a bona fide mental illness was right all
along, and the mystery of evil, it seemed, was gradually being solved.
Evil had a biological cause – which probably acted in combination with
environmental causes – and the most evil among us were those who
were born to be criminals.
By some estimates, there are as many as 12 million psychopaths in

the U.S. alone. At least half of all serious and violent crimes are com-
mitted by psychopaths, and their total economic cost could be as high
as $400 billion a year.3 Most serial killers are psychopaths, but surpris-
ingly, so are large numbers of corporate executives. Psychopaths are
drawn to power and excitement, and if blessed with intelligence and
education, they can wield devastating political and economic influence.
War, genocide, and large-scale financial mismanagement can result
from mild or severe cases of psychopathy. Psychopaths’ role in world
history, a leading researcher told an interviewer, is “a really big story.
It’s a story that could change forever the way people see the world.”4
This story, told with minor variations by many narrators, is the foun-

dation story of modern biological criminology. It is also myth. Although
some elements of it are true – studies have shown differences between
the neurobiology of psychopaths and that of non-psychopaths, and
psychopaths, by definition, cause suffering – its narrative core of sci-
entific hunches, impending threats, and empirical breakthroughs is
false. Pinel and Rush simply applied the vogue science of taxonomy
to describe deviations from the Judeo-Christian moral order, neurobio-
logical data on psychopathy remain inconclusive, and the reasoning
about the social harms caused by psychopaths is circular. The funda-
mental reason why the science of psychopathy remains inconclusive is
that the psychopathy concept, more than two centuries after it was first
proposed, has never managed to break free from its roots in the Judeo-
Christian theory of morality. The resulting mix of scientific method and
moral convention has, unsurprisingly, not produced a revolution in our
understanding of evil.
None of this, however, has prevented psychopathy from becoming

one of the great social science success stories of the late twentieth and
early twenty-first centuries, if we measure success by strictly non-sci-
entific criteria. Psychopathy research has blossomed into an impres-
sive international effort, complete with intense media coverage, law
1 The Moral Foundations of Psychopathy
In March 1996, the journal Criminal Justice and Behavior published an

article titled “Psychopathy: A Clinical Construct Whose Time Has
Come.” The paper, written by Robert Hare, a prominent psychopathy
researcher and the author of a widely used psychopathy test, discussed
the evolution and the importance of psychopathy as a scientific con-
cept. Some critics had suggested that psychopathy was an imaginary
disorder. Hare countered that volumes of data proved otherwise, and
that his critics were simply “uncomfortable about psychiatric labels.”
Hare called psychopathy a “formal clinical disorder,” and surmised
that its causes would soon be discovered. He pointed out that the diag-
nostic test he had developed, the Psychopathy Checklist-Revised (PCL-
R), was state of the art, and that it would almost certainly become an
essential tool in the criminal justice system.
Hare was demonstrably right about one thing – psychopathy’s time
had come. By the early twenty-first century, psychopathy had become
an international industry. At the time of this writing, of the more than
5,100 books and articles on psychopathy published since the mid-
nineteenth century, almost 75 per cent have been published since 1990.
When considered together, psychopathy and its close relative antisocial
personality disorder have generated over 15,000 research publications
to date.1 Grants for psychopathy research have also steadily increased.
For instance, between 2000 and 2010, the U.S. National Institutes of
Health increased its funding for psychopathy-relevant research by 67
per cent, and the number of references to psychopathy in funded re-
search between 1990 and 2010 increased by almost 600 per cent.2 Be-
tween 1998 and 2008, the Canadian Social Sciences and Humanities
Research Council increased its psychopathy research funding by a fac-
20
tor of twenty-four.3 In 2012–13, research on or related to psychopathy

received over $9 million from the NIH. One leading expert on psychop-
athy was given a $2-million-dollar mobile MRI unit to study criminals’
brains.4 Robert Hare, himself the author of more than two hundred ar-
ticles and book chapters on psychopathy, founded a research and con-
sulting firm, assisted the FBI and the Royal Canadian Mounted Police,
and sat on a number of research boards across the world. The Society
for the Scientific Study of Psychopathy named its Lifetime Achieve-
ment Award after Hare, and gave him the inaugural award. In Septem-
ber 2011, Hare received Canada’s highest civilian order, the Order of
Canada.
Diagnostic tests for psychopathy became commercially available
in the 1990s. The PCL-R appeared in 1991, and soon underwent revi-
sions and generated further tests. These include the Hare Psychopa-
thy Checklist-Revised: 2nd Edition;5 the Hare Psychopathy Checklist:
Youth Version (PCL-YV);6 the Hare Psychopathy Checklist: Screening
Version (PCL: SV);7 and the Hare Psychopathy-SCAN Research Version
(P-SCAN RV).8 Test authors began to offer workshops in the adminis-
tration of the checklists throughout the world. Hare’s website lists 139
such workshops between 1993 and 2014 (with a Post-Workshop Train-
ing Program running until 2012). In 2014, training sessions were offered
in Barbados and London.9
Other psychopathy tests by different authors – some free, some
available for a price – soon followed. These included the Psychopathic
Personality Inventory (PPI),10 the Youth Psychopathic Traits Inventory
(YPI),11 the Antisocial Process Screening Device (APSD),12 the Child
Psychopathy Scale (CPS),13 the Levenson Primary and Secondary Psy-
chopathy Scales,14 the Self-Report Psychopathy Scale (SRP-III),15 and
the Comprehensive Assessment of Psychopathic Personality (CAPP).16
What made all of this possible was a growing acceptance of psychop-
athy as a bona fide mental disorder. Although at the time of this writing
neither the American Psychiatric Association’s Diagnostic and Statisti-
cal Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-5) nor the World Health Organiza-
tion’s International Classification of Diseases recognized psychopathy as a
mental disorder – the DSM’s antisocial personality disorder and ICD-
10’s dissocial personality disorder come close – many researchers and
clinicians alike came to treat it as though it were one, devising and using
tests for its assessment, and studying its causes and treatments. Courts
also began to take it into consideration in sentencing decisions. In 1998,
Hare called psychopathy “one of the best-validated clinical constructs
6
latter part of nineteenth century saw a series of moral panics over va-
grancy, robbery, sexual offences, and murder. High-profile crimes like
those of Jack the Ripper achieved global news coverage and became
– rightly or wrongly – emblematic of problems in modern city life. In
the early 1990s, police reported crime rates in the U.S. and Canada had
reached historic peaks, and the serial killer entered popular culture.
The cultural iconography of serial killers reached its creative apogee
in Bret Easton Ellis’s novel American Psycho and Jonathan Demme’s
film The Silence of the Lambs, and retired criminal profilers began to pro-
duce popular books on serial and sexual homicide. Not surprisingly,
this gave social scientists an unprecedented beachhead in the battle for
public attention. As local crime replaced foreign threats in the popular
imagination, social scientists emerged as both public intellectuals and a
frontline defence against new, local threats.
Degenerates and psychopaths presented credible new dangers that

were, however, vague and fluid enough to encourage deep contempla-
tion and anxiety. The ambiguity inherent in the idea of the born psy-
chopath also guaranteed that it could be called upon to explain wider
social concerns. It inspired fear over personal safety but also uneasiness
about the future of political systems, nations, and even humanity. De-
generation was the key to understanding such things as the declining
fitness of military recruits, religious fanaticism, even unsightly art and
architecture. Psychopathy regularly features in discussions about mis-
behaving politicians, Internet fraud, and the sub-prime mortgage crisis
of 2008. Yet, the essence of the born criminal story was one of salvation:
scientists – particularly at the turn of the twenty-first century – were
at work on diagnostic tools for psychopathy, and the public could be
taught techniques for detecting the afflicted. Most serious treatises on
degeneration and psychopathy concluded with the assurance that sci-
ence was about to win the battle against evil. That the problem of evil
was scientific was beyond question. Even though most scientists con-
ceded certain gaps in their understanding of born criminality, few seri-
ously doubted either the gist of their theories or the ability of science to
deal with an essentially moral and social problem.
But the excitement over degeneration and psychopathy was not

solely due to history or scientific dogma. The idea of a shape-shifting,
subhuman malefactor has deep psychological and social roots. Degen-
eration and psychopathy tap into standard human fears, updating and
legitimizing them to reflect advances in science and shifts in popular
tastes. In the late 1800s, degeneration spawned a subgenre of scientific
22
Although the essence of Rush’s and Pinel’s idea survived, the names
they had chosen for the condition did not, and they were soon replaced
by the more eloquent “moral insanity,” a term coined by the British
physician James Prichard in 1833. A number of other names were pro-
posed in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, but finally the scien-
tific community settled on the now ubiquitous, though etymologically
dubious “psychopathy,” which derives from Greek and literally means
“suffering soul.”
Up to the mid-1900s, the term psychopathy carried many different
meanings, only some of which are consistent with the modern use of
the term. In 1941, the American psychiatrist Hervey Cleckley published
a now-famous book, The Mask of Sanity, which gave roughly the mod-
ern definition of psychopathy by way of twenty-one characteristics. By
1976, Cleckley had whittled the number down to sixteen. These were:
superficial charm and good intelligence; absence of delusions and oth-
er signs of irrational thinking; absence of nervousness or psychoneu-
rotic manifestations; unreliability; untruthfulness or insincerity; lack of
remorse or shame; inadequately motivated antisocial behaviour; poor
judgment and failure to learn from experience; pathologic egocentric-
ity and incapacity for love; general poverty in major affective relations;
specific loss of insight; unresponsiveness in general interpersonal rela-
tions; fantastic and uninviting behaviour with drink and sometimes
without; suicide rarely carried out; impersonal, trivial, and poorly
integrated sex life; and failure to follow any life plan.22 Cleckley, like
many of his contemporaries, believed that the condition had a bio-
logical cause, though he entertained the possibility of other causes as
well.
In the 1960s, Robert Hare began to study psychopaths in the labora-
tory, and discovered that their physiological responses to stimuli were
different from those of non-psychopaths. For example, he found that
autonomic nervous systems of psychopaths were less responsive to im-
minent threats than those of non-psychopaths’. Hare refined Cleckley’s
criteria, and developed the Psychopathy Checklist, which in 1991 be-
came the now ubiquitous Hare Psychopathy Checklist-Revised, now
in its second edition.23 Hare proposed twenty diagnostic criteria,24 the
original choice of which was informed by Cleckley’s list. The PCL-R
consists of items that fall into a number of higher-order categories or
factors. In one formulation, there are four such factors: interpersonal
(e.g., glibness/superficial charm, grandiose sense of self-worth), affec-
tive (e.g., lack of remorse or guilt, shallow affect), lifestyle (e.g., need for
The Moral Foundations of Psychopathy 23

stimulation/proneness to boredom, lack of realistic long-term goals),
and antisocial (e.g., criminal versatility).25 The PCL-R matches indi-
viduals against these criteria on a three-point severity scale (0,1,or 2),
yielding a score indicating the extent to which a person is a prototypi-
cal psychopath. The diagnostic cut-off score for designating a person a
psychopath is thirty out of a possible forty points.
With agreement on how to measure psychopathy, researchers could
now study potential causes for it. To put it shortly, a great number of
studies went on to support Hare’s initial findings by showing differ-
ences between the neurobiology of psychopaths and non-psychopaths.
As data amassed, the consensus supported the idea that psychopathy
had a neurological cause, possibly present at birth.
This story follows the basic outlines of medical taxonomy: Someone
makes an initial observation about manifest symptoms, and then others
refine them. Eventually the symptoms are linked together by underly-
ing functional and/or structural pathology and, hopefully, an ultimate
cause or causes. The result is disease classification. It is legitimate to say
that a disease so classified exists and afflicts, that it has a course and
a prognosis, and that its sufferers are patients, all terms consistently
applied to psychopathy throughout its history. The chief point is that
if psychopathy is a legitimate medical disorder, then it exists indepen-
dently of culture and morality. The fact that psychopaths are immoral
– this is no secret to anyone – is incidental: the physiological cause has
affected some basic function of the brain, such as emotion, and crime
and general immorality are simply by-products of this dysfunction. The
history of such a disease is a series of discoveries, refinements, and re-
alizations. So, when a papyrus dating back to about 2500 BC described
“bulging masses on [the] breast ... that ... have no granulations, contain
no fluid ... [and which are] hard and cool to the touch” we know it was
an early account of breast cancer.26 Although the exact causes of breast
cancer remain unknown, there is no doubt that someone with breast
cancer today has the same thing as someone else did four and a half
millennia ago. The only real difference is that we now know more about
it than we did before. By the late twentieth century, this was roughly
how psychopathy was understood as well.
The medical taxonomic account of psychopathy is compelling, among
other things, for its simplicity. It takes a social problem and cleanses it
of the messy residue – morality, law, local customs, historical moment,
and so on – that made the problem social in the first place. The medical
history of psychopathy can set aside deeper questions about essence
24
by simply posing them as secondary: what psychopathy is really about

hardly matters, because psychopathy is a problem, it has a solution,
and the solution is biological. As Hervey Cleckley put it,
Medical attention or any other practical step to help or ameliorate misfor-

tune or pain [caused by psychopaths] must not wait for a threshing out on
philosophic, metaphysical, and religious planes of the ultimate whys and
wherefores, the final determining of blame or responsibility. It is possible
to meet these emergencies at another point.27
But what if the “philosophic, metaphysical, and religious planes” are

all that there is? What if the story of psychopathy is not about scien-
tific revolutions, theories, and discoveries, but about social, moral, and
metaphysical ideas expressed in the language of science? What, in oth-
er words, if the medical taxonomic history of psychopathy is wrong?
Science, Religion, and the Enlightenment
The first formal, medical account of a psychopathy-like disorder was

given by Benjamin Rush. In 1786, Rush delivered a lecture titled “An
Inquiry into the Influence of Physical Causes upon the Moral Facul-
ty.” At the time of his lecture, he was already famous. America’s first
professor of chemistry at age twenty-three, at thirty a signatory to the
Declaration of Independence, an abolitionist and an advocate for the
humane treatment of the mentally ill, Rush was now forty-one, and
well on his way to becoming the father of American psychiatry. Rush
began his 1786 lectures with a definition of the moral faculty. Accord-
ing to Rush, the faculty was “a capacity in the human mind of distin-
guishing and choosing good and evil, or, in other words, virtue and
vice. It is a native principle, and though it be capable of improvement
by experience and reflection, it is not derived from either of them.”28
As the title of his lecture explained, the actions of the moral faculty
could be altered by physical means. These means included such things
as climate, diet, alcohol, disease, idleness, excessive sleep, bodily pain,
and lack of cleanliness. Rush called the total absence of the moral fac-
ulty “anomia,” and the effect of a partial or weakened faculty “mi-
cronomia,” but by 1812 he had taken to calling the condition “moral
derangement” and described it as “that state of mind in which the pas-
sions act involuntarily through the instrumentality of the will, without
any disease in the understanding.”29

This was the first known theory of psychopathy: an aberration in the
inborn, reflexive human ability to recognize right from wrong. This
raises an important point about the meaning of disease Rush is invok-
ing here. In Rush’s formulation, anomia and micronomia were not
merely diseases of a particular mental faculty. They also implied how
things should be; they implied the existence of a normative set of moral
precepts that are anchored in the human brain. When an otherwise ra-
tional agent chronically violated these precepts, the agent’s mind and
body were, according Rush, in an unnatural state. But how did Rush
infer what the natural state was? He gave a hint very early on in the
lecture, when he traced the history of the moral faculty idea to Cicero
and St. Paul. In Romans 2:14–15, Rush found the following encapsula-
tion of the idea: “For when the Gentiles which have not the law, do by
nature the things contained in the law, these, having not the law, are a
law unto themselves [emphasis original]; which show the works of the
law written in their hearts, their consciences also, bearing witness, and
their thoughts the mean while accusing, or else excusing, another.”30 In
other words, the moral faculty was the part of the human constitution
that essentially agreed with Cicero’s philosophy or Pauline Christian-
ity (these are not as different as might at first seem, since Cicero was
declared a “virtuous pagan” by the early Christian Church). Later in
life, Rush made the link between the moral faculty and Christian the-
ology even more obvious by arguing that the moral faculty was actu-
ally three faculties: the moral faculty proper, conscience, and a sense of
deity.31
It is not difficult to see how Rush came to his idea. Aside from being
a trained physician, he was also a devout Christian (though in the con-
text of the late eighteenth century, Rush’s ideas did not set him apart as
being unusually Christian; his central dedication remained to republi-
can political theory). He saw no categorical distinction between reason
and religion, writing that “the truths of philosophy and Christianity
dwell alike in the mind of the Deity, and reason and religion are equally
the offspring of his goodness. They must, therefore, stand and fall to-
gether.”32 For Rush, the sense of deity was a universal human quality,
whose purpose it was to produce “the highest degree of order and hap-
piness”33 in the human being.
Rush’s marriage of science to Christianity was ultimately compel-
ling because it involved a branch of science that had recently come into
vogue – taxonomy (also known as nosology). The pioneering work on
plant and animal classification, Carl Linnaeus’s Systema Naturae, had
Introduction 9

did appear to possess ancestral characteristics, as long as those char-
acteristics were defined in contrast to prevailing middle-class ideals of
conduct, dress, company, occupation, and physique. Psychopaths, also,
seem like a unique human type, even biologically. Yet, a closer look at
the neurobiological and psychometric data shows no convincing evi-
dence that psychopathy is a biologically based disorder. The desire to
see the psychopath as a distinct, abnormal human type has, again, led
scientists to fit ambiguous data into pre-existing ideas of good and evil,
and these ideas are once more being put forth as expressions of com-
mon sense. The resulting medico/cultural/moral narrative of scientific
triumph has prevailed because it is deeply satisfying on a number of
levels, but as we will see in this book, it is not in fact true to data.
The historical arc of the born criminal theory shows that, as pressures

built for definitive answers to growing social problems to be provided,
scientific caution began at some point to give way to overinterpreta-
tion and unwarranted scientific claims. Degeneration galvanized on the
issue of lower-class unrest and crowd behaviour. The ensuing moral
panic allowed untested but intellectually and emotionally gratifying
explanations of deviance to flourish. In the late twentieth century, the
born criminal theory rode into prominence on record-high crime rates,
but it also had new reasons to thrive. Modern neuroimaging and statis-
tical methods began to produce complex and suggestive results, which
many social scientists – especially those who appeared in popular
media – optimistically interpreted as support for currently popular bio-
logical theories. As public spending on biological research increased
at the cost of other kinds of research, the implicit question became,
why look into the brain if you do not expect to find something there?
Neuroimaging research in the twentieth and early twenty-first centu-
ries suffered from a few well-known problems, but these were rarely
discussed in popular accounts of psychopathy. Most importantly, the
impairments observed in psychopaths were not specific to psychopa-
thy but were shared with any number of mental and physical abnor-
malities and adverse environmental effects. This was not unexpected,
however, as psychopathy was defined so broadly that the meaning of
any neurobiological correlates it yielded were by nature difficult, if not
impossible, to interpret. In short, research data on psychopathy was,
like most social science data, stubbornly inconclusive. It took concerted
effort of interpretation to see this data as supportive of any theory. The
central problem with psychopathy research, we argue in this book, is a
widespread bias toward seeing signals in the noise of real-world data.

termined by examining the contours of the skull. Combining their in-
terests in anatomy and religion – both men had begun their studies
in theology – Gall and Spurzheim located the moral faculty at the top
of the head, the place they believed to be closest to God. They named
their new science “phrenology.” In short order, phrenology became
extremely popular throughout Europe and North America, Gall and
Spurzheim’s followers setting up institutes, societies, parlours, and
even a publishing house. All the while, Spurzheim travelled widely,
lecturing to large audiences in Europe and North America. The Boston
Medical and Surgical Journal called Spurzheim’s death in 1832 “a calam-
ity to mankind.”36
Although there is no evidence that Rush was aware of phrenology
in 1786, he later discussed it at length, noting that in general the theory
was probably right. The main point here, though, is not whether or not
Rush was influenced by Lavater, Gall, and Spurzheim, but the fact that
three similar theories arose at about the same time in a similar cultural
context. The context favoured both the fusion of religion with biology
and efforts to explain crime and deviance – mounting problems in the
rapidly urbanizing West – with relatively simple formulas. As the pop-
ularity of Lavater’s, Gall’s, Spurzheim’s, and Rush’s physio-spiritual
accounts of character show, the Enlightenment, despite its typical con-
notations with reason and progress, was still deeply receptive to theo-
logical explanations of human behaviour. Nor did explicitly religious
allusions to the moral faculty end with Rush. A prominent asylum su-
perintendent and one of the founders of forensic psychiatry, Isaac Ray,
continued Rush’s work into the late nineteenth century. (The American
Psychiatric Association hands out the Isaac Ray Award for Outstanding
Contributions to Forensic Psychiatry and Psychiatric Jurisprudence, an
award Robert Hare received in 2001.) In his 1863 book, Mental Hygiene,
Ray wrote about what had by then come to be known as moral insanity.
In moral insanity, Ray wrote, “those moral checks and balances which
the Creator has placed in the human soul, for the proper ordering of
the life and the attainment of life’s great ends, are disarranged and per-
verted by the intrusion of a foreign element.”37
From this it is obvious that the standard story of psychopathy’s birth
is wrong in a few different ways. Pinel was not the originator of the
idea, nor did Pinel and Rush “discover” or “recognize” the disorder.
It was born as an amalgamation of Christian theology and science of
taxonomy in vogue in the eighteenth century. In fact, the choice of Pi-
nel as the father of psychopathy, and Rush as a minor figure, is telling.
28
Most modern accounts of psychopathy hold Rush’s religiosity out as

an aberration, a blemish soon to be corrected by more serious scientists
like Pinel. In contrast, Pinel, though a devout Roman Catholic himself,
mostly kept religion out of his scientific writings, which made him a
natural fit with psychopathy’s scientific creation myth.
But the creation myth brings up another, more serious problem:
Rush’s explicit Christianity was not an anomaly in an otherwise scien-
tific pursuit, but merely the most obvious manifestation of what psy-
chopathy was really about.
On the Benefits of Being Unclear
In 1964, the sociologists William and Joan McCord wrote about the
difficulty of defining psychopathy. To prove their point they quoted
a psychiatrist who, speaking of the matter, had said, “I know an el-
ephant when I see one, but damned if I can define one!”38 This is a
puzzling statement on a number of levels. Why should the psychiatrist
have trouble defining psychopathy, especially since he was apparently
able to recognize a psychopath on sight? Logically, some criteria must
exist in order for us to recognize anything as that thing. What heuristic
allowed the psychiatrist to recognize a psychopath in the first place,
and why could he or she not verbalize it? Describing his reasons for
developing the PCL, Robert Hare once said “I, like most other research-
ers and clinicians, was very frustrated by the fact that we didn’t have
some sort of standardized measure of this particular construct. People
intuitively knew what they were talking about ... but how do you com-
municate that to somebody else?”39 The gap between intuition and
communication surfaced again in the BBC documentary Are You Good
or Evil?, in which Hare described his first encounter with psychopaths
as follows:
When I was first starting out I had no idea at all of the sorts of people with
whom I was dealing. They were people, and some of them would actu-
ally be very difficult to deal with; you could see that there was something
strange about them, even predatory; I hate to use the term “evil” [emphasis
added] but there is something pretty scary about them.40
What did Hare and other researchers know intuitively about psychopa-
thy, and why would he hate to use the term “evil,” especially since he
also discussed Ted Bundy and Jeffrey Dahmer in the same interview?

Are psychopaths not obviously evil, and if they are not, why should we
be so concerned about them? Confusing things further, the psycholo-
gist and former Harvard professor Martha Stout wrote that psychopa-
thy “would seem [emphasis added] to have a moral aspect.”41 Why such
uncertainty? What obstacles prevent Stout from determining whether
or not psychopathy is about morality?
Perhaps psychopathy is so conceptually complex a disorder that no
one can really say what it is about. This argument is easy to dismiss by
simply looking at some of the diagnostic features of psychopathy in the
Hare Psychopathy Checklist-Revised, which we have done in appendix
A. Our analysis in appendix A shows that the logic of psychopathy, at
least in the PCL-R formulation, largely derives from mainstream Judeo-
Christian thought, with each item representing, unambiguously, vari-
ous aspects of moral failure. But what would prevent social scientists
from seeing the obvious connection between morality and psychopa-
thy? The answer may have to do with maintaining an implicit sepa-
ration between science and morality. The standard medical-taxonomy
history of psychopathy is predicated on moral neutrality, as psychop-
athy is difficult to conceive of as being simultaneously about moral-
ity and a legitimate object of science. In order to qualify as a genuine
mental disorder, psychopathy must exist at all times and in all cultures;
otherwise it becomes a mere social construct. This puts the social sci-

entist in a difficult situation. If we are to think of psychopathy as a
problem worth funding and reading about, it has to be pitched so as to
generate a certain level of moral outrage. Yet, the cause of that moral
outrage – psychopathy – cannot itself be about morality, for if it were,
it would not count as a scientific concept. Better then to address the
concept of evil indirectly and hypothetically, to be tackled, if at all, by
others.
Whether this prevarication is calculated or not, it effectively increases
psychopathy’s appeal to a larger audience. It associates psychopathy
with morality, yet with plausible deniability built into the equation. The
marketing of popular psychopathy literature is both subtle and obvi-
ous. For example, cover illustrations for books on psychopathy are rife
with Christian imagery; the two most common images are snakes and
human eyes. In the Christian canon, the snake is an identifier of Satan
and of evil in general, and is also responsible for the fall of man as told
in Genesis. According to Classical and Christian accounts, eyes are the
window or mirror of the soul. Even exceptions prove the rule: the cover
of the 2005 book The Psychopath: Emotion and the Brain by James Blair,
30
Derek Mitchell, and Karina Blair features neither eyes nor snakes, but
a Rubens painting titled Cain Slaying Abel. In other words, judging by
their cover, books on psychopathy are about evil and about the soul, or
at least that is what the book publishers wish to communicate.
Written accounts of psychopathy also reference evil. Consider the
following sample of quotes from mainstream psychopathy literature:
“Mendacious psychopaths who cheat and betray, relying on their charm
and acting skill to ‘con’ and exploit others, may be said ... to inhabit the
realm of evil”; “Indeed, it is hard to resist the impression that the true
psychopath is a personification of the demonic”; “Psychopathy ... can

be argued to overlap with cruelty, sefishness, or even ‘evil’”; “Many of
you will find an uneasy resemblance between the individuals [psycho-
paths] in these examples and people who have made you think you
were living in hell”; “The heart of darkness of the psychopath is well
known in both the world literature and real life”; and “We cannot es-
cape the possibility that at some time in the future, a particularly viru-
lent psychopath may become evil incarnate and leave all of humankind
for dead.”42
The truly remarkable thing about these quotes is not their obvious
moral overtone, but how gingerly and provisionally they approach mo-
rality. Psychopaths “may be said” to be evil, “it is hard to resist the im-
pression” that they are evil, psychopathy “can be argued” to be about
evil, there is “an uneasy resemblance” to evil, and so on. What is left
unsaid is that if psychopathy is “sort of” about evil, what criterion of
morality is being used here? Is it mere coincidence that diagnostic fea-
tures of psychopathy in essence articulate Judeo-Christian theology? Or
does psychopathy reflect some natural source of morality, and Judeo-
Christian theology simply happens to tap into that source? The likelier
answer is more prosaic: instead of putting forth an involved analytical
argument (which in this case would be an argument from natural law),
in choosing diagnostic features, researchers simply – knowingly or un-
knowingly – follow the moral convention of their time and place, just
as Rush and Pinel did. In other words, social scientists are human and
are thus just as thoroughly embedded in the moral language and emo-
tion of their time and place as the rest of society. This is why Hervey
Cleckley thought it illustrative to include in The Mask of Sanity a clinical
vignette of an “intelligent and in some respects distinguished young
man,” who despite the local influence of the Ku Klux Klan, picked up
“four negro men,” and showed “no compunction about taking from the
field these unwashed laborers” for oral sex.43 Elsewhere in the book, he
12
Part two is about empirical case-making. Chapter 7 describes the

rhetorical techniques researchers have used to bolster psychopathy’s
status as a bona fide mental disorder. Chapter 8 concerns modern neu-
robiological research on psychopathy. This chapter will show that the
medical model of psychopathy is based not on hard data but on a series
of conceptual confusions about how to interpret neuroimaging data.
In chapter 9 we give concluding thoughts on how groupthink, dogma,
and wishful thinking have led to the modern conception of the psycho-
path. Finally, appendices A and B deal with issues central to psychopa-
thy research, but both involve technical details which, if included in
the chapters, would interfere with the flow of the main argument. Ap-
pendix A concerns the relationship between a currently popular defini-
tion of psychopathy and morality. Here we show that the diagnostic
features for psychopathy are not about pure, naturally occurring per-
sonality style – the subject of objective science – but about deviations
from Judeo-Christian morality. Appendix B concerns psychometric re-
search on psychopathy. Here we concentrate on two lines of research:
factor analytic studies and the calculation of heritability coefficients.
Our arguments are that (a) linear factor analytic results have not – nor
can they even in principle – prove the existence of an entity called psy-
chopathy and (b) despite frequent arguments to the contrary, heritabil-
ity coefficients do not measure the relative contributions of genes and
environment to the development of psychopathy. Appendix B shows
that, logically, heritability coefficients of psychopathy are unrelated to
the question of causality.
Our critique of psychopathy comes with a few caveats. These are as

follows:
1. We do not deny the existence of psychopaths or the suffering they

cause, nor do we deny that it is worthwhile to study destructive people
and to find ways to minimize their effects on the world. But saying that
psychopaths – or whatever we choose to call them – exist does not mean
that their existence is due to a biological abnormality; describing a set
of traits and behaviours, and finding people who fit them is as com-
mon as it is ontologically inconsequential (hard-line communists, say,
or Internet trolls exist and have effects on the world, but their existence
is not reducible to neurobiology). What we criticize in this book are sci-
entific claims made about psychopaths, most importantly that they are
a biologically unique subspecies of humanity. We are not, however, op-
posed to biological explanations of crime, deviance, and personality in
principle, nor do we prefer any other form of explanation. Our critique
2 The First Golden Age:
Degeneration
Despite its intuitive appeal, not everyone was convinced by the crime-
as-mental-illness idea in the nineteenth century. Even those who did
generally side with Rush and Pinel could not agree on such basic things
as what to call the disorder. It and its sufferers were named, among
countless other things, moral insanity, moral imbecility, moral idiocy,
moral lunacy, moral defectives, constitutional defectives, defective de-
linquents, constitutional immorality, and impulsive homicidal mania.
This terminological disagreement reflected more than simple aesthetic
preferences; different writers understood the condition and its sup-
posed causes differently. In 1888, the German psychiatrist Julius Lud-
wig August Koch named the condition “psychopathic inferiority,” thus
introducing the word “psychopath.” Yet, even though the name stuck
– mostly – the idea it connoted was hardly common sense. Psychiatrists
and legal experts did not agree on whether the moral faculty could act
separately from the intellectual faculties, and whether crime could even
in principle have a physiological cause. Some claimed to have located
the moral faculty in the brain, but others thought the very search was
metaphysical fancy. In 1873, John Ordronaux, a professor of medical
jurisprudence at Columbia University, made the point by challenging
Pinel’s celebrated scientific objectivity. He wrote,
The idea that moral insanity is the offspring of a kind-hearted physician

(Pinel) who, living amid the terrors of the French Revolution and wit-
nessing the undertow of blood which accompanied this age of reason,
supposed he had received a new revelation to man’s mental nature as
separated from his moral responsibility. He thought that this national ef-
florescence of immorality proved the possibility of an entire loss of man’s
The First Golden Age: Degeneration 33

moral nature and responsibility, while still enjoying an undimmed intel-
lect. In the same breath he certified that it exhibited no mental obscuration.
It is no wonder that he, whose life was one of exceptional quiet and purity,
should have charitably explained depravity in his words as disease.1
At least three things stood in the way of a popular psychopathy mas-

ter narrative in the first half of the nineteenth century. First, without
precise measurement tools, it was difficult to empirically prove con-
stitutional theories. This essentially meant that biological theories of
psychopathy were nothing more than unproven hypotheses. Second,
while the idea of the inborn moral faculty was culturally and theologi-
cally appealing, the exact causes proposed to unhinge the faculty (diet,
environment, disease, etc.) were too vague and numerous to inspire a
coherent cultural crime script. Third, crime itself lacked a master narra-
tive. Realistic crime journalism and fiction had not yet developed to a
point where they could influence public opinion about crime and devi-
ance. But all this began to change in the second half of the nineteenth
century. Developments in biological measurement, evolutionary theo-
ry, and print media caused biological criminology to coalesce around a
single idea with immense popular appeal: the born criminal.
The Nineteenth Century
Most historians see the nineteenth century, particularly in Central Eu-

rope and North America, as an age of progress. The period saw innova-
tions in areas such as transportation (especially the railway), medicine
(for example, vaccinations), power (electricity in homes, and the inter-
nal combustion engine), communications (the telephone and the tele-
graph), and finance (in the form of the joint stock investment bank).
The very idea of progress itself became increasingly popular. Progress
in the manufacture of goods, the economy, political freedom, equality,
and state sovereignty did not seem merely desirable, but historically
necessary. Theorists like August Comte, Friedrich Hegel, Karl Marx,
and Herbert Spencer tried to show that all history was a continuous,
gradual ascent towards a given end. An 1875 dictionary entry defined
progress in this way: “Humanity is perfectible and it moves incessantly
from less good to better, from ignorance to science, from barbarism to
civilization ... the idea that humanity becomes day by day better and
happier is particularly dear to our century. Faith in the law of progress
is the true faith of our century.”2 The idea of progress was at once social,
34
political, and scientific. For many writers, Darwin’s The Origin of Spe-
cies gave the scientific foundation for understanding social and political
progress. As biological organisms evolve from simple to complex life
forms, so must societies evolve. Of course, at the pinnacle of this social
evolution stood modern capitalist democracies.
The rapid industrial, political, and economic progress, however,
came with an increasing concern over social ills such as crime, insan-
ity, vagrancy, and prostitution, all of which seemed to be on the rise.
Also, upper- and middle-class citizens began to express concern over
the “dangerous classes” who had been empowered by the mid-century
democratic movements throughout Europe, and whose fertility rates
seemed to outpace those of the upper classes. The greatest fear of the
professional classes was the vaguely defined “crowds” or “masses” in
which the dangerous classes most naturally expressed themselves. In
his best-selling 1895 book The Crowd, French social psychologist Gus-
tave le Bon described crowd behaviour as “far more under the influ-
ence of the spinal cord than the brain.” In the crowd, according to le
Bon, “a man descends several rungs in the ladder of civilization.”3
The masses seemed unmanageable in part because they were in-
creasingly heterogeneous. Brought together by rapid industrialization
and urbanization, ethnically, culturally, religiously, and linguistically
diverse groups found themselves in the densely inhabited cities of Cen-
tral Europe. In the U.S., the situation was no less urgent. In the horror
writer H.P. Lovecraft’s words, New York had become “a scrofulous bas-
tard city” and its immigrant communities “a degenerate gelatinous fer-
mentation.”4 Social unrest and anonymity, the twin existential threats
to the upper and middle classes’ sense of identity, seemed to undo the
industrial, economic, and democratic gains of the nineteenth century.
Yet, wars between nation states were on the decline, and most national
economies were improving. Fears of economic or military collapse were
slowly replaced by fears of internal and local conflict and uncertainty.
One of the most obvious symptoms of these developments was a
growing interest in all things criminal. This was fuelled by an increas-
ing emphasis on journalistic realism that began in the 1830s. Accounts
of social injustice and working-class hardship had been appearing fre-
quently in local papers for some time, but it was not until the emer-
gence of truly free presses in the last quarter of the nineteenth century
that these stories became widely available.5 Victorians were treated
to broadsides and pamphlets that described recent crimes, especially
murders, in dramatic detail. True crime memoirs, detective fiction,

theatrical crime melodramas, murder tourism, autopsies and funerals
of criminals, and crime-scene photography became popular pastimes.
Jack the Ripper’s 1888 Whitechapel murders were an international
sensation.
As W. Scott Poole argues in his 2011 book Monsters in America: Our
Historical Obsession with the Hideous and the Haunting, Darwin’s work
had given rise to a set of deeply philosophical questions about the hu-
man body. These included the nature, causes, and the prevention of
monstrous deviations from the natural order. These monstrosities in-
cluded everything from birth defects to apparently unclassifiable ani-
mal hybrids. Darwin himself was fascinated with nature’s monsters
and wrote about them extensively in his private notebooks. He did so,
however, with modern detachment from moral evaluation. Darwin’s
interest in species transmutation was strictly scientific, and he consid-
ered the genesis of monstrous animals to follow certain natural laws.
The objects of Darwin-inspired bodily horror were not only of scien-
tific interest, but were also displayed and exploited in travelling freak
shows that had become circus and carnival staples in the nineteenth
century. The most famous of these were travelling shows by the man
who called himself “The Prince of Humbug”: P.T. Barnum. Among Bar-
num’s most popular displays was the What Is It? exhibit, which dis-
played “non-descripts,” liminal creatures like William Henry Johnson
– marketed as “Zip the Pinhead” – an African-American man who may
have suffered from microcephaly. Barnum claimed to have captured
Johnson in Africa, and employed evolutionary theory to sell him as a
missing link between the human and the monkey – a scientifically sig-
nificant monster, in other words. As the philosopher Stephen T. Asma
has argued, shows like this functioned on a number of psychological
levels. They allowed audiences to confirm and project their racial and
political ideologies, to feed their scientific curiosity, and to feel grateful
for their own, always comparatively elevated, stations in life.6
Professional classes were not above any of this. It was physicians
who performed the public autopsies on criminals, phrenologists who
competed for the criminals’ skulls, anthropologists who observed and
dissected nature’s non-descripts, and social scientists who sounded the
warnings about the dangerous classes. But it was in particular evolu-
tionary scientists and criminal anthropologists who set the tone for the
nineteenth-century discussion on the causes and cures of social unrest,
and the apparent paradox of social progress and regress. Their unifying
theory was degeneration.
Introduction 15

According to our database research, about 24 per cent of psychopathy
research makes some reference to neurobiology, whereas only about
16 per cent of APD research does.14 Perhaps because of the biological
theory’s role in psychopathy discourse, psychopathy also appears dis-
proportionately in discussions of law and criminal and moral responsi-
bility. There are in fact more journal articles, books, and book articles on
psychopathy and law than there are on APD and law, even though the
overall number of citations for antisocial personality disorder is more
than twice the number of psychopathy citations.15
This leaves us with sociopathy, which is often treated synonymously

with psychopathy. The term sociopathy has several connotations, in-
cluding a mid-twentieth century idea that psychopathy has a sociologi-
cal cause. Some writers have also defined sociopaths as those patients
who may behaviourally resemble psychopaths, but who confusingly,
and unlike psychopaths, have a sense of morality. Finally, some re-
searchers only use sociopathy in the context of “acquired sociopathy,” a
condition in which brain injury has given rise to antisocial behaviour.16
Because of this conceptual looseness, sociopathy does not appear fre-
quently in modern research literature, and it is also the reason we do
not concentrate on it in this book.
The definition of psychopathy is, however, not entirely settled either.

There are several measures of psychopathy, and debate over the exact
diagnostic criteria is ongoing.17 Nonetheless, the Hare Psychopathy
Checklist-Revised (PCL-R), developed by Robert Hare, has become the
prominent tool in psychopathy research and in the assessment of psy-
chopathy in the criminal justice system, and many of the other tests are
validated against it. It has been called “the gold standard,” “state of the
art,” “the measure of choice,” and “standard of practice instrument”18
for the measurement of psychopathy, and more research has been done
on the PCL-R than on any other test. Research into the use of psychop-
athy diagnoses in the criminal justice system also mostly concerns the
PCL-R. Popular discourse tends to associate the measurement of psy-
chopathy with the PCL-R as well. We reference the PCL-R more than
any other test in this book for these reasons. However, even though
the modern psychopathy concept is largely indebted to the PCL-R,
this book is essentially not about the PCL-R, but about the broader
concept of psychopathy, of which any test is only the most obvious
example.
4. For the sake of fluency, we refer to both clinical and experimental

psychologists as “psychologists,” whether they are officially registered
as psychologists or not.

Second Generation: Tendency to apoplexy and severe neuroses;
alcoholism.
Third Generation: Mental derangements; suicide; intellectual incapacity.
Fourth Generation: Hereditary imbecility; deformities; arrested devel-
opment. With this last generation the race comes to an end by
sterility.9
Degeneration theory made criminology into a popular and legitimate

branch of social science. From the Enlightenment until the late nine-
teenth century, the prevailing Classical School criminological theory
considered crime to be a result of the criminal’s rational calculation. In
1876 Lombroso published his L’Uomo Delinquente (The criminal man),
in which he challenged the notion of universal criminal free will and ra-
tionality. Lombroso argued that roughly one third of all offenders were
of a “born-criminal type”: atavistic, biologically determined life forms
whose mental and physiological characteristics resembled those of chil-
dren, apes, and primitive people. Lombroso describes his discovery of
the type in a famous paragraph:
This was not merely an idea, but a revelation. At the sight of that skull, I
seemed to see all of a sudden, lighted up as a vast plain under a flaming
sky, the problem of the nature of the criminal – an atavistic being who
reproduces in his person the ferocious instincts of primitive humanity
and the inferior animals. Thus were explained anatomically the enormous
jaws, high cheek bones, prominent superciliary arches, solitary lines in the
palms, extreme size of the orbits, handle-shaped ears found in criminals,
savages and apes, insensibility to pain, extremely acute sight, tattooing,
excessive idleness, love of orgies, and the irresponsible craving of evil for
its own sake, the desire not only to extinguish life in the victim, but to
mutilate the corpse, tear its flesh and drink its blood.10
Lombroso could identify the born criminal type by certain physical,

psychological, and moral signs. These included abnormalities in the
head, the brain, the face, the limbs, as well as in high pain tolerance,
and slangy, archaic language. Aberrations in the moral sense, as indi-
cated by lack of remorse, treachery, vanity, and impulsiveness, were
also unique to the born criminal. The ordinary criminal and the born
criminal type’s overt behaviour could be identical, but the various
signs would set the two types apart.
What made Lombroso’s ideas appealing to both professional and lay
38
audiences was the fact that the theory seemed to unfold in the way a
proper science should. First, it was rooted in legitimate scientific theo-
ries and fields of study, most importantly natural selection (though in
fact Darwin believed that traits harmful to an organism would not be se-
lected, making degeneration logically incompatible with evolutionary
theory), and anthropology. Many European cities built anthropological
museums in the second half of the nineteenth century, and it became
fashionable to consider human cultures in evolutionary terms. Darwin
himself tied human sex differences to cultural evolution. He wrote in
The Descent of Man that traits like intuition, perception, and imitation
are stronger in women than in men, but that “some, at least, of these
faculties are characteristic of the lower races, and therefore of a past and
lower state of civilization.”11 Lombroso’s attempt to fit individuals into
this scheme was therefore not a radical departure from accepted ideas.
Second, Lombroso generated vast amounts of data. He took physi-
cal measures of soldiers, asylum inmates, prison inmates, youth in and
out of reformatories, women, and dead bodies. He studied, among
other things, physiognomy, craniometry, tattoos, pain sensitivity, sight,
strength, blushing, armpit temperature, urine, drawings, and hand-
writing. At the 1885 International Congress of Criminal Anthropology
he displayed
seventy skulls of Italian criminals, thirty skulls of epileptics, and the entire
skeleton of a thief ... plaster molds of two criminals’ heads, three hundred
photos of epileptics, another three hundred photos of German criminals,
twenty-four life-size drawings of criminals, and samples of criminal hand-
writing and those of preserved skin with tattoos.12
Lombroso also made use of the latest scientific instruments, such as the
algometer for measuring general sensitivity, the auricular goniometer
for facial angles, the Zwaardemaker olfactometer for smell, the Noth-
nagel thermesthesiometer for thermal sensitivity, and the Eulenberg
baristesiometer for pressure discrimination.13 These measurements
were also a natural extension of work already underway in Europe.
Some have estimated that as many as 20 million people – mostly school
children and military recruits – were subjected to anthropological mea-
surements at the end of the nineteenth century.14
One of the most attractive aspects of Lombroso’s theory for the gen-
eral audience was that it was at once serious science and common sense.
Repulsion toward the born criminal physique was, according to Lom-

broso, instinctual. Common people, including children, could describe
such bodies in poems and drawings, and recognize criminals on sight.
Lombroso tried to prove this empirically. As his daughter recalls, Lom-
broso “once placed before forty children twenty portraits of thieves and
twenty representing great men, and 80 per cent recognized in the first
the portraits of bad and deceitful people.”15
The more Lombroso’s theory expanded, the more it took hold in the
public imagination. As Lombroso’s thought matured, the more obvious
it became to him that born criminals were not simply people who com-
mited crimes; they were types of individuals with certain dispositions
and biological markers, and the exact behavioural outcome of their ata-
vism could be affected by circumstances. This meant that degeneration
could afflict non-criminals as well. “He may not be a legal criminal,”
Lombroso once remarked, “but he is a criminal anthropologically.”16
In his 1888 book, The Man of Genius, Lombroso went so far as to argue
that degeneration was more common in geniuses than in the insane.
His degenerate-geniuses included Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, Alexander
the Great, Erasmus, Spinoza, Mozart, Beethoven, Rembrandt, Balzac,
Schopenhauer, Dostoyevsky, and even Charles Darwin himself. Other
degenerationists agreed, observing that degeneration could afflict not
only the career criminal, but scientists, lawyers, administrators, math-
ematicians, and artists alike.
Degeneration was popular well into the early decades of twentieth
century, though its heyday was the late nineteenth century. Accounts
appeared in medical and evolutionary literature as well as in popular
fiction, newspaper articles, and political treatises. Robert Louis Steven-
son’s novel The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1886), Oscar Wil-
de’s The Picture of Dorian Gray (1890), and H.G. Wells’s The Island of Dr.
Moreau (1896) all dealt with the horrible possibility of human physical
and mental descent. Some aspects of degeneracy were explicitly racist.
The German physician-anthropologist Johann Friedrich Blumenbach
believed that Adam and Eve had been Caucasian, and that other races
were the result of degeneration. Demographic and international power
shifts were also a common target, specifics depending on the coun-
try. Degeneracy was blamed for military decline in France and for the
rising number of poor in England. Germans feared that the influx of
Jews would result in degeneration and racial impurity. The social critic
Max Nordau attacked modernist art – everything from overly aes-
thetic English literature to Impressionist painting – as symptomatic of
degeneration.
40
Despite its ubiquity, the acceptance of degeneration theory as seri-

ous science began to decline at the end of the nineteenth century. In
its attempt to explain everything, it had become too ambitious, vague,
and easy to critique. By 1884, Lombroso himself had noted the drift.
Even though he still held on to his own general theory of born criminal-
ity – and indeed added new types of criminals and causes of criminal-
ity throughout his career – Lombroso now wrote, “In an era in which
the goal of science is careful analysis, the concept of degeneration has
become too broad, being used to explain pathologies from cretinism
to genius, from deaf-mutism to cancer.”17 Moreover, the theory’s key
assumption – the different physical and psychological makeup of de-
generates and non-degenerates – was never systematically studied in
the nineteenth century. When the British criminologist Charles Goring
published his study The English Convict: A Statistical Study in 1913, the
results were disappointing: the criminal’s constitution was not signif-
icantly different from anybody else’s. The ultimate end of degenera-
tionism, however, did not come until after the Second World War. A
number of prominent fascists throughout Europe had raised degenera-
tionist fears of social, moral, physical, and racial decline. Hans Frank,
a Third Reich minister of justice and the Governor General of occupied
Poland – later to be executed for his role in the Holocaust – told an audi-
ence in 1938,
National Socialism regards degeneracy as an immensely important source

of criminal activity ... in an individual, degeneracy signifies exclusion
from the normal “genus” of the decent nation. This state of being degener-
ate or egenerate, this different or alien quality, tends to be rooted in mis-
cegenation between a decent representative of his race and an individual
of inferior racial stock. To us National Socialists, criminal biology, or the
theory of congenital criminality, connotes a link between racial decadence
and criminal manifestations.18
The Reich’s justification of the genocide of Jews, Slavs, and other un-
wanted elements on the basis of degeneracy made it henceforth impos-
sible to entertain the theory with good conscience.
In sum, many variations of degeneracy were put forth in the late
nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The majority of them, how-
ever, shared basic tenets, which are as follows:
1. Different types of disorder and deviance are interconnected.

2. These connections are caused by a biological defect.
42
until, in the period after the Second World War, the link was all but
sublimated. But the association did not disappear; within a generation
it simply mutated into an unacknowledged debt. When psychopathy
emerged as a major diagnostic category later in the century, it began,
seamlessly and quietly, to borrow ideas from degeneration theory. Here
are the five basic tenets of degeneracy again, and their correspondence
to modern thought on psychopathy:
1. Different types of disorder and deviance are interconnected. Degenera-

tion theory argued that psychological, physical, moral, and social
ills exist as a network of logically interconnected ills. The same idea
is reflected in the diagnostic criteria for both psychopathy and psy-
chopathic comorbidity. First, psychopathy contains a wide variety of
moral and social deviations, many of which were also symptoms
of degeneration. The general symptom categories include psycho-
logical problems (such as “need for stimulation/proneness to bore-
dom,” “poor behavior controls,” and “impulsivity”), criminality
(“juvenile delinquency,” “criminal versatility,” and “revocation of
conditional release”), and implicit and explicit moral transgressions
(essentially all twenty PCL-R items; see appendix A).
Second, psychopathy researchers have, in the tradition of stand-
ard clinical research, conducted comorbidity studies. Although sev-
eral technical definitions of comorbidity exist, the gist of the notion
is the coexistence of two or more disorders in a given individual.
Comorbidity studies have attempted to link not only mental and
physical disorders with psychopathy, but a variety of other social
and moral problems as well. These studies have managed to cap-
ture the bulk of degeneracy symptoms with surprising accuracy.
Here is a list of conditions and behaviours that have been studied
as potentially comorbid with psychopathy: schizophrenia, soma-
tization disorder, mood disorders, suicide attempts and suicide,
alcoholism, narcotic addiction, paedophilia, pornography, job trou-
bles, negligence towards children, illegal activities, marital relation-
ships and promiscuity, physical violence, vagrancy, lying, the use
of aliases, traffic offences, pimping, tattooing, bodybuilding, body
piercing, and steroid use.23 A 2009 study even found that students
with psychopathic traits were more likely than non-psychopathic
students to own a vicious dog.24
Furthermore, recall that Lombroso’s born criminals showed
abnormal language and high pain tolerance. Two standard causal

theories of psychopathy involve abnormal language processing and
deficient fear conditioning to painful stimuli.
2. These connections are caused by a biological defect. Most contemporary

researchers believe that psychopathy is caused by an interaction
between biological and environmental factors. Also, comorbidity
studies of psychopathy typically make the assumption that symp-
tom overlaps are not necessarily random or spontaneous but may
be due to some underlying biological defect. On this, one researcher
writes,
Comorbidity can have several causes ... Two disorders can be comorbid
simply by chance, since they occur completely independently of each
other. They can have a common core liability that takes on different expres-
sions [emphasis added]. They can both be a part of a spectrum of related
disorders. One disorder can predispose a person to or make the person
vulnerable to the other, and one disorder can be a complication of the
other. For psychopathy, all these causes of comorbidity are found.25
3. This biological defect is heritable. A number of recent studies have

examined the heritability of psychopathy – see appendix B. Most
genetic theories implicitly suggest a direct causality (psychopathic
parent passes on a risk gene or genes), though some researchers
make the case for indirect heritability. In terms strikingly similar
to Morel’s generational theory of degeneration, one modern re-
searcher writes about antisocial personality disorder, a close cousin
to psychopathy:
Most genetic and developmental research seems to support a devel-

opmental process model, starting with APD [antisocial personality
disorder] or hyperaggression in the biological parents, and leading to
hyperaggression, oppositional defiant disorder, CD [conduct disorder],
adult APD, and eventually substance misuse in the offspring.26
4. Individuals afflicted with degeneration are evolutionary throwbacks. Of-

ficially, atavism is an example of a dead idea. If it is discussed at
all, it is discussed as an example of junk science, and no rational
researcher would explicitly support it. Yet, some researchers and
clinicians portray psychopaths as either throwbacks to an earlier
stage of human development (whether childlike or primitive) or as
In March 1996, the journal Criminal Justice and Behavior published an

article titled “Psychopathy: A Clinical Construct Whose Time Has
Come.” The paper, written by Robert Hare, a prominent psychopathy
researcher and the author of a widely used psychopathy test, discussed
the evolution and the importance of psychopathy as a scientific con-
cept. Some critics had suggested that psychopathy was an imaginary
disorder. Hare countered that volumes of data proved otherwise, and
that his critics were simply “uncomfortable about psychiatric labels.”
Hare called psychopathy a “formal clinical disorder,” and surmised
that its causes would soon be discovered. He pointed out that the diag-
nostic test he had developed, the Psychopathy Checklist-Revised (PCL-
R), was state of the art, and that it would almost certainly become an
essential tool in the criminal justice system.
Hare was demonstrably right about one thing – psychopathy’s time
had come. By the early twenty-first century, psychopathy had become
an international industry. At the time of this writing, of the more than
5,100 books and articles on psychopathy published since the mid-
nineteenth century, almost 75 per cent have been published since 1990.
When considered together, psychopathy and its close relative antisocial
personality disorder have generated over 15,000 research publications
to date.1 Grants for psychopathy research have also steadily increased.
For instance, between 2000 and 2010, the U.S. National Institutes of
Health increased its funding for psychopathy-relevant research by 67
per cent, and the number of references to psychopathy in funded re-
search between 1990 and 2010 increased by almost 600 per cent.2 Be-
tween 1998 and 2008, the Canadian Social Sciences and Humanities
Research Council increased its psychopathy research funding by a fac-

gram can be even more explicit about this. The Argosy University
psychologist Alisa Robinson writes on her blog that “in some ways,
these individual’s [psychopaths’] brains are more like that of a rep-
tile than a human.”32
In the degenerationist ethos, the degenerate was above all a
strange creature. The same holds for psychopaths. It is not unusual
to read comments like these in mainstream psychopathy literature:
“True psychopaths, with their consistently antisocial behavior,
present the average observer with a phenomenon so spectacu-
larly alien that it seems almost incredible that such people exist”;
“The true psychopath is lost to humanity”; “To say that there is
something unusual about people like him [a psychopath] is an un-
derstatement”; and “In time, after developing inner controls, the
normal baby acquires ‘human nature.’ Why do a few children (the
psychopaths) never make this transition into ‘humanness’?”33
5. The degenerate may be identified by physical and psychological signs, which

are often subtle. Both the degenerate and the psychopath are seen as
types, whose distinguishing characteristics may be difficult to detect
without the use of certain specialized techniques, such as Lombro-
so’s physical examinations and various tests for psychopathy.
Also, just as degeneration could afflict anyone from Charles Dar-
win to the prostitute and the murderer, we now have “white-collar,”
“corporate,” or “subclinical” psychopaths, who according to Robert
Hare can be “lawyers, doctors, psychiatrists, academics, mercenar-
ies, police officers, cult leaders, military personnel, businesspeople,
writers, artists, entertainers, and so forth.”34 (For a more thorough
discussion of white-collar psychopaths, see chapter 3.)
Psychopathy researchers also have updated Lombroso’s list of fa-

mous degenerates. The proposed lists of psychopaths in mainstream
psychopathy literature include Alcibiades, Winston Churchill, Lyndon
Johnson, Oskar Schindler, Sir Richard Burton, Chuck Yeager, Julius
Caesar, Lawrence of Arabia, Rousseau, Shelley, Nietzsche, Flaubert,
Carlyle, Schiller, and Rimbaud.35
The Adjustable Degeneracy Portfolio
In the late nineteenth century, degenerates could be whoever you want-

ed them to be. This was the theory’s strength and its eventual weak-
46
ness. The theory was remarkably popular for a long time despite lack
of empirical proof, and within a few decades of its death it came to life
again as psychopathy. Theories like degeneration endure because they
not only provide simple rules for understanding and identifying the
deviant but also are flexible. As the Canadian philosopher Ian Hacking
argues, degeneracy accommodated whatever deviance was considered
problematic in a given time and place. In the late 1880s, for example,
vagrancy became a pressing social issue, and was immediately incor-
porated into the theory. Degeneracy is built on a few hard-core assump-
tions around which a number of auxiliary hypotheses – terms used by
another philosopher of science, Imre Lakatos – about symptoms, pa-
tient groups, and so on can be added. Also, any non-performing aux-
iliary hypothesis can be deleted without damage to the theory’s hard
core. Hacking calls this the “adjustable degeneracy portfolio.”36 Each
generation updates this portfolio. Whether or not degeneration theory
or one of its offshoots – such as the biological theory of psychopathy –
is correct, the portfolio above all functions as an index of generational
fears. The portfolio expanded to include serial murder in the 1980s and
corporate mismanagement in the early 2000s. The sub-prime mortgage
crisis of 2008 was an unexpected lifeline. These types of events mo-
bilize and legitimize the theory’s hard core. When cultural concerns
arise, scientists are employed, the best are celebrated, and papers and
books are published. But scientists wedded to the theory see it in re-
verse: the degenerate is a human type who precedes culture, and who
simply materializes to prey in culture-specific ways. These scientists
would posit that new social arrangements of their time – democracy,
cars, free markets, TV, the Internet, etc. – have created a degenerate-
friendly world. To make sense of and to combat degeneracy, such sci-
entists are compelled to update their theory and tools. In the process,
books and articles get written, honours are bestowed, and the media
and law enforcement get involved. When conditions are right, the de-
generacy program enters a golden age.
3 The Second Golden Age:
Psychopathy
In 2007, a thief began to raid homes in southeastern Ontario, taking

women’s and girls’ lingerie, home movies, family photos, and sex toys.
Sometimes he left taunting notes. One read: “Go ahead and call the
police. I want to show the judge your really big dildos.” Another said
“Merci.” Then in September 2009, in the small municipality of Tweed,
a masked man entered a woman’s house and bound, raped, and pho-
tographed her. Soon it happened to another Tweed woman. In Novem-
ber of the same year, thirty-eight-year-old Marie-France Comeau was
raped and murdered in her home in the nearby town of Brighton. Two
months later, twenty-seven-year-old Jessica Lloyd disappeared from
her home in Belleville. Ontario Provincial Police had few leads and
little reason to connect the burglaries, the rapes, the murder, and the
disappearance. Finally, a clue emerged in front of the missing woman’s
house – a distinctive tire track. The police set up a road block, and be-
gan to look for matching tire treads. The search soon produced a match
to a Nissan Pathfinder driven by forty-six-year-old Russell Williams.
Williams was placed under surveillance and called in for questioning
a few days later. In addition to the tire tracks, the police had matched
Williams’s boots to prints found at the crime scene. Confronted with
the evidence, Williams confessed and led the investigators to Jessica
Lloyd’s body. Williams had raped and strangled her, dumping her in a
forest a short drive from his home. He also confessed to the burglaries
and rapes, and to Marie-France Comeau’s murder. Police found a care-
fully indexed inventory of each offence at Williams’s home, including
video of the murders, police reports, hundreds of pieces of stolen linge-
rie, and pictures of Williams posing in them.
48
Canadian and international media reported Williams’s arrest, confes-

sion, and subsequent life sentence. What made the case particularly un-
usual was the offender himself; Williams was a decorated commander
of the Canadian Forces base in Trenton, Ontario, a man who had regu-
larly piloted planes for high-ranking politicians and even the Queen of
England. He was well-connected, competent, and married. None of the
usual explanations for violent crime – revenge, poverty, abuse, alien-
ation, or mental illness – seemed to apply. Williams’s childhood and
youth were unremarkable. His parents had divorced when he was sev-
en, and in adulthood he had few intimate relationships with women.
That was all.1
A number of mental health and law enforcement experts comment-
ed on the case for the media. Since the experts tended to know little
beyond news coverage about Williams, most of the commentary was
either repetitive or obvious. The New York Times interviewed three ex-
perts, one of whom explained that “it almost has the quality of a break-
down”; the second noted that Williams maintained a responsible public
image and the third that his public image was exactly what “[made] it
so startling.”2 All emphasized just how strange the case was; “This man
is from another planet,” said one clinical psychologist.3 Most interview-
ees commented on Williams’s rapid escalation from theft to murder,
and described him as a sexual sadist with a paraphilia. Some thought
that his behaviour was probably caused by an interaction between his
genes and his environment, while others speculated about a triggering
event in his life. The former director of the Royal Canadian Mounted
Police’s criminal profiling unit said that “we all have stressors that put
pressure on us and we all have different ways of relieving it. Some peo-
ple go for a run, others have a glass of wine, and sexual predators go
out and rape.”4 A year after the case broke, Dateline NBC brought in a
retired FBI profiler to discuss the case. He had this to say on the first
murder: “What was clear that somebody had raped her, and somebody
had killed her, and somebody had spent time in the home ... which
suggests reconnaissance activity.” On Williams’s state of mind during
the offences he concluded that it was “probably quite exhilarating for
him.” Williams’s habit of stealing and posing in lingerie meant that “in
essence, Russell Williams was creating his own pornography collection
in which he was the star.”5
But some experts proposed a more definitive explanation. Since Wil-
liams had no discernible motive, they reasoned, he must be a psycho-
path or a sociopath. This seemed a simple and elegant solution to the
22
Although the essence of Rush’s and Pinel’s idea survived, the names
they had chosen for the condition did not, and they were soon replaced
by the more eloquent “moral insanity,” a term coined by the British
physician James Prichard in 1833. A number of other names were pro-
posed in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, but finally the scien-
tific community settled on the now ubiquitous, though etymologically
dubious “psychopathy,” which derives from Greek and literally means
“suffering soul.”
Up to the mid-1900s, the term psychopathy carried many different
meanings, only some of which are consistent with the modern use of
the term. In 1941, the American psychiatrist Hervey Cleckley published
a now-famous book, The Mask of Sanity, which gave roughly the mod-
ern definition of psychopathy by way of twenty-one characteristics. By
1976, Cleckley had whittled the number down to sixteen. These were:
superficial charm and good intelligence; absence of delusions and oth-
er signs of irrational thinking; absence of nervousness or psychoneu-
rotic manifestations; unreliability; untruthfulness or insincerity; lack of
remorse or shame; inadequately motivated antisocial behaviour; poor
judgment and failure to learn from experience; pathologic egocentric-
ity and incapacity for love; general poverty in major affective relations;
specific loss of insight; unresponsiveness in general interpersonal rela-
tions; fantastic and uninviting behaviour with drink and sometimes
without; suicide rarely carried out; impersonal, trivial, and poorly
integrated sex life; and failure to follow any life plan.22 Cleckley, like
many of his contemporaries, believed that the condition had a bio-
logical cause, though he entertained the possibility of other causes as
well.
In the 1960s, Robert Hare began to study psychopaths in the labora-
tory, and discovered that their physiological responses to stimuli were
different from those of non-psychopaths. For example, he found that
autonomic nervous systems of psychopaths were less responsive to im-
minent threats than those of non-psychopaths’. Hare refined Cleckley’s
criteria, and developed the Psychopathy Checklist, which in 1991 be-
came the now ubiquitous Hare Psychopathy Checklist-Revised, now
in its second edition.23 Hare proposed twenty diagnostic criteria,24 the
original choice of which was informed by Cleckley’s list. The PCL-R
consists of items that fall into a number of higher-order categories or
factors. In one formulation, there are four such factors: interpersonal
(e.g., glibness/superficial charm, grandiose sense of self-worth), affec-
tive (e.g., lack of remorse or guilt, shallow affect), lifestyle (e.g., need for

stimulation/proneness to boredom, lack of realistic long-term goals),
and antisocial (e.g., criminal versatility).25 The PCL-R matches indi-
viduals against these criteria on a three-point severity scale (0,1,or 2),
yielding a score indicating the extent to which a person is a prototypi-
cal psychopath. The diagnostic cut-off score for designating a person a
psychopath is thirty out of a possible forty points.
With agreement on how to measure psychopathy, researchers could
now study potential causes for it. To put it shortly, a great number of
studies went on to support Hare’s initial findings by showing differ-
ences between the neurobiology of psychopaths and non-psychopaths.
As data amassed, the consensus supported the idea that psychopathy
had a neurological cause, possibly present at birth.
This story follows the basic outlines of medical taxonomy: Someone
makes an initial observation about manifest symptoms, and then others
refine them. Eventually the symptoms are linked together by underly-
ing functional and/or structural pathology and, hopefully, an ultimate
cause or causes. The result is disease classification. It is legitimate to say
that a disease so classified exists and afflicts, that it has a course and
a prognosis, and that its sufferers are patients, all terms consistently
applied to psychopathy throughout its history. The chief point is that
if psychopathy is a legitimate medical disorder, then it exists indepen-
dently of culture and morality. The fact that psychopaths are immoral
– this is no secret to anyone – is incidental: the physiological cause has
affected some basic function of the brain, such as emotion, and crime
and general immorality are simply by-products of this dysfunction. The
history of such a disease is a series of discoveries, refinements, and re-
alizations. So, when a papyrus dating back to about 2500 BC described
“bulging masses on [the] breast ... that ... have no granulations, contain
no fluid ... [and which are] hard and cool to the touch” we know it was
an early account of breast cancer.26 Although the exact causes of breast
cancer remain unknown, there is no doubt that someone with breast
cancer today has the same thing as someone else did four and a half
millennia ago. The only real difference is that we now know more about
it than we did before. By the late twentieth century, this was roughly
how psychopathy was understood as well.
The medical taxonomic account of psychopathy is compelling, among
other things, for its simplicity. It takes a social problem and cleanses it
of the messy residue – morality, law, local customs, historical moment,
and so on – that made the problem social in the first place. The medical
history of psychopathy can set aside deeper questions about essence
The Second Golden Age: Psychopathy 51

verse that neatly and scientifically set evil apart from good. Ambiguity
or absence of a diagnosis, on the other hand, dredged up the question
no one was prepared to answer: how does a basically decent individ-
ual turn evil? Yet, logically, the debate over Williams’s psychopathy
diagnosis was meaningless. Psychopathy is a descriptive term, which
means that it no more explained Williams’s behaviour than kindness
explains good deeds. Crime is a feature of psychopathy, not its effect.
In other words, psychopathy – if Williams indeed was a psychopath
– would simply be a summary statement about what he was like, and
what he was like was already a matter of public record; the diagnosis
would add nothing beyond the record.
But the debate was meaningful in another way. It showed that psy-
chopathy had metastasized into something far more philosophically
complex and culturally loaded than a psychiatric diagnosis. For one,
it had become a positive feedback loop, with each go at a diagnosis
tacitly reinforcing the label’s significance. The more the diagnosis came
up, even as something Williams was not, the more central it became to
the case. More subtly, it showed that psychopathy was wrapped up in
a number of implicit assumptions.
First, despite being a psychiatric diagnosis, psychopathy was also
unmistakeably about morality. Williams’s diagnosis gave us licence to
treat him simultaneously as an object of science and of moral condem-
nation, as both mad and bad. A different diagnosis – say, schizophrenia
– would almost automatically exclude the latter, thus making the mur-
ders less a popular narrative than a medical one.
Second, psychopathy invoked determinism. Williams’s actions, the
assumption seemed to be, were the result of his psychopathy and not
of something else, such as free will (one psychologist interviewed on
TV did in fact bring up the possibility of free will, but to no avail – the
interviewer quickly dropped that line of questioning).14 One retired FBI
profiler summarized the point like this: “Williams escalated and contin-
ued his crimes because it was who he was and he couldn’t do anything
about it.”15
Third, the idea that psychopathy, to whatever degree, was Williams’s
central identity and the rest of his life a mere illusion was so powerful
as to become practically an article of faith. The legendary FBI sex crime
profiler Roy Hazelwood reinforced the notion by summarily detach-
ing Williams’s true self from his pre–crime spree behaviour, declaring
that “Williams was always a sexual sadist, he just hadn’t arrived there
behaviorally yet.”16 That is, Williams was always fundamentally a sadist,
52
and his behaviour – the typical source of diagnostic information – was

simply a confirmation of this deeper psychological truth. Another re-
tired FBI agent, who also had never met Williams, knew that Williams’s
sexual fantasies “without question began at an early age.”17 The profil-
ers’ claim to absolute knowledge about Williams was predicated on the
total separation of mental illness – or at least this mental illness – from
mental health. Williams was above all mentally ill, and what he did was
either a direct cause of his illness or a desperate – and to the trained
eye, a transparent – attempt to hide it. The line of reasoning here went
something like this: Williams was knowable because (a) he was men-
tally ill and (b) he was nothing beyond his mental illness. Williams was
an object, and science had caught up to him.
The remarkable thing about the early public commentary on Wil-
liams was just how completely it derived from the natural sciences (at
least when not being tautological). The pre-arrest Williams, a man pre-
sumably with an interior life, intentions, depth and complexity, abrupt-
ly became a psychologically flat mechanism, a known entity whom
experts could swiftly recognize and understand. His diagnosis now
substituted for motives. But the new frame of reference came with a
built-in problem: since psychopathy was supposedly a stable trait that
could, at least according to some, be identified early in life, Williams’s
entire life would now have to be re-evaluated. Predictably, the new
frame could not account for everything. If Williams’s pre-crime self –
his friendships, career, reputation, marriage, and so on – made sense as
a series of choices and aspirations, his new psychopathic self no longer
quite did; it accounted for what was ruthless, odious, and wrong about
him, not for what was private and benign. But the opposite also held
true: the crimes hardly made sense as rational means–ends thinking.
How could a sane person choose to cause so much suffering and risk so
much simply to further sexual ends?
The question of whether Williams’s behaviour was the function of
causes or reasons and motives embodies a central problem in psychol-
ogy’s self-definition. Since becoming an academic discipline in the
nineteenth century, psychology has struggled to decide whether it is
a natural or a social science, a science whose subject – the person – is
either reducible to mechanistic natural laws or not. If it is so reduc-
ible, human behaviour can at least in principle be explained; if not, the
goal of psychology is to understand. One logical dividing line between
the two approaches is free will. If humans have free will, the role of
social science is to look for the reasons for how we exercise free will.

Reasons tend to be heavily contextual; they flow from beliefs, cultural
norms, dispositions, experiences, interpretations, and so on, and cannot
be reduced to any single event. Causes on the other hand are univer-
sal, and therefore operate in the same way in different contexts. The
German historian Wilhelm Dilthey called the two, equally valid, forms
of science Naturwissenschaft (“natural science”) and Geisteswissenschaft
(“spiritual” or “human science”), and prescribed what they should be
modelled after: Naturwissenschaft after physics, and Geisteswissenschaft
after history.
The common experience of free will, combined with the humanis-
tic impulse to endow human life with dignity, clashed early on with
the Darwinian idea that humans existed in an evolutionary continuum
(the evolutionary argument was bolstered by mid- to late-nineteenth-
century advances in functional brain localization). The conflict was ex-
plicit in the work of founding psychologists like Wilhelm Wundt and
William James. Wundt was a pioneering physiological psychologist
and the founder of the first psychological laboratory. Yet, he was also
adamant that one could not understand a human being without also
understanding his or her culture. He put it like this:
When we have taken account of every one of the external reasons that
go to determine action, we still find the will undetermined. We must
therefore term these external conditions not causes, but motives [emphasis
original], of volition. And between a cause and a motive there is a very
great difference. A cause necessarily produces its effect: not so a motive ...
(S)ince all the immediate causes of voluntary action proceed from person-
ality, we must look for the origin of volition in the inmost nature of per-
sonality – in character [emphasis original]. Character is the sole immediate
cause [emphasis original] of voluntary actions.18
For Wundt, “character” meant, in Daniel Robinson’s words, “the

complex creation of biological organization, cultural influences, heredi-
tary predispositions, and that matrix of beliefs, opinions, attitudes, and
feelings that give a person a unique identity.”19 Since to understand the
entirety of any individual required understanding his or her charac-
ter, psychology had to involve analysis of culture as well. To this end,
Wundt divided his work into two major projects: experimental labora-
tory psychology on the one hand and study of cultural products – myth,
religion, art, language, and customs – on the other, the latter of which
he called Völkerpsychologie. Whatever Wundt’s first project discovered
54
about the human mind would by necessity be incomplete without help

from the second.
The twentieth century failed to produce a unifying psychological
theory, and so the debate over psychology’s status continued. Behav-
iourists and cognitive psychologists fought for ground with humanist
and psychoanalysts throughout much of the century (psychoanalysis’
influence on psychiatry in the decades following the Second World
War was profound, especially in America). By the late twentieth cen-
tury, however, the natural science frame had won out. And so, by the
time it came to understanding Russell Williams, the commentators al-
most reflexively reached for a natural science explanation. Confident
that Williams’s behaviour followed some as-yet-discovered natural
laws of psychopathology, the experts had few apparent qualms about
dissecting him without laying eyes on him. Williams was ill, and his
behaviour was the function of his illness, and anyone with the same ill-
ness would behave similarly. Understanding his character, in Wundt’s
terms, would be superfluous.
The resulting story was best summarized in a Globe and Mail article
about Williams soon after his confession. “The brains of psychopaths,”
the article explained,
seem to be stunted in the machinery involved in humanity’s ability to

feel empathy and kindness, even love. In adult psychopaths, the almond-
shaped structure called the amygdala that generates emotions like fear
and is also involved in learning, is significantly smaller. They appear
to have weaknesses in the inner recesses of the brain that make up the
paralimbic system, which involves emotions and self-control ... There also
appear to be differences in the corpus callosum, which joins the right and
left hemispheres of the brain and has been linked to their impressive abil-
ity to lie and cheat and manipulate people.20
In other words, Williams’s central identity was psychopathy, he was pre-

determined to kill, and he could put on a false front because he probably
had a defective paralimbic system and corpus callosum. What is more,
as one researcher explained to the reporters, the defect was genetic and
possibly curable. This was not speculation, the article not-so subtly im-
plied, but an emerging consensus, a set of well-documented empirical
facts which were just now coming to light and which would eventually
explain the likes of Russell Williams.
26
appeared in 1735, and medical classifications had followed closely

behind. One of the most influential medical taxonomists of the mid-
eighteenth century was the Scottish physician William Cullen. Cullen
believed that most diseases originated in a disordered nervous system,
but could be triggered by external influences, such as climate, food, and
humidity. Thus, according to Cullen, specific combinations of environ-
ment and nervous system function and structure would bring about
specific diseases. As a young medical student in Edinburgh, Rush stud-
ied under Cullen, and on his return to America put his education to
use by embarking on a program of disease classification that accorded
with Cullen’s framework, with the focus on mental disorders. In short,
Rush’s idea of an inborn moral faculty coupled with the idea that it
could also be shaped by external forces was thus strictly in line with
Cullen’s general theory.
Rush was not the first to link morality with biology. In the decade
prior to his lecture, a Protestant minister from Zürich, Johann Caspar
Lavater, had developed a system of classifying character based on facial
features. Although the idea that a person’s face revealed his or her char-
acter – Lavater called the idea “physiognomy” – was ancient, Lavater
was the first to systematize it in a scientific way. He provided detailed
drawings of faces, indicating key features and their correspondence to
character. He paid special attention to eyes, nose, teeth, and chin. For
instance, of a male with a bony, flat face and an underbite he wrote,
“With a face like this, no one will ever achieve a bold and hazardous
enterprise: he will have domestic virtues, he will faithfully discharge
the duties of his station; but he is incapable of attaining any portion of
the Warrior’s valour, or the Poet’s genius.”34
The theoretical basis for Lavater’s classification came from Genesis.
Lavater knew that humans were created in the image of God. How-
ever, he postulated that since our expulsion from Eden only the faithful
could maintain their deity-inspired good looks, while the rest would be
both ugly and wicked, the relationship between their “corporeal and
moral deformity”35 thus predetermined at birth.
Lavater’s work was continued in the late eighteenth and early nine-
teenth centuries by two German physicians, Franz Joseph Gall and Jo-
hann Gaspar Spurzheim. Gall and Spurzheim accepted Lavater’s basic
idea that the body was a physical signifier of the mind, but instead of
looking at the face, Gall and Spurzheim looked to the brain. They be-
lieved that the brain was divided into twenty-seven different organs,
each with a specific function. The strength of each organ could be de-
56
The Consensus
The Globe and Mail article on the psychopathic brain was certainly
right about one thing: the biological theory of psychopathy had be-
come immensely popular in the last ten years. Spurred by develop-
ments in neuroimaging technology in the 1990s, social scientists began
to amass an impressive body of data on psychopathic brains. More
often than not, the data showed structural and functional differences
between psychopaths’ and non-psychopaths’ brains, a finding that re-
searchers tended to interpret as proof that the disorder was biological.
Although physiological studies of psychopathy were well under way
by 1970, they did not become the dominant paradigm until the 1990s,
and their ascendancy accelerated rapidly in the 2000s. More than 75
per cent of the published studies, books, or book chapters on psychop-
athy and neurobiology published to date have appeared since 2000.22
In 2011–12, the National Institutes of Health funded thirty psychopa-
thy-related research projects, of which twenty-four studied neurobio-
logical correlates and only two social or environmental correlates. In
2013–14, the institute funded fourteen studies on the neurobiology of
psychopathy, while only two studies looked at both the environment
and neurobiology.23
Media began to take serious interest in the biological studies in the
early 2000s, and a few leading researchers repeatedly appeared in print,
radio, and documentary films to reiterate the biological story of psy-
chopathy. Headlines like “What If a Brain Scan Could Catch a Murder-
er?,” “Brains of Psychopaths are Different, British Researchers Find,”
and “Brain Imbalance ‘Causes’ Psychopaths,”24 became commonplace
in mainstream media, and social scientists made public statements that
grew bolder with time. James Blair, the chief of the Unit on Affective
Cognitive Neuroscience at the National Institute of Mental Health, told
an interviewer in 2002 that “it’s definitely a biologically based condi-
tion in the sense that the amygdala is functioning poorly.”25 University
textbooks on psychology and criminology followed suit, dedicating
increasing space to biological studies at the cost of those examining en-
vironmental causes. Many introductory psychology texts, for example,
now discuss only biological theories of psychopathy.
A few popular science writers and public intellectuals took up the
cause in the early 2000s, cementing the biological theory’s status as
common sense in the popular imagination. Jonah Lehrer, the now-dis-
graced journalist and best-selling author of books on neuroscience and

psychology, blogged in 2010 at length about psychopaths’ neurologi-
cal defects, stating it as fact that “the emotional parts of their [psycho-
paths’] brains are damaged, and this is what makes them dangerous.”26
The Princeton University bioethicist Peter Singer lent his support to
the idea of testing all children for biological markers of psychopathy,
granted that the tests were sufficiently accurate. In 2011, the Richard
Dawkins Foundation promoted a BBC article on the neurobiology of
psychopaths on its website. 27 Unsurprisingly, lay debates on psychopa-
thy and its causes (on the Internet, mostly) tended to feature a simple
dichotomy between those who believed in the biological theory and
those who feared and rejected its potential implications for criminal
responsibility. The neuroscience, it seemed, was largely settled in the
public mind; what remained were simply questions about its relevance
to criminal justice.
Psychopathy and Law
Fears about psychopathy’s implications for moral and legal responsi-

bility were, in fact, realistic. For much of its history, born criminality
has been intimately linked with jurisprudence, a self-evident connec-
tion since the central point of born criminality was the power of biol-
ogy to override free will. And so, within half a century of Benjamin
Rush’s physical theory of anomia and micronomia, the medical and
legal communities began to seriously debate the legal status of the
morally insane. If Rush was correct, and the moral faculties operated
independently of reason, a rational criminal could in principle be found
legally insane. Although this flew in the face of legal common sense,
Rush’s theory nonetheless created the possibility of a revolution in ju-
risprudence. One of the most ardent proponents of such a revolution
was Isaac Ray, the author of the influential medico-legal text A Treatise
on the Medical Jurisprudence of Insanity.28 “That the insane mind,” Ray
wrote in 1838, “on many subjects is perfectly rational and displays the
exercise of a sound and well-balanced mind is one of those facts now
so well established that to question it would only betray the height
of ignorance and presumption.”29 Ray argued that the morally insane
should be treated by the courts as mentally ill. Ray lashed out at judges
who did not agree with him on this point, writing in 1835 that “for
our courts we hope better things than that blind submission to author-
ity, which prefers the dicta of fallible men to the established truths of
science.”30
58
But others, like John Gray, a prominent asylum superintendent, dis-

agreed. According to Gray, the mind could not be rational and insane
at the same time, and so moral insanity could not excuse a criminal
act. Reason, according to Gray, was the sole criterion of moral and
legal responsibility. “Moral insanity,” he scoffed in an address to the
Medical Society of the State of New York in 1868, “is the last remnant
of the metaphysical school.”31 In an effort to clarify the issue, the As-
sociation of Medical Superintendents of American Institutions for the
Insane brought it up for discussion in an 1863 meeting. The results
were anything but conclusive. Of the thirteen superintendents who ex-
pressed an opinion, five supported Ray’s position and eight sided with
Gray.
In the ensuing century and a half, the question of moral insanity/
psychopathy and criminal responsibility remained unresolved. The is-
sue was disputed in courtrooms and medico-legal treatises, with expert
support for both sides. By and large, common law rejected psychopa-
thy as a defence. The original Ray-Gray-inspired debates began to lose
momentum by the end of the nineteenth century, only to be revived a
century later with the Gray side now increasingly on the defensive.
Beginning in the early 1990s, psychopathy began to appear in sev-
eral court cases. One study showed that between 1991 and 2004, the
use of psychopathy – as measured by the PCL-R – as evidence in U.S.
courts rose steadily from zero to thirty cases per year, with a total of
eighty-seven uses for the period. A follow-up study for the years 2005
to 2011 recorded a total of 348 PCL-R uses, with similarly steady yearly
increases.32 (These numbers include only written opinions, and so most
likely reflect only a fraction of actual cases. The Simon Fraser Universi-
ty psychologist Stephen Hart estimates that between 60,000 and 80,000
PCL-R forensic evaluations are carried out every year.)33 The studies
also show that the test has been used for an increasingly wide range
of purposes. The most common uses were for determining whether an
offender was a sexually violent predator, providing insight at parole
hearings, assessing his or her mental state during the offense, and de-
termining the appropriate sentence, including capital punishment.34
A Canadian study showed similar increases in juvenile cases between
1970 and 2008.35 In sentencing decisions, however, courts did not apply
the diagnosis consistently, some judges taking psychopathy as a miti-
gating and others as an aggravating circumstance.
A team of University of Utah scholars investigated how psychopa-
thy, and in particular the biological theory of psychopathy, might affect

judges’ sentencing decisions. The researchers gave 181 U.S. state trial
court judges a hypothetical case of a violent robbery by a psychopathic
offender.36 The study measured, among other things, the judges’ sen-
tencing decisions based on whether or not they received expert testi-
mony about the biomechanism of psychopathy. Although overall the
judges rated the defendant’s psychopathy as an aggravating factor,
the biological explanation significantly reduced hypothetical sentence
length (from 13.93 years without the explanation to 12.83 with it). The
study also revealed that the judges’ decisions in the case bore at least
some relation to real-life sentencing decisions. One judge justified the
decision to consider the biological information as a mitigating circum-
stance thus: “The evidence that psychopaths do not have the necessary
neural connections to feel empathy is significant. It makes possible an
argument that psychopaths are, in a sense, morally ‘disabled’ just as
other people are physically disabled. I have received and considered such
evidence in past trials [emphasis added].”37 In other words, at least some
judges had joined the emerging consensus in seeing the biological evi-
dence as an explanation of criminal behaviour.
That psychopathy explains crime is, of course, the prerequisite logic
for raising the question of criminal responsibility. Since several neu-
roimaging studies had suggested that psychopathy was a bona fide
mental disorder, the natural question became whether psychopathic of-
fenders were fully in control of their actions, and whether they should
therefore be held legally culpable. While the original Ray–Gray types of
arguments tended to be coloured by religion and moral-legal theories,
the new debates became increasingly science based. Some researchers
began to argue that psychopaths were impaired in a number of legally
and morally relevant ways, including in their ability to learn from pun-
ishment, resist impulses, and experience the level of empathy necessary
for moral behaviour. Consequently, the researchers argued, the moral
culpability of psychopaths should be reduced, if not eliminated. A team
of University of Pennsylvania researchers wrote,
Given increasing psychological and neuroscientific evidence that brain re-

gions critical in moral decision-making are impaired in psychopaths, here
we argue that highly psychopathic individuals, with emotional deficits
that impair moral behavior, should not be held criminally responsible for
their antisocial actions. In the absence of appropriate emotional respond-
ing, psychopaths lack motivation to behave morally; their social knowl-
edge is rhetorical and has little influence on behavior.38

Are psychopaths not obviously evil, and if they are not, why should we
be so concerned about them? Confusing things further, the psycholo-
gist and former Harvard professor Martha Stout wrote that psychopa-
thy “would seem [emphasis added] to have a moral aspect.”41 Why such
uncertainty? What obstacles prevent Stout from determining whether
or not psychopathy is about morality?
Perhaps psychopathy is so conceptually complex a disorder that no
one can really say what it is about. This argument is easy to dismiss by
simply looking at some of the diagnostic features of psychopathy in the
Hare Psychopathy Checklist-Revised, which we have done in appendix
A. Our analysis in appendix A shows that the logic of psychopathy, at
least in the PCL-R formulation, largely derives from mainstream Judeo-
Christian thought, with each item representing, unambiguously, vari-
ous aspects of moral failure. But what would prevent social scientists
from seeing the obvious connection between morality and psychopa-
thy? The answer may have to do with maintaining an implicit sepa-
ration between science and morality. The standard medical-taxonomy
history of psychopathy is predicated on moral neutrality, as psychop-
athy is difficult to conceive of as being simultaneously about moral-
ity and a legitimate object of science. In order to qualify as a genuine
mental disorder, psychopathy must exist at all times and in all cultures;
otherwise it becomes a mere social construct. This puts the social sci-

entist in a difficult situation. If we are to think of psychopathy as a
problem worth funding and reading about, it has to be pitched so as to
generate a certain level of moral outrage. Yet, the cause of that moral
outrage – psychopathy – cannot itself be about morality, for if it were,
it would not count as a scientific concept. Better then to address the
concept of evil indirectly and hypothetically, to be tackled, if at all, by
others.
Whether this prevarication is calculated or not, it effectively increases
psychopathy’s appeal to a larger audience. It associates psychopathy
with morality, yet with plausible deniability built into the equation. The
marketing of popular psychopathy literature is both subtle and obvi-
ous. For example, cover illustrations for books on psychopathy are rife
with Christian imagery; the two most common images are snakes and
human eyes. In the Christian canon, the snake is an identifier of Satan
and of evil in general, and is also responsible for the fall of man as told
in Genesis. According to Classical and Christian accounts, eyes are the
window or mirror of the soul. Even exceptions prove the rule: the cover
of the 2005 book The Psychopath: Emotion and the Brain by James Blair,

having natural rights,” he wrote, “would have to be based upon his
dignity or worth as a person. But this is just what he does not have!
Indeed ... he is more profitably pictured – from the moral point of view
– as an animal.”42 Murphy’s volley did not come under much criticism
in the scientific community, and the argument was occasionally cited as
a hypothesis worth considering. It took another two and a half decades
for philosophical arguments to become a legitimate subgenre of psy-
chopathy literature, but when they finally did, the relationship between
scientific research and moral philosophy quickly grew symbiotic. Since
psychopaths were cognitively impaired, a number of ethicists argued,
the law should treat psychopaths as morally impaired as well and ex-
cuse them from moral, or even criminal, responsibility.
Although this conclusion seemed counter-intuitive, for many phi-
losophers it was, upon lengthy jurisprudential and moral-philosophic
reflection, self-evident. It also further legitimized the scientific research,
which after all was more or less predicated on psychopathy being a
serious mental disorder. Now even the philosophers agreed. Cordelia
Fine and Jeanette Kennett at Monash University basically echoed Isaac
Ray when they wrote that “to ignore the substantial evidence that psy-
chopathic offenders are not criminally responsible is itself a dangerous
threat to criminal justice.”43 Oxford philosopher Neil Levy wrote that
psychopaths should not be held responsible for their behaviour be-
cause “for them [psychopaths] it is not easy to grasp core moral norms;
it is, I suspect, impossible [emphasis original].”44 Antony Duff at the Uni-
versity of Sterling knew that psychopaths had a “radical deficiency in
rational capacities,” which meant that they “cannot understand what
it is to love someone, or to be angered by injustice, or to be moved by
compassion.” At best, Duff argued, a psychopath could imitate emo-
tional words and gestures, but never take part in the world of values
and moral emotions, and therefore “cannot but be an outsider.”45 Duff
also concluded that psychopaths should not be held morally or crimi-
nally responsible.
Duff’s categorical separation of psychopaths from the rest of human-
ity, his view of moral insiders and outsiders and of the centrality of mor-
al emotions in separating the two, brought psychopathy back exactly to
where Rush had found it in the first place – in the moral faculty. In an
even more Rushian vein, the bioethicist Grant Gillett, after detailing the
standard correlational data on psychopaths (which, he claimed, proved
“biological and/or learning defects”), observed that psychopaths were
“distanced from true relatedness and the implicit care, openness, re-
62
sponsivity, and vulnerability that is part of the human life-world.” The

psychopath, according to Gillett, “probably lacks the sense of nobler or
greater things that many of us attach to ‘the starry skies above.’”46
The basic formula for the philosophers here was to review modern
experimental47 and neuroimaging data; to interpret it to mean that psy-
chopaths had an insurmountable affective, rational, or volitional defect;
to link that defect with moral theory and/or legal tenets; and to declare
the psychopath free of moral and legal culpability. 48 The conclusion, a
number of philosophers argued, was startling yet ultimately fair, hu-
mane, and enlightened.
One significant dissenter, however, emerged: Robert Hare. Although
Hare clearly believed that psychopathy caused crime – he once wrote
“even those opposed to the very idea of psychopathy cannot ignore
its potent explanatory [emphasis original] and predictive power”49 –, he
continued to argue for psychopaths’ criminal responsibility. “Unlike
psychotic individuals,” he wrote, “psychopaths are rational and aware
of what they are doing and why. Their behavior is the result of choice,
freely exercised.”50 Elsewhere, he continued:
In most jurisdictions, psychopathy is considered to be an aggravating

rather than a mitigating factor in determining criminal responsibility. This
is the way it should be, in my view. However, I’ve been asked whether
research evidence of the sort described above – affective deficit, thought
disorder, brain dysfunction – might lead some to view psychopathy as a
mitigating factor in a criminal case. As one psychiatrist put it, perhaps
psychopathy will become “the kiss of life rather than the kiss of death” in
first-degree murder cases. This would be disturbing, given that psycho-
paths are calculating predators whose behavior must be judged by the
rules of the society in which they live.51
But if it was true, as Hare maintained, that psychopaths suffered

from impairments which in turn caused criminal behaviour, then how
could their behaviour also be the result of free will? If the law did not
account for a bona fide neurological dysfunction, could the law still
be considered fair? Some writers, like the Louisiana State University
law professor Ken Levy, got around this problem by distinguishing be-
tween moral and legal responsibility.52 Psychopaths, he argues, may be
“victims of neurological abnormalities,” but they do understand the
requirements of law, and should thus be held criminally if not morally
responsible. Levy writes,

The reason why just criminal punishment does not require moral re-
sponsibility is because criminal law is a fail-safe, last-ditch option to use
against those who, for whatever reason, are not sufficiently motivated by
morality and respect for the law to comply with the law. And one reason
for insufficient reason may just be inability [emphasis original] to be suf-
ficiently motivated. But even if certain people are unable to be sufficiently
motivated by morality and respect for the law, they are still criminally
responsible, and therefore criminally punishable, for breaking the law as
long as they knew they were breaking the law and that breaking the law
would likely mean getting punished if they were caught.53
Superficially, the both-impaired-and-responsible argument adheres to

Gould’s idea of non-overlapping magisteria: scientists study the causes
of things, while society – guided by moral considerations – decides on
how to view and deal with the social effects of those things. The prob-
lem with this, of course, is that the magisteria had already overlapped
in the selection of psychopathy’s symptoms; the “thing” itself consisted
of little more than a series of moral transgressions (see appendix A).
Despite a growing number of arguments rejecting the moral and le-
gal culpability of pyschopaths, common law continued to see them as
fully responsible. In 1981, the Supreme Court of Canada rejected, in R.
v. Kjeldsen, the idea that a psychopath should be excused from criminal
liability. The court reasoned that, for legal purposes, psychopaths un-
derstand the nature and the quality of their actions, even though they
may not feel remorse or guilt for them. U.S law similarly tended to view
psychopathy as irrelevant to criminal responsibility, either by statute
or case law. The British Mental Health Act 2007 removed any specific
language to psychopathy that had existed in the previous, 1983, act.
The exclusion of psychopathy as a basis of insanity defences in general
rested on the basic assumption that psychopaths were rational and able
to resist impulses, and that punishing them was therefore rational and
just.
Ultimately, though, exactly how courts decided on the admissibility
of psychopathy diagnoses or how individual philosophers decided on
psychopaths’ moral and legal culpability had little impact on the psy-
chopathy research project itself. The sole fact that so many philosophers
uncritically accepted the empirical data was itself enough to legitimize
the medical view of psychopathy. The DSM continued to exclude psy-
chopathy – a major problem for using the diagnosis in court – but this
setback was at least somewhat compensated by philosophers’ approval
64
of the science behind it. (It is fair to wonder what the consequences
might have been, had the same philosophical attention been paid to the
research rather than its implications.) But the effect of the philosophi-
cal debates cut both ways: as the treatises began to appear alongside
mainstream empirical research, academic philosophy grew in social
relevance. It would be increasingly difficult to dismiss philosophy as
merely “academic,” now that it was joined with mainstream natural
science and jurisprudence.
2 The First Golden Age:
Degeneration
Despite its intuitive appeal, not everyone was convinced by the crime-
as-mental-illness idea in the nineteenth century. Even those who did
generally side with Rush and Pinel could not agree on such basic things
as what to call the disorder. It and its sufferers were named, among
countless other things, moral insanity, moral imbecility, moral idiocy,
moral lunacy, moral defectives, constitutional defectives, defective de-
linquents, constitutional immorality, and impulsive homicidal mania.
This terminological disagreement reflected more than simple aesthetic
preferences; different writers understood the condition and its sup-
posed causes differently. In 1888, the German psychiatrist Julius Lud-
wig August Koch named the condition “psychopathic inferiority,” thus
introducing the word “psychopath.” Yet, even though the name stuck
– mostly – the idea it connoted was hardly common sense. Psychiatrists
and legal experts did not agree on whether the moral faculty could act
separately from the intellectual faculties, and whether crime could even
in principle have a physiological cause. Some claimed to have located
the moral faculty in the brain, but others thought the very search was
metaphysical fancy. In 1873, John Ordronaux, a professor of medical
jurisprudence at Columbia University, made the point by challenging
Pinel’s celebrated scientific objectivity. He wrote,
The idea that moral insanity is the offspring of a kind-hearted physician

(Pinel) who, living amid the terrors of the French Revolution and wit-
nessing the undertow of blood which accompanied this age of reason,
supposed he had received a new revelation to man’s mental nature as
separated from his moral responsibility. He thought that this national ef-
florescence of immorality proved the possibility of an entire loss of man’s
66
bination of public fears and political shifts, in a mutually reinforcing

cycle.
Violent Crime
In the U.S. and Canada, violent and property crimes increased dra-
matically from the 1960s to the early 1990s. Sharp increases in youth
violent crime arrests in the mid-1980s and early 1990s in the U.S. led
Princeton professor John Dilulio to famously predict the rise of juvenile
“super-predators”: fearless and ultraselfish youth whose numbers by
2000 would increase by 30,000, resulting in a violent-crime explosion.
Dilulio’s pronouncement was fortified by a rise in high-profile real and
imagined youth crimes such as the Central Park jogger case in 1989
(a case in which five youths were falsely convicted). In the same year,
psychologist Ken Magid and journalist Carole McKelvey published a
book titled High Risk: Children without a Conscience, which essentially
presaged Dilulio’s argument. Magid and McKelvey, however, chose
“psychopath” over “super-predator.” In his 1993 book, Without Con-
science: The Disturbing World of the Psychopaths among Us, Robert Hare
again recited the worrying youth crime statistics, described some recent
high-profile youth crimes, and drew readers’ attention to the fact that
young psychopaths seemed to be untreatable. Hare asked his readers to
“consider the more dramatic examples of psychopathy that have been
increasing in our society in recent years,”1 and concluded his book with
survival tips. However, crime rates, including youth crime rates, began
a long and steady decline in the early 1990s, and Dilulio soon retracted
his super-predator theory.2 But this did not stop one prominent former
FBI criminal profiler from predicting a rebound in crime rates, writing
as late as 1998, “I wonder if the same politicians who are taking bows
for the current decrease will still be around to accept the blame for what
some of us already see coming.”3 He also thought that the Green River
Killer would turn out to be more than one person.
Serial Murder
The 1990s also saw moral panics over workplace violence, online child
sexual predation, and satanic ritual abuse, but none affected psychopa-
thy’s popularity more than the rapidly growing interest in serial mur-
der. As David Schmid argued in his Natural Born Celebrities: Serial Killers
in American Culture, the serial killer cultural phenomenon of the 1980s
The Politics of Psychopathy 67

and beyond was largely due to the FBI’s efforts to boost its flagging
popular image and to attract new funding. To this end, the bureau
took ownership of the serial killer phenomenon in the 1970s when it
established the Behavioral Sciences Unit and began to study incarcer-
ated sexual murderers. It defined serial murder as almost exclusively a
sexual crime (though in fact serial killers have any number of motives
besides sex), as the major 1988 FBI-sponsored study’s title alone, Sexual
Homicide: Patterns and Motives, suggested. The bureau further described
the murderers as highly mobile, and exaggerated the number of their
victims. In 1983, the Justice Department gave a press conference on se-
rial murder, which was widely reported on in the media. The coverage
that followed – some of which included expert commentary on serial
murder – marked the start of serial murder as a cultural phenomenon.
The FBI’s sudden interest in serial murder may have, however, been
empirically justified as well. According to the Radford University’s Se-
rial Killer Database, serial murder in the U.S. was increasing dramati-
cally at around this time, from 39 incidents of a killer’s first murder
occurring in the 1950s compared to 475 in the 1980s.4 The FBI also be-
gan to note an increase in murders committed by strangers with no
apparent motive for the killing. In 1976, for example, 8.5 per cent of all
homicides were committed by strangers; that figure had risen to 17.8
per cent in 1982, reaching 22.5 per cent in 1985.5
Fictional portrayals of serial murder also increased dramatically in
the 1990s. In the rather restrictive calculations of serial killer expert
Eric Hickey, the number of serial killer–themed films per decade in-
creased steadily, from two in the 1920s to twenty-three in the 1980s.
In the 1990s, they topped 150. Using less exclusive criteria, a search of
the Internet Movie Database now yields in excess of 1,000 films featur-
ing serial killers, most of them appearing since 1990.6 Serial killer films
also peaked creatively in the 1990s with films like Jonathan Demme’s
1991 The Silence of the Lambs, which won five Academy Awards; David
Fincher’s 1995 Se7en; and Oliver Stone’s 1994 Natural Born Killers. Bret
Easton Ellis’s book American Psycho, which came out in 1991 – and was
made into a movie starring Christian Bale in 2000 – became a bestseller.
Fictional serial murderers appeared alongside real ones in print and
film. Pioneering 1970s and 1980s FBI criminal profilers Robert Ressler
and John Douglas retired in the 1990s and began writing extremely
popular books about their experiences, including Ressler’s Whoever
Fights Monsters: My Twenty Years Tracking Serial Killers for the FBI (1992),
and Douglas’s Mindhunter: Inside the FBI’s Elite Serial Crime Unit (1995).
68
Both men’s work also made it into a number of documentary films

about criminal profiling and serial murder.
Sometimes the line between fiction and non-fiction blurred. The fic-
tion author Thomas Harris, for instance, consulted with Ressler for his
books Red Dragon and The Silence of the Lambs, and the FBI later collabo-
rated on the film adaptation of the latter. (Ressler, though, objected to
the FBI’s involvement, as he felt that the film misrepresented a num-
ber of things about the bureau.) In the same vein, Nicole Kidman con-
sulted Robert Hare on how to portray a psychopath in the film Malice.
Ressler’s Whoever Fights Monsters featured on its second page a William
Blake painting with a dedication: “For Bob Ressler with best wishes,
Francis Dolarhyde and Thomas Harris” (Dolarhyde is Red Dragon’s
fictional serial killer). John Douglas admitted in Mindhunter that “our
antecedents actually do go back to crime fiction more than crime fact,”7
and cited Edgar Allan Poe, Wilkie Collins, and Arthur Conan Doyle as
particular inspirations.
Psychologists, profilers, academics, and journalists also began to
write serial murder non-fiction. Ann Rule, who in a strange coincidence
worked in her youth alongside Ted Bundy at a telephone helpline, be-
came one of the best known of the group, and once even appeared
before a Senate Subcommittee to testify about serial killers, where she
rather bizarrely claimed that serial murderers travel 200,000 miles a
year in search of victims, which would mean an average of 548 miles
per day. This of course fed into the FBI’s case about serial killers’ ex-
treme mobility. Much of post-1980s true crime literature also cemented
the FBI’s dominion over the phenomenon by representing the agency
in a heroic, semi-mythological light and its profilers as possessing near-
magical powers of observation and deduction. Secrecy surrounding
criminal profiling methods reinforced the mythology. The same my-
thologizing held for print and film fiction, most obviously in The Silence
of the Lambs, but present even in art house takes on FBI agents – witness
for example agent Cooper in David Lynch’s Twin Peaks.
Interest in serial murder fuelled interest in psychopathy. What made
psychopathy central to serial murder in the public imagination was
largely the FBI’s emphasis on lust killers. The link between sexual mur-
der and psychopathy was not new; the sexual psychopath was a recur-
ring theme in U.S. psychiatry, politics, and popular media, emerging
most intensely in the period between about 1935 and 1960. The Stan-
ford historian Estelle B. Freedman describes the rise of the sexual
psychopath in the course of two moral panics over sexual crime, one

running from about 1937 to 1940, the other from 1949 to1955, both in-
spired by a series of particularly gruesome child murders.8 The appar-
ent sexual motivation behind the murders, and ensuing media interest
in the cases led the FBI director, J. Edgar Hoover, to declare “a war
on the sex criminal” in 1937. Hoover argued that “the sex fiend, most
loathsome of all the vast army of crime, has become a sinister threat to
the safety of American childhood and womanhood,”9 and later claimed
that sex crimes were the fastest-growing crime in the country. Although
there was no evidence of increasing sexual crimes at the time, the com-
bined interests of law enforcement, psychiatry (informed largely by the
psychoanalytic school), and the public gave rise to a number of com-
missions, statutes, and institutions dealing with the sexual psychopath.
The sexual psychopath also lent legitimacy to the newly founded dis-
cipline of forensic psychiatry by giving it a population to study, treat,
and testify about in court.
Psychopathy as understood in the 1990s was ideally suited to the
FBI’s notion of the serial murderer as a sexual predator. Northeastern
University criminologists Jack Levin and James Fox put it like this in
their 1985 book Mass Murder: America’s Growing Menace:
Few of them can be said to be driven by delusions or hallucinations;

almost none of them talks to demons or hears strange voices in empty
rooms. Though their crimes may be sickening, they are not sick in either a
medical or a legal sense. Instead, the serial killer is typically a sociopathic
personality who lacks internal control – guilt or conscience – to guide his
own behavior, but has an excessive need to control and dominate others.
He definitely knows right from wrong, definitely realizes he had commit-
ted a sinful act, but simply doesn’t care about his human prey. The socio-
path has never internalized a moral code that prohibits murder. Having
fun is all that counts.10
Independent researchers into serial murder tended to follow in the

FBI’s footsteps and concentrate on understanding sexual homicide. In
2000, the forensic psychologist J. Reid Meloy justified the FBI’s view of
serial murder by his summary of the empirical evidence. “Recent evi-
dence,” he wrote, “strongly suggests that a majority of serial murderers
are sexually motivated” and “virtually all sexual homicide perpetrators
evidence narcissistic and psychopathic personality traits.”11
The psychopath as a lust killer was more than an empirical coinci-
dence. In the 1970s the Behavioral Sciences Unit had begun to infor-

theatrical crime melodramas, murder tourism, autopsies and funerals
of criminals, and crime-scene photography became popular pastimes.
Jack the Ripper’s 1888 Whitechapel murders were an international
sensation.
As W. Scott Poole argues in his 2011 book Monsters in America: Our
Historical Obsession with the Hideous and the Haunting, Darwin’s work
had given rise to a set of deeply philosophical questions about the hu-
man body. These included the nature, causes, and the prevention of
monstrous deviations from the natural order. These monstrosities in-
cluded everything from birth defects to apparently unclassifiable ani-
mal hybrids. Darwin himself was fascinated with nature’s monsters
and wrote about them extensively in his private notebooks. He did so,
however, with modern detachment from moral evaluation. Darwin’s
interest in species transmutation was strictly scientific, and he consid-
ered the genesis of monstrous animals to follow certain natural laws.
The objects of Darwin-inspired bodily horror were not only of scien-
tific interest, but were also displayed and exploited in travelling freak
shows that had become circus and carnival staples in the nineteenth
century. The most famous of these were travelling shows by the man
who called himself “The Prince of Humbug”: P.T. Barnum. Among Bar-
num’s most popular displays was the What Is It? exhibit, which dis-
played “non-descripts,” liminal creatures like William Henry Johnson
– marketed as “Zip the Pinhead” – an African-American man who may
have suffered from microcephaly. Barnum claimed to have captured
Johnson in Africa, and employed evolutionary theory to sell him as a
missing link between the human and the monkey – a scientifically sig-
nificant monster, in other words. As the philosopher Stephen T. Asma
has argued, shows like this functioned on a number of psychological
levels. They allowed audiences to confirm and project their racial and
political ideologies, to feed their scientific curiosity, and to feel grateful
for their own, always comparatively elevated, stations in life.6
Professional classes were not above any of this. It was physicians
who performed the public autopsies on criminals, phrenologists who
competed for the criminals’ skulls, anthropologists who observed and
dissected nature’s non-descripts, and social scientists who sounded the
warnings about the dangerous classes. But it was in particular evolu-
tionary scientists and criminal anthropologists who set the tone for the
nineteenth-century discussion on the causes and cures of social unrest,
and the apparent paradox of social progress and regress. Their unifying
theory was degeneration.

the organized, psychopathic offender was the mystery of reconciling
his person with his persona, the very thing that made Russell Williams
international news. This is how one FBI special agent put it:
For many of us in law enforcement, psychopaths are an enigma. They

walk and talk like us, and sometimes cry during an interview or laugh
with us as though they were our best friends. Their kids appear normal,
and their wives seem to love them. If they are really good actors, they
seem to be as offended by violent crime as we are. It is their appearance of
normalcy that is so unsettling.15
Not surprisingly, the FBI took interest in psychopathy, frequently

consulting with Robert Hare on serial murder and child abductions.
(Hare, according to his bio, has been a research advisory board member
of the FBI Child Abduction and Serial Murder Investigative Resources
Center.) Some FBI agents, like Supervisory Special Agent Mary Ellen
O’Toole and Sharon Smith at the Behavioral Sciences Unit, became ex-
perts in psychopathy, and published academic articles and book chap-
ters on the disorder and its relevance to crime-scene evidence and other
law enforcement concerns. In 2012, the bureau dedicated an entire is-
sue of its Law Enforcement Bulletin to psychopathy with information on
such things as how to interview psychopaths and how to spot psycho-
paths by their language. The issue concluded, predictably, with a call
for more research on the disorder.16
Politics of Crime Science
On Scientific Fashions
Psychopathy’s popularity in the 1990s was caused in part by a resur-

gence in biological theories of crime. Biological theories – which had
regularly been surfacing, but were overshadowed by sociological theo-
ries in the middle of the twentieth century – began to make a comeback
toward the end of the twentieth century. Nicole Rafter outlines two key
reasons for this: an emphasis on biological explanations of human be-
haviour in general, buoyed by the founding of the Human Genome
Project initiated in 1988; and a social movement to reduce all forms of
risks, from health to crime. Rafter notes that, beginning in the 1970s,
social sciences gradually declined in prestige, and funding previously
enjoyed by them began to shift to natural sciences. Within many disci-
72
plines, the trend was the same: the focus of psychology, for example,
shifted from the study of interpersonal relationships to neuropsychol-
ogy and evolutionary psychology. This did not mean, however, that a
single biological theory began to dominate. Rafter writes that the pe-
riod since the mid-1960s
has been one of tremendous activity, with biocriminologists cultivating a

number of fields at once. It has been characterized not by the dominance
of a single theory or even a group of related theories but by a multiplic-
ity of contestants – chemical, cognitive, evolutionary, genetic, hormonal,
neurological, and psychophysiological explanations – all vying for first
place. 17
In this way, psychopathy was an accurate historical weathervane: all of

the theories Rafter lists above have been proposed to explain psychopa-
thy – most of them since the 1970s.
Another way of putting this is that causal theorizing about psychopa-
thy, like moral insanity a hundred years earlier, was inextricably linked
with scientific fashions. The late-eighteenth-century and nineteenth-
century emphasis on biology gave us the biologically based moral
faculty, anomia, micronomia, and moral insanity. The mid-twentieth-
century emphasis on sociology produced environmental explanations
of psychopathy, and a rebranding of the disorder as sociopathy. The late-
twentieth-century emphasis on biology produced biological explana-
tions. More specifically, the rise of functional neuroimaging in the 1990s
resulted in more funding for neuroimaging studies, which led to more
neuroimaging studies (though neuroimaging of violent offenders itself
was not new: pneumoencephalography, a precursor to the CT scan, was
used to study aggressive behaviour in the mid-1970s; and the brain ac-
tivity of psychopaths had been studied with electroencephalography
at least as early as the 1940s), which in turn led to more neurological
theories of psychopathy. Though most scientists believed that psychop-
athy was caused by a combination of brain and environment, few were
interested in actually studying environment when the real action was
in the study of the brain. This was a complete reversal of mid-century
priorities.
The rise of sociobiology in the 1970s and evolutionary psychology
in the late 1980s also quickly led to evolutionary explanations of psy-
chopathy. The Oregon Health Sciences University psychiatrist James
MacMillan and the psychiatrist Lial Kofoed proposed in 1984 that so-

ciopathy was a genetically determined “low-investment reproductive
strategy”18 (essentially, promiscuity), an idea later developed by the St.
John’s University psychologist Linda Mealey, who laid the foundation
for much of evolutionary theorizing to come in her 1995 article “The
Sociobiology of Sociopathy: An Integrated Evolutionary Model.”19
Mealey proposed that primary sociopaths – whom she later called psy-
chopaths – were genetically predisposed cheaters. Cheating, according
to Mealey, was produced by frequency-dependent selection that cre-
ated more than one type of individual in a species, which in this case
were cheaters and non-cheaters. The aims of cheaters were simple evo-
lutionary benefits: mates and resources. In frequency-dependent selec-
tion, low-frequency behavioural strategies would remain in the gene
pool as long as the majority of the population held an opposite strategy.
That is, a minority cheating strategy would remain viable only as long
as the majority were non-cheaters.
Mealey’s paper was widely cited, and the cheater-strategy argument
entered mainstream psychopathy literature. Support for the evolution-
ary theory began to accumulate from a number of sources, the most im-
portant of which were (a) relatively stable rates of psychopathy across
cultures, (b) the fact that the majority of crime was committed by a
small percentage of the population, (c) the moderate to strong heritabil-
ity of some psychopathic traits, and (d) the presence of psychopathic
cheater strategies in other animal species. In addressing the last one, a
university textbook offered the example of “sneaker” salmon. Sneaker
salmon were small, furtive Pacific salmon which, unlike their common
counterparts, mostly stayed in the spawning stream, skulking about,
ready to fertilize the female egg before the dominant salmon could get
to it. “So what do you think,” the authors asked, “are psychopaths the
human equivalent of sneakers in the salmon world?”20 If yes, humans
would be in unfortunate company with not only salmon, but also blue-
gill sunfish, isopods, swordtails, and ruffs.21
The evolutionary theory of crime and psychopathy was a perfect ex-
ample of a popular modern theory: scientifically revolutionary (evolu-
tionary psychology is often, though dubiously, called “the new science
of the mind”); intellectually satisfying; multidisciplinary (genetics, cog-
nitive neurosciences, psychology, etc.); reliant on scientific technology
and data but not limited by them; and endlessly useful in explaining
bad behaviour, even when that behaviour seemed theoretically counter-
intuitive. The science writer John Whitfield tried to apply psychopathy
and the cheater strategy to the British expense-claim scandal and to in-
74
vestment bankers.22 Two McMaster University psychologists found an

evolutionary strategy for spousal conflict and for killing one’s child.23
Another set of Canadian researchers found that psychopathy actually
decreased the likelihood of killing one’s kin. According to the authors,
this too was an evolutionary strategy, called “nepotistic inhibition.”24
Appearances aside, the evolutionary theory of psychopathy was
never a threat to the prevailing idea that psychopathy was a mental
disorder. Although one theory had it that psychopathy meant dysfunc-
tion and the other that it meant perfectly intact function, both theories
made the same ontological point, and that point was what eventually
mattered: psychopathy denoted a specific kind of person. Psychopathy
was an “it,” and that “it” was a problem that had to be identified and
neutralized. Moreover, the evolutionary theory reinforced “its” biologi-
cal cause by simply adding a distal cause (frequency-dependent selec-
tion) to the already supposed proximal ones (brain function and genes).
Culture of Fear
The shift from social to natural sciences was not, as many biological
researchers now implicitly or explicitly assert, simply a matter of tech-
nological innovation and new data. Neuroimaging technology did im-
prove dramatically in the last decades of the twentieth century, but the
push to subject criminals to biological study, and the idea that the brain
should be the obvious place to look for answers, was as much a result
of political assumptions as it was of scientific tools.
The biological theory’s return as a leading crime explanation in the
late twentieth century was a natural extension of a general shift in
crime politics. Mid-twentieth-century understanding that crime was a
social ill, curable with therapy and right social engineering, was born
of general postwar optimism in the state’s ability to care for its citizens.
Throughout the West, the years between 1945 and the mid-1970s were
marked by social mobility, economic equality, and job security. Western
governments stabilized after the horrors of the Second World War; trust
in governments’ ability to mediate in conflicts and to fairly represent
individuals in politics was high, as was faith in the ability of people to
improve their social status by hard work. Each of these, in Randolph
Roth’s exhaustive study of U.S. homicide, contributed to relatively low
postwar homicide rates.25 All this began to change in the mid-1970s.
Income inequality rose, particularly in the U.S. and the U.K., and so
did the general distrust of fellow citizenry.26 Social mobility decreased,
38
audiences was the fact that the theory seemed to unfold in the way a
proper science should. First, it was rooted in legitimate scientific theo-
ries and fields of study, most importantly natural selection (though in
fact Darwin believed that traits harmful to an organism would not be se-
lected, making degeneration logically incompatible with evolutionary
theory), and anthropology. Many European cities built anthropological
museums in the second half of the nineteenth century, and it became
fashionable to consider human cultures in evolutionary terms. Darwin
himself tied human sex differences to cultural evolution. He wrote in
The Descent of Man that traits like intuition, perception, and imitation
are stronger in women than in men, but that “some, at least, of these
faculties are characteristic of the lower races, and therefore of a past and
lower state of civilization.”11 Lombroso’s attempt to fit individuals into
this scheme was therefore not a radical departure from accepted ideas.
Second, Lombroso generated vast amounts of data. He took physi-
cal measures of soldiers, asylum inmates, prison inmates, youth in and
out of reformatories, women, and dead bodies. He studied, among
other things, physiognomy, craniometry, tattoos, pain sensitivity, sight,
strength, blushing, armpit temperature, urine, drawings, and hand-
writing. At the 1885 International Congress of Criminal Anthropology
he displayed
seventy skulls of Italian criminals, thirty skulls of epileptics, and the entire
skeleton of a thief ... plaster molds of two criminals’ heads, three hundred
photos of epileptics, another three hundred photos of German criminals,
twenty-four life-size drawings of criminals, and samples of criminal hand-
writing and those of preserved skin with tattoos.12
Lombroso also made use of the latest scientific instruments, such as the
algometer for measuring general sensitivity, the auricular goniometer
for facial angles, the Zwaardemaker olfactometer for smell, the Noth-
nagel thermesthesiometer for thermal sensitivity, and the Eulenberg
baristesiometer for pressure discrimination.13 These measurements
were also a natural extension of work already underway in Europe.
Some have estimated that as many as 20 million people – mostly school
children and military recruits – were subjected to anthropological mea-
surements at the end of the nineteenth century.14
One of the most attractive aspects of Lombroso’s theory for the gen-
eral audience was that it was at once serious science and common sense.
Repulsion toward the born criminal physique was, according to Lom-
76
Curve. Both books essentially made the same point: a person’s social
standing – as a cognitive elite or non-elite, as a person with or without
morals – was a matter of individual characteristics, caused either by
genes or by an interaction between genes and individual environments.
There was another similarity between The Bell Curve’s argument and
the idea of psychopathy. Psychopathy, with its diverse and morally
loaded diagnostic features, was a perfect example of the late-twentieth-
century preoccupation with the flexible and inclusive idea of antisocial
behaviour. Psychopathy was not about crime per se, but about person-
ality; it was a disorder with presumed specific neurobiological causes,
but with multiple manifestations, from loose sexual morals to crime.
The same combination of hard-core causal assumptions and looseness
about symptomatology pervaded Herrnstein and Murray’s argument.
Here are their six points about intelligence, which according to The Bell
Curve “are by now beyond significant technical dispute.” Substitute
“psychopathy” for “intelligence,” and “diagnostic test for psychopa-
thy” for “IQ tests,” and observe the similarities:
1. There is such a thing as a general factor of cognitive ability on

which human beings differ.
2. All standardized tests of academic aptitude or achievement meas-
ure this general factor to some degree, but IQ tests expressly de-
signed for that purpose measure it most accurately.
3. IQ scores match, to a first degree, whatever it is that people mean
when they use the word intelligent or smart in ordinary language.
4. IQ scores are stable, although not perfectly so, over much of a per-
son’s life.
5. Properly administered IQ tests are not demonstrably biased against
social, economic, ethnic, or racial groups.
6. Cognitive ability is substantially heritable, apparently no less than
40 percent and no more than 80 percent.31
Around these hard-core assumptions about ontology, measurement,

and causality, Herrnstein and Murray built a looser set of intelligence’s
effects. These included crime, poverty, educational success, unemploy-
ment, welfare dependency, illegitimacy, child neglect, civility and citi-
zenship, and even idleness and injury. In comparison, here are a few
typical psychopathic behaviours: crime, sexual and marital promiscuity,
child neglect and failure to pay child support, truancy, financial depen-
dency, and poor work performance.32 That is, both are good summaries

of degeneracy’s effects from a century earlier, minus masturbation and
tattooing. They are also good examples of Hacking’s adjustable degen-
eracy portfolio, which we will soon discuss.
Although The Bell Curve was strikingly similar to any mainstream
text on psychopathy in its style of argument and its attempt to individ-
ualize social problems, there was one significant point of divergence:
its reception. The Bell Curve drew heavy criticism for its racism, statisti-
cal inaccuracy, misunderstanding of genetics, and its right-wing poli-
tics. Critiques of modern biological theories of psychopathy, however,
were muted. Some writers objected to psychopathy’s moral overtones
and its labelling effect, while others debated subtypes of psychopathy,
the exact list of symptoms, or the number of factor analytic solutions
it properly yielded. But as long as the diagnosis was carefully applied,
not many objected to the basic idea that immoral behaviour was prob-
ably caused by a biological disorder.
Another reason for the relatively uncritical reception of psychopathy,
compared to that of The Bell Curve, was that Herrnstein and Murray’s
book was nakedly political; its conservatism was evident not only in its
main conclusions, but also in Murray’s libertarian politics and his affili-
ation with the American Enterprise Institute. Research on psychopathy,
on the other hand, seemed politically neutral. Psychopathy was about
mental health and community safety (the PCL-R is marketed under the
“public safety” product category by its publisher. The Psychopathic
Personality Inventory-Revised, according to its publisher, is “useful in
a variety of settings, particularly correctional facilities, forensic prac-
tice, substance abuse treatment centers, and research”).33 Evidence of
political sentiment in psychopathy research was scant: a few throw-
away critiques about sentencing leniency and about the mistaken belief
in the inherent goodness of all people.34
But the politics of psychopathy – like its Judeo-Christian morality –
were simply subtler than Herrnstein and Murray’s. Where Herrnstein
and Murray saw low-SEC social pathology, psychopathy researchers
saw individual pathology: welfare mooching became “parasitic life-
style,” illegitimacy became “many short-term marital relationships,”
idleness and unemployment became “lack of realistic, long-term
goals,” and so on. Crime, of course, remained crime. But most of all, it
was no coincidence that both psychopathy and The Bell Curve argument
became popular phenomena just as the politics of crime and poverty
had reached their conservative peak, when social problems had trans-
formed into individual problems, and when “welfare state” had be-
78
come a dirty word. It was also no coincidence that psychopathy and The
Bell Curve argument were ultimately based on natural rather than social
science. What caused the controversy over The Bell Curve, then, was its
political transparency. As we will see next, psychopathy, much better at
hiding its crime politics, began to spread into mainstream culture in a
way Herrnstein and Murray could only hope for.
5 The Adjustable Psychopathy Portfolio
The Corporate Psychopath
MSNBC aired a program on workplace psychopaths in 2006. The pro-

gram was inspired by Robert Hare and Paul Babiak’s recently pub-
lished book, Snakes in Suits: When Psychopaths Go to Work:
Dr. Eric Hollander: “Psychopaths can be found in all settings in life.

They can be found in the workplace, they can be found even in your so-
cial interactions …”
Narrator: “And Eric Hollander says the place you work could be an at-
tractive target for a psychopath.”
Hollander: “Well, psychopaths can blend in very well in the work place
setting. They may have a strong drive for success, for power, for financial
gain …”
Interviewer: “Some people would say though, Paul [Babiak], that these
people [psychopaths] eventually, because they don’t have empathy, will
not be successful. Is that true?”
Babiak: “It’s true if they work in an old-style bureaucracy. But today’s busi-
ness moves so quickly that there’s constant change, which attracts them
in the first place. And secondly, because the people around them are con-
stantly changing, anybody who figures out who they are ends up being
laid off or moved out or the psychopath themselves gets promoted.”1
In their book, Babiak and Hare had argued that late-twentieth- and
early-twenty-first-century business was an ideal place for psychopaths
to thrive. In the 1970s and 1980s, the basic model of corporate organiza-
tion had started to shift from ineffective and expensive bureaucracies
80
to sleek and innovative structures. The organization man, the arche-

typal postwar collectivist and risk-averse corporate drone, gave way to
a generation of bold executive types who flourished in flat, simplified,
and hypercompetitive organizations. Babiak and Hare argued that the
resulting changes in hiring practices facilitated the rise of psychopaths
through the corporate ranks. Callousness and insensitivity, far from be-
ing impediments to career advancement, might be valuable traits in the
new corporate culture. Impersonal corporate structures made it easy to
confuse psychopathy with strong leadership.
A 2010 study in the journal Behavioral Sciences and the Law seemed to
confirm that psychopaths had indeed found a home in the corporate
world.2 The authors – Babiak, Hare, and Craig Neumann – assessed 203
corporate professionals in seven companies, and found a remarkable
eight full-blown psychopaths (3.9 per cent of the sample), a significant-
ly higher proportion than that estimated in the general population (1
per cent). Based on their corporate experience, two Western Kentucky
University professors claimed that the actual prevalence was probably
higher than 4 per cent.3 One psychologist, also a Wall Street insider,
put the number at more than 10 per cent.4 Robert Hare cautioned mak-
ing definitive statements about the prevalence of psychopathy on Wall
Street, but allowed on his website that “it may be even higher [emphasis
original] than ten percent, on the assumption that psychopathic entre-
preneurs and risk-takers tend to gravitate toward financial watering-
holes, particularly those that are enormously lucrative and poorly
regulated.”5 A website for the victims of psychopaths reported that
50 per cent of business managers may be psychopathic,6 and a British
study found that some psychopathic traits were more common in se-
nior business managers than in forensic inmates.7 Commerce students,
another study showed, self-reported more psychopathic traits than
other students.8
Newspapers and magazines began to report extensively on work-
place psychopaths in the early 2000s. Titles such as “Expert Warns of
Dangers of the Corporate Psychopath: Call for Screening to Prevent
Scandals”; “Are You Sitting Next to the Office Psycho?”; “Corporate
Psychos Blend in Well”; and “How to Spot the Office Psychos”9 be-
came standard media fare. Even the Harvard Business Review weighed
in, arguing that “chances are good there’s a psychopath on your man-
agement team.”10 Psychologists, psychiatrists, lawyers, and other ex-
perts wrote mass-market books with titles like The Sociopath Next Door:
The Ruthless Versus the Rest of Us; The Psychopathy of Everyday Life: How
The Adjustable Psychopathy Portfolio 81

Antisocial Personality Affects All of Us; The Devil You Know: Looking Out
for the Psycho in Your Life; Corporate Psychopaths: Organizational De-
stroyers; and Almost a Psychopath: Do I (or Does Someone I Know) Have a
Problem with Manipulation and Lack of Empathy?11 All of these accounts
addressed two common misconceptions. The first misconception was
that all psychopaths were hard-core violent criminals. The second was
that we tend to be right in our first impressions of people. Both of these
assumptions were wrong, the writers explained, because crime was
only one aspect of psychopathy – non-criminal aspects of psychopa-
thy included lying, conning, and manipulating – and, because of these
non-criminal aspects, psychopaths were extremely good at pretending
not to be psychopaths. The back cover to Martha Stout’s bestselling The
Sociopath Next Door made the case as follows:
We are accustomed to think of sociopaths [which Stout uses interchange-

ably with psychopaths] as violent criminals, but in The Sociopath Next
Door, clinical psychologist Martha Stout reveals that a shocking 4 percent
of ordinary people have an often undetected mental disorder, the chief
symptom of which is the complete absence of conscience. They could be
your colleague, your neighbor, even family. And they can do literally any-
thing at all and feel absolutely no guilt, shame, or remorse.
The “hidden psychopath” idea was not new. As early as 1941, Hervey
Cleckley had argued that psychopaths were not definitionally criminal.
Cleckley distinguished criminal psychopaths from non-criminal psy-
chopaths – the latter kept up “a far better and more consistent outward
appearance of being normal”12 – and gave case studies of successful
professional psychopaths. In Without Conscience: The Disturbing World
of the Psychopaths among Us, Hare devoted a chapter to white-collar, or
“subcriminal” psychopaths, who were
every bit as egocentric, callous, and manipulative as the average criminal

psychopath; however, their intelligence, family background, social skills,
and circumstances permit them to construct a facade of normalcy and to
get whatever they want with relative impunity.13
Around the turn of the twentieth century, researchers began to pay

serious attention to subcriminal psychopaths. Some proposed that
subcriminal psychopaths – or “successful” psychopaths, as they were
now increasingly called – made up a distinct psychopath subtype with
82
distinct behaviours and neurological deficits. Soon, studies began to

report behavioural and neurobiological differences between successful
and unsuccessful psychopaths, and this led some researchers to pro-
pose that criminal arrests and convictions themselves might have spe-
cific neurobiological causes.14
The successful psychopath updates Hacking’s adjustable degenera-
cy portfolio idea – let us call it the “adjustable psychopathy portfolio.”
Successful psychopathy preserves the hard-core assumptions about
evil and mental health while introducing flexibility around the core.
The auxiliary hypothesis – that someone can be a psychopath without
meeting the necessary cut-off score for psychopathy, which is difficult
without criminal convictions – allows the psychopathy concept to cap-
ture new populations without any loss of the original concept’s mean-
ing. As more and more people qualify for the diagnosis, two important
things happen. First, with the addition of each new subtype (since the
mid-twentieth century at least thirty different subtypes of have been
proposed),15 the research program gains legitimacy, as each subtype
description seems to refine the original concept. Second, the research
program retrofits itself to address evolving social problems such as
corporate raiders and rogue traders. In this way, the program meets the
dual demands of being relevant and scientific. In practice, this means
that various mental health experts – whether so by their professional
qualifications or simply by their own definition – can offer diagnoses
as high-profile criminal cases unfold in the media. The expert can do so
with reference to cutting-edge research, since the criteria for successful
psychopathy are not fixed and diagnosing psychopathy has become
feasible with minimal data and personal involvement. Crime report-
ing suffices as diagnostic information for psychopathy, so long as the
labels come with caveats (i.e., the commentator has not done a full as-
sessment), and provisionally (i.e., the persons diagnosed are “psycho-
pathic” or show “psychopathic behaviour” rather than being outright
psychopaths). In this way, when Bernie Madoff was arrested in 2008 for
the largest Ponzi scheme in U.S. history, mental health experts were on
hand to diagnose him immediately. It no longer mattered that Madoff
had no prior criminal record – he was, in fact, a noted philanthropist
– or that the experts had never actually met him. What mattered was
that Madoff seemed to fit the profile, so long as both “fit” and “profile”
were understood in the loosest possible terms. Here was Robert Hare
on the case:

theories of psychopathy involve abnormal language processing and
deficient fear conditioning to painful stimuli.
2. These connections are caused by a biological defect. Most contemporary

researchers believe that psychopathy is caused by an interaction
between biological and environmental factors. Also, comorbidity
studies of psychopathy typically make the assumption that symp-
tom overlaps are not necessarily random or spontaneous but may
be due to some underlying biological defect. On this, one researcher
writes,
Comorbidity can have several causes ... Two disorders can be comorbid
simply by chance, since they occur completely independently of each
other. They can have a common core liability that takes on different expres-
sions [emphasis added]. They can both be a part of a spectrum of related
disorders. One disorder can predispose a person to or make the person
vulnerable to the other, and one disorder can be a complication of the
other. For psychopathy, all these causes of comorbidity are found.25
3. This biological defect is heritable. A number of recent studies have

examined the heritability of psychopathy – see appendix B. Most
genetic theories implicitly suggest a direct causality (psychopathic
parent passes on a risk gene or genes), though some researchers
make the case for indirect heritability. In terms strikingly similar
to Morel’s generational theory of degeneration, one modern re-
searcher writes about antisocial personality disorder, a close cousin
to psychopathy:
Most genetic and developmental research seems to support a devel-

opmental process model, starting with APD [antisocial personality
disorder] or hyperaggression in the biological parents, and leading to
hyperaggression, oppositional defiant disorder, CD [conduct disorder],
adult APD, and eventually substance misuse in the offspring.26
4. Individuals afflicted with degeneration are evolutionary throwbacks. Of-

ficially, atavism is an example of a dead idea. If it is discussed at
all, it is discussed as an example of junk science, and no rational
researcher would explicitly support it. Yet, some researchers and
clinicians portray psychopaths as either throwbacks to an earlier
stage of human development (whether childlike or primitive) or as
84
Scientific treatises on successful psychopaths called for new and

subtle forms of surveillance and screening in the workplace. Ensuing
media coverage echoed these demands and created a sense of emer-
gency about undiagnosed psychopathy. To this end, Hare and Babiak
began to develop a questionnaire, called B-Scan (short for Business-
Scan). The questionnaire included a self-report form for employees or
potential employees, and forms for corporate supervisors to evaluate
their employees on the psychopathy spectrum.22 Babiak also set up a
consultancy for corporations concerned about psychopaths. A compa-
ny could call Dr. Babiak for “shadow consultation,” “private coaching,”
or “executive briefing.” These sessions, according to his website, would
provide “educational,” “provoking/eye opening,” and “entertaining”
“topics” and “takeaways” on narcissistic and egocentric corporate
fraudsters. One anonymous attendee described these sessions as “in-
formative and fun.”23
In an interview for the 2003 film The Corporation, Robert Hare took
a completely new angle on the corporate psychopath problem. Hare’s
earlier work was premised on the idea that psychopaths were a perva-
sive and parasitic element in modern businesses. He now argued that
corporations themselves were psychopathic. According to Hare, corpo-
rations were superficial, grandiose, manipulative, lacking in empathy
and remorse, unwilling to accept responsibility, impulsive, irresponsi-
ble, lacking in long-term goals, and antisocial. “Now, it would be pretty
hard for us not to look at the corporate structure itself as not being
psychopathic [sic],” he concluded. “They would have all the charac-
teristics. And in fact I suppose one could argue that in many respects a
corporation of that sort is the prototypical psychopath, at the corporate
level instead of the individual level.” 24 This idea, the film-makers em-
phasized, was political as much as it was theoretical. The film, written
by the University of British Columbia law professor Joel Bakan (a sup-
porter of, among other things, the Occupy movement), and directed
by Mark Achbar (the director of Manufacturing Consent: Noam Chomsky
and the Media) was a biting leftist polemic on the fundamental social
irresponsibility of large corporations. In the context of the film, Hare’s
superimposition of a clinical diagnosis on corporations was a critique
of laissez-faire capitalism itself.
Even though this critique of corporations seemed like a departure
from the research program’s usual focus on individual pathology, in
reality this new approach was simply a natural extension of the kind
of reductionism that had guided much of the thinking on psychopathy

since Benjamin Rush. Just as researchers had previously looked to biol-
ogy to understand the individual, they now could look to the individu-
al to understand corporations. In this line of thinking, pathology and its
effects worked like this: individuals suffer from psychopathy, corpora-
tions suffer from corporate psychopaths, societies suffer from psycho-
pathic corporations, and at the very beginning lies a biological defect
that causes the psychopathy. Once committed to this form of epistemol-
ogy, mainstream psychopathy researchers were averse to reversing the
causal order. They rarely asked, for example, whether modern societies
may in fact create a certain kind of corporation that in turn creates or
reinforces individual behaviour that we now call psychopathic. That is
exactly what Noam Chomsky, in the same film, suggested. “It’s a fair
assumption,” he said,
that every human being ... is a moral person. We’ve got the same genes,
we’re more or less the same. But our nature, the nature of humans, allows
all kinds of behaviour. I mean every one of us under some circumstances
could be a gas chamber attendant and a saint. When you look at a corpo-
ration, just like when you look at a slave owner, you want to distinguish
between the institution and the individual. So, slavery, for example or
other forms of tyranny, are inherently monstrous, but the individuals par-
ticipating in them may be the nicest guys you could imagine – benevolent,
friendly, nice to their children, even nice to their slaves, caring about other
people. I mean, as individuals they may be anything. In their institutional
role they’re monsters because the institution is monstrous. And then the
same is true here.25
The difference between Hare’s and Chomsky’s views here is not their
opinion on the nature of corporations, but on the more essential ques-
tion of human nature. While Hare compared the corporation to an
inherently bad individual, Chomsky rejected the idea of innate evil
altogether, and saw social and economic arrangements as the true
sources of evil. (A third option, of course, is that rather than creating
psychopathy, certain cultural forces create concern for it, and so cause
us to look for it, and find it, in corporations.) The issue here is not who
is right, but the set of basic epistemic and ontological commitments that
guide Hare’s and Chomsky’s respective thinking about the nature of
good and evil.
In 2011, the Middlesex University professor Clive Boddy took the
reductive approach to its logical conclusion in an article published in
86
the Journal of Business Ethics. As its title, “The Corporate Psychopaths

Theory of the Global Financial Crisis,” suggests, Boddy believed that
the entire 2008 global recession was caused by corporate psychopaths.
In his own words:
The Corporate Psychopaths Theory of the Global Financial Crisis is that

corporate psychopaths, rising to key senior positions within modern fi-
nancial corporations, where they are able to influence the moral climate of
the whole organisation and yield considerable power, have largely caused
the crisis. In these senior corporate positions, the corporate psychopath’s
single-minded pursuit of their own self-enrichment and self-aggrandize-
ment to the exclusion of all other considerations has led to the abandon-
ment of the old fashioned concept of noblesse oblige, equality, fairness, or
any other real notion of corporate social responsibility.26
Boddy concluded his article with a suggestion that it would be impor-

tant to conduct “research into the brain chemistry and connectivity of
these people.”27
Boddy’s extreme form of reductionism and ahistoricism showed a
deep commitment to a reverse, yet faithful, version of Hacking’s ad-
justable degeneracy portfolio idea. Whereas Lombroso saw primitive
peoples and cultures as savage and immoral, Boddy glamorized ear-
lier forms of corporate culture as essentially stable, fair, and hostile to
psychopaths. In Boddy’s view, previously sturdy and decent capitalist
economies were becoming vulnerable to corporate psychopaths. These
psychopaths in turn were giving capitalism a black eye. In Hacking’s
words, Boddy’s hard core of biological determinism was augmented
by auxiliary hypotheses about capitalism, the global economy, and a
kind of moral degeneration that took modern corporations further and
further from a pre-1970s corporate golden age. Boddy’s remedy – brain
imaging – also naturally implied an occupational hierarchy. At the top
were research psychologists and psychiatrists, followed by manage-
ment specialists like Boddy himself, and somewhere toward the bottom
were economists and politicians concerned with speculative bubbles,
financial deregulation, fair and efficient tax systems, and the like. This
also meant that if Boddy was right, and psychopathy in fact was rel-
evant to institutions as much as it was to individuals, psychopathy ex-
perts’ realm of influence should logically expand to include economics,
business, sociology, political science, and any number of other social
sciences.

One of the most remarkable features of corporate psychopathy was,
like degeneracy in its time, its ability to explain seemingly contradic-
tory events. A major premise of Babiak and Hare’s Snakes in Suits argu-
ment was that corporate culture had begun to shift in the 1970s, and
that the shift had fully matured in the 1990s. This meant that the shift
coincided with the economic boom of the 1990s. The coincidence of im-
proved corporate efficiency and profit makes sense, and if Babiak and
Hare were right, the coincidence should attract psychopaths. But what
about the post-2008 global recession? A writer for Fraud Magazine asked
Babiak and Hare this very question. Here is Babiak’s answer:
While economic slowdowns can lead to layoffs and plant closings, there is
still the need for seasoned, experienced leaders who have the wherewithal
to meet the challenge of recovery and turnaround. These individuals are
rare. What a perfect scenario for the psychopath to enter as the “solution,”
replete with the skills (faked), abilities (faked), and background (faked)
necessary to take over and makes things right.
There is also greater access to higher education in general than before,
as well as questionable online degrees that can be bought and used by
psychopaths to pad their resumes. Losing one’s job no longer bears the
stigma – or provokes as much concern – as it once did; layoffs and plant
closings have left many truly stellar executives with gaps in their employ-
ment histories. Economic conditions can be a convenient explanation for
short tenures listed on the resume. While a psychopath would be expected
to blame the former boss’s personality or colleagues’ underhandedness
for losing his or her job, a really clever one can feign some sadness at hav-
ing to leave “a great job at a great company” due to economic conditions.28
That is, both prosperity and its opposite created opportunities for psy-
chopaths. The transitory nature of modern corporations itself invited
psychopaths, regardless of how well those corporations actually per-
formed.
But this created another problem. On the one hand, Babiak and Hare
contended that modernity and its demands for constant business in-
novation themselves were to blame for the corporate psychopathy
problem. On the other hand, they also argued that the same problem
afflicted highly traditional, close-kit “affinity groups” as well. They
wrote,
Affinity groups – religious, political, or social groups in which all mem-

46
ness. The theory was remarkably popular for a long time despite lack
of empirical proof, and within a few decades of its death it came to life
again as psychopathy. Theories like degeneration endure because they
not only provide simple rules for understanding and identifying the
deviant but also are flexible. As the Canadian philosopher Ian Hacking
argues, degeneracy accommodated whatever deviance was considered
problematic in a given time and place. In the late 1880s, for example,
vagrancy became a pressing social issue, and was immediately incor-
porated into the theory. Degeneracy is built on a few hard-core assump-
tions around which a number of auxiliary hypotheses – terms used by
another philosopher of science, Imre Lakatos – about symptoms, pa-
tient groups, and so on can be added. Also, any non-performing aux-
iliary hypothesis can be deleted without damage to the theory’s hard
core. Hacking calls this the “adjustable degeneracy portfolio.”36 Each
generation updates this portfolio. Whether or not degeneration theory
or one of its offshoots – such as the biological theory of psychopathy –
is correct, the portfolio above all functions as an index of generational
fears. The portfolio expanded to include serial murder in the 1980s and
corporate mismanagement in the early 2000s. The sub-prime mortgage
crisis of 2008 was an unexpected lifeline. These types of events mo-
bilize and legitimize the theory’s hard core. When cultural concerns
arise, scientists are employed, the best are celebrated, and papers and
books are published. But scientists wedded to the theory see it in re-
verse: the degenerate is a human type who precedes culture, and who
simply materializes to prey in culture-specific ways. These scientists
would posit that new social arrangements of their time – democracy,
cars, free markets, TV, the Internet, etc. – have created a degenerate-
friendly world. To make sense of and to combat degeneracy, such sci-
entists are compelled to update their theory and tools. In the process,
books and articles get written, honours are bestowed, and the media
and law enforcement get involved. When conditions are right, the de-
generacy program enters a golden age.
3 The Second Golden Age:
Psychopathy
In 2007, a thief began to raid homes in southeastern Ontario, taking

women’s and girls’ lingerie, home movies, family photos, and sex toys.
Sometimes he left taunting notes. One read: “Go ahead and call the
police. I want to show the judge your really big dildos.” Another said
“Merci.” Then in September 2009, in the small municipality of Tweed,
a masked man entered a woman’s house and bound, raped, and pho-
tographed her. Soon it happened to another Tweed woman. In Novem-
ber of the same year, thirty-eight-year-old Marie-France Comeau was
raped and murdered in her home in the nearby town of Brighton. Two
months later, twenty-seven-year-old Jessica Lloyd disappeared from
her home in Belleville. Ontario Provincial Police had few leads and
little reason to connect the burglaries, the rapes, the murder, and the
disappearance. Finally, a clue emerged in front of the missing woman’s
house – a distinctive tire track. The police set up a road block, and be-
gan to look for matching tire treads. The search soon produced a match
to a Nissan Pathfinder driven by forty-six-year-old Russell Williams.
Williams was placed under surveillance and called in for questioning
a few days later. In addition to the tire tracks, the police had matched
Williams’s boots to prints found at the crime scene. Confronted with
the evidence, Williams confessed and led the investigators to Jessica
Lloyd’s body. Williams had raped and strangled her, dumping her in a
forest a short drive from his home. He also confessed to the burglaries
and rapes, and to Marie-France Comeau’s murder. Police found a care-
fully indexed inventory of each offence at Williams’s home, including
video of the murders, police reports, hundreds of pieces of stolen linge-
rie, and pictures of Williams posing in them.
90
major social development will bear its imprint. Probably the best illus-
tration of this is the Internet.
The Internet
Since the Internet became widespread in the 1990s, it has been inextri-
cably linked to fears about its effects on users. The most salient fears
concern sexual predation of children, and this has led several jurisdic-
tions around the world to enact laws targeting Internet-facilitated child
abuse. But with the introduction of the major modern social networking
platforms in the early 2000s, these fears spread rapidly to include adult
and non-sexual victimization as well. By about 2010, the psychopathy
portfolio incorporated Internet predation (by the portfolio’s standards
this was relatively late, considering that by now many Internet-preda-
tion laws were a decade old), even spawning the neologism “cyber-
path” to denote the predatory, psychopathic Internet user.
Most early 2000s Internet references in psychopathy discourse were
limited to financial fraud, as illustrated by Babiak and Hare’s Snakes
in Suits. But as social networking evolved, so did popular fears. The
online psychopath shifted from a purely monetary threat to something
more ambiguous and menacing. Robert Hare argued in the 2011 film I
Am Fishead that psychopaths had “flourished” in the Internet age, and
the British forensic psychologist Kerry Daynes introduced her 2012
Telegraph article “Is There a Psychopath in Your Inbox?” with the claim
that “the Internet has become a hunting ground for psychopaths.” “The
key things that make the Internet so attractive to them [psychopaths],”
she went on to argue,
are the anonymity it allows – one client managed 20 separate email ac-
counts to take on 20 different online personas, ranging from a 12-year-old

girl to a 70-year-old grandfather – and the instant gratification it gives

them. They’re just the click of a button away from a potential audience;
they don’t have to go out to a bar. The Internet also gives them access to
a huge volume and variety of people it would otherwise take several life-
times for him or her to meet.40
A July 2012 FBI Law Enforcement Bulletin pointed out that social net-
working sites were likely to attract psychopaths, since it was easier,
according to research, to get away with lying online than in person.
However, the bulletin also noted that text-based online social network-

ing made it easier for law enforcement to analyse suspect communi-
cations. “Words provide a window into the minds of criminals,” the
article explained, “helping to determine whether they fit any particular
personality profile, such as psychopathy.”41
Psychologists’ and law enforcement officers’ concerns about Inter-
net psychopaths mirrored popular fears about the Internet itself. Just
as psychopaths had the ability to take on any number of personas, so
Internet anonymity enabled unrestrained impression management and
multiple virtual identities. That is, psychopaths and the Internet func-
tion in the same kind of unsettling existential vacuum where persona
and personality bleed effortlessly into one another, and where identity
becomes whatever situations demand of it. Both feed off instant gratifi-
cation, and both embody freedom from constraints: the psychopath of
moral constraints, the Internet of the physical limits of tangible goods
and services. Logically, the situation with the Internet and psychopathy
is not that different from that with corporations and psychopathy. If the
corporations-as-psychopaths idea hinged on fears of corporate powers,
the power of the Internet to subvert transparency and human identity
underwrote the connection to psychopathy. The Internet was more than
a hunting ground for psychopaths. It was a virtual analogy to the con-
crete psychopath problem.
By the second decade of the twenty-first century, social networking
behaviour became increasingly linked with morality and mental health.
Researchers began to study whether the Internet facilitated deception,
and law enforcement agencies took an interest in social networking-
based criminal profiling.42 In the highest-profile study conducted to
date, a team of Florida Atlantic University computer scientists de-
signed a program to detect psychopathy in Twitter postings. A large
sample of online users filled in personality questionnaires and allowed
the researchers access to their Twitter feeds. The program was able to
correlate the respondents’ personality profiles with the content of their
tweets, and the researchers concluded that the algorithm should be
useful in “employment, online dating, social networking and use by
law enforcement.”43 Forbes Magazine proposed a new term – “Klycho-
path” – a derivative of the Internet site Klout that rates Twitter users’
social influence. In the wake of the revelation that neither the Colorado
movie theatre shooter James Holmes nor the Norwegian mass mur-
derer Anders Behring Breivik had a Facebook profile, the Mail Online
asked the obvious question: “Is not joining Facebook a sign you’re a
psychopath?”44
92
Just as the adjustable degeneracy portfolio expanded to include ev-

erything from violent crime and religious fanaticism to genius and art,
the psychopathy portfolio pathologized more and more behaviours.
For social networking, this meant an ever-increasing list of suspicious
behavioural signs, one of which was not participating in social network-
ing at all. If the Internet became the face of progress at the turn of the
twentieth century, psychopathy personified the flip side of that change.
In this role, the online psychopath reflected larger concerns about the
Internet. As the twenty-first century wore on, it became increasingly
clear that the Internet could be used for democratic and creative ends
just as much as it could be for distraction, repression, misinforma-
tion, and fraud. The psychopathic sexual online predator gave a face
to the Internet’s many problems with anonymity. Online identity theft
reminded us about the fluidity between virtual and real goods, about
how quickly passwords, bank account numbers, birth dates, and moth-
ers’ maiden names translate to actual bank withdrawals. The presence
of cyberpaths, the portfolio accurately suggested, should constrain
how much we give of ourselves online. As Kerry Daynes put it, “psy-
chopaths are increasingly turning to the Internet as a means of meeting
people ... This means that there’s a small chance that the person sitting
across the table could be a psycho – and you will need to take steps to
protect yourself.” The warning appeared under a picture of a young
woman sitting with a laptop, and a caption “Bad date? The Internet
has become a field of opportunity for psychopaths.”45 The psychopathy
portfolio had taken on a new and powerful role as an object lesson in
rethinking progress.
Degenerate Society
The psychopathy portfolio adjusted in a number of ways. It admitted

new patient groups and behaviours, it assimilated social fears and po-
litical aspirations, and it responded to technological advances. It also
accommodated a range of estimates about the prevalence of psychopa-
thy, and an even broader spectrum of implications of those estimates
for the health of societies.
A typical opening to a modern tract on psychopathy included an es-
timate of psychopathy’s prevalence, followed by a sentence like “It is
very likely that at some time in your life you will come into painful con-
tact with a psychopath.”46 Robert Hare put his population prevalence
estimate at 1 per cent, and calculated in 1993 that there were 2 million

psychopaths in North America, with 100,000 in New York alone.
According to Martha Stout, the prevalence was 4 per cent, which raised
the number of psychopaths to over 12 million in the U.S. and to about
330,000 in New York City, by 2011 population estimates.47 The U.S.
National Institute of Mental Health estimated the prevalence of the
much less exclusive – and therefore more prevalent – disorder, antiso-
cial personality disorder, and placed that number at 1 per cent of the
general population. Since antisocial personality disorder is considered
by some to be up to five times more common than psychopathy,48 only
0.2 per cent of the population should be psychopathic, and instead of
having 330,000 psychopaths, New York City should have fewer than
17,000.
Another frequently cited number was an estimate that 50 per cent
of serious crime in North America was committed by psychopaths.49
Clearly embracing psychopathy’s flexibility, FBI profiler John Douglas
implied a much higher number, writing “virtually anyone who com-
mits murder or some other horrible or violent act can be thought of
as being ‘mentally ill.’ Normal, mentally healthy people just don’t do
those kinds of things.”50 Of course, nobody has verified the proportion
of all serious crimes committed by psychopaths or their prevalence in
the general population. Full psychopathy assessments have been done
on only a small number of people – typically incarcerated offenders –
and, at least when done with the help of the PCL-R, each requires hours
of interview and document review. More importantly, psychopathy’s
prevalence could be manipulated simply by changing the cut-off score
for psychopathy (in fact, different researchers and practitioners often
use different scores). Increase it, and the number of psychopaths de-
clines; decrease it, and their numbers grow.51
However, the key feature of these estimates was not their numerical
flexibility, but their potential use in expanding the psychopathy port-
folio’s reach. The degeneracy portfolio had in part hinged on the argu-
ment that degeneration was more than an individual problem; it was
also a gauge of the mental and moral hygiene of entire societies. If the
number of degenerates in a given country reached a critical threshold,
some contended, the country itself could become degenerate. It was
critical for the degeneration theory’s popularity that it was able to stoke
fears of just such a scenario. If crime reporting did not sell enough copy,
national emergencies would.
So it goes for psychopathy. The eminent author and psychologist
Benjamin B. Wolman worried in 1999 – in the midst of declining crime
94
rates throughout North America – about “the rise of sociopathy and the
growing danger of an epidemic,” which posed a “threat to civilization
and the democratic way of life.” In an unmistakeable appropriation of
nineteenth-century degenerationist logic, Wolman compared the sexual
practices of sociopathic youths to those of “baboons, rhesus monkeys,
and other infrahuman species, and some primitive tribes” and be-
moaned sociopaths’ “regression to primitivism.”52 Wolman distanced
himself from Lombroso, however, by attributing the rise of sociopathy
not to biology but to the conservative mainstays: poor parenting, de-
clining family values, TV, liberal education, and lack of cultural norms.
In 2012, the Cambridge research psychologist Kevin Dutton also noted
the increasing incidence of psychopathy around the world, citing as
evidence a Japanese youth who sold his kidney to buy an iPad, Chi-
nese shoppers who failed to help an accident victim, the defence team
in the Elizabeth Smart kidnapping trial, the self-reported narcissism of
college students, and U.S. corporate crime. Dutton hypothesized that
there were probably many causes for the trend, but he concentrated on
one in particular: children’s reading habits. Reading books, Dutton ex-
plained, fostered empathy and changed children’s brains for the better.
Studies had shown a decrease in the number of books an average child
read, which led Dutton – the author of two books himself – to link the
incidence of psychopathy with a lack of reading. And here was Robert
Hare in an interview with Dutton:
I think, in general, yes, society is becoming more psychopathic. I mean,

there’s stuff going on nowadays that we wouldn’t have seen 20, even 10
years ago. Kids are becoming anesthetized to normal sexual behavior by
early exposure to pornography on the Internet. Rent-a-friend sites are get-
ting more popular on the Web, because folks are either too busy or too
techy to make real ones ... The recent hike in female criminality is particu-
larly revealing. And don’t even get me started on Wall Street.53
Hitching psychopathy to the cultural decline narrative may have

been historically inevitable. By the early twenty-first century, the psy-
chopathy portfolio had co-opted a basic set of postmodern fears: tech-
nology, strangers, alienation, powerlessness, anonymity, and financial
meltdowns. However, in the rush to establish cultural relevance, hardly
anyone had paid much attention to traditional grievances over such
things as justice and social change. Now, in evoking the classic conser-
vative refrain about the decline in civility, the portfolio had something

to offer for both ends of the political spectrum. The political left could
diagnose cut-throat capitalists, and conservatives could diagnose the
next generation, and each side had science on its side.54
The Useful Psychopath
The more psychopathy penetrated popular culture, the more it shed

its original connotation with evil. Successful psychopathy in particular
raised the obvious question: could psychopathy confer certain social
benefits? If so many heads of state and captains of industry were psy-
chopathic, could their psychopathy be in some ways advantageous?
Increasingly, the answer became yes.
In his 2012 book, The Wisdom of Psychopaths: What Saints, Spies, and Se-
rial Killers Can Teach Us about Success, Kevin Dutton set out to prove that
psychopathy is in many ways socially beneficial. Dutton’s argument
rested on the assumption that the consistent presence of psychopathy
must indicate that the disorder has some evolutionary benefit. What is
more, Dutton noted, psychopaths consistently outperformed their non-
psychopathic counterparts in a number of tasks that required risk-tak-
ing, a finding that seemed to support the idea that early psychopaths
had been valuable as hunters and warriors. In modern times, psychop-
athy might be a useful trait in high-risk professions like the military,
law enforcement, and business.55
Dutton cited Steve Jobs as an exemplary contemporary psychopath.
Jobs was charismatic, visionary, focused, and ruthless, but a second-
rate inventor who took other people’s ideas and made them appealing
to the consumer. Dutton now took his idea a step further, and argued
that even saints could be psychopaths. Saint Paul was a perfect can-
didate – a drifter, risk-taker, an incarcerated criminal, and an expert
manipulator of crowds – who, because of his psychopathy, rose to the
centre of the Christian canon. Dutton argued that Saint Paul’s canon-
ization had obscured the more sordid facts of his life, and noted that
“deep within the corridors of the brain, psychopathy and sainthood
share secret neural office space.”56 Even more counter-intuitively, Dut-
ton cited an Australian study that seemed to show that under certain
circumstances psychopaths were more altruistic than non-psychopaths.
But to Dutton this made perfect sense, as just the right amount of psy-
chopathy could be channelled to either pro-social or antisocial pursuits.
One example of such channelling were psychopath-heroes who, due
to their superior focus and lack of anxiety, were able to perform high-
96
stakes military tasks and civilian rescue operations. For tasks like these,
Dutton argued, cooperation was anathema; what was required was the
sort of cold-hearted individualism only psychopaths possessed.
In Dutton’s hands, psychopathy completed a full circle. It could now
afflict anyone from despicable schemers to leaders of men, from serial
murderers to rescuer-heroes. But Dutton was not solely responsible
for closing the loop. By the early 2000s, various experts had begun to
dismantle psychopathy’s traditional role as a mental illness and ex-
panded diagnostic data sources to include anything from the Bible to
self-reports to brief encounters. Dutton simply put together research
and theory that had begun to offer something for everyone. Gradu-
ally, psychopathy lost its distinct clinical meaning, and it increasingly
became shorthand for extraordinary people, good or bad. Spotting psy-
chopathy in high achievers became a sport in itself. In this way, just like
late-nineteenth-century degenerates – which included Lombroso’s ge-
nius-degenerates – the twenty-first-century psychopath became a con-
summate cultural projection. Lay audiences and social scientists alike
could lay claim to psychopathy by applying the label to their own fears
and research aspirations. The logic of psychopathy came to accommo-
date the obvious (psychopaths commit crimes, ruthlessness works, etc.)
and the counter-intuitive (psychopaths are socially beneficial, saints
can be psychopaths), and all of it fit neatly within an ever-expanding
portfolio. As we will see next, it did not take long for psychopathy to
break free of its scientific moorings and enter popular culture.
6 The Culture of Psychopathy
One side effect of the psychopathy portfolio’s being so adjustable was

that it encouraged non-scientists to adopt the diagnosis to their own
ends. Natural and social scientists may have originated the psychopathy
discourse, but their exclusive claim to it did not last long: non-experts
soon discovered the power of the diagnosis to stand for any number of
grievances, from simple moral outrage to philosophical disagreements.
By marrying Judeo-Christian theology with mainstream science, psy-
chopathy – just like degeneracy before it – was as much something that
afflicted people as it was a tool for talking about good and evil in a secu-
lar age. Psychopathy was to late modernity what witchcraft had been to
early modernity: a platform for marking out the moral world and one’s
enemies within it. Psychopathy discourse now offered scientists and
non-scientists alike a concept that allowed everyday moralizing to pass
as scientific statements. But eventually psychopathy became something
much more nuanced than a mere synonym for evil. While some saw
psychopathy as an analogy for whatever ailed modern societies and
their political leaders, others embraced it as a symbol of strength, dan-
ger, and sexual prowess; and still others wanted to have the diagnosis
for themselves in a juvenile quest for identity. In this way, psychopa-
thy also became a cultural weathervane of sorts. Cultural norms and
anxieties, particularly in individualistic North America, often found
expression in the character of the psychopath. Since the mid-twentieth
century, the psychopath has stood as the personification of the benefits
and drawbacks, the freedom and the horror, of individual freedom.
This process of cultural appropriation depended, to an extent, on
the cooperation of mental health experts. Although the mass appeal
of psychopathy was no mystery – the diagnosis by its nature evoked
98
fear, puzzlement, and envy – a number of psychopathy experts took

steps to publicly emphasize just how dangerous and compelling the
psychopath was. Some professionals also popularized the concept by
assessing ordinary people, wannabe psychopaths, and fictional charac-
ters on the psychopathy spectrum, in some cases essentially providing
diagnoses on demand. Thus the professional and lay audiences became
a positive feedback loop of information. In this loop, experts dissemi-
nated scientific information about psychopathy in evocative lay terms,
and non-experts assimilated the relevant concepts into their existing
world views. Non-experts then made the concepts personally useful,
which eventually further popularized the scientific concepts, thus cre-
ating ever-widening audiences for more scientific information. Without
this cultural endorsement, psychopathy could never have become the
deeply resonant and uniquely Western construction it eventually did.
It was this cultural endorsement that also allowed scientific research to
attract funding and new generations of students to become interested
in psychopathy research.1
Psychopathy as Cultural Critique
The Hipster Psychopath
The cultural iconography of the psychopath was born in the early

counterculture of 1950s America. The U.S. postwar welfare state had
created unprecedented opportunities for economic and social success
for the returning veterans of the Second World War and their families.
Job security and social mobility in the Cold War were at an all-time
high, and Soviet nuclear and ideological threats galvanized the coun-
try in a common fear. But the American dream came with what many
judged to be a heavy price: conformity. The symbols of conformity –
dull suburban architecture, grey and uniform dress codes, bureaucracy,
household consumer goods, and so on – were to literate observers a
sign that Americans had abandoned en masse the founding ideals of
individualism in return for safe collectivism. Thomas Frank wrote in
his The Conquest of Cool: Business Culture, Counterculture, and the Rise of
Hip Consumerism that the 1950s
was said to be a time of intolerance of difference, of look-alike commuters

clad in gray flannel and of identical prefabricated ranch houses in planned
suburban Levittowns, all stretching moderately and reasonably to the ho-
52
and his behaviour – the typical source of diagnostic information – was

simply a confirmation of this deeper psychological truth. Another re-
tired FBI agent, who also had never met Williams, knew that Williams’s
sexual fantasies “without question began at an early age.”17 The profil-
ers’ claim to absolute knowledge about Williams was predicated on the
total separation of mental illness – or at least this mental illness – from
mental health. Williams was above all mentally ill, and what he did was
either a direct cause of his illness or a desperate – and to the trained
eye, a transparent – attempt to hide it. The line of reasoning here went
something like this: Williams was knowable because (a) he was men-
tally ill and (b) he was nothing beyond his mental illness. Williams was
an object, and science had caught up to him.
The remarkable thing about the early public commentary on Wil-
liams was just how completely it derived from the natural sciences (at
least when not being tautological). The pre-arrest Williams, a man pre-
sumably with an interior life, intentions, depth and complexity, abrupt-
ly became a psychologically flat mechanism, a known entity whom
experts could swiftly recognize and understand. His diagnosis now
substituted for motives. But the new frame of reference came with a
built-in problem: since psychopathy was supposedly a stable trait that
could, at least according to some, be identified early in life, Williams’s
entire life would now have to be re-evaluated. Predictably, the new
frame could not account for everything. If Williams’s pre-crime self –
his friendships, career, reputation, marriage, and so on – made sense as
a series of choices and aspirations, his new psychopathic self no longer
quite did; it accounted for what was ruthless, odious, and wrong about
him, not for what was private and benign. But the opposite also held
true: the crimes hardly made sense as rational means–ends thinking.
How could a sane person choose to cause so much suffering and risk so
much simply to further sexual ends?
The question of whether Williams’s behaviour was the function of
causes or reasons and motives embodies a central problem in psychol-
ogy’s self-definition. Since becoming an academic discipline in the
nineteenth century, psychology has struggled to decide whether it is
a natural or a social science, a science whose subject – the person – is
either reducible to mechanistic natural laws or not. If it is so reduc-
ible, human behaviour can at least in principle be explained; if not, the
goal of psychology is to understand. One logical dividing line between
the two approaches is free will. If humans have free will, the role of
social science is to look for the reasons for how we exercise free will.
100 The Myth of the Born Criminal

for hipsters a return to a purer and more primitive America, one that
was free to set its own language and codes, and free to seek simple
pleasures. In the cultural critic Richard Slotkin’s contention, the Puri-
tans’ relationship to the New World was largely defined by the difficul-
ties of wilderness life and of the Indian Wars.4 Consequently, American
mythology came to see violence as natural and regenerative; what was
necessary for early settler survival became the founding idea of the
frontier spirit. As later generations reworked the original myths, vio-
lence took on a new role as an engine of change and as a counterforce
to cultural stagnation. What started out as simple law-breaking could
later become legend. Billy the Kid, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance
Kid, Jesse James, John Dillinger, Bonnie and Clyde, and Al Capone be-
came part of the creative violence–folklore, and it was these characters
whom the hipsters embraced. For the 1950s bohemian, the outlaw be-
came shorthand for individualism and rebellion. But as John Leland,
the author of Hip: The History, argues, this violence was all borrowed
gesture, an aesthetic without nerve or desire to actually carry it out. “At
an elemental level, the hipster is a vicarious form of the outlaw,” Le-
land wrote. “Hipsters are criminals once removed, intimations of crime
without the thing itself. In a nation of laws, the romance of the out-
law lies mainly in the potential, isolated from the seamier reality of its
results.”5
One result of hip’s attempt to wed high culture with low culture,
white culture with black culture, and outright criminality with mid-
century romanticism was the psychopath-hero. The first to make the
leap from hip’s intimations of violence to a reverence of actual violence,
from the hipster to the psychopath, was Norman Mailer. Mailer set up a
binary choice between conformity and hipsterism in his widely reviled
1957 essay “The White Negro”: “One is Hip or one is Square ... one is a
rebel or one conforms, one is a frontiersman in the Wild West of Ameri-
can night life, or else a Square cell ... doomed willy-nilly to conform
if one is to succeed.” For Mailer, there is only one truly moral choice.
Having witnessed the horrors of the concentration camps and the atom
bomb – both courtesy of vast scientific and bureaucratic operations
– the modern individual could either fall into “slow death by confor-
mity with every creative and rebellious instinct stifled” or to “accept
the terms of death, to live with death as immediate danger, to divorce
oneself from society, to exist without roots, to set out on that uncharted
journey into the rebellious imperatives of the self.” The hipster – whom
Mailer fashioned as an American-style existentialist or as a “wise prim-
The Culture of Psychopathy 101

itive” (i.e., black, hence the essay’s title and hence the critiques of his
heavy-handed racial stereotypes) – chose the latter. This choice did not
mean organized political dissent, but private pathology, which Mailer
considered preferable to systemic, state-sanctioned violence. He glori-
fied hip’s psychopathic immoderation, solipsism, and disregard for the
future. The hipster pursued his nihilistic ends at leisure, showed active
hostility to cooperation, and professed faith only in himself. “Whether
the life is criminal or not,” he wrote, “the decision is to encourage the
psychopath in oneself, to explore that domain of experience where se-
curity is boredom and thereof sickness, and one exists in the present, in
that enormous present which is without past or future.”6
The Postmodern Psychopath
The idea that psychopaths signified cultural values became a rich

source of philosophical debate after Mailer’s initial salvo. The basic
position here was that the psychopath was not mentally ill. Rather, he
was essentially sane, and simply reflected an individualistic, competi-
tive culture. Sociologists and cultural critics found in psychopathy a
useful analogy for the ills of modern consumer culture and unchecked
individualism. In his 1996 book The Wilding of America: How Greed and
Violence are Eroding our Nation’s Character, sociologist Charles Derber
used the 1989 assault on a Central Park jogger – referred to as “wild-
ing” in the media, though wrongly, as the actual offence most likely had
nothing to do with wilding – as an illustration of an unsettling trend
in American life: the increasing acceptance of “legitimate” sociopathy
in all walks of life. American business, politics, and even home-life,
Derber argued, were increasingly devoted to the pursuit of naked self-
interest. “In sociopathic societies,” he wrote, “the clinical effort to dis-
sect the sociopathic personality cannot be separated from an analysis
of national character and ideology.”7 Psychologist Robert Joseph Smith
reached the same conclusion in his 1978 book, The Psychopath in Society.
Smith examined the North American national character through case
studies of commercials, children’s stories, and literature, and conclud-
ed that the traits most valued in the U.S. are congruent with psycho

pathy. He wrote,
In a situation where individualism is trump, the psychopath is powerfully

equipped to survive, if not always to succeed. That is, if the operational
basis of the culture requires projecting a good image while watching out

for oneself, if it encourages pursuit of material pleasure and the merchan-
dizing of people, then far from being a mask of sanity or a moral imbecile,
the psychopath is the reasonable one and those of us who are trusting,
reliable, and empathetic are out of phase with reality.8
The exact aspect of modernity that psychopaths represented depend-

ed on a writer’s interests. For cultural critics, the psychopath mirrored
capitalist greed; for the philosophically inclined, the psychopath be-
came a philosopher of sorts. What united the two camps were grievanc-
es over some aspect of contemporary life, which they sought to portray
as analogous to psychopathy. For philosophers the grievance tended to
concern postmodernism.
In the early part of the twentieth century, the term “postmodern”
was used to describe art and architecture that stood in contrast to mod-
ernist art and architecture. In the latter half of the twentieth century,
postmodernism acquired new meanings as it spread to literary theory
and the humanities. Here, the term came to denote a set of epistemo-
logical ideas that stood in contrast to traditional beliefs about authority
and knowledge. Postmodernist epistemology was a critique of mo-
dernity’s view of science and objectivity. Modern science, rather than
being the arbiter of objective truths, was in fact deeply male- and ethno-
centric. Postmoderns argued that what moderns took as authoritative
knowledge about history, society, and natural phenomena were merely
subjective feelings and preferences perpetuated by the powerful. Post-
modernism gained traction with the rise of multiculturalism and cul-
tural relativism in the 1960s and 1970s, and quickly became dogma in
many humanities and social sciences departments. One problem with
postmodernism was its insistence that truth and falsehood were ob-
jectively indistinguishable, which, if taken literally, would undermine
any scientific inquiry. If science and pseudoscience were epistemical-
ly the same, what would be the point of debunking the latter? Many
writers pointed out that postmodernism did not seem to contribute to
our understanding of the world in any meaningful way. This problem
came to a head when the physicist Alan Sokal submitted a deliberately
nonsensical faux-postmodernist article about quantum gravity to the
well-regarded postmodernist cultural studies journal Social Text. When
the journal published the article, Sokal revealed his submission as a
hoax intended to expose the silliness of postmodern thought. The hoax,
which came to be known as “The Sokal Affair,” galvanized postmod-
ernism’s critics.

For some critics, the mental life – or lack thereof – of psychopaths
made for an irresistible analogy to postmodernism. The York Universi-
ty philosopher David Stamos compared psychopaths’ lack of morality
with postmodernists’ lack of commitment to objective truth. In his 2011
essay “The Philosophical Significance of Psychopaths: Postmodernism,
Morality, and God,” Stamos wrote, “Just as psychopaths lack moral vir-
tues and values and do not want them, postmodernists lack epistemic
virtues and values and do not want them.”9 The Oregon State Univer-
sity psychologist Michael Levenson compared psychopathy to the bête
noire of postmodernists, scientism (the overextension of science to ex-
plain practically everything) like this: “The psychopath appears to be
a postmodernist philosopher who fully endorses – and extends to its
logical extreme – scientistic devaluation of concerns about intrinsic or
ultimate meaning.”10 Other writers, such as the sociologist Simon Gott-
schalk, argued that the postmodern self, egged on towards pathological
individualism and sensation-seeking by a ruthless consumer society,
was “systematically encouraged” to adopt sociopathic tendencies.11
The Ideological Enemy
On the crassest and most predictable level, psychopathy became a

means of categorizing enemies to one’s ideology. Embittered politi-
cal ideologues took to diagnosing their political adversaries (espe-
cially those in power), blithely conflating differences in opinion with
psychopathy in their opponents. Some tried to make quasi-legitimate
taxonomies by matching their foes’ public utterances and policies with
diagnostic criteria for psychopathy, often nominating psychopathy re-
searchers as spiritual friends of sorts in a fight against evil. Democrats
diagnosed Republicans and Republicans diagnosed Democrats. Barack
Obama – Nobel Peace Prize or not – was a psychopath for running se-
cret and not-so-secret wars, for cutting taxes and for increasing them,
for his smooth talk and self-confidence. George W. Bush had psycho-
pathic eyes and took psychopathic delight in having people tortured.
On the eve of the 2012 presidential election, Mitt Romney was diag-
nosed for strapping his dog to the roof of his car and for shutting down
companies while at Bain Capital. Even the uncharismatic Canadian
prime minister, Stephen Harper, received the label for his pro-business
stance. The atheist blogger Austin Cline diagnosed God, and Jacob
Stein, an Orthodox Jew, diagnosed atheists like Austin Cline. “It sud-
denly struck me,” Stein wrote on his blog, Jewish Philosopher, “What is

But however elegant this biological account was, it simply illustrated
why psychology had trouble defining itself in the first place. Even if
there was such a thing as a psychopathic brain, and even if Williams
had one, did he not also have free will and motives? What evidence
suggests that he did not have free will and motives? (A 2013 study, for
instance, suggests that psychopaths have the ability to turn their em-
pathetic responses on and off.)21 In reducing Williams’s essence to psy-
chopathy and neurobiology, something essential was left out. The most
obvious missing ingredient was Williams’s psychology – the nexus of
motives, intentions, beliefs, choices, internal conflicts, social contexts,
regrets, meaningful coincidences, and so on: the stuff, in other words,
of any well-written biography. One of the central differences between
the psychological and biological – or social and natural science – ac-
counts is that the former is dynamic whereas the latter is static. Save for
the possibility that Williams had certain proximal triggers (stress, say,
right before his crime spree), the biological account was fundamentally
retrospective and essentialist: Williams’s behaviour was determined
by his personality, and his personality by his biology (or some com-
bination of biology and environment). The account was essentialist in
endorsing an implicit hierarchy of essential and inessential selves. Wil-
liam’s normal, social self was a “mask of sanity,” a fake persona that
hid his essential psychopathic self. But of course nothing compels this
conclusion. It may be morally justifiable to divide Williams’s selves in
this way – it is easy to argue that the moral significance of his crimes
outweighed the rest of his accomplishments, and to argue the oppo-
site would be to minimize his crimes – but there is nothing scientific
about doing so. Why should we believe that Williams’s evil side was a
truer self than his not-so-evil side? Could the two sides not coexist, or
gradually develop into one composite, and more complex, but equally
true self, one that comes into being and for a moment thrives in early
twenty-first-century southeastern Ontario, a thing Wundt would call
character? Williams’s presumed lack of empathy might have made it
easier for him to rape and murder, but it does not ultimately explain
why he did so. Is Williams’s double life, furthermore, really a mystery,
or have we simply not studied him enough? This raises a few obvious
questions, such as: Why exactly is a double life a mystery, and how do
we know that its solution lies in abnormal psychology? Is a double life
not a rational choice for a person committing crimes and not wanting
to get caught?

termined fears, and as such conveys a great deal about a culture’s
collective psyche. Kevin Haggerty at the University of Alberta has
cogently argued that the serial killer is essentially an image of mod-
ern, anonymous, media-saturated, and instant celebrity–obsessed so-
ciety. The choice of serial murderers’ victims also mirrors social values
that reflexively denigrate certain groups, such as prostitutes. Haggerty
writes,
Rather than attempt to comprehensively list the axes of marginalization

that distinguish the victims of serial killers, it is easier to point out who
they do not [emphasis original] kill. In North America serial killers very
rarely murder wealthy Caucasian heterosexual males – those individuals
who are iconically positioned in the most esteemed cultural category.13
But the monster does more than kill and repulse; it also symbolizes
unstated longings for God-like powers and freedom from social con-
straints. Jeffrey Jerome Cohen describes the monster’s appeal in this
way:
The monster also attracts. The same creatures who terrify and interdict can
evoke potent escapist fantasies; the linking of monstrosity with the forbid-
den makes the monster all the more appealing as a temporary egress from
constraint. This simultaneous repulsion and attraction at the core of the
monster’s composition accounts greatly for its continued cultural popu-
larity, for the fact that the monster seldom can be contained in a simple
binary dialectic ... We distrust and loathe the monster at the same time we
envy its freedom, and perhaps its sublime despair.14
Psychologists have long noted enviable freedom of psychopaths from

conventional morality. Hare and Babiak write that psychopaths “lack
feelings of remorse and guilt, part of the internal moral sense that pre-
vents the rest of us from acting out some of the fantasies we occasion-
ally have about using, manipulating, and hurting others.”15 According
to Martha Stout, as a psychopath “you can do anything at all [emphasis
original], and still your strange advantage over the majority of people,
who are kept in line by their conscience, will most likely remain undis-
covered.” Stout goes on to ask, “What will you do with your huge and
secret advantage?”16 Aside from the obvious points about psychopaths’
freedom, the operative words here are “fantasies,” “strange,” and “se-
cret,” each a key element of monster folklore.

As Cohen suggests above, the monster operates on a number of
psychological levels. The monster is an object of fantasy and envy, but
also a figure of “sublime despair,” an unreadable and secretive figure
whose existence is a tragedy to itself as much as to its victims. It carries
a horrible secret of being neither human nor animal, but something in
between. We also know that eventually the monster is cut down by a
hero, and so its death is stamped into its very nature by a narrative con-
vention. In short, folklore catches the monster up in multiple traps of
identity, which makes the monster a complex character. By design, then,
the monster’s complexity stands in contrast to the folklore’s audience,
whose lives in comparison seem flat and ordinary.
Given the monster’s depth, complexity, and freedom, it is not sur-
prising that monsters are often given a sympathetic or at least semi-
sympathetic treatment in modern retellings. The inverted monster
narrative – which emphasizes the monster’s positives over the bloody
and tragic negatives – has been the basis of vampires’, witches’, and
werewolves’ appeal, and is increasingly prominent in recent franchises
like Dexter and Twilight. The sitcom It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia
features the psychopathic Dennis Reynolds, who, as Men’s Health put
it “has convinced America to fall in love with him.” Glenn Howerton,
the actor who portrays Dennis and who also co-created the show, ex-
plained to the magazine that “being a psychopath isn’t such a bad thing
after all.”17 In this regard, real-life serial killers are different only in de-
gree from their fictional counterparts. As proof of the disappearing line
between fame and infamy, you can now join serial killer fan clubs and
buy the killers’ letters, art, prison address lists, hair and nail clippings,
and personal effects. There are Top 10 and Top 100 serial killer lists, and
even Kevin Dutton refers to serial “A-listers” and “Hall of Famers,”18
apparently to distinguish Ted Bundy et al. from their less prolific and
less popular counterparts. “I have cradled John Wayne Gacy’s brain in
my hands,”19 he exclaimed in a strange mix of Lombrosian enthusiasm,
twenty-first-century fanboy culture, and religious iconography. The
adoration of serial killers is in basic outline equal to the exaltation of
actors (who tend to enjoy playing serial killers) and superstar athletes.
Each celebrity occupies a semi-spiritual plane onto which audiences
can project any number of desires and pathologies, the only difference
being the slightly subversive shame that comes with admiring and pro-
jecting onto the killers.
What made this inversion possible is what made monster folklore
possible in the first place: essentially it is just a story. As the UCLA Eng-

lish professor Mark Seltzer has argued, modern “true crime” literature
and film are increasingly indistinguishable from their fictional counter-
parts. He wrote,
True crime is crime fact that looks like crime fiction ... “Crime” on its own
is then crime fiction, “false crime.” The presumption seems to be that
“crime” is a fictional genre and that one must bend fiction toward fact
by adding the word “true” to crime. This interestingly paradoxical rela-
tion between true and false crime points to the manner in which crime in
modern society resides in that interval between real and fictional reality
... That is, a reality bound up through and through with the reality of the
mass media.20
This conflation of real and fictional crime has the psychological effect
of releasing the audience from having to consider the seamy realities
of actual murder. If the killer’s identity is hard to distinguish from fic-
tion, so it is easy to confuse real victims’ suffering with the suffering of
fictional victims. It is safe to contemplate and identify with the mon-
ster when his victims are marginally real. The confusion only deepens
when it is reinforced by mental health experts. A number of psycholo-
gists, for example, contributed to The Psychology of Dexter, a book-
length psychological assessment of the fictional psychopath Dexter
Morgan (or “America’s favorite serial killer,”21 as one Emory Univer-
sity psychologist put it in the book). Then, on 24 October 2012, Kevin
Dutton took the stage at the Rubin Museum of Art in New York, joined
by Michael C. Hall, who portrayed Dexter on TV. “Incorporating the
latest advances in brain scanning and neuroscience,” the museum ad-
vertisement explained in terms reminiscent of P.T. Barnum, “Dutton
reveals that there is a scale of ‘madness’ along which we all sit. In this
on-stage conversation, Dutton will test his theories on the actor who
embodies psychopathic qualities in his role on Showtime’s Dexter.”22
The conflation of real and imaginary here is so complete and unique
that it is nearly impossible to think of an analogy elsewhere. The clos-
est would probably be a zoologist studying a person who wears an
animal costume.
The widespread appeal of psychopathy as an alter ego lies in psy-
chopathy’s inclusiveness. Since psychopathy can define the president
as much it can the serial murderer, the label’s essence is not harm, but
freedom and potential. Psychopathy implies a range of options denied
to the non-psychopath: a psychopath can kill or choose not to kill; he

can choose any career or no career at all; he can use his talents for good
or evil. The psychopath is also good at many things the average per-
son is not: lying, first impressions, manipulation, casual sex, and start-
ing new jobs and relationships. Studies seem to prove this: one study
found a positive correlation between psychopathy and the number of
casual sex partners.23 Another study showed that psychopaths have
special powers of perception. In a much-discussed experiment, a team
of Brock University researchers tested whether undergraduate students
with psychopathic traits were better than non-psychopathic students
at detecting vulnerability in potential victims. To do this, the research-
ers asked a pool of subjects whether they had been previously victim-
ized, and then filmed them walking down a hallway. The researchers
then gave another pool of students a self-report questionnaire on psy-
chopathy, and showed them the film with the instruction to identify
who among the walkers would be a good mugging victim. The higher
an individual’s self-reported psychopathy, the better he or she was at
identifying the previously victimized group.24 “Psychopathy really is
like a high performance sports car,”25 Kevin Dutton concluded.
Also, just like the folklore of vampires, werewolves, and other mon-
sters, psychopathy taps into typical adolescent fears and hopes. The
monster’s destructive powers temper and justify the bitterness of social
exclusion and sense of alienation. The monster is free from doubt and
immune to ego threats, and when the ego is threatened, a secret alter
ego deploys to avenge the hurt. The monster is tragically alone but su-
perior. Given the choice between having a conscience and not having it,
between weakness and strength, doubt and certainty, many would con-
ceivably choose the psychopath’s fate. The online “I Am a Psychopath”
discussion and chat forum is a case in point. The website capitalizes
on the inverted monster narrative and on psychopathy’s attractiveness
as a personality trait. Officially, the forum allows subscribers to do the
following: “Anonymously connect with people who share your expe-
riences – like those who say ‘I Am a Psychopath.’ Read hundreds of
true stories, share your own story anonymously, get feedback and com-
ments, chat in the discussion forum, help others, meet new friends, and
so much more.”26
In practice, however, many use the forum for a completely different
purpose: showing off. “I am proud to be what you call a psychopath,”
wrote one member. “In my opinion we, the Psychopaths, stand above
all other Humans.” Another member explained “The Benefits of Being
a Young Black Psychopath” like this: “Since I am a black psychopath, I
58
But others, like John Gray, a prominent asylum superintendent, dis-

agreed. According to Gray, the mind could not be rational and insane
at the same time, and so moral insanity could not excuse a criminal
act. Reason, according to Gray, was the sole criterion of moral and
legal responsibility. “Moral insanity,” he scoffed in an address to the
Medical Society of the State of New York in 1868, “is the last remnant
of the metaphysical school.”31 In an effort to clarify the issue, the As-
sociation of Medical Superintendents of American Institutions for the
Insane brought it up for discussion in an 1863 meeting. The results
were anything but conclusive. Of the thirteen superintendents who ex-
pressed an opinion, five supported Ray’s position and eight sided with
Gray.
In the ensuing century and a half, the question of moral insanity/
psychopathy and criminal responsibility remained unresolved. The is-
sue was disputed in courtrooms and medico-legal treatises, with expert
support for both sides. By and large, common law rejected psychopa-
thy as a defence. The original Ray-Gray-inspired debates began to lose
momentum by the end of the nineteenth century, only to be revived a
century later with the Gray side now increasingly on the defensive.
Beginning in the early 1990s, psychopathy began to appear in sev-
eral court cases. One study showed that between 1991 and 2004, the
use of psychopathy – as measured by the PCL-R – as evidence in U.S.
courts rose steadily from zero to thirty cases per year, with a total of
eighty-seven uses for the period. A follow-up study for the years 2005
to 2011 recorded a total of 348 PCL-R uses, with similarly steady yearly
increases.32 (These numbers include only written opinions, and so most
likely reflect only a fraction of actual cases. The Simon Fraser Universi-
ty psychologist Stephen Hart estimates that between 60,000 and 80,000
PCL-R forensic evaluations are carried out every year.)33 The studies
also show that the test has been used for an increasingly wide range
of purposes. The most common uses were for determining whether an
offender was a sexually violent predator, providing insight at parole
hearings, assessing his or her mental state during the offense, and de-
termining the appropriate sentence, including capital punishment.34
A Canadian study showed similar increases in juvenile cases between
1970 and 2008.35 In sentencing decisions, however, courts did not apply
the diagnosis consistently, some judges taking psychopathy as a miti-
gating and others as an aggravating circumstance.
A team of University of Utah scholars investigated how psychopa-
thy, and in particular the biological theory of psychopathy, might affect

parlayed his diagnosis into an appearance on the 2007 British docu-
mentary film Egomania, which billed Vaknin as “the world’s leading ex-
pert on NPD.” For the film, Vaknin provided a series of insights on the
nature of narcissistic personality disorder, and a narrative twist toward
the end of the show whereby he confessed that he himself was “a self-
aware narcissist.” This, he explained, was a rare condition. “We had
finally found a level-nine narcissist,” the film’s narrator noted, what-
ever that meant. “Sam is unique.” Vaknin’s by-the-book narcissism, on
display throughout the film, seemed to unsettle the entire film crew.
Two years later, Vaknin appeared in the film I, Psychopath. This time,
he submitted himself to a battery of diagnostic tests to see whether,
aside from his NPD, he also qualified as a bona fide psychopath. Vari-
ous mental health experts examined his brain and interview responses,
and eventually gave him the diagnosis. Vaknin’s tantrums and manip-
ulations were again captured on film, supposedly as evidence that he
was indeed a psychopath. The film’s director bemoaned on camera the
toll that the filming was taking on his own mental health. Robert Hare,
who appeared on the film himself, later confirmed Vaknin’s diagnosis
in a radio interview, and explained that Vaknin’s condition was most
likely genetic.27 Amid layers of complexity and irony, the troubling
question remained: was Vaknin a psychopath or merely pretending
to be one? Would pretending make him a psychopath anyway? Why
would Vaknin agree to be filmed in this way? One thing stood out clear-
ly: Vaknin seemed to sincerely want to be a psychopath. At least he was
making money from it, as he confessed on camera.
M.E. Thomas, a pseudonymous sociopath/psychopath followed in
Vaknin’s footsteps in her 2013 book, Confessions of a Sociopath: A Life
Spent Hiding in Plain Sight. In the book, Thomas, a self-described law
professor, musician, Sunday school teacher, and woman with a “bril-
liant IQ,” recounted how she came to suspect that she might be a psy-
chopath, and described her mission to find a diagnosis. She finally
received it when John Edens, a professor at Texas A&M University and
a noted expert on psychopathy, put Thomas through a number of tests
and pronounced her “a ‘socialized’ or ‘successful’ psychopath.” Her
personality profile, according to Edens, mirrored “the prototypical psy-
chopathic personality among females.” Thomas sensed Edens’s sym-
pathy for her condition: “At one point during our interview I thought
that he might cry,” she wrote. “He seemed so distressed on my behalf
... I think ... he was worried for me – worried about what a diagnosis
like ‘sociopath’ would mean for me in my life.” “Of course it’s hard for

me to worry about things like that,” Thomas went on, since sociopaths
are not supposed to care. Yet earlier in the book she had worried, and
quite dramatically so: “I have managed to remain undetected so far,”
she wrote,
but there’s no telling how long that will last. Will I end up being shipped
off to a sociopaths-only gulag? Perhaps if I’m lucky. Many visitors to my
blog [SociopathWorld.com, which advertises her book and accepts do-
nations] have called for much worse, including our total extermination.
I’m hoping that once you get to know one sociopath, you’ll show even
this cold heart some compassion when the cattle cars come to ship me off
somewhere.28
Although marginally more subtle than Vaknin, Thomas nevertheless

was faithful to Vaknin’s method of persona construction. She sought
out a mental health expert to confirm the diagnosis she suspected, as-
similated her own narrative to the scientific consensus (she blamed
“dual quirks of genetics and environment” for her condition),29 and
proceeded to recount a life of psychopathy in the flat, mechanical pre-
cision of someone ticking off boxes. Finally, Thomas’s inauthentic and
shallow prose, like Vaknin’s bouts of on-camera ill temper, both con-
firmed her as a psychopath and left open the possibility that she was
faking it. The faking itself, of course, had a familiarly circular logic:
counterfeiting a psychopathic profile would itself count as a symptom
of psychopathy.30 In this context, the logic of psychopathy seemed to
make it an impossible-to-malinger disorder, even if doing so was per-
fectly rational. (I, Psychopath and Confessions of a Sociopath featuring
a non-psychopath and a non-sociopath would probably not produce
compelling narratives.)
If diagnosing Vaknin and Thomas was ironic in all sorts of intended
and unintended ways, the National Public Radio’s take on the diagno-
sis came as a light-hearted corrective. Having read Jon Ronson’s book
Psychopath Test: A Journey Through the Madness Industry, the station de-
cided to ask a forensic psychologist to assess the staff on This American
Life. “Who is the psycho?” the host asked:
So if you heard at the beginning of today’s program, you heard that I and
my fellow producers here at This American Life decided to take the psycho-
path test ourselves for this week’s program. And just to quickly repeat our
caveats about that, we did this for entertainment and education purposes
60
One of the best-known contemporary psychopathy researchers, Uni-

versity of New Mexico psychologist Kent Kiehl, agreed. To him, psy-
chopaths’ emotional understanding of morality is too undeveloped to
warrant full criminal responsibility. He put it this way: “Everyone un-
derstands if you have a child with low IQ they aren’t as responsible and
don’t make the same choices. What about a child that has an emotional
IQ in the same low range?” 39
In 2009, Kiehl put his ideas into action when he appeared as an expert
witness in the sentencing hearing of Brian Dugan. Dugan had raped
and murdered a ten-year-old Chicago girl in 1983. Kiehl had diagnosed
Dugan as a psychopath, and scanned his brain. The results led Kiehl
to argue that Dugan suffered from reduced mental capacity that char-
acterized psychopathy. Kiehl argued that Dugan should therefore be
spared the death sentence. Even though the jury ultimately rejected his
argument (a moot decision it turned out, since Illinois repealed its death
penalty in April 2011, thus commuting Dugan’s sentence to life in pris-
on), Kiehl considered it a temporary setback. In an interview with NPR
he predicted that “neuroscience and neuroimaging is going to change
the whole philosophy about how we punish and how we decide who
to incapacitate and how we decide how to deal with people.”40 Nor
was Kiehl’s testimony the first of its kind. As early as 2000, University
of Pennsylvania psychologist Adrian Raine had given expert witness
testimony for the defence in the trial of Donta Page, a man who stood
accused of murdering and raping a twenty-four-year-old woman in
Denver. Raine’s argument was similar to Kiehl’s: Page’s brain showed
a defect common in murderers and psychopaths – lower-than-normal
prefrontal cortex activation – which Raine took to mean that the “emer-
gency brake on behaviour is just not there in this individual.”41 This
time, a three-judge panel agreed with the argument, and sentenced
Page to life in prison rather than imposing the death sentence.
The most surprising source of support for the Kiehl-Raine position
was academic philosophy. Rather than attacking the biological theory
at its weak points (problems with biological determinism, the obvious
metaphysical and Judeo-Christian bases of the entire psychopathy dis-
course, etc.), modern philosophers tended to take the empirical litera-
ture at face value, and frequently concluded that psychopaths should
not be held criminally or morally responsible for their behaviour. Uni-
versity of Arizona philosopher Jeffrie Murphy set the tone in 1972 by
arguing that psychopaths should, morally speaking, be understood as
animals. “The only possible argument for regarding the psychopath as
PART II
7 The Language of Persuasion
In 2006 Martin Kantor, a retired psychiatrist from the Department of

Veterans Affairs Medical Centre in New Jersey, began his latest book,
The Psychopathy of Everyday Life: How Antisocial Personality Disorder
Affects Us All, with these words: “Psychopathy is both a serious psy-
chological problem that threatens our individual happiness and a
widespread social problem that threatens our entire civilization.”1
Though vacuous – substitute “evil” for “psychopathy,” and observe
the banality – Kantor’s statement was still powerful. It expressed just
how urgent it was to understand psychopathy: the stakes were high,
and we ignored psychopathy at our own peril. Or consider the typical
introduction to an academic journal article on psychopathy. Here is an
example:
Psychopathy is one of the most powerful predictors of both violent and

non-violent criminal recidivism ... Offenders with psychopathic features
commit more crimes, commit a greater variety of crimes, and are more
violent during the commission of their crimes ... Given the well-defined
relationship between psychopathy and extreme violence ... it might be
predicted that psychopathy would be associated with a propensity for
committing sexual violence.2
Of course psychopaths commit more crimes than non-psychopaths.

They do so almost by definition.3 Traditional measures of psychopa-
thy include items that are either directly or indirectly about crime. The
PCL-R, for example, includes items about juvenile delinquency, condi-
tional release, criminal versatility, conning, remorselessness, and fail-
ure to accept responsibility for one’s own actions (to receive a score on

the last two items there must be something to feel remorseful about
and to take responsibility for). The Levenson Self-Report Psychopathy
Scale, though less explicitly about crime, measures attitudes about such
things as clever scams, ripping people off, hurting others in pursuit of
goals, cheating, and behaviours that consistently land one in trouble.4
A great number of studies, nevertheless, have examined the relation-
ship between crime and psychopathy. The Carleton University psy-
chologists Adelle Forth and Heather Burke summarize the research as
follows: “A strong relation between psychopathy, criminal behaviors,
and violence has consistently been found in adult offender popula-
tions.”5 That is, researchers “consistently” find that people without
conscience do bad things. The important question here is not the exact
quantitative strength of the crime–psychopathy relationship, but the
reason why social scientists would carry out these studies in the first
place.
While it is elementary logic that tautologies need not be tested em-
pirically, testing them may nevertheless fulfil a useful purpose. Take
the analogy of a political campaign. Suppose you want to enter politics
because you think that, if elected, you will bring about the most public
good. But to win, you cannot appeal to social benefits alone; you also
have to do things that bear no logical relation to good governance –
serving pancakes, espousing slogans, making vague or impossible-to-
keep campaign promises, getting expensive haircuts, and so on. Now
think about the psychopathy research program. To attract attention and
funding, a psychopathy researcher has to stress the public benefits of his
or her research, which the researcher can do by, say, proving that there
is an empirical relationship between psychopathy and social problems,
such as crime. Although this serves no actual scientific purpose, it does
serve a unique function: persuasion – the scientific equivalent, in other
words, of a slogan or a haircut.
The rhetorical logic behind the “dangerous psychopath” argument is
simple: it mobilizes audiences into action – to read a book, to accept an
article for publication, to approve a grant application, and so on. Since
psychopaths are a proven threat to human welfare, the logic goes, it is in
an audience’s self-interest to act, however that action may be construed
for the particular situation. In rhetoric, this strategy is called “framing.”
The frame in this case packages psychopathy as primarily a crime prob-
lem, a problem that requires action, and it is this call for action that sells
the research program.
The Language of Persuasion 117

In this chapter we propose that psychopathy has become popular
in part because of rhetoric. Although rhetoric was an important part
of nineteenth-century degeneracy and moral insanity discourse, it did
not blossom into an art until the 1990s, largely for technological rea-
sons. In the 1990s, advancements in neuroimaging and psychometric
techniques introduced the world to a new kind of social scientist, one
whose primary competency was in operating complex technologies
rather than in understanding and managing the human psyche. One
of the effects of this shift was to inhibit psychology’s traditional critics
– philosophers, humanists, and journalists – who had no training in in-
terpreting neuroimaging or psychometric data.6 Logical critiques in the
style of, say, Walter Lippman (who skewered U.S. Army mental testing
in 1922) or Noam Chomsky (whose critique of B.F. Skinner’s Verbal Be-
havior in 1959 was instrumental in taking the sheen off behaviourism)
are exponentially easier to dismiss today with appeals to the data. Here
is Robert Hare on the data:
Like most clinical constructs, psychopathy has been and continues to be

the subject of considerable debate, scientific and otherwise. Some com-
mentators – perhaps influenced by belief systems intolerant of clinical and
behavioral constructs, or overwhelmed by the inconsistent, fuzzy, and le-
galistic ways in which the term is often used – have even suggested that
the disorder is mythological or, at the very least, not clinically or theoreti-
cally useful. These views typically have an armchair quality about them,
and are held with surprising certitude and tenacity, given the wealth of
clinical and empirical support for the construct of psychopathy now read-
ily available in the literature ... Indeed, a meeting of leading researchers
on personality disorders organized by the National Institute of Mental
Health in Washington, DC, in June 1992 concluded that the convergence
of biological, psychological, and behavioral paradigms in the theory and
research on psychopathy was a useful model for the construct validation
of other personality disorders.7
In other words, it is both very complicated and very simple. Unless

we have a thorough understanding of the empirical literature – pub-
lished accounts of which now number in the thousands – and construct
validation (a concept even experts have trouble understanding; see ap-
pendix B), we should accept what the experts tell us. And what they
tell us is a simple story: psychopathy is a real disorder. Yet, it does not

take a social scientist to see that the passage above is also effectively
a condensed manual on rhetoric. There is an ad hominem on ethics,
objectivity, and competence of critics (they are “influenced by belief sys-
tems intolerant of clinical and behavioural constructs, or overwhelmed”;
their views “have an armchair quality about them,” and are “held with
surprising certitude and tenacity”); a claim to objectivity (the data are
“readily available,” and basically require no interpretation. For more
on this, see chapter 8.); an appeal to authority (“a meeting of leading re-
searchers on personality disorders organized by the National Institute of
Mental Health ... concluded) [emphasis added]; and slippery language
(“clinical construct” sounds scientific, but what does it mean? Is a con-
struct not the opposite of a real thing? For more on this, see appendix
B. Also, the statement that critics have “suggested that the disorder is
mythological” already implies that the argument is about a disorder, the
very thing many critics in fact reject).
But are these rhetorical utterances intentionally rhetorical? In this
book we do not claim that rhetoric deployed in the service of psychopa-
thy research is meant to deceive, distract, or to market a dubious prod-
uct. Our criteria for considering a statement rhetorical and for including
it here is that (a) it is scientifically questionable or inessential, (b) it is
frequently made, and (c) it advances an institutional agenda. In other
words, rhetoric for our purposes here consists of statements that serve
only institutional agendas, and not scientific ones. We do not know the
reasons for these rhetorical statements; we only discuss their effects, and
when we say a certain statement has a certain rhetorical purpose, we do
not mean that the individual making that statement has that purpose,
only that it has a rhetorical effect. What follows is a discussion of some
of the rhetorical techniques evident in psychopathy discourse.
Medical Terminology
The master narrative of psychopathy is the disease model. Psychop-

athy is a disorder, psychopaths are patients with a dysfunction, their
symptoms – itemized in diagnostic tests – have an onset and a course, and
psychopathy may or may not be treatable. A typical academic journal
article sounds like this:
Antisocial and psychopathic personality disorders can be linked to a num-

ber of biochemical abnormalities (e.g., serotonin, monoamine oxidase,
4 The Politics of Psychopathy
But what exactly happened to make psychopathy such a powerful idea

in law and in the public imagination, and why did it happen in the 1990s
and not before? The standard answer has to do with scientific equip-
ment and data, and runs something like this: For most of the twentieth
century, the psychopathy concept had essentially lain dormant or in ut-
ter disarray. Nobody agreed on what constituted or caused psychopa-
thy, or what it should be even called. The publication of the PCL-R in
1991, however, finally allowed researchers to study and talk about the
same thing. (Hare described the first version, the PCL, as a research
scale in 1980, but it was not published as a clinical scale until 1991, and
is now called the PCL-R.) Newly developed neuroimaging techniques,
particularly functional neuroimaging, which became widely available
for researchers in the 1990s, soon began to show that psychopaths had
unique brain activation. Many researchers thought that these brain pat-
terns, combined with certain environmental stresses, caused the disor-
der. Later psychometric studies showed that psychopathy had a genetic
basis as well.
This master narrative of psychopathy makes passing note of indi-
vidual mid-century theorists, but generally their work is seen as little
more than a dress rehearsal for the turn-of-the-century neuropsychiat-
ric revolution. Nothing of cultural relevance occurred in between; the
revolution was brought on by the combined forces of scientific insights
and technical innovations in neuroimaging and psychometrics. Psy-
chopathy became popular, in other words, because it turned out to be a
real disorder.
This story, as we will see in chapter 8 and appendix B, is wrong. What
sealed psychopathy’s popularity in the 1990s was not data but a com-

And so, with a few essentially random decisions you have created an
entirely new discourse.
The question is which language – the medical or the descriptive –
makes more sense for psychopathy. The answer has nothing to do with
whether or not psychopathy has a biological cause. Liberalism, intro-
version, jerkiness, chronic complaining, and musical ability probably
have a biological cause – at least in part – and attractiveness certainly
has one, but they are not disorders. Nor are socio-economic status,9 re-
ligious affiliation,10 and political orientation11 disorders, though each
has been shown to have neurobiological correlates. (We will discuss
psychopathy’s proposed biological causes in chapter 8.)
So, let us concentrate on language. Is the medical language logically
appropriate for psychopathy? Are psychopaths patients who suffer from
symptoms? Not in the traditional sense of the words. Psychopaths do not
typically complain about their psychopathy or seek help for it. Unless
a psychopath is punished for a crime, psychopathy is only problem-
atic for others. Some features – like juvenile delinquency, revocation of
conditional release, and criminal versatility – are in fact as much about
criminal law and the functioning of the criminal justice system as they
are about the individual diagnosed. As we saw in chapter 5, some peo-
ple actually want to be psychopaths. Do the symptoms of psychopathy
have an onset and course in the way diseases typically have? The an-
swer is no, since there is no pre- and post-psychopathy, no fluctuation in
symptoms (though psychopaths commit fewer crimes as they approach
middle age, but so do non-psychopaths). Do psychopaths suffer from
a dysfunction? Are they unable to feel remorse, stay unmarried or mo-
nogamous, refrain from crime, take responsibility for their offences, and
so on, or do they simply choose to do so less than non-psychopaths?
In medicine, dysfunction is typically taken to mean that an organism
either (a) has ceased to be able to do what it was previously able to do,
or (b) cannot perform its natural function (excluding the natural aging
process in both cases). The problem with psychopathy and (a) is, again,
that there are no proposed pre- and post-psychopathy functions. The
problem with (b) is that framing such things as remorse, manipulation,
sense of self-worth, and charm – which are included in most measures
of psychopathy – in terms of natural functions requires either metaphysi-
cal speculation or guesswork about evolutionary adaptation.
In other words, there are no compelling empirical grounds for prefer-
ring medical language over personality description when discussing
psychopaths.12 However, the rhetorical reasons for the medical model

are obvious: the more psychopathy discourse resembles medical dis-
course, the more it commands research funds, professional prestige,
law enforcement endorsements, and mainstream media interest.
Dangerous Knowledge
Not long after the Hare Psychopathy Checklist-Revised was published

and began to gain public attention, concerns were raised about its po-
tential misuse. This was not without some justification, as a psychopa-
thy diagnosis can influence any number of legal decisions, including
death sentence deliberations (see chapter 9). Robert Hare has provided
anecdotal evidence of PCL-R misuse in the American and Canadian
criminal justice systems. These range from a judge’s ad hoc PCL-R
diagnosis of a defendant to inmates diagnosing themselves.13 Others
have documented PCL-R misuses as well. Here are two representative
cases, as described by John Edens:14 In one case, prosecution sought the
death penalty for a defendant in a multiple murder case. The argument
centred in part on the defendant’s PCL-R score (thirty-six) which, the
prosecution argued, meant that the defendant was likely to engage in
institutional violence if not given the death penalty. Edens points out
that the empirical literature is inconclusive on the issue of institutional
violence, and the violence risk may be in any case irrelevant for in-
mates on twenty-three-hour-a-day lockdown in the facility in which
the defendant would be placed. The second case concerns a defendant
on trial for multiple sexual assaults against his child. A psychiatrist
had assessed him based on a number of tests, including ten to fifteen
select and improperly documented PCL-R items, and concluded that
the defendant did not show “sociopathic tendencies” and was there-
fore unlikely to have committed the offences. Edens lists three principal
problems with this argument. The psychiatrist
(a) did not have adequate information available to administer and score
the PCL-R appropriately; (b) presented the obtained results in a highly
unusual and nonstandardized manner; and (c) drew conclusions that are
in no way supported by the existing literature regarding the relationship
between psychopathy and sexual violence ... Although it is true that some
sex offenders score quite highly on the PCL-R ... and that the combination
of psychopathy and deviant sexual arousal has been shown to be a robust
predictor of sex offender recidivism in general ... these factors have very
little to do with the prediction of incest per se.15

All this has led Robert Hare to comment at length on the dangers
of PCL-R misuse. Once, Hare recalls, a prominent criminal lawyer de-
scribed him to an audience at an international conference as “a very
dangerous man.” “I share his concern,” Hare wrote in 1998,16 and later
posted this warning on his website: “The potential for harm is consider-
able if the PCL-R is used incorrectly, or if the user is not familiar with
the clinical and empirical literature pertaining to psychopathy.”17 To
minimize the risk of misuse, Hare listed the qualifications PCL-R users
should have. These include educational requirements (an advanced de-
gree in social, behavioural, or medical sciences), and work experience
in the forensic field. The PCL-R publisher refuses to even sell the test to
anyone without a graduate degree and training in test administration.18
In 2003, the question over user qualifications reached the Federal Court
of Canada, which had agreed to hear an inmate complaint over a PCL-
R assessment done by a non-PhD-level psychologist (the court decided
against the complainant).19
The PCL-R also poses dangers to its users in the form of copyright
law. Hare recounts the following scene:
In a recent civil commitment hearing for a sex offender, the prosecutor

noticed that the defendant’s psychologist appeared in court with photo-
copies of the PCL-R Manual, the Interview Schedule, and the Rating Sheet.
He asked the psychologist – who had testified that the defendant was not
a psychopath – if he was trained in the use of the PCL-R. The psycholo-
gist replied that he was not, but that he had attended a lecture on the as-
sessment of psychopathy presented by a prominent forensic psychologist.
When the prosecutor asked if he had an authorized version of the manual,
the judge cautioned the psychologist that he might be about to incriminate
himself in an illegal act. The prosecutor then repeated his question, where-
upon the psychologist said, “I plead the Fifth Amendment on the grounds
that I might incriminate myself.” The prosecutor asked how many copies
he had made of the PCL-R, who had received them, and so forth. To each
question the psychologist said, “I plead the Fifth Amendment.” The judge
then rejected the psychologist’s assessment of the defendant.20
Copyright laws have also set severe limits on how psychopathy can
be discussed in public. Mainstream media and university texts very
rarely publish the entire list of PCL-R items (to circumvent copyright
law, some textbooks provide Cleckley’s symptom list or the original
PCL items), resulting in a lopsided public discourse with lengthy dis-

cussions of psychopathy’s proposed causes on the one side but deliber-
ate haziness on exactly what they are supposed to cause on the other.
This stands in stark contrast to DSM-sanctioned disorders, such as an-
tisocial personality disorder, whose symptoms can be found in most
first-year psychology textbooks.
Although copyright laws governing psychological tests like the PCL-
R are generally fair, and the misapplication of diagnostic tests can be
harmful, sustained discussion on copyright restrictions and test misuse
can, however, also serve a rhetorical purpose. The rhetorical logic here
dictates that not only are psychopaths dangerous, but so is the tool for
detecting them. The rhetorical purpose of the “dangerous knowledge”
set of arguments is to communicate the essential seriousness – and the
attendant “realness” – of the psychopathy concept: since the conse-
quences of the psychopathy idea are serious for everyone involved, the
idea itself must be important. In this formulation, psychopathy is the
mental health version of the perennial “loaded gun” concept: a subtle
form of reification with built-in deniability. It is true that tests for psy-
chopathy can be misused, and they are justly protected by copyright
law. But it is also true that sustained, academic discussion on misuse
and copyright contribute to the overall rhetoric of psychopathy’s dan-
ger, and, consequently, its ontology.21
Public Emergency
As we saw in chapter 4, the case for psychopathy research is often pre-

mised on public safety. Psychopaths, we are told, cause untold physical,
emotional, and financial harm. The solution to this problem, we also
learn, lies at least in part in more research. But what kind of research?
Hervey Cleckley had an answer. “An important point to express,” he
wrote in 1982 (in a quote already familiar from chapter 1), is that
medical attention or any other practical step to help or ameliorate misfor-

tune or pain [caused by psychopaths] must not wait for a threshing out on
philosophic, metaphysical, and religious planes of the ultimate whys and
wherefores, the final determining of blame or responsibility. It is possible
to meet these emergencies at another point.22
This argument is rhetorically effective in two ways. First, if there is an

emergency, then surely something should be done about it. The emer-
gency provision shuts down discussion and disguises the tautology –

bad people do bad things; they always have – at the argument’s core.
The request for funds and public attention now seems not only plau-
sible but essential and selfless. Second, Cleckley’s admonition against
“threshing out on philosophic, metaphysical, and religious planes”
makes a claim for ownership – the problem now belongs to science. Phi-
losophy and metaphysics are too contemplative and slow to be useful
in emergencies, and besides, they cannot fix the psychopathy problem
in any meaningful way.
Another way of putting Cleckley’s argument is what in classical rhet-
oric is called ethical appeal. The gist of ethical appeal, as David Foster
Wallace put it, is “a complex and sophisticated ‘Trust Me’... it requires
the rhetor to convince us not just of his intellectual acuity or techni-
cal competency but of his basic decency and fairness and sensitivity
to the audience’s own hopes and fears.”23 Recalling his visit with Rob-
ert Hare, the award-winning Canadian writer Robert Hercz makes the
ethical appeal for psychopathy research:
Ever since I visited Dr. Robert Hare in Vancouver, I can see them, the psy-
chopaths. It’s pretty easy, once you know how to look. I’m watching a
documentary about an American prison trying to rehabilitate teen mur-
derers. They’re using an emotionally intense kind of group therapy, and I
can see, as plain as day, that one of the inmates is a psychopath. He tries,
but he can’t muster a convincing breakdown, can’t fake any feeling for his
dead victims. He’s learned the words, as Bob Hare would put it, but not
the music.
The incredible thing, the reason I’m yelling, is that no one in this docu-
mentary – the therapists, the warden, the omniscient narrator – seems to
know the word “psychopath.” It is never uttered, yet it changes every-
thing ... I think of Bob Hare ... and wonder if he’s watching the same show
in his hotel room and feeling the same frustration ... After thirty-five years
of work, Bob Hare has brought us to the stage where we know what psy-
chopathy is, how much damage psychopaths do, and even how to identify
them. But we don’t know how to treat them or protect the population from
them. The real work is just beginning. Solving the puzzle of the psycho-
path is an invigorating prospect – if you’re a scientist.24
The Historical Psychopath
Diagnosing psychopathy or individual symptoms of psychopathy is a

highly circumscribed act. Psychopathy experts describe the diagnostic

process of psychopathy in detail, and regularly give warnings about
assigning the psychopathy label to people who have not been properly
assessed, and about whom not enough is known. Here, for example,
is the University of Wisconsin-Madison psychologist Joseph Newman:
My main concern is that the label (of psychopath) is applied too liberally
and without sufficient understanding of the key elements. As a result, the
term is often applied to ordinary criminals and sex offenders whose be-
havior may reflect primarily social factors or other emotional problems
that are more amenable to treatment than psychopathy.25
Robert Hare gives a cautionary tale about “long-distance diagnosis”

in Without Conscience. Hare had been contacted by CBS to comment on
Saddam Hussein’s possible psychopathy, but he refused, because
the long-distance diagnosis of public figures, even by experienced diag-

nosticians, can easily become a parody of professional procedure. The re-
sult can be a form of glorified gossip, lent credence not by the facts but
merely by the expert’s credentials ... Not only were biographical materials
on Hussein limited, but the highly influential variables of culture, religion,
and other components of a belief system profoundly different from ours
called for careful study and understanding from anyone attempting a psy-
chological diagnosis.26
Now consider the following statements found in mainstream psychop-

athy literature:
Perhaps the earliest written description of psychopathic traits can be

found in the Book of Deuteronomy about 700 BCE. About three hundred
years later, one of Aristotle’s students, Theophrastus (371–287 BCE), be-
came the first scholar to write about psychopaths in any detail. He named
his prototypical psychopath “The Unscrupulous Man.” Stories of psy-
chopaths pervade literature. Greek and Roman mythology is strewn with
descriptions of such characters. Accounts populate the Bible, beginning
with Cain – the first murderer ... Psychopaths are typically described in
historical texts as monsters, evildoers, people who lack the emotional con-
nections that bind the majority of us, as well as the inhibitions that those
connections engage.27
Psychopathy began to emerge as a formal clinical construct in the last cen-


tury, but references to individuals we now readily recognize as having
been psychopathic can be found in biblical, classical, medieval, and other
historical sources.28
Though it would hardly be convincing to claim that we can establish a

medical diagnosis, or a full psychiatric explanation, of this public figure
who lived almost two and a half thousand years ago [Alcibiades], there
are many points in the incomplete records of his life available to us that
strongly suggest Alcibiades may have been a spectacular example of what
during recent decades we have, in bewilderment and amazement, come to
designate as the psychopath.29
Various commentators provide evidence suggesting that psychopaths can

be identified in a range of societies and at different points in historical
time ... Psychopathic individuals are regarded as distinct individuals; the
diagnosis is not, as some would allege, merely a mechanism for identify-
ing those who do not fit with the expectations of modern industrialized
societies.30
Some historical figures who, I believe, had the “talent” for psychopathy
but who did not develop the full syndrome and achieved great worldly
success include Winston Churchill ... the African explorer, Sir Richard Bur-
ton ... and Chuck Yeager, the first man to fly faster than sound.31
Clearly these contradict both the letter and the spirit of mental health
diagnosis, whether in diagnosing psychopathy or some aspects of it.
Although the writers here may be applying the label loosely in some
unspecified non-clinical sense, the very practice of identifying histori-
cal psychopaths undercuts the legitimacy of the diagnosis. If individu-
als at any time, dead or alive, with or without the help of protocols
can be diagnosed, then surely it must mean that the diagnostic criteria
are less than rigorously defined. Carefully considered, this practice also
undermines the “dangerous misuse” rhetoric: perhaps the only justifi-
cation for conceptual looseness here is that the historical psychopath is
by definition already dead, and so unable to contradict the diagnosis or
suffer any direct consequences from it.
The rhetorical purpose of the historical psychopath, however, is easy
to see. The case that psychopaths have always existed lends the research
program legitimacy, because a disorder that is timeless means that it is
also “real” or “true” in the same way as medical or severe psychiatric
74
vestment bankers.22 Two McMaster University psychologists found an

evolutionary strategy for spousal conflict and for killing one’s child.23
Another set of Canadian researchers found that psychopathy actually
decreased the likelihood of killing one’s kin. According to the authors,
this too was an evolutionary strategy, called “nepotistic inhibition.”24
Appearances aside, the evolutionary theory of psychopathy was
never a threat to the prevailing idea that psychopathy was a mental
disorder. Although one theory had it that psychopathy meant dysfunc-
tion and the other that it meant perfectly intact function, both theories
made the same ontological point, and that point was what eventually
mattered: psychopathy denoted a specific kind of person. Psychopathy
was an “it,” and that “it” was a problem that had to be identified and
neutralized. Moreover, the evolutionary theory reinforced “its” biologi-
cal cause by simply adding a distal cause (frequency-dependent selec-
tion) to the already supposed proximal ones (brain function and genes).
Culture of Fear
The shift from social to natural sciences was not, as many biological
researchers now implicitly or explicitly assert, simply a matter of tech-
nological innovation and new data. Neuroimaging technology did im-
prove dramatically in the last decades of the twentieth century, but the
push to subject criminals to biological study, and the idea that the brain
should be the obvious place to look for answers, was as much a result
of political assumptions as it was of scientific tools.
The biological theory’s return as a leading crime explanation in the
late twentieth century was a natural extension of a general shift in
crime politics. Mid-twentieth-century understanding that crime was a
social ill, curable with therapy and right social engineering, was born
of general postwar optimism in the state’s ability to care for its citizens.
Throughout the West, the years between 1945 and the mid-1970s were
marked by social mobility, economic equality, and job security. Western
governments stabilized after the horrors of the Second World War; trust
in governments’ ability to mediate in conflicts and to fairly represent
individuals in politics was high, as was faith in the ability of people to
improve their social status by hard work. Each of these, in Randolph
Roth’s exhaustive study of U.S. homicide, contributed to relatively low
postwar homicide rates.25 All this began to change in the mid-1970s.
Income inequality rose, particularly in the U.S. and the U.K., and so
did the general distrust of fellow citizenry.26 Social mobility decreased,

hand, it extended the sense of public emergency by multiplying the
number of psychopaths to concern ourselves with. John Clarke, an
Australian psychologist and the author of Working with Monsters: How
to Identify and Protect Yourself from the Workplace Psychopath, gave pub-
lic lectures and media interviews explaining how psychopaths “infil-
trate companies undetected, the strategies they use to manipulate those
around them to achieve power and promotion.”36 He advised com-
panies to screen their employees and to limit psychopaths’ “access to
highly vulnerable people or victims.”37 Clarke also added a new form
of victimization: suicide. “I have had a number of cases,” Clarke told
ABC News in Australia, “where the victim has taken their own life.”38
Paraphrasing Clarke’s key message, ABC News wrote, “The only way
to win the war against these psychopaths is to refuse to tolerate their
damaging behaviour.”39
Corporate psychopaths also came with a number of unsettling, built-
in unknowns: How many of them are there? (Clarke put the number
at 1 to 3 per cent of the general population.) How do you detect them?
How do they avoid detection? Could someone you know be a psycho-
path? To complicate things further, Clarke explained that workplace
psychopaths can be difficult to identify, because they were often “gen-
erally well-liked and competent at their jobs.”40 Clarke’s well-liked
monsters owe a direct debt to Cleckley’s classic formulation of the psy-
chopath: “We are dealing here not with a complete man at all but with
what might be thought of as a subtly constructed reflex machine,”41 a
machine that hides behind “a mask of sanity.” This fundamental vague-
ness about essences and appearances, of truth and falsehood, reinforces
the liminality and mythological appeal of psychopaths. Just as scien-
tists began to demystify the criminal psychopath, a new mystery began
to emerge – the corporate psychopath.
Furthermore, the concept of the corporate psychopath extends the
realm of influence and expertise of research programs, with the atten-
dant demand for increased research funding. They also created a new
market for mental health experts and assessment tools, a phenomenon
whose justification often came from conceptually slippery research.
Consider a 2010 study on corporate psychopaths. The study, described
in chapter 5, found a disproportionate number of psychopaths in busi-
ness organizations. What made the finding possible, however, was the
omission of two PCL-R items – revocation of conditional release and
criminal versatility – which the authors considered “not applicable” to
the sample, presumably since a criminal record and a string of con-

ditional release revocations would make it difficult to find work in a
large business. Besides, the researchers noted, the omissions were done
“using the standard procedure as outlined in the PCL-R manual.”42
Logically, and contrary to the study’s authors’ claim, by deleting cer-
tain elements of the test to suit the circumstances, the study did not
appear to be about psychopathy in the traditional sense of the word,
but about something else.43 In other words, the desired result – proof
for the existence and high prevalence of corporate psychopaths – could
be achieved simply by choosing the diagnostic features to fit the patient
group, without apparent loss of meaning.
Finally, flexibility in the psychopathy concept allows the researcher
to skirt major diagnostic issues. Like most psychological concepts, psy-
chopathy presents the diagnostic dilemma of determining how psy-
chopathy is distributed in the population. There are two competing
propositions: psychopathy manifests itself either as a continuum (i.e.,
we are all psychopathic to a certain extent in the same way as we have
blood pressure or intelligence) or as a discrete entity (i.e., you either
are or are not a psychopath in the same way as you do or do not have
the influenza virus). This results in the problem of a cut-off score. In
the case of the PCL-R, the score is set at thirty, but different research-
ers recommend or use scores ranging anywhere from twenty-three to
thirty-four. The corporate psychopath seems to solve both problems.
On the one hand, a “formal” cut-off score lends the diagnostic process
an air of mathematical certainty; on the other hand, an “informal” cut-
off score extends the concept while preserving the overall legitimacy
of the diagnosis, simply by adding a prefix (“sub-criminal,” “white-
collar,” “corporate,” etc.). The central problem here is that the cut-off
score is a constantly moving target untethered from any evidence that
the scores mean anything. Blood pressure and intelligence, for instance,
can be given a clinically meaningful cut-off score – blood pressure at
level x signifies a health problem called hypertension, and intelligence
below level x signifies a mental handicap, which signifies the inability
to function independently.
Ultimately, Hare argued in 1970, it was perfectly legitimate to side-
step the question of trait distribution altogether. Here is his solution in
a nutshell:
Perhaps it is so difficult to decide whether psychopathy is best viewed as

a typology or as a dimensional concept because both views are appropri-
ate, representing, as it were, different sides of the same coin. Similarly,

it is possible that “the conflict between typology and dimensionality is
a pseudoconflict dependent upon the state of knowledge of the field”
(Zubin, 1967, p. 398), and that research on psychopathy and other disor-
ders of behavior can be fruitfully carried out without formal commitment
to a particular view.44
Thirty-seven years later, he concluded, “Clinicians and researchers long

have wondered whether psychopathy is better represented as a dimen-
sion or as a discrete category, or taxon. I have been more or less neutral
on the issue, but my ‘gut feeling’ always has been that it is the latter.”45
Although it is reasonable to reserve judgment on an empirical issue
until the issue is settled by science, and while it may well not have been
Hare’s intent, it seems clear that express flexibility can also serve an
important rhetorical function by rendering a legitimate scientific prob-
lem a “pseudoconflict” by fiat. In effect, it solves the trait distribution
problem by resolving not to solve it. If psychopathy can, without loss
of meaning, be distributed in any number of ways, no empirical result
about the distribution can threaten the concept’s viability. Rhetorically
speaking, it does not matter that psychopathy can flex and constrict
without scientific consequence or strict theoretical rationale, as long as
the flexibility is decided in advance to not be a problem.
Equivocation
The ultimate question about psychopathy is what causes it. It should

therefore be surprising that the word “cause” rarely appears in main-
stream psychopathy literature. Rather, we read statements like “Accu-
mulating empirical evidence supports Cleckley’s view that an emotional
deficit lays [sic] at the core of psychopathy”; “Emotional deviation is
central to the clinical conception of psychopathy ... and a growing body
of research has focused on the nature and bases of affective anomalies
in psychopaths”; “Current findings suggest some specific directions
for further study of the mechanisms underlying psychopathy”; “This
is not to say that externalizing, defined as the common dispositional
factor underlying varying disorders of impulse control represents an
imprecise ... entity ... This points to the externalizing construct as a co-
herent and important target in studies of the neurobiological bases of
impulse control problems”; “The relationship between psychopaths’
abnormal asymmetries and task complexity suggests that their perfor-
mance asymmetries may reflect poor interhemispheric integration”;

“The current study provides valuable new information about basic af-
fective reactivity differences in psychopathic individuals, and adds to a
growing body of data indicating that such differences are uniquely tied
to the emotional interpersonal facet of psychopathy”; and “The theo-
retical importance of the two factors described here depends largely
on the degree to which they are derived from the personality structure
underlying psychopathy.”46
This kind of equivocation has become increasingly pronounced with
time – the more recent the publication, the less likely it is to use the
word “cause.” The closest recent literature comes to “cause” is by way
of “etiology,” which properly means “the assignment of cause,” “the
science or philosophy of causation,” or “that branch of medical science
which investigates the causes and origin of diseases,” according to the
Oxford English Dictionary. In psychopathy literature, this term is some-
times used properly, as in “It also remains to be determined what impli-
cations these and other linguistic processes might have for the etiology
and dynamics of psychopathy,” and sometimes incorrectly, as in “IRT
methods are likely to be useful procedures for enhancing not only our
knowledge of the functioning of the PCL-R and its constituent items,
but also our understanding of the etiology of this important disorder,”
or “The advantage of the concept of psychopathy is that it identifies
a population who share a common etiology, a dysfunction in specific
forms of emotional processing.”47
But why should researchers increasingly opt for these cumbersome,
ambiguous, and often incorrect expressions over the straightforward
and informative “cause”? Although it may simply be that the art of
clear expression – at least in the academia – is difficult to master, it
may also be that the ambiguity is intentional and rhetorically use-
ful. What a researcher means by a “cause” is plainly obvious; it is a
conjecture that is open to all sorts of critiques and questions about
confounds, intervening variables, temporal order between cause and
effect, the exact mechanisms of causality, and so on. However, what
the researcher means by “mechanisms,” “processes,” “dimensions,”
“factors,” or “personality structures” “underlying,” “uniquely tied to,”
“reflecting,” “lying at the core,” or at “the bases” of psychopathy is
demonstrably unclear. Although unclear, these kinds of expressions
are also evocative and open to interpretation, suggesting a great and
unspecified range of possibilities. A “mechanism,” “process,” “dimen-
sion,” “factor,” or “structure” may be one of many things. These terms
may refer to something biological, psychological, or even the currently

popular “biopsychosocial,” but cannot be pinned down to anything
specific.
These expressions do not typically come with an explanation of what
a psychological process or structure might look like, since of course
“psychological process,” “personality structures,” and so forth are met-
aphors and as such do not strictly speaking look like anything. And,
when things of this order “underlie,” “lie at the core” or form the “bas-
es” of psychopathy, one may mean that they actually cause psychopa-
thy, are symptoms of psychopathy, or that they in some way simply
exist “below” psychopathic behaviour and feeling without necessarily
doing anything other than “lying” there. But since there is no “above,”
“at level with,” “below,” at the “surface,” or at the “core” of psychopa-
thy in any material sense, things can only “lie” there metaphorically. To
be “uniquely tied to” or “reflecting” something is a condition no less
opaque and open to interpretation.
The rhetorical purpose of this kind of equivocation is obvious. Meta-
phorical expressions of the above kind intimate causal-like knowledge,
or suggest that a causal picture may be “emerging,” without running
the usual risks associated with making explicit causal theories. They
serve as provisional theories, which may inspire cautious optimism and
some confidence that progress is being made, however vaguely that
progress is framed. Should one of these provisional theories fall short
under close scrutiny, one can respond that the theory was never in-
tended as “causal” in any strict sense – the reason for avoiding the term
in the first place – but only as a cautious hypothesis, an idea, or a sug-
gestion for further research.
Paradoxes and Red Herrings
Since at least the nineteenth century, thinking about psychopathy has

been predicated on an apparent paradox: psychopaths appear normal,
yet they do bad things (hence, Pinel’s term “insanity without delirium,”
and Cleckley’s title The Mask of Sanity). The logic of psychopathy solves
the paradox by framing the problem itself as a partial explanation – it is
in the nature of psychopaths to pretend normalcy. As Paul Babiak put
it, “They blend in.”48 At the root of the problem is the classic mytho-
logical assumption – and the guiding principle of much of Lombroso’s
work – about moral deviance and its reflection in outward appearance:
the moral deviant should look and sound like a moral deviant, whether
by physical deformity or by visible insanity. However, since there is no
The Corporate Psychopath
MSNBC aired a program on workplace psychopaths in 2006. The pro-

gram was inspired by Robert Hare and Paul Babiak’s recently pub-
lished book, Snakes in Suits: When Psychopaths Go to Work:
Dr. Eric Hollander: “Psychopaths can be found in all settings in life.

They can be found in the workplace, they can be found even in your so-
cial interactions …”
Narrator: “And Eric Hollander says the place you work could be an at-
tractive target for a psychopath.”
Hollander: “Well, psychopaths can blend in very well in the work place
setting. They may have a strong drive for success, for power, for financial
gain …”
Interviewer: “Some people would say though, Paul [Babiak], that these
people [psychopaths] eventually, because they don’t have empathy, will
not be successful. Is that true?”
Babiak: “It’s true if they work in an old-style bureaucracy. But today’s busi-
ness moves so quickly that there’s constant change, which attracts them
in the first place. And secondly, because the people around them are con-
stantly changing, anybody who figures out who they are ends up being
laid off or moved out or the psychopath themselves gets promoted.”1
In their book, Babiak and Hare had argued that late-twentieth- and
early-twenty-first-century business was an ideal place for psychopaths
to thrive. In the 1970s and 1980s, the basic model of corporate organiza-
tion had started to shift from ineffective and expensive bureaucracies

words but not the music.”52 That is, psychopaths know what emotion
words like “sorrow,” “love,” and “fear” mean, but cannot fully expe-
rience the corresponding emotions. This linguistic paradox was origi-
nally suggested, by way of an analogy, by Hervey Cleckley in 1941,
who called the condition “semantic dementia.” Semantic aphasia was an
already existing condition in expressive language, which Cleckley used
as an analogy to illustrate a core feature psychopathy. Cleckley’s term
“semantic dementia” denoted an ability to mimic emotional reactions –
just as patients with semantic aphasia had trouble producing meaning-
ful language – but an inability to feel them.
The key logical problem with the emotional deficit theory is that
much of it is circular – psychopaths by definition have shallow affect,
and lack a few specific emotions, namely remorse, guilt, and empathy.53
So, studies showing that psychopaths have less emotional response
to emotional words than non-psychopaths can essentially prove one
thing: that people who have shallow affect in life also have shallow
affect in the laboratory. In other words, an emotional deficit relative to
the emotions already contained in the diagnostic features is a partial
restatement of psychopathy, not a causal theory. (Empirical proof for
abnormal emotion processing in psychopaths is inconclusive).54 The
most salient feature about the emotional deficit theory therefore is not
its explanatory power, but how good it is at hiding its central tautology.
This is worth considering in detail.
The obvious clue to a tautology is when a phenomenon’s cause is
contained in its definition – low mood causing depression, social isola-
tion causing loneliness, and so on. Usually, the circularity problem is
relatively easy to detect. The emotional deficit theory is different, be-
cause it introduces the circularity gradually. The theory is usually pre-
sented in a two-step sequence.
The first step introduces the concept of language – often referencing
Cleckley’s semantic dementia – and weaves it into a vaguely causal-like
theory. This avoids circularity because nothing in the diagnostic criteria
deals with language per se, and the proposed cause (something like
semantic dementia) looks qualitatively different from the effect (psy-
chopathy). This first proposition, then, not only appears non-circular,
but it also promises to remove the threat of circularity from subsequent
causal theories concerning emotion, for the proposition that psychopa-
thy is caused by an emotional deficit can now be understood simply as
a development of the original, semantic dementia theory.

The second step in the sequence removes the language reference as
the cause, proposing that the inability of psychopaths to process emo-
tional language is only “a symptom,” “a reflection,” or a “test” of a
general emotional deficiency. Rhetorically, then, language processing
functions as a red herring.
To clarify, consider a group of individuals, let us call them Marvins,
who know the basic rules and terms of basketball, but who do not actu-
ally play the game very well. You can prove the latter with a measure
called the “Basketball Inventory,” an index that is composed of a num-
ber of diagnostic criteria for basketball skills, and includes tasks like
three-point shooting, jump shooting, dribbling, rebounding, passing,
lateral mobility, and one-on-one defence. The Marvins perform very
poorly on this test. Metaphorically, we can define a Marvin as someone
who knows the words (i.e., the rules and terms), but not the music (i.e.,
the actual skill) of basketball. Now you want to know why the Marvins
are not good basketball players. Researcher A is intrigued by the dis-
crepancy between the Marvins’s basketball knowledge and their skill,
and proposes that the Marvins may be poor basketball players because
they suffer from semantic dementia, defined in this case as an inability
to process the full significance of basketball language (i.e.,“knowing the
words but not the music”). Researcher A proceeds to present basketball
words to a sample of Marvins and a sample of NBA players. Research-
er A then examines whether these groups differ on various reaction
measures to the words, and discovers significant differences between
the groups on a number of indices. Subsequent studies confirm these
findings.
A new generation of researchers now proposes an extension to the
theory. They propose that the “defects” shown by the Marvins in the
language processing tests can be generalized from “semantic dementia
concerning basketball language” to a general deficit in basketball skills.
Having travelled a full circle, the theory now enjoys wide popularity,
and serious theoretical and policy debates erupt over a suggestion that
Marvins be excused from all basketball-related activities at school on
the basis of their disorder.
The red herring here is basketball knowledge. The herring’s function
is to create the appearance of a paradox: how can someone know about
basketball but not play it well? The analogous psychopathy paradox is:
how can someone understand the meaning of emotional words but not
feel the corresponding emotions? But of course, we do not really expect

sports fans to also be elite athletes, or psychopaths to be non-verbal.
So, the real questions have nothing to do with basketball knowledge or
emotional words, but with actual basketball skill and actual emotional
experience. The real questions are, (a) what makes a good basketball
player? (b) why do some people not have normative feelings? and (c)
how do feelings relate to psychopathy? The rest is rhetoric.
A related theory also features the language-processing red herring.
Some researchers have proposed that psychopathy is caused by a cog-
nitive deficit in the processing of abstract material (the similarity here
to the emotional deficit theory is that emotional material is abstract).
While psychopaths appear to understand the meaning of concrete and
abstract concepts, they appear to show abnormalities in response time
and attendant brain activation while processing abstract concepts. One
research team found that psychopaths take longer than non-psycho-
paths to recognize abstract words, and that while processing abstract
and concrete stimuli psychopaths do not show the same brain activity
difference as non-psychopaths. Here is their conclusion:
For the sake of argument, if we assume that psychopathy is present at an

early age and that abnormalities in semantic processes related to concep-
tually abstract material are also present at that age, then how might these
abnormalities lead to psychopathic-like behavior? Perhaps psychopathic
individuals have difficulty engaging in cognitive functions that involve
material that has no concrete realization in the external world. We might
speculate that complex social emotions such as love, empathy, guilt and
remorse may be a form of more abstract functioning. Thus, difficulties in
processing and integrating these conceptually abstract representations to
regulate or modulate behavior would be impaired in these individuals ...
Given the growing evidence supporting abnormalities in processing con-
ceptually abstract representations, these data suggest that abstract pro-
cessing deficits may be a fundamental abnormality in psychopathy.55
The appeal of this theory is obvious. All we have to do is to think of an

abstract concept denoted by symptoms of psychopathy, find its oppo-
site concept, and consider psychopaths incapable of processing those
concepts. The list might include traits, feelings, and behaviours like
patience, humility, honesty, self-control, empathy, sense of guilt, pru-
dence, love, remorse, and so on; that is, a very traditional list of virtues.
So, if a psychopath has difficulty processing concepts such as guilt,
remorse, and honesty, then he or she might find it easy to lie and not

feel guilt and remorse. But why end the list here? Since the theory does
not restrict the type or number of abstract terms for which psychopaths’
processing falters, we might as well consider psychopaths deficient
in the experience of, say, “evil,” “dishonesty,” “crime,” “selfishness,”
“money,” and “God.” If the theory holds, a psychopath deficient in the
processing of these terms would be a good, honest, law-abiding, unself-
ish, and poor atheist. Of course, this person would no longer qualify as
a psychopath.
We can summarize the effect of rhetoric in psychopathy research as

follows: First, rhetoric has increased the research project’s appeal by
giving it the appearance of cutting-edge science. Second, and more im-
portantly, rhetoric has created diversions from the project’s ultimate
and predictable failure to address crime and antisocial behaviour in a
new and meaningful way. The central mode of distraction here is data.
Many of the rhetorical devices double as data sources – correlations be-
tween crime and psychopathy, lives of historical psychopaths, subtypes
of psychopathy, language-processing experiments, and so on – and so
contribute to the research project’s sheer magnitude. Psychopathy may
be a modern rephrasing of Classical and medieval folklore and Judeo-
Christian morality, but psychopaths really are dangerous, and they pro-
cess language very oddly. Is it not interesting and counter-intuitive to
know that Winston Churchill and Julius Caesar were psychopathic? In
this way, the data not only function as a red herring but also contribute
new dimensions and levels of abstraction that, curiously, have a solidi-
fying effect. The more numerous and diverse the data, the sounder the
concept they are about must be, even though the data may essentially
be irrelevant.
Another way of putting the point is this: rhetorical data gathering
mimics the scientific problem-solving process. In standard scientific
work, large problems (such as the cause of cancer) are broken down
into smaller and more manageable problems. The distinctive charac-
teristic of rhetorical data gathering is that the smaller problems can be
manufactured to supplant larger problems, with the implicit assump-
tion that data – whether or not they are relevant to the main ontological
questions – per se are a valuable commodity. The data’s rhetorical pow-
er increases when they are derived from cutting-edge technology, as
was the case with a 2011 Cornell University experiment which showed
that a computer program could identify the speech patterns of psycho-
paths by looking at words indicative of emotional flatness and lack of
82
distinct behaviours and neurological deficits. Soon, studies began to

report behavioural and neurobiological differences between successful
and unsuccessful psychopaths, and this led some researchers to pro-
pose that criminal arrests and convictions themselves might have spe-
cific neurobiological causes.14
The successful psychopath updates Hacking’s adjustable degenera-
cy portfolio idea – let us call it the “adjustable psychopathy portfolio.”
Successful psychopathy preserves the hard-core assumptions about
evil and mental health while introducing flexibility around the core.
The auxiliary hypothesis – that someone can be a psychopath without
meeting the necessary cut-off score for psychopathy, which is difficult
without criminal convictions – allows the psychopathy concept to cap-
ture new populations without any loss of the original concept’s mean-
ing. As more and more people qualify for the diagnosis, two important
things happen. First, with the addition of each new subtype (since the
mid-twentieth century at least thirty different subtypes of have been
proposed),15 the research program gains legitimacy, as each subtype
description seems to refine the original concept. Second, the research
program retrofits itself to address evolving social problems such as
corporate raiders and rogue traders. In this way, the program meets the
dual demands of being relevant and scientific. In practice, this means
that various mental health experts – whether so by their professional
qualifications or simply by their own definition – can offer diagnoses
as high-profile criminal cases unfold in the media. The expert can do so
with reference to cutting-edge research, since the criteria for successful
psychopathy are not fixed and diagnosing psychopathy has become
feasible with minimal data and personal involvement. Crime report-
ing suffices as diagnostic information for psychopathy, so long as the
labels come with caveats (i.e., the commentator has not done a full as-
sessment), and provisionally (i.e., the persons diagnosed are “psycho-
pathic” or show “psychopathic behaviour” rather than being outright
psychopaths). In this way, when Bernie Madoff was arrested in 2008 for
the largest Ponzi scheme in U.S. history, mental health experts were on
hand to diagnose him immediately. It no longer mattered that Madoff
had no prior criminal record – he was, in fact, a noted philanthropist
– or that the experts had never actually met him. What mattered was
that Madoff seemed to fit the profile, so long as both “fit” and “profile”
were understood in the loosest possible terms. Here was Robert Hare
on the case:

You can’t talk about psychopathy without bringing Bernie Madoff up.
Now I don’t know whether he is a psychopath or not. I haven’t evaluated
him; I don’t know if anybody has done a formal evaluation on him, but
anybody who can destroy the lives of tens of thousands of people includ-
ing close relatives and friends is not your normal loving kind of guy.16
And here was a former FBI profiler in an interview with the New York
Times:
“Some of the characteristics you see in psychopaths are lying, manipula-

tion, the ability to deceive, feelings of grandiosity and callousness toward
their victims,” says Gregg O. McCrary, a former special agent with the
F.B.I. who spent years constructing criminal behavioral profiles.
Mr. McCrary cautions that he has never met Mr. Madoff, so he can’t
make a diagnosis, but he says Mr. Madoff appears to share many of the
destructive traits typically seen in a psychopath. That is why, he says, so
many who came into contact with Mr. Madoff have been left reeling and
in confusion about his motives.17
The implosion of Enron and WorldCom, in 2001 and 2002 respec-

tively, gave psychologists similarly easy targets. Within a month of
WorldCom’s bankruptcy, Robert Hare gave a talk to a large group of
law-enforcement officers on psychopathy. He began with a slide show
of hit men and sex offenders and then turned to pictures of Enron and
WorldCom executives. “These,” Hare said, “are callous, cold-blooded
individuals. They don’t care that you have thoughts and feelings. They
have no sense of guilt or remorse.”18 When the major Enron criminal
cases wound their way through the courts in 2006, psychological post-
mortems quickly followed. At least three psychopaths emerged, ac-
cording to different psychologists: Chief Executive Officer Kenneth Lay,
Chief Operating Officer Jeffrey Skilling, and Chief Financial Officer An-
drew Fastow.19 Other corporate scandals revealed more psychopaths,
such as the CEO of Adelphia Communications Corporation, John Rigas,
who in 2004 was convicted of bank, wire, and securities fraud.20 And
when the media tycoon and British MP Robert Maxwell died in 1991,
Robert Hare promptly made reference to him in Without Conscience. In
2004, Hare described Maxwell in terms that were now becoming stan-
dard for the adjustable psychopathy portfolio: “I’m not saying Maxwell
was a psychopath, but he sure had psychopathic tendencies.”21

tion. In this regard his mind was radically changed, so decidedly that his
friends and acquaintances said he was “no longer Gage.”1
Gage’s case became a staple in modern psychology textbooks and,

unsurprisingly, in psychopathy literature. Harlow’s description made
a number of obvious references to what now seem like psychopathic
symptoms, and so it has become standard practice to cite Gage as ear-
ly proof of the brain bases of psychopathy. In 1994, the University of
Southern California cognitive neuroscientist Hanna Damasio and her
colleagues used magnetic resonance imaging to reconstruct the physi-
ological damage resulting from Gage’s accident. They concluded that
Gage fits a neuroanatomical pattern that we have identified to date in 12

patients within a group of 28 individuals with frontal damage. Their abil-
ity to make rational decisions in personal and social matters is invariably
compromised and so is their processing of emotion. On the contrary, their
ability to tackle the logic of an abstract problem, to perform calculations,
and to call up appropriate knowledge and attend to it remains intact. The
establishment of such a pattern has led to the hypothesis that emotion and
its underlying neural machinery participate in decision making within the
social domain and has raised the possibility that the participation depends
on the ventromedial frontal region.2
The suggestion that Gage’s personality change may have been related
to an emotional deficit fit neatly with classic accounts of psychopathy.
Consider, for example, Pinel’s description of patients with manie sans
délire, who according to Pinel “at no period gave evidence of any lesion
of the understanding but who were under the domination of instinctive
and abstract fury, as if the faculties of affect alone had sustained inju-
ry.”3 What struck Pinel about these patients was not very different from
what struck Harlow about Gage’s new personality: apparent cognitive
normalcy coupled with self-defeating impulsivity and disregard for the
feelings of other people. Damasio’s team also came close to Cleckley’s
description of semantic dementia. Given the suddenness and oddness
of Gage’s personality change and its obvious links to psychopathy,
Gage soon became patient zero in the search for a neural basis of moral
insanity. He became, if not actual proof of acquired psychopathy, then
at least a powerful illustration of the biological theory of psychopathy.
In short order, neuroscientists began referring to Gage as the “most no-
table neurological case study”4 of “psychopathiclike”5 traits. His case
Neurobiology and Psychopathy 141

was heralded as “the first clinical evidence showing a link between per-
sonality, behaviour, morality, and the frontal lobe.”6 Gage showed that
specific regions of the frontal lobes, as well as their connection with
a group of other brain structures called the limbic system, played an
important role in emotion and social behaviour. It was only natural to
speculate that the cold and calculating amorality of psychopaths on the
one hand and their impulsivity on the other could be caused by a defect
in precisely these areas of the brain. As Kent Kiehl and the Harvard
psychologist Joshua Buckholtz put it, “Gage’s story became a classic of
neuroscience because it revealed that behavior, which seems a matter of
personal will, is fundamentally biological.”7
Neurobiological Theories of Psychopathy
Early Theories
The prefrontal–limbic system theory is one of the latest in a long line

of biological theories of psychopathy and psychopathy-like conditions.
The lineage began with anomia and micronomia in the eighteenth cen-
tury, and degeneracy theory a hundred years later. In the twentieth cen-
tury, theories with links to degeneracy continued to surface at irregular
intervals. Some early theories connected psychopathy with epilepsy
(a line of thought that persists even today).8 Other electrophysiologi-
cal studies found that a certain proportion of psychopaths consistently
showed abnormal brainwave activity, suggestive of “cortical immatu-
rity,” which led researchers to draw – in an inadvertent nod to Lom-
broso – a connection between the brains of psychopaths and children.9
The development of the prefrontal–limbic system theory of psychop-
athy began in earnest in the 1950s, when the University of Minnesota
psychologist David Lykken decided to study the fear conditioning of
psychopaths.10 Lykken hypothesized that since psychopaths seemed to
lack anxiety, and since learning to avoid unpleasant things (like pun-
ishment) is at least partly a function of reducing anxiety about that un-
pleasant thing, psychopaths should show both poor avoidance learning
and poor conditioning to fearful stimuli. Lykken wanted to test wheth-
er psychopaths’ lack of anxiety (a) was physiologically based and (b)
had consequences for their behaviour. To test (a), Lykken subjected
psychopaths and non-psychopaths to the sound of a buzzer, which
was sometimes followed by an electric shock. According to the prin-
ciples of classical conditioning, the subjects would learn that the buzzer

predicted pain and would become anxious upon hearing the buzzer.
Consistent with Lykken’s prediction, psychopaths showed poorer con-
ditioning and were less physiologically aroused by the buzzer than
non-psychopaths. To test (b) – whether these findings had implications
for actual behaviour – Lykken had the subjects learn a maze in which
some wrong choices were followed by an electrical shock. Psychopaths’
lack of anxiety, Lykken hypothesized, would make them less capable
of learning to avoid the shock, and thus less capable of learning the
maze itself. This is exactly what happened. One modern criminology
textbook asked rhetorically, “Does this provide at least a partial expla-
nation for why psychopaths continue to get into trouble with the law,
despite the threat of imprisonment?”11
Though Lykken was reluctant to draw firm conclusions about the ex-
planatory value of his findings, his results influenced the work of many
other researchers, including Robert Hare, who in 1966 conducted a
study employing a very similar methodology. Hare asked psychopaths
and non-psychopaths to define the intensity of electrical shock they
were willing to tolerate for six trials, and then to select whether they
would be shocked immediately or after a ten-second delay. Non-psy-
chopaths chose immediate shock most of the time, while many psycho-
paths chose to delay some or all of the shocks. Lykken had stated that a
psychopath appeared “defective in his ability to condition the anxiety
response.”12 Hare concluded, in the same vein, “The emotional effects
and the aversive properties of future pain or punishment are relatively
small for the psychopath. Whereas the normal person finds it distress-
ing to wait for some unpleasant event, the psychopath apparently does
not.”13 While their findings were consistent, their interpretations were
somewhat different. Lykken cautiously suggested “classification [of
psychopaths] according to the presence or absence of defective emo-
tional reactivity ... shows the promise of relationship to [its] as yet un-
known origins.”14 He believed that the absence of punishment-related
anxiety distinguished psychopaths from non-psychopaths, but he was
agnostic about the ultimate cause of these deficits.
In a 2011 interview with Alix Spiegel of National Public Radio’s All
Things Considered, Hare explained that even at the time of his early ex-
periments he was convinced that criminal behaviour was caused by
inborn, biological personality factors. Hare said, “We have individual
differences in intelligence. Well, we should have individual differences
in the personality traits that are responsible [for] or related to crime.”15
In other words, “criminal” is not a description of your behaviour, it is

what you are, and it is difficult (if not impossible) to change what you
are. At the time he proposed it, Hare’s trait-based explanation for de-
ficient anxiety conditioning contradicted the prevailing psychological
wisdom. In the 1940s and 1950s, behaviourism was the dominant ex-
planatory framework for human actions. In its simplest form, behav-
iourism held that any behaviour leading to pleasant consequences
would be repeated, whereas any behaviour resulting in negative con-
sequences would not. Antisocial behaviour was caused by the environ-
ment’s (i.e., society’s) response to it – those responses being either the
absence of punishment (no chance of being caught) or rewards (the
loot) outweighing the punishment (threat of imprisonment). Criminals,
in other words, were made rather than born. This is why the idea of fear
conditioning and biological abnormalities seemed revolutionary for its
time.16
Early attempts during the 1960s and 1970s to evaluate the biology
of fear responses in the nervous system often used heart rate, blood
pressure, or galvanic skin response as rough indicators of anxiety or
arousal level. If psychopaths failed to show normal arousal in the pres-
ence of a threat such as an electrical shock, it would indicate their fail-
ure to experience fear and, hence, to learn from it. Researchers who
found lower heart rates and skin conductance immediately preceding
punishment described psychopaths as “autonomically hyporeactive”17
and unable to experience fear or anxiety because of chronic biological
deficits. This theory was persuasive because it suggested a stable, trait-
like, physiological cause of psychopathy, and it seemed to explain both
the deficient fear conditioning of psychopaths and their often-observed
sensation seeking. The theory received a great deal of attention. How-
ever, empirical support was mixed. Some studies found autonomic hy-
poreactivity in psychopaths, while others found no differences between
psychopaths and non-psychopaths.18
One interpretation of this inconsistency was that it reflected as-yet-
unrecognized variants of psychopathy. For example, the fact that some
psychopaths were neither physically aroused nor concerned about
impending punishment, while others were both aroused and anxious
about it, meant that there were “distinct subtypes” of psychopathy.19
This was in keeping with Cleckley, who had proposed two psychopa-
thy variants, which he called “primary’ (implying a biological cause)
and “secondary” (or acquired) psychopathy, reflecting his assumption
that there were divergent causes of intractable criminality.20 The pos-
sibility that such inconsistencies and contradictions might indicate a
86
the Journal of Business Ethics. As its title, “The Corporate Psychopaths

Theory of the Global Financial Crisis,” suggests, Boddy believed that
the entire 2008 global recession was caused by corporate psychopaths.
In his own words:
The Corporate Psychopaths Theory of the Global Financial Crisis is that

corporate psychopaths, rising to key senior positions within modern fi-
nancial corporations, where they are able to influence the moral climate of
the whole organisation and yield considerable power, have largely caused
the crisis. In these senior corporate positions, the corporate psychopath’s
single-minded pursuit of their own self-enrichment and self-aggrandize-
ment to the exclusion of all other considerations has led to the abandon-
ment of the old fashioned concept of noblesse oblige, equality, fairness, or
any other real notion of corporate social responsibility.26
Boddy concluded his article with a suggestion that it would be impor-

tant to conduct “research into the brain chemistry and connectivity of
these people.”27
Boddy’s extreme form of reductionism and ahistoricism showed a
deep commitment to a reverse, yet faithful, version of Hacking’s ad-
justable degeneracy portfolio idea. Whereas Lombroso saw primitive
peoples and cultures as savage and immoral, Boddy glamorized ear-
lier forms of corporate culture as essentially stable, fair, and hostile to
psychopaths. In Boddy’s view, previously sturdy and decent capitalist
economies were becoming vulnerable to corporate psychopaths. These
psychopaths in turn were giving capitalism a black eye. In Hacking’s
words, Boddy’s hard core of biological determinism was augmented
by auxiliary hypotheses about capitalism, the global economy, and a
kind of moral degeneration that took modern corporations further and
further from a pre-1970s corporate golden age. Boddy’s remedy – brain
imaging – also naturally implied an occupational hierarchy. At the top
were research psychologists and psychiatrists, followed by manage-
ment specialists like Boddy himself, and somewhere toward the bottom
were economists and politicians concerned with speculative bubbles,
financial deregulation, fair and efficient tax systems, and the like. This
also meant that if Boddy was right, and psychopathy in fact was rel-
evant to institutions as much as it was to individuals, psychopathy ex-
perts’ realm of influence should logically expand to include economics,
business, sociology, political science, and any number of other social
sciences.

inefficiently distributed across the cerebral hemispheres ... and relatively
devoid of affective components; as a consequence, they may not be as ef-
fective in controlling behavior as they are in normal individuals.24
In other words, a biologically based emotional deficit may have caused

both lack of conscience and poorly controlled behaviour, a conclusion
that reinforced the broader notion that psychopathy, as defined by the
PCL and the PCL-R, was the end result of brain abnormalities (in pos-
sible combination with environmental events).
At about this time, multiple strands of research began to form into
a unifying neurobiological theory of psychopathy. Psychopathy was
increasingly accepted as a bona fide personality disorder, and its proxi-
mate cause seemed be a biological deficit in emotion (and hence con-
science and behaviour control). This cardinal feature mapped neatly
onto the known functions of the amygdalae, components of the lim-
bic system involved in threat perception and fear, and ventromedial
prefrontal areas, which are implicated in learning and response selec-
tion.25 In 1994, Damasio and her colleagues provided the missing link
– evidence that an injury to the ventromedial prefrontal cortex directly
caused psychopathic symptoms in Phineas Gage. Just as Gage’s injury
caused his varied personality changes, limbic-prefrontal abnormalities
provided a clear, compelling explanation for the heterogeneous symp-
toms of psychopathy.
The advent in the 1990s of new technologies that promised to pro-
vide a high-resolution window into the brain increased the enthusiasm
about the latest biological theory of psychopathy. X-ray and magnetic
resonance imaging (MRI) finally allowed researchers to view the com-
ponents of the limbic-prefrontal circuit, without having to rely on
indirect measures such as skin conductance or EEG. Using such im-
aging technologies, an abnormality in limbic-prefrontal pathways is
generally measured in one of two ways. First, the volume or size of
structures and their components is a rough indicator of their integrity.
Relative to healthy people, smaller (or in some instances larger) vol-
umes of particular structures are assumed to reflect some abnormal-
ity in their formation, an injury, or a degenerative process. Second, the
activity of structures shows whether they are under- (hypo-) or over-
(hyper-)active during mental processing. Hypoactivity could indicate
a deficiency in neurological resources for the cognitive task at hand,
while hyperactivity may sometimes show cognitive inefficiency (more
resources are required to complete a task than a typical person would

need). Abnormalities in structure and activation often co-occur, but
it is also possible for structurally normal brain regions to function in
abnormal ways. Evidence of limbic-prefrontal deficits in psychopathy,
then, could be structural, functional, or both.
Psychopathy researchers have extensively evaluated brain structures
in limbic and prefrontal areas. Recent review articles note inconsistent
evidence of structural and functional abnormalities in the brains of psy-
chopaths and those with elevated psychopathy scores (i.e., increased
and decreased prefrontal and limbic volumes, as well as increased and
decreased activation) compared with those of non-psychopaths and
those with lower psychopathy scores.26 Despite this, many researchers
present the evidence for prefrontal-limbic dysfunction as being more
consistent than it actually is. For instance, Kent Kiehl wrote in 2014,
“I’d looked at hundreds of psychopaths’ brains in my career, but the
consistency of their brain abnormalities never ceased to amaze me.”27
However, even if the evidence of brain abnormalities was entirely con-
sistent, there remain serious interpretive challenges posed by the defi-
nition of psychopathy, as we will outline below.
Consider the typical neurobiological study, which summarizes evi-
dence that, relative to controls (individuals matched to psychopaths in
every way except for psychopathic traits), psychopaths have less pre-
frontal grey-matter volume.28 In other words, they have fewer neural
cell bodies in the prefrontal cortex. Smaller volumes have also been
documented – though, again, inconsistently – in the amygdalae, as well
as the hippocampi, which are adjacent structures within the limbic sys-
tem.29 In addition to these structural abnormalities, a number of stud-
ies describe underactive prefrontal and/or limbic areas in people with
psychopathy. These deficits are particularly evident when psychopaths
are asked to make decisions requiring empathy or moral judgment.30
Moral judgments generate atypical patterns of limbic-prefrontal
activity in people with psychopathic traits, which, some researchers
suggest, also explains the poor decision making of psychopaths and
their capacity for cruel and illegal behaviour.31 James Blair, a psycholo-
gist and chief of the Unit on Affective Cognitive Neuroscience at the
National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH), and his co-investigators
evaluated whether psychopathic traits were related to different brain
processes when young people made moral judgments. In their study,
participants were asked to identify a series of words (such as “comfort”
and “steal”) as either legal or illegal. Relative to young people without
psychopathic characteristics, those with psychopathic traits showed

less strongly connected amygdalae-prefrontal activity when identifying
legal words.32 Psychopathy seemed to interfere with the neurological
capacity to recognize “bad” actions or choices and organize behaviour
accordingly.
In fact, theories about brain functioning in psychopathy have evolved
as structural and functional imaging has implicated an expanding
swath of abnormalities beyond the amygdalae and associated prefron-
tal areas. Adrian Raine and his research collaborators have published
extensively on the neurobiology of psychopathy. Against the backdrop
of smaller limbic and prefrontal volumes, Raine and his colleagues re-
ported that psychopaths have longer, thinner, and volumetrically larger
corpora callosa than non-psychopaths.33 While not considered part of
the limbic-prefrontal circuit per se, the corpus callosum contains white-
matter tracts connecting the left and right hemispheres. In the presti-
gious Journal of the American Medical Association, Psychiatry, Raine and
his co-investigators suggested that this abnormality reflected “reduced
lateralization” and might be “significantly related to the deficient af-
fect factor and, to a lesser extent, to the impulsive/irresponsible factor
but not to the arrogant/deceptive factor [of psychopathy].”34 Raine’s
work is only one example of the accumulating data indicating abnor-
mal structure or function in areas outside the traditional bounds of the
limbic-prefrontal circuit being correlated with some (but not all) psy-
chopathic traits.
Kent Kiehl, a former graduate student of Robert Hare, has proposed
another causal hypothesis, called the “paralimbic system dysfunction
hypothesis.”35 According to this theory, the brain-based deficits in psy-
chopathy extend beyond the amygdala, hippocampus, and associated
prefrontal areas to include other portions of the temporal lobes, the cor-
pus callosum and regions directly above it (cingulate cortex), and pre-
frontal regions beyond the ventromedial cortex. This hypothesis stems
from psychopathy-related structural and functional abnormalities in
these extra-limbic regions, which show varied relationships to symp-
toms of psychopathy. For instance, portions of (non-limbic) temporal
lobe regions specialized for processing facial expressions are sometimes
underactive in psychopaths relative to non-psychopaths when they are
asked to identify facial displays of emotion.36 Abnormalities in a non-
limbic region, while not supporting the strict limbic-prefrontal explana-
tion of psychopathy, might help to explain the difficulties psychopaths
have in experiencing, understanding, and learning from emotions. The
main point about Kiehl’s hypothesis here is that, given the heterogene-

ity of psychopathy symptoms, the locations of potential neurological
abnormalities are similarly diverse.
Psychopathy researchers now treat psychopathy almost invariably as
a disorder of the brain (with, of course, the compulsory though much
less thoroughly researched environmental component). Nigel Black-
wood, a researcher at King’s College Institute of Psychiatry in London,
suggests that brain scans might be used to differentiate intractable psy-
chopaths from other antisocial personality styles. He argued that,
identifying and diagnosing this sub-group of violent offenders with brain

scans has important implications for treatment. Those without the syn-
drome of psychopathy, and the associated structural brain damage, will
benefit from cognitive and behavioural treatments.37
This neurobiological emphasis is by no means unique to psycho-

pathy, as all psychological disorders are increasingly understood to
involve some abnormalities in brain function. The explosion of neu-
roimaging research into psychological disorders has also produced a
more sophisticated appreciation of the shortcomings of such methods,
whose limitations are especially relevant to our understanding of psy-
chopathy.
Limitations of Neurobiological Theories
cause-and-effect problems
n most areas of research, modern neuroscience’s limitations are well
i
understood. Neurobiological studies typically outline abnormalities in
brain structure or function of unknown cause that are related to psycho-
logical conditions such as depression or schizophrenia. In other words,
modern neuroscience can sometimes be causal (brain injury leads to
symptoms), but is most typically correlational (brain abnormalities and
symptoms present together). Since psychopathy research is part of this
tradition, neuroimaging studies of psychopaths almost without excep-
tion acknowledge the correlational nature of their findings. Although
researchers often state that neurological abnormalities “contribute [or]
... predispose to”38 psychopathy, they occasionally do acknowledge
that it is just as likely that psychopathy causes those same neurological
abnormalities or that the abnormalities are related to some third factor.
This interchangeability of cause and effect is the most significant
limitation of clinical neuroscience research in general. Just as brain

abnormalities can produce behavioural symptoms, behaviour and ex-
periences can lead to changes in brain function. Many studies demon-
strate that our brains are shaped by our lifestyle just as much as our
neurobiology causes lifestyle choices. For instance, skilled musicians
have greater cortical activation than non-musicians when generating
internal rhythms,39 cab drivers have larger spatial knowledge centres
(right temporal regions) than non–cab drivers,40 and students study-
ing for the LSATs appear to have better developed deductive reasoning
circuits (white-matter pathways) than other post-secondary students.41
The recognition of the cause-and-effect dilemma’s true magnitude is
relatively recent. In the past, a typical neuroscience article on, say, de-
pression would almost invariably use quasi-causal language to imply
that all the neurological correlates of depression – even those found in
case studies – were really the causes of the condition. For example, a
1997 review of neuroimaging in depression began with the statement
“The possibility that the brain abnormalities responsible for depression
may be detectable has stimulated structural brain imaging studies.”42
The reason for this quasi-causal language in older research – even up to
the early 2000s – is probably partly due to the state of the research, and
partly to make a rhetorical point. Rhetorically, as we explained in chap-
ter 7, arguments of this sort create the impression that physiology holds
more explanatory power than environmental factors do. This rhetorical
technique could be called “correlation masquerading as causation.”
To some extent, contemporary neuroscience has moved past the as-
sumption that one must identify a primary or ultimate cause for be-
haviour. This has allowed modern neuroscience to dispense with the
correlation-masquerading-as-causation rhetoric. Most researchers are
comfortable accepting that experience has the power to shape the brain,
and many see this as an exciting source of individual neurological dif-
ferences. For example, recent neurobiological studies of depression in-
dicate that individuals whose depressive symptoms lifted in response to
treatment also showed an increase in neurotrophins, markers of neural
health. As one set of researchers put it, this “neurotrophin hypothesis
of depression” suggested that “Major Depressive Disorder [depression]
leads to atrophy of specific brain areas, such as amygdala and hippo-
campus, that is reversed after antidepressant treatment – hence neu-
roplasticity should occur in these sites.”43 While depression and relief
from depression are clearly related to neurobiological changes in the
brain, we are not entirely certain what specific mechanism (biological
or otherwise) causes the depression in the first place. In the late 1990s,

the assumption was that brain atrophy led to depression – that there
was an as-yet-undiscovered biological “first” cause of the disorder.
With an increasingly sophisticated understanding of the relationship
between symptoms and biology, the belief in (or need for) any single,
“first” cause of psychological disorders is palpably decreasing.
An unanticipated benefit of this embrace of causal uncertainty is the
corresponding inability of well-executed neuroscience research to act
as a foil for poorly defined clinical conditions. That is, a researcher can
no longer claim that it does not matter whether observable symptoms
are confusing or inconsistent, because there is proof of a unitary, bio-
logical cause of them all. Neuroimaging has been demystified and is
understood in many cases as an analog (as opposed to the sole expla-
nation) of behaviour; hence, the mere presence of differences in brain
function no longer “explains” disparate traits or behaviours.
Contemporary neuroscience can add an element of uncertainty to
causal theorizing because our theories are revised as new evidence
comes to light. This is not problematic when the disorder is concep-
tually consistent. However, as we outlined in previous chapters, psy-
chopathy as a behavioural disorder is theoretically coherent only
insofar as Judeo-Christian morality is a coherent theoretical frame-
work. Unlike other psychological disorders, psychopathy includes not
only thoughts, feelings, and behaviours, but also legal sanctions and
clinicians’ normative judgments. This conceptual breadth may partly
explain why psychopathy research is vulnerable to the correlation-mas-
querading-as-causation rhetorical style. The search for biological coher-
ence supplants the need for conceptual coherence. This also generates
a set of empirical problems. As we will see next, poor definition of a
disorder inevitably leads to inconsistencies in empirical findings and,
more importantly, makes the meaning of such findings indecipherable.
To be clear, the problem with neurobiological research is not in how it
is conducted (studies are methodologically sound and often very so-
phisticated), but in how results are interpreted and how these results
inform (or rather, fail to fully inform) theories of psychopathy.
correlation masquerading as causation

Most contemporary biological accounts of psychopathy argue that psy-
chopathy is a by-product of dysfunctional limbic-prefrontal circuitry.
This theory stands on behavioural, neuroimaging, and lesion data, with
three central lines of evidence. First, people who are antisocial or psy-
chopathic often, but not always, show impairments on tests of execu-

tive or “frontal lobe” functions, a general term for an individual’s level
of cognitive and behavioural regulation (e.g., working memory, inhi-
bition, and decision making).44 Second, as noted above, psychopaths
often (but not always) show lower levels of physiological activity than
controls in limbic and prefrontal regions. Third, non-psychopathic pa-
tients with prefrontal injuries often (but not always) show increased
aggression and difficulties with emotions and/or moral decision-mak-
ing.45 In the standard presentation of the data, these three lines of evi-
dence are treated as being equally significant proofs of psychopathy’s
biological cause. Hence, executive function deficits are really just vis-
ible symptoms of the underlying limbic-prefrontal dysfunction that
cause them, as evidenced by aggressive, antisocial, frontal lobe–injury
patients. Most published studies do include caveats about the limita-
tions of such findings, but these cautionary notes do not tend to make
the press releases.
Executive Functioning: It is understandable that psychopathy research-

ers would turn to standardized clinical tests of executive function, be-
cause these tests are designed to be sensitive to prefrontal dysfunction.
A number of studies have examined executive abilities in psychopaths
and have found a small to moderate effect. 46 This executive dysfunc-
tion, however, is the least controversial and also the least compelling
line of evidence for limbic-prefrontal dysfunction. Tests of executive
function are by definition complex and often require the coordination
of multiple inputs into a single behavioural output. On one test, a sub-
ject might be asked to trace increasingly complex mazes without mak-
ing errors. He or she would have to visually process the maze, deduce
the correct sequence of steps to the end point, hold those steps in mind,
and then draw the line. It is this holding-in-mind, integration, and coor-
dination of output that separates executive functions from other cogni-
tive abilities.
Thus, executive functions typically involve the synthesis of numer-
ous simpler cognitive skills. In the above example, the subject has to
understand the relatively complicated verbal instructions for the task,
focus visual attention on a maze, use visual perception to detect blind
alleys and open routes in the maze, integrate these perceptions and de-
duce the correct route to the end of the maze, and then hold the multi-
stage route in mind while tracking the completion of the correct route.
Failure to do so might indicate executive function weaknesses. It might
also indicate deficiencies in one or more of the basic component skills.

psychopaths in North America, with 100,000 in New York alone.
According to Martha Stout, the prevalence was 4 per cent, which raised
the number of psychopaths to over 12 million in the U.S. and to about
330,000 in New York City, by 2011 population estimates.47 The U.S.
National Institute of Mental Health estimated the prevalence of the
much less exclusive – and therefore more prevalent – disorder, antiso-
cial personality disorder, and placed that number at 1 per cent of the
general population. Since antisocial personality disorder is considered
by some to be up to five times more common than psychopathy,48 only
0.2 per cent of the population should be psychopathic, and instead of
having 330,000 psychopaths, New York City should have fewer than
17,000.
Another frequently cited number was an estimate that 50 per cent
of serious crime in North America was committed by psychopaths.49
Clearly embracing psychopathy’s flexibility, FBI profiler John Douglas
implied a much higher number, writing “virtually anyone who com-
mits murder or some other horrible or violent act can be thought of
as being ‘mentally ill.’ Normal, mentally healthy people just don’t do
those kinds of things.”50 Of course, nobody has verified the proportion
of all serious crimes committed by psychopaths or their prevalence in
the general population. Full psychopathy assessments have been done
on only a small number of people – typically incarcerated offenders –
and, at least when done with the help of the PCL-R, each requires hours
of interview and document review. More importantly, psychopathy’s
prevalence could be manipulated simply by changing the cut-off score
for psychopathy (in fact, different researchers and practitioners often
use different scores). Increase it, and the number of psychopaths de-
clines; decrease it, and their numbers grow.51
However, the key feature of these estimates was not their numerical
flexibility, but their potential use in expanding the psychopathy port-
folio’s reach. The degeneracy portfolio had in part hinged on the argu-
ment that degeneration was more than an individual problem; it was
also a gauge of the mental and moral hygiene of entire societies. If the
number of degenerates in a given country reached a critical threshold,
some contended, the country itself could become degenerate. It was
critical for the degeneration theory’s popularity that it was able to stoke
fears of just such a scenario. If crime reporting did not sell enough copy,
national emergencies would.
So it goes for psychopathy. The eminent author and psychologist
Benjamin B. Wolman worried in 1999 – in the midst of declining crime

cuits” but be unable to achieve the same performance levels. If the cri-
terion for categorizing people is conceptually clear – age, for instance
– inconsistent results can be interpreted sensibly. In the example above,
compared with young adults, people in their fifties can keep up; people
in their sixties can keep up, but only by throwing all their neural re-
sources at the problem; while people in their seventies cannot keep up,
because they no longer have the requisite neural resources.
Psychopathy is not as clearly defined as age, which makes empiri-
cal inconsistencies difficult to interpret. Inconsistent patterns of brain
activity could indicate something interesting about brain functions
in different subtypes of psychopathy. However, it is just as likely that
such inconsistencies reflect a poor classification strategy, which yields
a group of people potentially united by nothing but their moral trans-
gressions. Hence, the problem with many neuroimaging studies of
psychopathy lies not in the heterogeneity of their findings but in the
definition of psychopathy itself. The difficulties in interpreting imaging
data reveal the precariousness of psychopathy research and its unwav-
ering assumption that a set of moral contraventions actually reflect a
unitary biological trait. As we have noted, there appears to be little ap-
petite amongst researchers to consider whether the idea of psychopa-
thy fits the data. Instead, more data are sought to shore up psychopathy
as a biological trait.
Brain Injury: In order to move beyond simple correlations and their in-
terpretive challenges, psychopathy researchers have turned to brain-
injury data, which can show a clear temporal relationship between a
causal event (injury to brain) and its effect (such as aggressive and an-
tisocial behaviour). Indeed, there is strong evidence that certain types
of prefrontal injuries lead to aggressive outbursts. Other injuries cause
empathy failures, or interfere with a person’s ability to resolve moral
dilemmas. Some frontal lobe injuries lead to the blunting of emotions,
while others release emotional control. This line of evidence, however,
comes with its own problems, the most important of which is that the
frontal lobes constitute about half of the human cerebral cortex and are
involved in most cognitive processes, making dysfunction difficult to
interpret.49 With brain areas this large and involved in myriad cognitive
or emotional processes, any injury significant enough to cause observ-
able behaviour problems likely also relates to multiple psychological
disorders. In other words, frontal areas are excellent candidates for
non-specific behavioural problems. In fact, in addition to psychopathy,

atypical frontal lobe structures and/or functions are associated with
disorders as diverse as ADHD, autism, schizophrenia, mood disorders,
Parkinson’s disease, dementia, and addiction (many of which, inciden-
tally, also show abnormalities in limbic system functions).50 To say that
psychopaths have abnormalities in some prefrontal areas amounts to
stating that they have a diffuse problem with thinking and emotions.
Moreover, when researchers try to explain selected psychopathy symp-
toms using a prefrontal injury model, they are usually forced to include
other potential lesion sites to cover the rest of the symptoms. Kiehl’s
paralimbic theory, for one, does exactly this. However, neurological
case studies of paralimbic injury usually include cognitive and be-
havioural issues not observed in psychopathy. Limbic and paralimbic
damage typically involves profound memory impairment, a deficit that
inspires next to no commentary from psychopathy researchers.51
Finally, consider aggression, which in the psychopathic personal-
ity is usually thought to be instrumental, or planned, calculating, and
somewhat dispassionate. It is often portrayed as most characteristic
of the callous, manipulative, unempathic mindset of the psychopath.
However, the PCL-R also includes items assessing impulsiveness and
poor behavioural controls – that is, unplanned, passionate, or reactive
aggression. Some researchers refer to instrumental aggression as “emo-
tionally cold” and reactive aggression as “emotionally hot.”52 While
frontal lobe injuries can result in significant difficulties with impulsive-
ness, creating a type of “aggressive dyscontrol,”53 such injuries do not
cause cold, calculated aggression (or many other diagnostic features
of PCL-R psychopathy, such as pathological lying, manipulativeness,
grandiose sense of self-worth, and glibness).54 In order to explain in-
strumental aggression, psychopathy researchers revisit early studies
of fear conditioning and the amygdala. As would be expected, some
research shows that limbic areas are hypoactive in psychopaths, pro-
viding a neurological corollary for empathic and emotional deficits. Un-
deractive limbic areas could indeed explain instrumental aggression.
However, other studies report hyperactivity in exactly the same neu-
rological circuitry.55 This is where interpretation of the inconsistency in
research findings matters a great deal. Rather than casting doubt on the
broader hypothesis that limbic-prefrontal underactivity causes instru-
mental aggression, and by extension psychopathy, researchers interpret
hyperactivity as improving the neurological theory of psychopathy by
explaining impulse control problems (such as addiction) that appear
sometimes (but not always) in psychopathy.56 Conceptually, being a

cold and calculating hothead seems to defy logic; empirically, it cre-
ates a sort of social-science version of the Barnum effect whereby every
possible abnormality – however inconsistent and hard to interpret – is
somehow critically important and relevant to psychopathy.
Interpreting this type of correlational neuroscience research using the
extremely flexible conceptual framework of psychopathy means that
no finding necessarily contradicts theoretical predictions. Excessive or
too little, in the predicted or an unpredicted location: any combination
of these neurological descriptors can be covered by the adjustable psy-
chopathy portfolio.
Neurodevelopmental Theories: Some psychopathy researchers acknowl-

edge that their interpretation of contradictory correlational findings is
problematic. As Raine and his collaborators point out, “It is difficult to
infer causality from cross-sectional studies.”57 To strengthen the neuro-
biological theory of psychopathy, some investigators are exploring the
possibility that psychopathy could be a neurodevelopmental disorder.
According to this theory, all the divergent neurological and behavioural
abnormalities have a common source early in development. Neurode-
velopmental models have long been used to explain well-established
neuropsychiatric conditions such as schizophrenia; it is perhaps inevi-
table that psychopathy would fit this model as well. In this approach,
genetic predispositions or risks can be triggered by environmental
events (e.g., stress, trauma, substance abuse) at multiple stages of de-
velopment.
Neurodevelopmental models have the following implications for
our understanding of disorders: (a) genetic and environmental factors
are both powerful contributors to the disorder, (b) disorders “begin” in
the earliest stages of development but may unfold somewhat heteroge-
neously, and (c) evidence of atypical central nervous system develop-
ment will often precede the clinical onset of the disorder.
Postulate (b) accommodates heterogeneous and/or contradictory
neurological abnormalities – postulate (c) – because postulate (a) pre-
vents us from overinterpreting their causal significance. Abnormalities
could indicate genetic causes, environmental causes, or both, and they
are therefore cautiously interpreted. Given the first two postulates,
proof of atypical central nervous system development – postulate (c) –
is usually considered non-specific, which means that it shows some un-
usual development at some point in time that is probably a risk for any
number of disorders involving central nervous system dysfunction.
One side effect of the psychopathy portfolio’s being so adjustable was

that it encouraged non-scientists to adopt the diagnosis to their own
ends. Natural and social scientists may have originated the psychopathy
discourse, but their exclusive claim to it did not last long: non-experts
soon discovered the power of the diagnosis to stand for any number of
grievances, from simple moral outrage to philosophical disagreements.
By marrying Judeo-Christian theology with mainstream science, psy-
chopathy – just like degeneracy before it – was as much something that
afflicted people as it was a tool for talking about good and evil in a secu-
lar age. Psychopathy was to late modernity what witchcraft had been to
early modernity: a platform for marking out the moral world and one’s
enemies within it. Psychopathy discourse now offered scientists and
non-scientists alike a concept that allowed everyday moralizing to pass
as scientific statements. But eventually psychopathy became something
much more nuanced than a mere synonym for evil. While some saw
psychopathy as an analogy for whatever ailed modern societies and
their political leaders, others embraced it as a symbol of strength, dan-
ger, and sexual prowess; and still others wanted to have the diagnosis
for themselves in a juvenile quest for identity. In this way, psychopa-
thy also became a cultural weathervane of sorts. Cultural norms and
anxieties, particularly in individualistic North America, often found
expression in the character of the psychopath. Since the mid-twentieth
century, the psychopath has stood as the personification of the benefits
and drawbacks, the freedom and the horror, of individual freedom.
This process of cultural appropriation depended, to an extent, on
the cooperation of mental health experts. Although the mass appeal
of psychopathy was no mystery – the diagnosis by its nature evoked

rizon. Conformity was not supposed to be a merely transitory problem
of the moment, an intolerance which would fade eventually like the red
scares of the past. According to its more sociologically and historically ori-
ented observers, conformity was forever, a symptom of vast economic and
social shifts, part of a permanent cultural sea-change that accompanied
the ongoing transformation of the American economy.2
Some writers thought that this shift was more than economic and so-
cial. It had brought, in Frank’s paraphrasing of mid-century sociologist
David Riesman, “a new dominant ‘characterological’ type: the ‘other-
directed’ man who, unlike his ‘inner-directed’ predecessors, looked for
guidance not to abstract, unchanging ideals, but to the behavior and
beliefs of those around him.”3 With the perceived demands of confor-
mity came longings for a different kind of America: aggressively free,
bohemian, and racially equal. A confluence of events in mid-1950s pop
culture gave this ideal a viable identity: the publication of Allen Gins-
berg’s Howl and Jack Kerouac’s On the Road, the stylistic and popular
expansion of bebop, and the appearance of Marlon Brando in The Wild
One, James Dean in Rebel Without a Cause, and Elvis on The Ed Sulli-
van Show. The resulting composite countercultural character was the
hipster.
The hipster was an aggregate of a number of things, all of which
stood in contrast to Riesman’s “other-directed man.” For one, the hip-
ster – who was more often than not white and middle class – emulated
and idealized black culture, especially as embodied by jazz musicians
like Charlie Parker, Miles Davis, John Coltrane, and Dizzy Gillespie.
For the hip generation, black culture represented a flight from stifling
social convention. Jazz music was a form of subversion and innova-
tion in the face of oppression, black male sexuality an overdue insult
to white middle-class courtship rituals, and black English an elusive
in-group identifier. Bebop indicated another important hipster value:
the marriage of high and low culture. Bebop’s emphasis on improvisa-
tion and difficult, fragmented arrangements challenged the value of the
prevailing danceable swing jazz, and remained by design inaccessible
to the casual music fan. Yet, bebop was played by marginalized black
musicians in low-culture underground venues. The result was a dis-
tinctly mid-century mix of bohemian sophistication and largely white-
concocted ideas of black sexual primitivism.
Another significant hipster reference group was the criminal class.
Outlaws and rebels, the staples of American mythology, represented

leles produce higher levels of enzymes and break down neurotransmit-
ters more effectively; hence there are low-activity MAOA alleles (high
serotonin) and high-activity MAOA alleles (normal or low serotonin).70
The story of how psychopathy researchers developed their interest
in low-activity MAOA alleles bears an uncanny resemblance to the
Phineas Gage case. In 1993, Han Brunner, a Dutch medical geneticist,
published what would become a seminal study in the prestigious jour-
nal Science. Brunner and his colleagues reported on a Dutch family af-
fected by a point mutation of the MAOA gene on the X chromosome.
As with all X-linked mutations, men in the extended family showed
the effects most clearly. Brunner described a syndrome in eight males
of “borderline mental retardation and a tendency toward aggressive
outbursts, often in response to anger, fear, or frustration ... types of
behavior that occurred in individual cases included arson, attempted
rape, and exhibitionism.”71 Brunner and his colleagues qualified their
findings by saying, “It should be stressed that the aggressive behavior
varied markedly in severity and over time,” noted that their findings
related to “impulsive aggression rather than premeditated aggression,”
and suggested that REM sleep deprivation (also a consequence of this
particular mutation) could play a major role in this impulsivity.72 Just as
Phineas Gage was “fit” to the concept of psychopathy, the Dutch family
is often invoked (in the face of these serious qualifications) as proof that
psychopathic aggression probably has an analogous genetic basis.
The questionable fit of the Dutch family with psychopathy was also
obscured by the arrival of a series of other studies marking low-activity
MAOA as an “aggression gene.” Inspired by Brunner’s work, animal
studies explored the causal role of MAOA in aggressive behaviour. Two
years after Brunner’s study was published, a team led by the French
microbiologist and neuroscientist Olivier Cases reported on aggres-
sion in transgenic mice, which were bred to lack MAOA coding genes.
Not surprisingly, these mice were unusually aggressive and showed
multiple abnormalities in brain structures related to elevated levels of
neurotransmitters. Reflecting the deterministic zeitgeist, the research-
ers concluded that
[since transgenic mice] display enhanced aggression under standard rear-

ing conditions [this] supports the idea that the particularly aggressive be-
havior of the few known human males lacking MAOA is not fostered by
an unusual genetic background or complex psychosocial stressors but is a
more direct consequence of MAOA deficiency.73

for oneself, if it encourages pursuit of material pleasure and the merchan-
dizing of people, then far from being a mask of sanity or a moral imbecile,
the psychopath is the reasonable one and those of us who are trusting,
reliable, and empathetic are out of phase with reality.8
The exact aspect of modernity that psychopaths represented depend-

ed on a writer’s interests. For cultural critics, the psychopath mirrored
capitalist greed; for the philosophically inclined, the psychopath be-
came a philosopher of sorts. What united the two camps were grievanc-
es over some aspect of contemporary life, which they sought to portray
as analogous to psychopathy. For philosophers the grievance tended to
concern postmodernism.
In the early part of the twentieth century, the term “postmodern”
was used to describe art and architecture that stood in contrast to mod-
ernist art and architecture. In the latter half of the twentieth century,
postmodernism acquired new meanings as it spread to literary theory
and the humanities. Here, the term came to denote a set of epistemo-
logical ideas that stood in contrast to traditional beliefs about authority
and knowledge. Postmodernist epistemology was a critique of mo-
dernity’s view of science and objectivity. Modern science, rather than
being the arbiter of objective truths, was in fact deeply male- and ethno-
centric. Postmoderns argued that what moderns took as authoritative
knowledge about history, society, and natural phenomena were merely
subjective feelings and preferences perpetuated by the powerful. Post-
modernism gained traction with the rise of multiculturalism and cul-
tural relativism in the 1960s and 1970s, and quickly became dogma in
many humanities and social sciences departments. One problem with
postmodernism was its insistence that truth and falsehood were ob-
jectively indistinguishable, which, if taken literally, would undermine
any scientific inquiry. If science and pseudoscience were epistemical-
ly the same, what would be the point of debunking the latter? Many
writers pointed out that postmodernism did not seem to contribute to
our understanding of the world in any meaningful way. This problem
came to a head when the physicist Alan Sokal submitted a deliberately
nonsensical faux-postmodernist article about quantum gravity to the
well-regarded postmodernist cultural studies journal Social Text. When
the journal published the article, Sokal revealed his submission as a
hoax intended to expose the silliness of postmodern thought. The hoax,
which came to be known as “The Sokal Affair,” galvanized postmod-
ernism’s critics.

teria of psychopathy. As a result, it is difficult to determine how most
existing research would apply to psychopaths. Second, many research-
ers do acknowledge that the environment plays a key role in how
“risky” genes (including MAOA) are expressed. Third, studies on psy-
chopathy and the low-activity MAOA gene have so far failed to find a
link.80
However, even if future studies did correlate psychopathy with the
low-activity MAOA gene, two core interpretive problems remain: (a)
MAOA is not specific to human aggression, and, more importantly, (b)
it makes little sense to discuss genetic determination of the very com-
plex and broad behaviours of psychopaths.
MAOA alleles are not specific to human aggression precisely because
they are correlates of a general dimension of neurophysiological activ-
ity. Hence, the low-activity MAOA allele is distributed quite widely
throughout the general population81 (at least one-third of people are
thought to carry it). As well, low- and high-activity MAOA alleles,
corresponding to reduced or increased neurotransmitter metabolism,
respectively, show the expected relationship with a variety of psychi-
atric conditions. Low-activity MAOA is associated, for example, with
alcoholism,82 as well as depression and anxiety symptoms following
stressful life events,83 while high-activity MAOA is related to ADHD84
and bipolar disorder.85 However, there are also less intuitive relation-
ships, including sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS), which seems to
occur more often in babies with low-activity MAOA.86 Moreover, low-
activity MAOA allele types are related to obesity87 and daytime sleepi-
ness.88 Other research has linked high-activity MAOA with financial
fraud in young adults, though only in those with delinquent friends.89
Like many of the brain-based anomalies correlated with psychopathy,
genetic correlates are non-specific. That is, they indicate that something
may be mildly unusual in the mechanics of neurotransmitter metabo-
lism, but the path from allele to neurotransmitter levels to behaviour is
unclear and complicated.
In fact, the limitations of our understanding of the genetic mecha-
nisms of neurotransmitter regulation exacerbate the interpretive prob-
lems outlined in this chapter. If the brain is a different continent, genes
are a whole new universe, and our understanding of relationships be-
tween single-gene variants and complex behaviour includes as-yet-un-
determined gene–gene and gene–environment interactions. The most
we can say at present, to quote Kenneth Kendler, is that “the impact
of individual genes on risk for psychiatric illness is small, often non-

specific, and embedded in causal pathways of stunning complexity.”90
There is good reason for caution in concluding that there is “a gene
for”91 any psychiatric condition, especially when that condition is as
broadly defined as psychopathy. Such molecular genetic studies, if in-
terpreted incorrectly, can appeal to and perpetuate a sense of biological
determinism about psychopathy.
We discuss these molecular genetic studies not to dispute that the
brain develops following a genetic blueprint as we age, but to highlight
the fact that environmental (or social) events can also have a profound
effect on the realization of the blueprint. For example, the often-impli-
cated paralimbic dysfunction in psychopaths is assumed to be largely
genetic. However, studies of the long-term effects of child maltreatment
report abnormalities in prefrontal–amygdala connections.92 Some areas
related to the candidate circuit in psychopathy, assumed to be abnor-
mal from the earliest stages of life, also seem to develop atypically in
abused children. Psychopathy researchers suggest that child maltreat-
ment leads to a very different pattern of abnormal brain activity (for
instance, amygdala hyperactivity) than psychopathy (amygdala hypo-
activity).93 In other words, atypical brain structure and function in psy-
chopathy cannot be explained by early life adversity. However, the fact
that psychopathy has been associated with both amygdala hypo- and
hyperactivity – as well as normal activation patterns94 – suggests that
the potential effects of early adversity cannot be dismissed so easily.
Overlooking or minimizing the role of the environment has profound
consequences when it comes to dealing with psychopathic behaviours.
Norwegian psychologist Aina Gullhaugen and her co-author, psychia-
trist Jim Nøttestad, point out that because we assume psychopathy is
biological, and because psychopaths fail to show normal emotional re-
sponses, we assume that their emotional lives never were and never
will be normal. But what if we are wrong? What if, Gullhaugen and
Nøttestad ask, early life experiences play an important role in shaping
the barren emotional life of psychopaths? Gullhaugen and Nøttestad
reviewed all case studies of psychopaths published in the last thirty
years, and analysed childhood experiences in each case.95 In a July 2012
interview, Gullhaugen stated, “Without exception, these people have
been injured in the company of their caregivers ... and many of the de-
scriptions made it clear that their later ruthlessness was an attempt to
address this damage, but in an inappropriate or bad way.”96 This type
of explanation does not tend to be considered in mainstream psychopa-
thy research because, as Hare stated, a traumatic environment can lead

lish professor Mark Seltzer has argued, modern “true crime” literature
and film are increasingly indistinguishable from their fictional counter-
parts. He wrote,
True crime is crime fact that looks like crime fiction ... “Crime” on its own
is then crime fiction, “false crime.” The presumption seems to be that
“crime” is a fictional genre and that one must bend fiction toward fact
by adding the word “true” to crime. This interestingly paradoxical rela-
tion between true and false crime points to the manner in which crime in
modern society resides in that interval between real and fictional reality
... That is, a reality bound up through and through with the reality of the
mass media.20
This conflation of real and fictional crime has the psychological effect
of releasing the audience from having to consider the seamy realities
of actual murder. If the killer’s identity is hard to distinguish from fic-
tion, so it is easy to confuse real victims’ suffering with the suffering of
fictional victims. It is safe to contemplate and identify with the mon-
ster when his victims are marginally real. The confusion only deepens
when it is reinforced by mental health experts. A number of psycholo-
gists, for example, contributed to The Psychology of Dexter, a book-
length psychological assessment of the fictional psychopath Dexter
Morgan (or “America’s favorite serial killer,”21 as one Emory Univer-
sity psychologist put it in the book). Then, on 24 October 2012, Kevin
Dutton took the stage at the Rubin Museum of Art in New York, joined
by Michael C. Hall, who portrayed Dexter on TV. “Incorporating the
latest advances in brain scanning and neuroscience,” the museum ad-
vertisement explained in terms reminiscent of P.T. Barnum, “Dutton
reveals that there is a scale of ‘madness’ along which we all sit. In this
on-stage conversation, Dutton will test his theories on the actor who
embodies psychopathic qualities in his role on Showtime’s Dexter.”22
The conflation of real and imaginary here is so complete and unique
that it is nearly impossible to think of an analogy elsewhere. The clos-
est would probably be a zoologist studying a person who wears an
animal costume.
The widespread appeal of psychopathy as an alter ego lies in psy-
chopathy’s inclusiveness. Since psychopathy can define the president
as much it can the serial murderer, the label’s essence is not harm, but
freedom and potential. Psychopathy implies a range of options denied
to the non-psychopath: a psychopath can kill or choose not to kill; he

Harlow’s later accounts of Gage derive from his correspondence with
Gage’s family, not from medical examinations. Others involved in the
case gave a more complex picture of Gage's injury. For example, Gage is
reported to have “entertain[ed] children with made-up stories, dr[iven]
heavily laden coaches with six horses, and ma[de] transatlantic cross-
ings” following his injury. Henry Bigelow, a Harvard surgeon who
evaluated Gage in person some time after the incident stated that Gage
was “quite recovered in his faculties of body and mind,” and that, as
before his accident, he was “shrewd and intelligent.”100 The psycholo-
gist and medical historian Zbigniew Kotowicz points out that long after
his accident Gage maintained close family relationships, was consis-
tently employed, liked hard work, and had no difficulties with the law.
Why, then, does Gage’s case recur in psychopathy literature? Kotow-
icz gives a plausible answer:
It seems that the reasoning is as follows: with this kind of damage to the
brain Gage must have been emotionally affected. Once this is accepted,
the search for the precise localization of the damage begins. The face dis-
appears. Here is a man finding it difficult to adjust after half his face has
been blown away, [and] the neuroscientist sends him to have his brain
scanned to pinpoint the exact reason for his difficulties. To put the matter
succinctly and perhaps a little unpalatably ... neuroscience breeds clinical
insensitivity.101
That is, Gage’s case lends itself to a superficial reading because it con-
firms exactly what the psychopathy research project requires: a patient
zero whose existence supports a contemporary leading theory. This ne-
gates other possible explanations for Gage’s behaviour, one candidate
for which might be, as Kotowicz argues, social rejection stemming from
his visible disfigurement. What this negation does is similar to what
happened in the aftermath of the Russell Williams murders. Within
days of his confession, Williams became an object of science onto whom
any number of theories and impressions could be projected. Very few
who commented on the case had ever laid eyes on Williams, and very
few, incidentally, had much to say beyond whether or not Williams fit
the profile of a standard murderer. In other words, Gage and Williams
became little more than scientific types whose essence hung on their
verification of contemporary theory. And contemporary popular the-
ory, by virtue of being popular, found what it was looking for, and so
became even more popular.
9 Conclusion: The Parlour Game
On Sex and Litigation
In 2007, after decades of research between them, the University of Cali-

fornia, Irvine psychologist Jennifer Skeem and the Scottish psychologist
David Cooke decided to publish a critique of the PCL-R in the journal
Psychological Assessment. Their main argument was that it would be a
good idea to remove criminal behaviour from the PCL-R as a diagnos-
tic feature of psychopathy. The PCL-R, they argued, had become syn-
onymous with psychopathy, hindering efforts to refine the disorder in
light of new data and theories. One symptom of this stagnation was the
insistence that crime was key to understanding psychopathy, a critical
error that conflated personality pathology with how the criminal jus-
tice system responded to it. Skeem and Cooke’s case was standard aca-
demic fare: very technical, and hardly revolutionary. The psychopathy
concept had, after all, pre-dated the PCL-R by more than two centuries;
between the late eighteenth and twentieth centuries, the disorder had
undergone about as many name changes and revisions to its diagnostic
features as there were major writers on the subject. As of this writing,
both the DSM and the World Health Organization’s International Clas-
sification of Diseases continue to exclude psychopathy as defined by the
PCL-R. So why not change the disease definition now?
By standards of academic publishing, Skeem and Cooke’s paper
was likely to generate one of two responses: a polite back-and-forth
between supporters and critics, or equally polite silence. Instead, even
before the paper made it to publication, Robert Hare’s attorney sent a
letter to Skeem, Cooke, and the publishing journal’s editor stating that
the article would “constitute defamation on the part of the authors, and
Conclusion: The Parlour Game 165

also Psychological Assessment,” and that Hare would “have no choice
but to seek financial damages from your publication and from the au-
thors of the article, as well as a public retraction of the article.”1 Al-
though Hare did not follow up on his threat, and the article eventually
appeared in 2010,2 many commentators noted that the damage to aca-
demic freedom and the progress of science was already done. Several
news outlets, including the New York Times, Science, Scientific American,
and the Chronicle of Higher Education covered the case. The New York
Times suggested that original article had “raised questions of censor-
ship, academic fraud, fair play and criminal sentencing — and all them
well before the report ever became public.”3 Two University of South
Florida researchers warned in an article published by the International
Journal of Forensic Mental Health that lawsuit threats might effectively
discourage researchers from proposing alternative models and theories
of psychopathy.4 Karen Franklin, a forensic psychologist and a critic of
psychopathy, outlined on her blog three specific effects of defamation
threats against researchers:
1. Researchers avoid conducting critical research out of fear of

lawsuits.
2. Academics decline to serve as volunteer peer reviewers for
academic journals due to loss of anonymity in defamation suits.
3. Journal editors self-censor on controversial topics.5
Franklin also wondered whether the suppression of critical literature

of the PCL-R might reduce psychopathy’s usefulness in court. Lawyers
whose clients were prejudiced by a psychopathy diagnosis, she argued,
might be able to discredit the diagnosis on the basis of Hare’s attempt
to suppress critiques of it. But whatever the eventual effects of the case,
one thing was certain: there was now a potential extra cost to consider
in publishing critiques of the PCL-R and the psychopathy concept in
general (the latter because it is difficult to discuss the modern psychop-
athy concept without reference to the PCL-R).
If Hare’s tactics troubled many in the research community, what Lom-
broso did to his critics in the nineteenth century was worse. He and his
followers sustained the positive school’s dominance over criminologi-
cal thought by launching intense, systematic, and public attacks on the
theory’s critics. At times the attacks were personal, while at other times
they were sweeping and transparently suppressive (the Italian sociolo-
gist Napoleone Colajanni, who proposed a sociological explanation of

parlayed his diagnosis into an appearance on the 2007 British docu-
mentary film Egomania, which billed Vaknin as “the world’s leading ex-
pert on NPD.” For the film, Vaknin provided a series of insights on the
nature of narcissistic personality disorder, and a narrative twist toward
the end of the show whereby he confessed that he himself was “a self-
aware narcissist.” This, he explained, was a rare condition. “We had
finally found a level-nine narcissist,” the film’s narrator noted, what-
ever that meant. “Sam is unique.” Vaknin’s by-the-book narcissism, on
display throughout the film, seemed to unsettle the entire film crew.
Two years later, Vaknin appeared in the film I, Psychopath. This time,
he submitted himself to a battery of diagnostic tests to see whether,
aside from his NPD, he also qualified as a bona fide psychopath. Vari-
ous mental health experts examined his brain and interview responses,
and eventually gave him the diagnosis. Vaknin’s tantrums and manip-
ulations were again captured on film, supposedly as evidence that he
was indeed a psychopath. The film’s director bemoaned on camera the
toll that the filming was taking on his own mental health. Robert Hare,
who appeared on the film himself, later confirmed Vaknin’s diagnosis
in a radio interview, and explained that Vaknin’s condition was most
likely genetic.27 Amid layers of complexity and irony, the troubling
question remained: was Vaknin a psychopath or merely pretending
to be one? Would pretending make him a psychopath anyway? Why
would Vaknin agree to be filmed in this way? One thing stood out clear-
ly: Vaknin seemed to sincerely want to be a psychopath. At least he was
making money from it, as he confessed on camera.
M.E. Thomas, a pseudonymous sociopath/psychopath followed in
Vaknin’s footsteps in her 2013 book, Confessions of a Sociopath: A Life
Spent Hiding in Plain Sight. In the book, Thomas, a self-described law
professor, musician, Sunday school teacher, and woman with a “bril-
liant IQ,” recounted how she came to suspect that she might be a psy-
chopath, and described her mission to find a diagnosis. She finally
received it when John Edens, a professor at Texas A&M University and
a noted expert on psychopathy, put Thomas through a number of tests
and pronounced her “a ‘socialized’ or ‘successful’ psychopath.” Her
personality profile, according to Edens, mirrored “the prototypical psy-
chopathic personality among females.” Thomas sensed Edens’s sym-
pathy for her condition: “At one point during our interview I thought
that he might cry,” she wrote. “He seemed so distressed on my behalf
... I think ... he was worried for me – worried about what a diagnosis
like ‘sociopath’ would mean for me in my life.” “Of course it’s hard for

eth century, and why, until the 1920s, female psychopathy tended to
be diagnosed mainly in young women whose sexual conduct violated
middle-class norms.11 The same tradition led a team of Canadian re-
searchers to find, in 2007, by way of a statistical study of sex offenders, a
naturally selected psychopathy sexuality taxon. The researchers argued
that a certain group of sexually coercive psychopaths were a unique hu-
man type, whose behaviour was determined by Darwinian evolution,
a conclusion the researchers reached by simply examining covariation
among PCL-R items and sexual behaviour.12
Sexual behaviour was nearly inseparable from psychopathy from
the start, a practice that continued in the pre-psychometric era because
sexual immorality was what clinicians looked for, and found, in their
patients. This “clinical tradition” then became the starting point for the
construction of the modern psychopathy concept. Hare described the
process in a 1980 paper as follows:
The first step was to list all of the traits, behaviors, indicants and counter-
indicants of psychopathy that we felt were explicitly or implicitly used in
making an assessment. We ended up with over 100 of these items. A series
of statistical analyses was carried out to determine which of these items
best discriminated between inmates with low and high ratings of psy-
chopathy ... we found that our clinical judgments of psychopathy could
be represented effectively by 22 items ...13
That is, test construction began as an exercise in representing tradition

as accurately as possible, with “clinical” practically becoming syn-
onymous with “tradition” (“tradition” alone, of course, is rhetorically
weak, hence the emphasis on the qualifier). Since clinicians had habitu-
ally linked low sexual morals with psychopathy, the PCL and the PCL-
R did so too, even when those items later performed poorly in factor
analysis.
The clinical-tradition fall-back strategy was part of a larger problem.
The research program’s rigidity about a few core assumptions – psy-
chopathy was a mental disorder, it was instantiated by immoral behav-
iour, and it had a biological cause – tended to generate research whose
primary objective was simply to reinforce these assumptions. This re-
sulted in largely uncritical data production with little regard for what
the data actually meant. Consider the following study:
A 2012 Carleton University master’s thesis titled Backstabbing Boss-
es and Callous Co-workers studied the effects of working with psycho-

paths. The research, supervised by a leading psychopathy researcher,
asked participants to identify psychopathic bosses, co-workers, or
subordinates, fill in several questionnaires about themselves and the
psychopath, and to describe what it was like to work with the psy-
chopath. The participants were recruited from a number of sources,
including Robert Hare’s website and those of the Aftermath: Surviving
Psychopathy Foundation and Lovefraud.com. The questionnaire was
to be completed online, with the instructions to do so in a safe place
(that is, away from the psychopathic co-worker). Along with the man-
datory anonymity and confidentiality protections, the study’s website
had security features to prevent the newly diagnosed psychopaths – or
“ascribed” psychopaths as the author called them – from accessing the
participants’ responses. The experience of working with a psychopath,
the instructions further explained, “may have been traumatic or stress-
ful for you and you may experience distress when answering these
questions.”14
The Aftermath: Surviving Psychopathy Foundation website de-
scribed the foundation’s purpose as providing “information and sup-
port to those whose lives, health, and/or careers have been placed at
risk or negatively impacted by psychopathy.”15 The website also stated
that the impact of psychopaths on the people around them was often
traumatic. Lovefraud.com was run by Donna Andersen, who according
to her website was “not a licensed therapist” and whose qualifications
consisted of having been married to a sociopath and having “heard from
more than 2,800 other victims about their experiences” (a phone consul-
tation with Andersen cost $65 per hour). “If you only know one thing
about psychology,” Andersen wrote on her website, “you should know
about sociopaths [whom she also called psychopaths]. Being aware of
sociopaths could help you avoid emotional trauma, ruined finances,
even an untimely death.”16 According to Andersen’s calculations, 12 per
cent of the population was “disordered,” which meant that there were
37 million people to avoid when seeking romance – once again reinforc-
ing the traditional link between sex, marriage, and psychopathy.17
The Carleton study’s results – released on a Canadian Psychological
Association’s newsletter and on Robert Hare’s website, among others
– showed that the “experience of working with a psychopath is nega-
tive and has the potential to be very emotionally harmful to victims.”18
More than half of the respondents reported “physical and mental
health problems (e.g., hair loss, lack of sleep, weight gain, depression,
anxiety, and paranoia).”19 All this, the study’s author emphasized, had

“implications for human resource personnel as they emphasize the con-
sequences of employing an individual with psychopathic traits.”20 The
author directed interested parties to the Aftermath and Lovefraud web-
sites for more information about the survivors of psychopaths.
If the study’s contribution to science was unclear, its contribution to
the psychopathy research program was not.21 The study tried, in its
own way, to confirm the point the research program had tried to make
for decades: psychopathy was a real thing with real-life consequences,
and it was therefore worth studying. In that role the study was no dif-
ferent from, say, ones that show a correlation between psychopathy and
crime, or those showing that psychopaths commit more varied crimes
than non-psychopathic offenders.
One significant contribution of this type of research is that it rein-
forces a growing disconnection between meaning and implication. No
matter how circular and derivative the data were, they were produced
because they had – or at least the researchers insisted they had – con-
ceivable application in some critical context such as criminal justice,
human resources, or scam avoidance. (The assumption here, of course,
was that intended audiences would actually find the research helpful:
that HR staff, for example, had not considered the downsides of hiring
psychopaths.) In other words, the data meant little, but they implied
urgent action, and urgent action was what sustained the production of
more data.
What allows researchers to compromise meaning for the benefit of
implication is basic certainty about psychopathy’s ontology, as calcu-
lating the social effects of psychopaths already means accepting that
psychopathy functions as a cause (estimates about the social costs of
psychopaths are often framed as estimates of the social costs of psychop-
athy). While these certainties are typically implicit in scholarly work,
they are more explicit in public commentary. Here is an example of how
the process works for one researcher in the span of a few minutes: In
2008, Adrian Raine spoke at a University of Pennsylvania media semi-
nar about neuroscience and its role in the criminal justice system. He
began by describing a 1997 study that showed lack of activation in pre-
frontal cortices of murderers, but advised caution in interpreting the
findings, noting that “actually, you know, there is a lot of problems in
neuroimaging research. There are issues in drawing causal conclusions
from for example something that’s just a correlation. And also anoth-
er complexity is that not all murderers are alike.” Raine proceeded to
discuss research on psychopaths, and a murder case in which he had

appeared as an expert witness to argue for sentencing leniency based
in part on neuroimaging data. He concluded, five minutes later, that
“yes, there is a biological basis to crime and violence, at least in part,”
and went on to describe the violence-reducing effects of giving fish oil
to prisoners and aggressive children, eventually leaving the audience
with the question of what to do with “individuals who have all the
biological, genetic, and social boxes checked ... if they lack the neural
circuitry underlying appropriate moral decision making?”22
Raine’s talk not only encapsulated the logical drift from uncertainty
to near-certainty, but also a compelling case against critiques of his the-
ory. The biological theory of psychopathy, just like Lombroso’s theory
in the nineteenth century, was essentially progressive. Raine in his pre-
sentation emphasized treatment over detention, and sentencing discre-
tion over harsh and mandatory prison terms. He promoted fish oil and
defended a murderer’s right to life. Lombroso was similarly a humane
reformist, arguing that since many criminals were driven to crime by
biological and social causes, they should not be held morally respon-
sible for their behaviour. He opposed the death penalty, at least in his
early writings, and argued that punishment should be determined by
individual needs rather than as a deterrent to future crime. And, like
Raine, he proposed alternatives to prison.
So, what non-regressive alternatives are there to the medical model
of psychopathy? None, it seems. The case for psychopathy appears,
even if wrong in some details, essentially progressive. It is therefore fair
to ask whether there is anything wrong with trying to understand the
psychopathic brain. Modern psychopathy research may be weakened
by a series of conceptual confusions, but what exactly is the harm done
by the research itself? Are the potential benefits of the research not obvi-
ously great enough to justify a certain laxness around its edges? If by a
simple stretch of the imagination we can muster funds and public in-
terest to study and find a neurobiological cause of psychopathy – how-
ever remote that possibility may in reality be – everyone benefits. The
reverse is also true: failure to find anything is hardly a major problem;
at best it is a waste of money. Kent Kiehl, who now runs a $2-million
mobile MRI unit to study inmate’s brains, made the point in an inter-
view with The New Yorker: “Think about it, crime is a trillion-dollar-a-
year-problem. The average psychopath will be convicted of four violent
crimes by the age of forty. And yet hardly anyone is funding research
into the science. Schizophrenia, which causes much less crime, has a
hundred times more research money devoted to it.”23

The Harm
The problem with the proposal above – that psychopathy research may
be flawed in details but right and good in principle – is that it conflates
idea with practice. Of course it would be good to find a neurobiological
cause to psychopathy, if for nothing other than scientific curiosity. What
makes the probability of such a discovery vanishingly small, however,
is the way in which much of mainstream psychopathy research is actu-
ally carried out. Unexamined assumptions about morality have led to
an unwieldy and empirically indefensible disorder definition, and to re-
search that does not advance the scientific aims it purports to advance.
Such research is at once dogmatic and impressionistic, ambitious and
stifling, with the overall effect of doing tangible harm to the research
program’s otherwise laudable goals. With every attempt to fit data into
theory, the program’s goal of finding a cause for human destructiveness
becomes a little harder. This is roughly the situation the positive school
found itself in at the peak of its popularity. In their introduction to one
of the works co-authored by Lombroso and his colleague Guglielmo
Ferrero, Nicole Hahn Rafter and Mary Gibson correctly described Lom-
broso as “one of the most fertile, if uncritical thinkers, in nineteenth-
century Europe.”24 Corrected for time and place, Rafter and Gibson’s
description comes dangerously close to capturing much of modern
psychopathy research.
Consider also the biological theory’s effect on the non-biological re-
search of psychopathy. With the increasing popularity of the biological
theory of psychopathy, public funding of research on environmental
correlates has received little attention. Although the standard causal
explanation of psychopathy references both biology and environment,
the field’s attachment to the former has meant that research funds, pub-
lications, and career advancement are harder to come by if one studies
the environments of psychopaths rather than their brains. (In compari-
son to environmental studies, brain imaging also minimizes time in-
vestment and some obvious drawbacks – such as reporting biases on
the part of the subjects).25 In other words, exaggerating the significance
of brain imaging data does more than elevate the biological theory’s
status; in practice, it also detracts from complementary theories.
But science is not the only, or even the most significant, casualty of
the psychopathy dogma. The application of neuroimaging research
to criminal law may be well intentioned, but it is – to put it mildly –
premature. The essential problem in linking neuroimaging data with

criminal responsibility is that the two, given the state of scientific
knowledge, bear no logical relation to one another. Neurobiological
differences between psychopaths and non-psychopaths (or murderers
and non-murderers) contain no information about their relevance to
criminal and moral responsibility. As we have already seen, a growing
body of data shows that nearly any human characteristic – from socio-
economic status26 to religious affiliation27 and political orientation.28 –
has neurological correlates. Furthermore, as we discussed in chapter 8,
it is becoming increasingly clear that brain function and structure are
altered by experience. Consider the following small sample of activi-
ties and experiences that have been shown to correlate with changes in
brain structure or function:
• Culture29
• Driving a taxi in London30
• Psychotherapy31
• Juggling32
• Living in a city33
• Meditation34
• Stress35
• Listening to music36
As we saw, neuroimaging data of this sort may signify cause, effect,

or a confound (It would be harder to make the case that, say, a larger
right temporal lobe would cause a person to drive a taxi in London
than to suggest that driving in London builds spatial memory and
right temporal circuits.) Data on psychopathy are also of this sort,
which means that neuroimaging results used in court may be (a) mea-
sures of causes of psychopathic behaviour, (b) measures of effects of
psychopathic behaviour, or (c) irrelevant to psychopathic behaviour. In
other words, the reasons why some expert witnesses choose to present
(a) rather than (b) or (c) in their legal arguments is not answered by
data; their choice is rather about data interpretation, about going beyond
data, another name for which is metaphysics. Whether these witnesses
are right about the defendants’ mental states is beside the point, be-
cause their arguments are by definition beyond their capacity to make
them. The Emory University neurologist Helen Mayberg accurately
called Kent Kiehl’s defence of the serial murderer Brian Dugan “a
dangerous distortion of science that sets dangerous precedents for the
field.”37

Logically, the most significant real and potential misuses of psychop-
athy in the criminal justice system hinge on how well judges, juries,
defence counsels, prosecutors, and expert witnesses understand the
difference between description and cause. Psychopathy is a personality
description, with no built-in explanatory power. The cause of psychop-
athy, furthermore, is a matter of theory. When psychopathy is taken as
an explanation, and theory as fact – as sometimes happens – the system
of justice runs the risk of delivering something less than justice. It is
not difficult to find examples of the conflation between description and
cause in criminal – and even civil – cases. They sound like this:
He [Dr. Hector] was also asked whether he could be confident that the ap-
pellant would be able to follow probationary conditions that might afford
some assurance of public safety. He responded: “No, I’m afraid my an-
swer to that question has to be, no, no, and a categorical no. The reason for
that is the underlying personality disorder psychopathy ... [T]hat disorder
is a serious handicap because of what it does ... is limit the individual’s
capacity to contain their behaviour ...” Dr. Hector’s view is that the appel-
lant acts impulsively and unpredictably. He has an anti-social personal-
ity disorder and suffers from sexual sadism, as well as a substance abuse
condition ... The appellant requires protective custody until such time as
there is available the knowledge and capacity to treat one or more of the
conditions that led to this present situation. (R. v. Saddlemore, 2007)
And like this:
The appellant ... pleaded guilty to two counts of pointing a firearm and
one count of possession of a rifle for a purpose dangerous to the public
peace ... On the basis of the psychiatric report the trial judge said that the
answer to [the appellant’s] behaviour that day was very simple. The ac-
cused did it because he was very nearly a psychopath with a long record
of violence and intimidating behaviour. (R. v. Forsythe, 1994)
Confusions like these are easy to understand in light of how psy-

chopathy has historically been defined in legal dictionaries and legisla-
tion. The 2004 edition of the Dictionary of Canadian Law, for example,
gave the following definition: “Psychopathic disorder: A persistent
disorder or disability of mind other than mental illness that results
[emphasis added] in abnormally aggressive or serious socially disrup-
tive conduct on the part of a person.” The British Mental Health Act

1983 read, “Psychopathic disorder: a persistent disorder or disability
of mind, irrespective of intelligence level, which also results [emphasis
added] in abnormally aggressive or seriously irresponsible conduct.”
Often, psychopathy experts were complicit in the conflation, as was
the case with the editors of an influential 1998 book on psychopa-
thy, who bluntly stated that “psychopathy is often the primary cause
of physical and sexual abuse as well as being present in all kinds of
criminality.”38
Death sentence deliberations in American courts give a concrete ex-
ample of this kind of thinking and its consequences. The York Univer-
sity sociologist Richard Weisman has analysed a number of cases in
which juries, charged with the task of deciding between life without
parole and the death sentence, were led by prosecutors and expert wit-
nesses to believe that, as a matter of fact, psychopathic defendants (or
ones suffering from antisocial personality disorder) could not experi-
ence remorse.39 Since a defendant’s remorse is a critical factor in the
sentencing decisions of juries,40 the instruction effectively increases the
likelihood of a death sentence. When framed in this way, a psychopa-
thy diagnosis also nullifies any attempts by the defendant to actually
show remorse: since psychopaths cannot feel remorse, and since they
are natural manipulators, any show of remorse by a psychopath must
therefore be faked. Here is how one prosecutor put it to a jury:
But, ladies and gentlemen, his act is transparent to the neutral and criti-
cal observer such as you are and you all know that no matter what words
may be used to try to convince us that this defendant feels remorse and
cares for others, et cetera, et cetera, those are words ... the sadism, pre-
meditation, and ritualistic repetition shown in these crimes are the classic
trademark of the psychopath who feels no remorse and has no concern
for anyone outside of himself. He’s the beast that walks upright. You meet
him on the street. He will seem normal, but he roams those streets, para-
sitic and cold-eyed, stalking his prey behind a veneer of civility.41
On the other end of the spectrum are psychologists like Adrian Raine
and Kent Kiehl who have argued against the death penalty on the ba-
sis of defendants’ psychopathy and/or related neurobiological defects.
Yet, Raine and Kiehl subscribe to the same, unproven premise as their
opponents: they too believe that psychopaths cannot feel moral emo-
tions. The only point of real divergence between these two camps is a
disagreement over what to do with this supposed fact. The question of

take a social scientist to see that the passage above is also effectively
a condensed manual on rhetoric. There is an ad hominem on ethics,
objectivity, and competence of critics (they are “influenced by belief sys-
tems intolerant of clinical and behavioural constructs, or overwhelmed”;
their views “have an armchair quality about them,” and are “held with
surprising certitude and tenacity”); a claim to objectivity (the data are
“readily available,” and basically require no interpretation. For more
on this, see chapter 8.); an appeal to authority (“a meeting of leading re-
searchers on personality disorders organized by the National Institute of
Mental Health ... concluded) [emphasis added]; and slippery language
(“clinical construct” sounds scientific, but what does it mean? Is a con-
struct not the opposite of a real thing? For more on this, see appendix
B. Also, the statement that critics have “suggested that the disorder is
mythological” already implies that the argument is about a disorder, the
very thing many critics in fact reject).
But are these rhetorical utterances intentionally rhetorical? In this
book we do not claim that rhetoric deployed in the service of psychopa-
thy research is meant to deceive, distract, or to market a dubious prod-
uct. Our criteria for considering a statement rhetorical and for including
it here is that (a) it is scientifically questionable or inessential, (b) it is
frequently made, and (c) it advances an institutional agenda. In other
words, rhetoric for our purposes here consists of statements that serve
only institutional agendas, and not scientific ones. We do not know the
reasons for these rhetorical statements; we only discuss their effects, and
when we say a certain statement has a certain rhetorical purpose, we do
not mean that the individual making that statement has that purpose,
only that it has a rhetorical effect. What follows is a discussion of some
of the rhetorical techniques evident in psychopathy discourse.
Medical Terminology
The master narrative of psychopathy is the disease model. Psychop-

athy is a disorder, psychopaths are patients with a dysfunction, their
symptoms – itemized in diagnostic tests – have an onset and a course, and
psychopathy may or may not be treatable. A typical academic journal
article sounds like this:
Antisocial and psychopathic personality disorders can be linked to a num-

ber of biochemical abnormalities (e.g., serotonin, monoamine oxidase,

“Sorry, it’s just that I’ve been working on this for over a month now, and
I don’t want to think that politics is going to stand in the way.”
“This is a big company now, Dorothy. There’s going to be politics. And,”
he said interrupting her before she could respond, “you’re not very com-
fortable with things political, I’d say.”
“We’re not all big shots like you, Dave. I’ll get this through on my own.”
“I’m just suggesting that sometimes it’s wise to work with others. One
hand washes the other, you know.”
“Please,” she said dragging the word into two syllables and rolling her
eyes. “I know, you’re going to make me an offer I can’t refuse, right?” she
said, turning back to her computer screen.
“Well, maybe...”43
And here is M.E. Thomas, the author of Confessions of a Sociopath, on

herself:
Ruining people. [emphasis original] I love the way the phrase rolls around
on my tongue and inside my mouth. Ruining people is delicious. We’re
all hungry, empaths and sociopaths. We want to consume. Sociopaths are
uniformly hungry for power. Power is all I have ever really cared about in
my life: physical power, the power of being desired or admired, destruc-
tive power, knowledge, invisible influence. I like people. I like people so
much that I want to touch them, mold them or ruin them however I’d
like. Not because I want to exercise my power. The acquisition, retention,
and exploitation of power are what most motivate sociopaths. This much
I know.
What do I mean by ruining someone? Everyone has their different
tastes in regards to power, just like everyone has their different tastes for
food or sex. My bread and butter is feeling like my mind and my ideas are
shaping the world around me, which is of course why I bother writing
the blog. It’s my daily porridge; it keeps me from starvation. But when I
indulge – when I am hungry for the richest, most decadent piece of foie
gras – I indulge in inserting myself into a person’s psyche and quietly
wreaking as much havoc as I can. To indulge in malignity ... There is a
special pleasure in destruction because of its rarity – like dissolving a pearl
in champagne.44
The reason these stories are not compelling as literature is that they
straddle two narrative conventions without mastering either. On the
one hand, they follow the enforced obviousness of clinical vignettes

(such as the DSM-5 Clinical Cases)45 that connect diagnostic labels with
their real-life manifestations. On the other hand, they deploy standard
creative writing strategies the effect of which, presumably, is to make
the stories more interesting. But the overall effect is not interesting read-
ing, because the dramatic effects come off as strictly superfluous and
discordant. What makes traditional clinical vignettes “clinical” is, aside
from their depiction of pathology, the fact that they do not make an
emotional appeal on the reader; they illustrate and educate without
calling on the reader to witness just how bizarre and terrible the disorder
in question really is. These studies stand in contrast to the pathos and
voyeurism of psychopathy vignettes, whose educational point becomes
progressively less clear as the thrills increase. If the cover of a book
reads “1 in 25 ordinary Americans secretly has no conscience and can
do anything at all without feeling guilty. Who is the devil you know?” –
as Martha Stout’s The Sociopath Next Door does – what are the odds that
a reader will form an objective picture of psychopathy? What is more,
the thrills are brief and shallow, which in turn is simply the function of
what the vignettes try to dramatize. The psychopaths in the vignettes
are pure types who move about the world for no other purpose than
to illustrate a point. The psychopaths may not reach Tolstoyan depths,
it can be argued, because psychopaths are supposed to be superficial,
but this does not explain why nobody else in these stories – such the
psychopaths’ victims – has any depth either. In short, the narratives so-
licit a reader’s emotional investment without providing any characters
worth investing in.
Or perhaps the vignettes are true to life after all; perhaps psycho-
paths are unvaryingly bad in bland and predictable ways, and their
victims truly, straightforwardly decent in the damsel-in-distress way of
being decent. But even this turns out to be wrong: many of the case vi-
gnettes are not actually about real people. As Babiak and Hare explain
in their preface to Snakes in Suits,
The “snakes” we describe are not based on actual persons, and any re-
semblance to such persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental. Rather,
they are profiles of generic psychopaths based upon composites of psy-
chopathic characteristics derived from published reports, the news media,
and our own research about such personalities.46
The operative word here is “generic.” The vignettes are composites and
therefore essentially fictional. These mash-ups of real people have be-

come common in the psychopathy non-fiction genre.47 Robert Hare’s
1993 Without Conscience describes cases “taken from published reports,
the news media, and personal communications, and I cannot be sure
that the individuals in question are psychopaths.”48 (This is nowhere
more obvious than in Hare’s reliance on Joe McGinniss’s account of Jef-
frey MacDonald in the book Fatal Vision, a book whose veracity – along
with the actual guilt of Macdonald itself – has been repeatedly brought
into question.)49 James Blair, Derek Mitchell, and Karina Blair’s The Psy-
chopath: Emotion and the Brain opens with four case vignettes, which are
“amalgamations of individuals with whom we have worked.”50 The
Columbia University forensic psychiatrist Michael Stone for his part
consulted “a few hundred true-crime biographies,” which he explained
were “the ones found in the true-crime section of a bookstore,”51 in writ-
ing his 2009 The Anatomy of Evil. Why would a book about psychopathy
discuss people who may not actually be psychopaths? Have the writers
not met real psychopaths worth writing about? Are there undisclosed
legal reasons for doing this, or are actual psychopaths simply not very
interesting? Does this creative licence exist to improve psychopathy
discourse in some way?
The meshing of fact and fiction is more than an aesthetic problem.
The flatness of the psychopath’s character on the page is a symptom of
a widespread aversion towards psychological understanding. Psycho-
paths are essentially crude, semi-human cut-outs with no histories, ad-
vancing from infancy to mature evil without passing through the usual
stages of personhood. Researchers and mental health experts convey
this point with surprising candour. Psychopaths are “intraspecies pred-
ators,” “reptilian,” “chameleonlike,” an “alien subset of humanity,”
“like the emotionless androids depicted in science fiction,” “like Amy-
ciaea lineatipes, a species of arachnid,” “snakes,” “animals,” “parasitic
predators,” and “less human than the rest of us.”52 Martha Stout saw “a
gaze of a leopard” in a psychopath’s look, and wondered at the “deep
and yet strangely invisible dividing line across the human race.”53
It is not surprising that such allusions would become literal in the
public mind. “Psychopaths have no empathy and as a result they are
neither truly human nor truly alive,”54 wrote the author of a book titled
The Art of Urban Survival: A Family Safety and Self Defense Manual.
Behind the animal imagery lies a more profound truth about the lim-
its of knowledge. Since the serial killer and the psychopath seem at
first hard to understand, we tend to approach them in terms we under-
stand better. Just as physical deviations stand for moral deviations in

traditional monster folklore – a moral monster looks like a monster as
well – modern scientists rely on the animal metaphor to indicate psy-
chopaths’ lack of morality and human emotion. In a sense, the folkloric
animal imagery is the moral equivalent of diagnostic jargon – both aim
to familiarize the unfamiliar. If morality is human, immorality is not
human. So, a serial killer is knowable because he has a certain PCL-R
score, and he is reptilian because he is immoral.
But why offer metaphors at all? Does the animal metaphor actual-
ly help us to understand the psychopath? On closer examination, the
animal metaphor of psychopathy is informationally void. If psycho-
paths are more like, say, reptiles than humans, then what are reptiles
like? Since we know practically nothing about the psychological lives
of snakes, the metaphor’s effect here is a cognitive dead end. Rather
than showing what psychopaths are like, the metaphor confirms the nega-
tive: this is what psychopaths are not like. Psychopaths in the standard
narrative have no human psychological life at all; they are depthless
and blank, alien and unknowable, a mystery not worth investigating.
The popular psychopathy narrative’s point, then, is to reinforce incom-
prehension. Consider Snakes in Suits, which includes a chapter titled
“Who Are These People?”55 Or consider expert commentary on Russell
Williams. Within a five-and-a-half-minute interview, one psychologist
called Williams, “a black hole,” “a mystery,” “intriguing,” “from an-
other planet,” “like a tomb,” and “psychopathic.”56
Clearly, the familiar routines, anecdotes, and metaphors of the psy-
chopathy story are borrowed from older narrative conventions. In
monster mythology, a hybrid beast threatens an innocent population.
The beast’s nature is to be unknowable, and the victims’ nature is to
be innocent, trusting (they do not lock their doors, etc.), and know-
able. The hero (the police, the scientist) is meant to outwit and unmask
the monster. The psychopathy story simply updates this lore for mod-
ern, scientifically minded audiences. The problem with this updating
is that popular books on psychopathy do not fulfill the twin tasks of
folklore: to entertain and inform. The science is inconclusive, and oc-
casional flashes at folkloric insight have built-in implausibility. A good
example of the latter is the “psychopathic stare” idea, which now cir-
culates in popular and, to a lesser extent, academic literature. Here is
criminal profiler Robert Ressler invoking it in the standard fashion
while discussing the serial killer Richard Chase: “It was his eyes that
really got me. I’ll never forget them. They were like those of the shark
in the movie Jaws. No pupils, just black spots. These were evil eyes that

are obvious: the more psychopathy discourse resembles medical dis-
course, the more it commands research funds, professional prestige,
law enforcement endorsements, and mainstream media interest.
Dangerous Knowledge
Not long after the Hare Psychopathy Checklist-Revised was published

and began to gain public attention, concerns were raised about its po-
tential misuse. This was not without some justification, as a psychopa-
thy diagnosis can influence any number of legal decisions, including
death sentence deliberations (see chapter 9). Robert Hare has provided
anecdotal evidence of PCL-R misuse in the American and Canadian
criminal justice systems. These range from a judge’s ad hoc PCL-R
diagnosis of a defendant to inmates diagnosing themselves.13 Others
have documented PCL-R misuses as well. Here are two representative
cases, as described by John Edens:14 In one case, prosecution sought the
death penalty for a defendant in a multiple murder case. The argument
centred in part on the defendant’s PCL-R score (thirty-six) which, the
prosecution argued, meant that the defendant was likely to engage in
institutional violence if not given the death penalty. Edens points out
that the empirical literature is inconclusive on the issue of institutional
violence, and the violence risk may be in any case irrelevant for in-
mates on twenty-three-hour-a-day lockdown in the facility in which
the defendant would be placed. The second case concerns a defendant
on trial for multiple sexual assaults against his child. A psychiatrist
had assessed him based on a number of tests, including ten to fifteen
select and improperly documented PCL-R items, and concluded that
the defendant did not show “sociopathic tendencies” and was there-
fore unlikely to have committed the offences. Edens lists three principal
problems with this argument. The psychiatrist
(a) did not have adequate information available to administer and score
the PCL-R appropriately; (b) presented the obtained results in a highly
unusual and nonstandardized manner; and (c) drew conclusions that are
in no way supported by the existing literature regarding the relationship
between psychopathy and sexual violence ... Although it is true that some
sex offenders score quite highly on the PCL-R ... and that the combination
of psychopathy and deviant sexual arousal has been shown to be a robust
predictor of sex offender recidivism in general ... these factors have very
little to do with the prediction of incest per se.15

matological and least often pulmonary, due to likely sympathetic acti-
vation of their autonomic nervous system,” a finding he took to mean
that the reaction was an evolutionary “defense against an interspecies
or intraspecies threat.”62
The problem with all this, of course, is that psychopaths are also
by definition charmers and manipulators who lure their victims to all
manner of physical, emotional, and financial harm, and then convince
judges and parole boards to get them out of serving long sentences.
Most of those who knew Ted Bundy before his murders seemed to no-
tice his apparent normalcy and attractiveness, not the strangeness of his
eyes. The eyes became an issue only once the true horror of his crimes
became evident, and when J. Reid Meloy had had the opportunity to
study them in newspaper photos. And how can white-collar psycho-
paths do so well if their eyes constantly betray them, and their victims
keep having bad gut reactions to them? Hare himself reports having
been duped by a psychopath into giving a conference talk for free. He
writes, “Ironically, I had spent quite a bit of time with this man, at a
luncheon held just before my talk and later in a bar. I detected nothing
unusual or suspicious about him; my antenna failed to twitch in his
presence.”63 It was left to the baseball analyst and true crime enthusiast
Bill James to make the obvious point: “If you could look at a guy’s eyes
and see that he was a serial killer, women wouldn’t get into the car with
them.”64
On Making Too Much Sense
The reason why these folkloric fringe claims thrive in psychopathy

discourse is that every single one of them makes some sort of cultural
sense – to be evil is to be not human, eyes are a window to the soul, gut
instincts signify deeper truths hidden to reason, and so on. They make
sense in the same way the entire research program does: both have the
appearance of explaining things. And herein lies the problem. The idea
that evil is reducible to a score, to neurobiology, or to degeneration has
the common-sense ring of a standard medical discovery, and it comes
with the extraordinarily attractive assumption that evil is essentially
not a mystery but a puzzle. The puzzle metaphor is what the medical
journal The Lancet referred to in this 1996 editorial:
Is it too fanciful to suggest that we will soon know what evil is, if only to
accept its existence as something beyond the reach of forensic psychiatry

and outside the safe boundaries of nosology[?] ... To deny the possible ex-
istence of evil is as scientifically arrogant as claiming that no new phylum
of living things could be discovered ... All we can hope is for serendipity
– that a scientist ... will come across evil, maybe from the preserved brains
of those afflicted, and recognize it for what it is, something no-one has
ever seen before.65
The editorial’s conceptualization of evil – that somehow it possesses

material qualities, and can in principle be found, by lucky coincidence
no less – is what drives the psychopathy research program’s gradu-
al shift from theory to common sense. This shift, which has been the
theme of our book, is ultimately a story about a very human wish to
believe in an orderly universe. In this universe, evil is its own biologi-
cal category, readily set apart from the rest of humanity, and revealed
in human tissue. The scientific mind in this respect is as loaded with
cultural assumptions and imagery as the lay mind is, willing to reach
for conclusions well beyond physical data. To sum up this point – and
roughly our entire argument so far – consider this one last story:
The University of California, Irvine neuroscientist James Fallon, who
had been studying criminal and psychopathic brains for a long time,
was looking at random brain images his colleagues had given him.
Without knowing anything about the people the scans came from, Fal-
lon was blindly looking for patterns that might be scientifically use-
ful. One group of images stood out for low orbital frontal cortex and
amygdala activity, and Fallon wanted to know if anything tied them
together. Something did – they all belonged to murderers. This made
sense to Fallon, since his findings confirmed exactly what previous re-
search had found out about the brains of murderers and psychopaths.
But then things began to go wrong. One of the slides with low orbital
cortex and amygdala activity belonged to Fallon himself. Worse, when
he studied his own DNA he discovered that he had the genetic make-
up of a psychopathic murderer. The gene in question was the low-
activity variant of the MAOA gene, which is transmitted through the
X chromosome, and therefore inherited from your mother (see chapter
8). “You see,” Fallon told a reporter later, “I’m 100 percent. I have the
pattern, the risky pattern. In a sense, I’m a born killer ... You start look-
ing at yourself and you say, ‘I may be a sociopath.’”66 He was rightly
disturbed; the results undermined not only his own mental health, but
also the entire idea of a psychopathic brain. (In a statistically unlikely
coincidence, Adrian Raine discovered that he too had a “brain scan ...

that looks like a serial killer’s” and other biological markers of violent
criminals.)67
But then things began to make sense again. Fallon’s mother told him
that one of his great-grandfathers from his father’s side (never mind the
warrior gene’s maternal transmission) had murdered his own mother
in the seventeenth century. This side of the family had eight murder-
ers, one of whom was Lizzy Borden (again, never mind that Borden
was acquitted twice, once at her trial in 1893, and once at a 1997 mock
trial presided over by the U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice William
Rehnquist and Associate Justice Sandra Day O’Connor). The murderers
may or may not have been psychopaths, they may or may not have had
the warrior gene, and their number out of the family tree’s total may
or may not have represented historically average homicide rates, but
none of this mattered, because it all made for a very good story. What
is more, on reflection, Fallon’s personal story fit the prevailing inter-
actionist model, according to which psychopathy was caused by the
joint effects of genetics, brain dysfunction, and environment. Since Fal-
lon was not abused as a child, he only had two thirds of the equation.
In other words, Fallon’s brain actually supported the prevailing theory
(never mind, again, that had his brain functioned normally, this would
also have supported the theory). Putting it all together in a TED talk,
Fallon explained that “How you end up with a psychopath and a killer
depends on exactly when the damage occurs. It’s really a very precisely
timed thing.”68 Fallon’s own timing was off, which made him a luckier
man than Muammar al-Gaddafi and the Belarusian dictator Alexan-
der Lukashenko, both of whom Fallon diagnosed as psychopaths. “I
would like to have scanned the brain and tested the DNA of Osama bin
Laden,”69 he went on in an apparent contradiction to his own theory,
given that bin Laden, the son of a billionaire and a devout Muslim with
connections to the Saudi Royal family, does not seem to have suffered
childhood abuse.
Gathered around the dinner table, Fallon’s family began to make
sense of his situation. “I always knew there was something off. It makes
more sense now that it’s clear that he has the brain and the genetics of
a psychopath. It all falls into place as it were. He’s got a hot head and
everything you’d want in a serial killer he has in a fundamental way,”
said his son. Here was his wife: “It was surprising but it wasn’t surpris-
ing, because he really is in a way two different people. Even though
he’s always been very funny and gregarious and everything else, he’s
always had a standoffish part to him.” And here was Fallon himself,

flashing an enigmatic smile: “I have characteristics or traits some of
which are psychopathic, yeah. I could blow off an aunt’s funeral if I
thought there was a party that day ... I know something is wrong but
I still don’t care.”70 What emerged from all of this was essentially an
extreme version of the Barnum effect:71 Fallon was gregarious and
standoffish, impulsive and meticulous, a deeply uncaring family man,
a benign crypto-psychopath who studied murderers.
Finally, Fallon took the logical step of analysing his family’s brains
and genes, and compared them to his own. Fallon’s brother John who
according to the Wall Street Journal works for the New York State educa-
tion department, used to get into fistfights as a youth and still describes
himself as a fighter. His other brother, Pete, owns a pharmacy in Al-
bany, but likes to dive off tall cliffs and is, according to his family, a risk-
taker.72 Yet only James’s brain and genes fit the psychopathic pattern;
the rest of the family was entirely normal. “It became a parlour game,”
he explained, inadvertently capturing the nature of modern psychopa-
thy research; “I wanted to see,” he continued, “who had the high-risk
genes, who the ‘evil’ one was lurking in our midst. The kids, my broth-
ers, my wife, my mom – everyone was buzzing about it. It was a new
thing for us to argue about.”73
Appendix A: Morality and Psychopathy
The following is a sample of PCL-R items, mostly as described by Rob-

ert Hare in his 1993 book Without Conscience: The Disturbing World of the
Psychopaths among Us. Copyright laws prevent us from quoting directly
from the PCL-R manual or using the entire set of PCL-R items. We have
eliminated from this list items that are obviously about morality, in-
cluding items dealing with dishonesty, delinquency, and crime.
Glib and superficially charming. Morally speaking, the first item in

the PCL-R is also the most interesting and philosophically vexing.
Why should superficial charm be a symptom of a mental disorder?
Why is glibness a problem? Moral concern with glibness and superfi-
cial charm dates at least to Socrates’s admonition that the unexamined
life is not worth living. Socrates’s insight was a quintessential moral
insight. For him, shallowness was a moral failure. Since Socrates, self-
knowledge has become a cornerstone of Western religiosity and moral
philosophy (most famously advanced by St. Augustine, the Stoics, and
the Romantics).
But glibness and superficial charm are more than failures of personal

insight – they constitute a form of deception. The idea here is that every
person possesses an authentic self; a sincere, profound person acts in
accordance with his or her true self. A glib and superficially charming
person, on the other hand, constructs an inauthentic social self for the
purpose of some material or social benefit. Hare describes such people
as “insincere” and “too slick and smooth,”1 and contrasts them with
introverted and immature types. In typical clinical practice, immaturity
and extreme introversion may be a sign of mental health problems. In
186 Appendix A: Morality and Psychopathy

the psychopathy lexicon, they are the opposite. This reversal is intel-
ligible only in the context of the religio-moral concept of authenticity,
according to which the true self is imperfect, awkward, sensitive, and
precious. Slickness and smoothness are antithetical to it. The reasoning
for this view is far from clear, but we – and the PCL-R – tend to accept
it as fact.
Egocentric and grandiose. This item’s moral overtones are obvious.

Hare’s description reads,
Psychopaths have a narcissistic and grossly inflated view of their self-

worth and importance, a truly astounding egocentricity and sense of en-
titlement, and see themselves as the center of the universe, as superior
beings who are justified in living according to their own rules ... Psycho-
paths often come across as arrogant, shameless braggarts – self-assured,
opinionated, domineering, and cocky. They love to have power and con-
trol over others and seem unable to believe that other people have valid
opinions different from theirs.2
Aside from word choice (“grossly inflated,” “truly astounding”),

consider the early Christian church and what it considered the deadli-
est of the seven deadly sins: pride. The Oxford English Dictionary defines
pride as “a high or overweening opinion of one’s own qualities, attain-
ments, or estate, which gives rise to a feeling and attitude of superiority
over and contempt for others; inordinate self-esteem.”3
Lack of remorse or guilt. Remorse and guilt are consummate moral

emotions, and as such form the basis of conscience. Lack of moral feel-
ing (especially in the negative direction, as in not feeling badly about
committing a bad act) indicates lack of conscience. Lack of conscience
is morally wrong in two ways. On the one hand, it indicates non-partic-
ipation in the moral world, which itself is immoral. On the other hand,
a person’s lack of remorse or guilt is impossible to establish without
there being something he should feel remorseful or guilty about. That
is, guilt and remorse imply an immoral act.
Christian theology links the concept of guilt with the concept of sin.

Here, the solution to sin lies in part in repentance, and the emotional
aspect of repentance is remorse.
Shallow emotions. This item is worth quoting at length:


Psychopaths seem to suffer a kind of emotional poverty that limits the
range and depth of their feelings. While at times they appear cold and un-
emotional, they are prone to dramatic, shallow, and short-lived displays of
feeling. Careful observers are left with the impression that they are play-
acting and that little is going on below the surface. Sometimes they claim
to experience strong emotions but are unable to describe the subtleties of
various affective states. For example, they equate love with sexual arousal,
sadness with frustration, and anger with irritability.4
Without the accompanying item description, shallowness of affect in

itself is morally irrelevant. A person may simply not feel very strongly
or deeply about anything, and yet be moral. We describe such persons
as “casual” or “laid-back.” In another sense, a person may demon-
strate flat affect in a psychiatric sense if his facial expressions and tone
of voice are limited in range, and he appears withdrawn. These may
be diagnostic of such things as depression or schizophrenia. However,
this item is not about either of these senses. The psychiatric sense is
ruled out by the fact that a person who matches this description does
show emotion, however “dramatic, shallow,” and “short-lived” it may
be.
What, then, is the item about? The answer is threefold. First, it is

about pretence (“they are play-acting”), which is in the same moral
category as lying, conning, and manipulating. Second, while the item
description suggests shallowness in the experience of all normal emo-
tions, the item description only mentions the experience of one cate-
gory of emotion – love and affection (for instance, showing emotion
when discussing a friend’s death). That each scoring example is about
a pro-social emotion is probably not coincidental. If a person could not
feel any emotions, he could also not feel such things as grandiosity, a
need for excitement, frustration and anger, or whim, all of which are
diagnostic of psychopathy. In other words, without emotions he would
most likely not be a psychopath.
Third, the item is less about emotion than it is about the absence of

pro-social behaviour. If a person behaves in loving and caring ways,
that person’s depth of emotion should not raise concern with regard
to the item. That is, the item is as much about moral behaviour as it is
about moral emotion. In Christian theology, religious feelings like com-
passion, joy, fear, awe, remorse (or contrition), absolute dependence,
and gratitude are essential components of religious tradition, both as
pure emotions and as motivators for Christian action.

Lack of empathy. This item implies both non-participation in the moral
world (lack of feeling for the suffering of others), and morally repre-
hensible behaviour (meaningfully applied, “callousness” describes
only antisocial acts). Also, lack of empathy runs counter to the central
Christian emotion of compassion.
Poor behaviour controls. Since this item does not refer to all types of
behaviour – such as poorly controlled philanthropy – but only to acts of
an antisocial nature, it is clearly about morality. Hare writes:
Psychopaths are short-tempered or hot-headed and tend to respond to

frustration, failure, discipline, and criticism with sudden violence, threats,
and verbal abuse. They take offense easily and become angry and aggres-
sive over trivialities, and often in a context that appears inappropriate to
others.5
Theologically, this item is a close match with the deadly sin of wrath,

which the Oxford English Dictionary defines as “vehement or violent an-
ger; intense exasperation or resentment; deep indignation.”6 It is also
the reverse of such virtues as patience and self-control.
Promiscuous sexual behaviour. The term “promiscuous” has a de-

rogative connotation, suggesting reduced moral worth of the person
to whom the term applies as well as those things or acts which he so
indiscriminately chooses. Promiscuous sexual behaviour, more specifi-
cally, runs counter to the myths, prohibitions, institutions, and legisla-
tion that most if not all societies erect to limit the number and character
of human sex acts (consider, for instance, the institution of marriage,
the Roman Catholic virtue of chastity, and the richness of derogatory
expressions for those who are indiscriminate in their sexual practices).
Here is a description of this item in a textbook on psychopathy:
Hare (1991) describes promiscuous sexual behaviour as constituting a va-

riety of brief, superficial relations, numerous affairs, and an indiscriminate
selection of sexual partners. This aspect of promiscuity reflects a lack of
conscientiousness, particularly a hedonistic lack of self-discipline, delib-
eration, and moral dutifulness.7
Also, it depends not only on the quantity of a person’s sex acts, but

also on their emotional quality. Hare describes psychopaths’ sex lives

as impersonal and casual, the high frequency of actual sex being merely
a reflection of this quality. Traditional Christian theology’s abhorrence
of loveless and non-procreative sex is well known.
Lack of realistic, long-term goals. Hare describes psychopaths as

generally aimless, with no other conceivable goal than to live on the
“easy-street.” The assumption here is that we should do certain things
and lead our lives in certain directions. The foundation for this aware-
ness is, at least in part, moral judgment about the respective value of
different life paths. But where might the clinician find guidance for
such judgments? She might try for example Proverbs 28:20, which
says, “A faithful man shall abound with blessings: but he that ma-
keth haste to be rich shall not be innocent.” This admonition is well
in keeping with the Protestant ethic of earning one’s living by honest
labour.
Impulsivity. Hare writes,
Psychopaths are unlikely to spend much time weighing the pros and cons
of a course of action or considering the possible consequences ... More
than displays of temper, impulsive acts often result form an aim that plays
a central role in most of the psychopath’s behavior: to achieve immediate
satisfaction, pleasure, or relief ... they do not modify their desires; they
ignore the needs of others.8
Lack of consideration for the consequences of one’s actions – regard-

less of the actual consequences – is grounds for moral condemnation,
and implies such vices as recklessness, imprudence, and selfishness,
and lack of such Christian virtues as moderation.
Lack of responsibility. Since it is evident that this item applies only in

one moral direction (it does not deal with failure to accept responsibili-
ty for good behaviour), a person characterized by it faces moral censure
on two counts. First, a person must have acted immorally for the item
to be relevant. That is, there must be something to take responsibility
for. Second, in attempting to reduce demands on his or her moral char-
acter for the sake of personal benefit, the person undermines the social
foundation of morality. The Old Testament has this to say on the matter:
“He that covereth his sins shall not prosper: but whoso confesseth and
forsaketh them shall have mercy” (Proverbs 28:13).

Many short-term marital relationships. On the one hand, this item is
in the same moral category as lack of responsibility. The breaking of
marital vows here is simply an instance of failed commitment. Singling
out marital commitment, though, is an obvious nod to the traditional
Judeo-Christian ideal of a lifelong intimate bond (two leading personal-
ity researchers describe this item as a “reflection of low conscientious-
ness, particularly dutifulness”).9 The PCL-R implies that marriage is
more than a purely pragmatic contract; a failure to properly observe
and honour the institution of marriage here constitutes nothing less
than a symptom. Another way of putting this is that any disagreement
on the purpose and the ideal length of marriage – as, say, a financial
contract, a form of filial rebellion, an impulsive Las Vegas wedding,
each with easy opt-out clauses – potentially instantiates a psychiatric
disturbance.
Appendix B: The Psychometrics of
Psychopathy – On Factor Structures and
Heritability Coefficients
A basic goal of psychopathy research is to prove the existence of an

entity called psychopathy. If psychopathy is to be more than merely a
description of people, it must be a thing that produces effects, and it
must in turn be the effect of something else. The supposed “it” – the
psychopathy entity – goes by many different names in mainstream re-
search, including “disease,” “disorder,” “psychiatric condition,” “un-
derlying structure,” “clinical construct,” and “taxon.” But of course
psychopathy is not a disease in the standard medical sense, because its
symptoms are not physiological. Psychopathy is, at best, a personal-
ity disorder, and as such, proving it to be an entity requires something
other than observing and manipulating a disease process in human tis-
sue. The psychopathy entity is by its nature subject to several layers
of mystery. It, for example, is not directly observable; it is thought to
follow as-of-yet undiscovered laws (if they exist at all); it may or may
not be divisible into smaller units; and it may or may not operate differ-
ently in different populations.1 The greatest mystery, however, is how
we even know “it” exists. If there is an “it,” there are good grounds
for looking for its causes and treatments; if not, the empirical basis for
studying it would be about the same as searching for the general cause
of pain. Our question in this appendix is whether or not psychopathy is
an entity, and whether the tools we use to study this question are even
capable of giving us a definitive answer.
The two central ways of addressing the problem of psychopathy’s

existence are neuroimaging and psychometrics. As we explained in
chapter 8, psychopathy research draws its legitimacy largely from neu-
roimaging studies, but as we will see next, psychometric and biomet-
ric studies have played a strong secondary role. Medical imaging and
192 Appendix B: The Psychometrics of Psychopathy

psycho- and biometrics share another key element: both are highly tech-
nical enterprises which, by virtue of their technical complexity (a) tend
to confer credibility on their users and (b) create ample room for data
interpretation and misinterpretation. In what follows we show how
certain statistical procedures – whose actual mechanics remain some-
thing of a mystery to many who use them – have convinced a generation
of researchers that psychopathy is a bona fide entity. The quantitative
procedures that have played the largest role in legitimizing psychopa-
thy research, and which have been most commonly cited in support
of psychopathy’s status as an entity are (a) latent variable modelling
investigations into what is often called “the structure of psychopathy”
and (b) biometric twin studies into, supposedly, the genetic basis of
psychopathy. What follows is a description of latent variable modelling
and biometric research in the service of psychopathy research, and an
explanation of common errors in the interpretation of data derived from
these procedures. These errors, we will show, have allowed researchers
to draw inflated and logically dubious conclusions about the existence
of psychopathy as a disorder. Our discussion is at times technical be-
cause the procedures themselves are technical. Whenever possible, we
have attempted to put the points in terms meaningful to the general
reader. This, however, is difficult to do. The fundamental reason for in-
cluding such complex material in this book is that the book is intended
for both professional and non-professional readers. We do not want pro-
fessional readers to dismiss the rest of our arguments because, based on
their understanding of psycho- and biometrics, the data suggests that
psychopathy is, after all, a real disorder entity. However, we also do not
want the non-professional reader to assume that the central ontologi-
cal questions are too complex to make sense of. We have tried to find a
middle ground between being accurate and generally comprehensible.
The Structure of Psychopathy
A number of researchers, beginning around 1990, have made claims

about the “structure of psychopathy,”2 its “dimensionality, superordi-
nate nature,”3 “dimensional nature,” or reality as a “taxon,”4 the “co-
herence” or “viability” of the construct or syndrome of psychopathy,5
and the like. Generally, this research has employed statistical technol-
ogy called latent variable modelling (for example, linear factor analysis,
an item response theory technology, or a particular taxometric proce-
dure) to analyse sample data on psychopathy measures like the PCL-R.
Appendix B: The Psychometrics of Psychopathy 193

A latent variable model is a statistical model that makes reference to

two types of variables: manifest and latent variables. The manifest vari-
ables are thought to be observable or measureable, and the latent variables
unobservable or unmeasureable. In psychopathy research, a particular
latent variable model, of particular dimensionality m (the number of
latent variables that appear in the model’s defining equations), is fit to
a particular set of data. If, based on one or more criteria of model fit, the
model in use is deemed to provide an acceptable approximation to the
data, then the model is taken seriously as a description of reality, and
estimates of its parameters are employed to interpret (name, identify)
the m (unobservable) latent variables, or constructs.
The oldest latent variable model – and the one most frequently em-

ployed in psychopathy research – is the linear factor model. Factor
analysis was initially developed by the British psychologist and stat-
istician Charles Spearman for the study of mental abilities. In the early
twentieth century, Spearman noticed that scores on mental ability tests
he was studying were positively correlated. That is, a person’s good
performance on one test tended to coincide with good performances on
other tests of mental ability as well. To explain the correlations, Spear-
man postulated the existence of a factor, “general intelligence” or g. In
particular, he suggested that his mental tests were correlated because
they shared a dependency upon g. They were not perfectly correlated
because each test also depended upon what Spearman called a “specific
factor,” a factor that was unique to the test. This basic idea that a test is
the sum of a common (or shared) factor and a specific (or non-shared)
factor is the basis of factor analysis.
Spearman thought of his factor analysis to be primarily a test of the

hypothesis that g existed. Secondarily, should g be proven to exist,
it would provide – in the form of g itself – an objective definition of
the difficult-to-define concept “intelligence.” Spearman’s linear factor
analysis has gone on to become the most frequently used multivariate
technique,6 and has been used for many purposes, including personal-
ity and attitude research, and disease classification; as a foundation for
test theory; and as a means for studying the correlation structures of
any number of variable sets.
In psychopathy research, the most notable use of latent variable

models has centred on the issue of the “correct model” for the PCL-R.
Here, researchers have employed linear factor analysis,7 the organiz-
ing principle of which one team of researchers summarized like this:
“The viability of a psychopathological construct is based on a range

of evidence,” a prerequisite for which is “the existence of a coherent
syndrome, that is, a cluster of symptoms, signs, and traits that occur
together.” According to the researchers “considerable debate surrounds
the core features of this [psychopathy] construct,” but “factor analysis
... can inform our understanding, given its explicit recognition that all
measures are fallible indicators of constructs.” 8
In a seminal 1988 analysis, a team of University of British Columbia

researchers factor analysed PCL-R data from a large sample of male
inmates, and concluded that the PCL-R was two-dimensional. They
named the dimensions “selfish, callous, and remorseless use of others,”
and “chronically unstable and antisocial lifestyle.”9 In another widely-
cited study, the Glasgow Caledonian University psychologists David
Cooke and Christine Michie factor analysed an even larger sample,
and showed that the dimensionality of the PCL-R was in fact three.10
In 2008, Robert Hare and his colleague Craig Neumann summarized
empirical support for the position that the PCL-R was, in reality, four-
dimensional, and called the dimensions “interpersonal, affective, im-
pulsive lifestyle,” and “diverse externalizing/antisocial tendencies.”11
The two-, three-, and four-factor solutions have by now become the
standard ways to understand PCL-R’s dimensionality, though other
analyses have given as many as seven factors.12
What does this mean? That there are anywhere between two and

seven entities, each with a different cause or causes, or that there are no
real entities – that is, no signal, only noise? Either way, it might seem
obvious that multidimensionality of this sort is proof that there is no
single, real, entity called psychopathy. (Should a single factor – some-
thing like Spearman’s g – emerge, this would undoubtedly be used to
support psychopathy’s realness.) The conviction that psychopathy is a
single entity, however, has led researchers to simply reinterpret the two,
three, or four latent variables identified in the factor analytic work as
“facets”13 of psychopathy. Psychopathy itself was in a sense bumped up-
stairs, and recast into the role of superordinate construct – that is, a latent
variable that underlay the two, three, or four (as the case happened to
be) lower-order latent variables.14
On Technique and Metaphysics
Only things that exist can have a structure. If it were true that latent
variable models such as linear factor analysis allow researchers to
study the structure of psychopathy, or come to know something about

“its core features,” then it would seem that psychopathy must be a real,
existing, thing. However, logically there is nothing about latent variable
modelling that allows the researcher to make discoveries about any un-
observable entity, let alone an entity called psychopathy. Unlike tools
such as the metal detector, the bubble chamber, the neutrino detector,
and so on, latent variable modelling is not a test of existence of an entity
or class of entities, nor does it allow its user to draw inferences about
the structure, or the nature, of any such entities.15
Let us begin with a simple example. Consider the variables height

and weight and imagine that it happened to be the case that they were
unidimensional in a principal component analytic sense: a sense of
unidimensionality distinct from, but closely related to, linear factor
analytic unidimensionality. This would be the case only if the variables
were perfectly correlated, or, in other words, had a correlation of one
(in reality, the correlation between height and weight is large and posi-
tive, but less than one). And the variables would be perfectly correlated
only if, in a scatterplot of height and weight, all the people, each with a
height and a weight, were arrayed along a line (a single dimension).
And the people would be arrayed along a line only if there existed only
certain types of people (those who were tall and heavy, short and light,
and of average height and weight), and not others (those who were, for
example, tall and light, or short and heavy). The point is that the result
of unidimensionality here means that only certain types of people exist.
If the composition of the population were to change, so too would the
dimensionality result. Now, ask yourself, “Is knowing that there exist
certain types of people and not other types the same thing as know-
ing why there exist these types and not other types?” Of course not.
Equivalently, then, to know that a set of items is unidimensional is not
the same thing as knowing why it is unidimensional.
Unidimensionality (more generally, m-dimensionality) in a linear

factor analytic sense is a more complicated result, but is still equiva-
lent to a particular pattern of correlations. As such, it is equivalent to
a claim that certain types of people exist, and others do not. If we can-
not explain why these certain types exist (and others do not) then we
cannot explain why the variables are unidimensional in a linear factor
analytic sense. The point is that a unidimensional (or m-dimensional)
result does not contain its own explanation, and so does not contain
within it an explanation of any entity or entities.
The explanation, instead, lies in the soberingly old-fashioned ques-

tion: why are there different types of people? Since we already know

that there are different types of people – and factor analysis merely re-
flects this fact – the empirical questions about the reasons for any given
type’s existence turn out to be mind-numbingly complex. Take a tiny
sample of such questions inspired by an imaginary one-factor solution
to the PCL-R items:
• Why does superficial charm correlate positively with revocation of

conditional release, but not with monogamy?
• Why are there relatively many people who have a grandiose sense

of self-worth, and who have many short-term marital relationships,
but relatively few people with a normal or low sense of self-worth
and many short-term marital relationships?
• Why are some people promiscuous, lying criminals with no sense

of remorse?
• Is there a single thing that causes (a) pathological lying and (b) the

correlation between a parasitic lifestyle, early behavioural prob-
lems, and impulsivity?
How are these and countless other relevant questions to be answered?

They are, quite simply, to be answered by the disciplines designed to
answer “why” questions, including biology, psychology, sociology, and
so forth – whoever supplies the best answer wins. The winner can-
not, however, rely on statistical methodology such as factor analysis,
since questions about the existence and nature of causes are outside its
purview.
Now let us consider, from a technical angle, the issue of what the

m-dimensional linear factor model does. As for each and every latent
variable model, this model is specified as (a) a set of equations that
link p manifest variables, X (say, the p = 20 items of the PCL-R), to m
latent variables, x; and (b) a set of side-conditions. The equations of the
m-dimensional linear factor model are as follows,
X = τ + Lx + d, (1)

wherein (a) d is a set of p variables called uniquenesses; (b) L is a p × m
matrix (set of) “factor loadings” (actually, the slopes or regression coef-
ficients that would be used in predicting the manifest variables on the
basis of the latent variables); (c) and τ is a set of parameters that are in-
tercepts (interpreted in the standard linear regression sense as the value
of X to be predicted when x is equal to zero). The side conditions are,

on the other hand, as follows: (a) the p by p covariance matrix of d, Q, is
diagonal and containing only positive elements; (b) E(d) = 0; (c) E(x) = 0
and C(x) = I; and (d) C(x, d) is a null matrix.
Now, it is well known16 that the m-dimensional linear factor model

describes a particular set of manifest variables, say, X*, distributed in
a particular population P, if and only there exists a p × m matrix L*,
and a p by p diagonal, positive definite matrix Q*, such that Σ *, the
covariance matrix of the manifest variables, is equal to L*L*’ + Q*. The
x
researcher is, of course, not in possession of the population covariance
matrix Σ *. Thus, in practice, he must estimate Σ * using a sample drawn
x
x
from P, and make an inferential decision as to whether or not the model
holds (i.e., whether or not Σ * can be decomposed as L*L*’ + Q*) in P.
x
If he decides that the model does hold in P, then he has decided that the
p manifest variables X* are m-dimensional in a linear factor analytic
sense.17
So, for example, in claiming (rightly or wrongly) that the PCL-R was

two-dimensional, researchers claim (rightly or wrongly) that, within
whatever population of individuals they were investigating, there ex-
isted a p × 2 matrix L*, and a p by p diagonal, positive definite matrix
Q*, such that the covariance matrix of the twenty items of the PCL-R
was equal to L*L*’ + Q*. But where does the idea come from that such
a finding has a bearing on the structure of an unobservable entity, or
construct, called psychopathy – for example, that the number of facets
or constituent parts it possesses happens to be two?
Similarly, let us pretend that the PCL-R is, within the population

investigated, three-dimensional, and that these three factors were
unidimensional (the entire structure called a hierarchical structure or
model).18 Then it would be the case that (a) X* = τ* + * * + *, in which
Λ
ξ
δ
L* was a p × 3 matrix; (b) * = Γη + ε, in which E(η) = 0, E(ε) = 0, V(η)
ξ
= 1, C(η, ε) was a null matrix, and the 3 by 3 covariance matrix of ε, Ψ,
was diagonal and positive definite. From (a) and (b) it would, then,
have followed that Σ * = C(τ* + * * + *) = C(τ* + *[Γη + ε] + *) =
Λ
ξ
δ
Λ
δ
*Φ* *’ + Q* = ΩΩ’ + Q*, in which Ω was simply a p × 3 matrix (once
x
Λ
Λ
again, definitionally indicative of X* being three dimensional in a linear
factor analytic sense). Where, from this, do the researchers get the idea
that the variables * are facets of psychopathy, and that the variable η is
ξ
an extant, unobservable superordinate construct called psychopathy?
To put it simply, these ideas derive from an extra-scientific story19 that

has been routinely attached – so routinely, in fact, that it has achieved
the status of an unquestioned urbild or mythology – to latent variable

modelling technologies since at least the mid-nineteenth century, and
under which the following set of correspondences are tacitly, and in the
absence of any logical justification, asserted: (a) the m latent variables
ξ
are m real, unobservable constructs or causal entities20; (b) the p mani-
fest variables X are p observable indicators of (are causally dependent
upon) the m constructs ; and (c) the defining equations of a particular
ξ
latent variable model are a description of the causal dependencies of the
observable indicators on the unobservable constructs (estimates of the
parameters of which are employed to infer the identities of the unob-
servable constructs, a task known as factor interpretation).
Researchers who employ linear factor analysis (or any other latent

variable modelling technology) in their researches tacitly act as though
a wand has been passed over the model equations, magically trans-
forming these humble mathematical equations (which can be written
onto the paper as effortlessly, and with as little consequence, as the let-
ters of which these words are made) into features of nature, and forging
a link between the symbol and existing entities in nature.21 In other
ξ
words, linear factor analysis here functions along alchemical principles,
according to which simple ingredients can be transformed into com-
plex and powerful substances by way of a metaphysical process.
It is not an exaggeration to say that the social scientists’ conception

of the role of latent variable modelling technologies in science has been
corrupted by dependency on mythological accompaniments to the ac-
tual techniques. Even the ubiquitous practice of describing the manifest
variables X as “observable” and the latent variables as “unobservable”
ξ
is mere supporting mythology; variables are functions, and functions
cannot, of course, be said to be either observable or unobservable.22
What can be said about the distinction between the variables X and the
variables that are referred to in the defining equations of a latent vari-
ξ
able model, is that it is only on the manifest variables X that realizations
are taken, the consequence being that the data to be analysed in a latent
variable modelling exercise are scores on these variables only. Scores
on are not part of the data. There is no basis, and no sense, in claiming
ξ
that is unobservable, let alone that it stands for a set of unobservable
ξ
entities, the elements of which just happen to be constituent parts of
some ineffable entity called psychopathy.
Linear factor analysis does reveal something about structure, just

not the structure of unobservable, existing, entities. It reveals, instead,
something about the correlation structure of a set of variables, a fact that
social scientists ignore because it does not square with the mythologies

about unobservable constructs that they prefer. Let us pretend, once
again, that the PCL-R is two-dimensional in a linear factor analytic
sense. Then there would exist a p × 2 matrix *, and a p by p diagonal,
Λ
positive definite matrix Q*, such that the covariance matrix, Σ *, of the
x
twenty items of the PCL-R was equal to * *’ + Q*.
Λ
Λ
Each off-diagonal element of Σ * is a covariance, and, as such, quan-

x
tifies the strength of linear relationship between a particular pair of
PCL-R items. The full set of 12 p(p – 1) = 190 non-redundant off-diagonal

elements of Σ * can, therefore, be thought of as the covariance structure

x
of the items within the population under investigation. Now, if, as we
are presuming, the items happened to be two-dimensional in a linear
factor analytic sense, i.e., Σ * = * *’ + *, then it follows that Σ * – *
Λ
Λ
Θ
Θ
x
x
= * *’. What this implies is that if the researcher were to create a two-
Λ
Λ
dimensional plot in which each item j (j = 1..p) were positioned in ac-
cordance with the two values located in row j (j = 1..p) of *, she would
Λ
have created a plot in which the angular separations between items
displayed therein were equal to the covariances contained in Σ *.
x
Here lies the true (non-mythological) power of linear factor analysis:

it is a tool that can produce, when certain empirical conditions obtain,
low-dimensional graphical representations of the covariance structure
of a set of variables. With respect to the current example, the fact that
Σ * happens to equal * *’ + * implies that it is possible to represent
Λ
Λ
Θ
x
in a (scientifically very useful) two-dimensional graphical display, the
190 pieces of information that jointly constitute the covariance structure
of the items of the PCL-R. Once again, however, the technology is mute
with respect to the existence and structure of unobservable entities,
such as those supposedly underlying psychopathy.
The genetic basis of sychopathy

p
A large body of psychopathy literature now makes references to genet-
ic factors, genetic components, genetic effects, genotypic PD symptom
data, genetic determinants of psychopathy, heritability, and the like.
These references derive from twin studies, that is, quantitative investi-
gations in which data are collected on each member of a set of mono- or
dizygotic twins, raised either together or apart.
For example, a study conducted by a British-Swedish team of re-

searchers and published in the journal Psychological Medicine, explained
that “a number of twin studies have examined the importance of ge-
netic, shared environmental and non-shared environmental factors for

psychopathic personality traits and for antisocial behavior,” and that
“these studies overall suggest that psychopathic personality is highly
heritable and that environmental factors are of subordinate impor-
tance.”23 The authors applied structural equation modelling techniques
to a sample of 1,480 teenage twin pairs in order to estimate certain heri-
tability correlations. Their conclusion: “The genetic overlap between
psychopathic personality traits and antisocial behaviour may reflect a
genetic vulnerability to externalizing psychopathology.”24
Another team of researchers, whose 2011 study focused on what are

known as the fearless-dominance (FD), and impulsive antisociality
(IA), factors of the Psychopathic Personality Inventory (PPI), concluded
that heritability coefficients calculated for these factors are typically in
the .4 to .5 range. In this study, data from a large sample of adolescent
twin pairs was analysed by structural equation modelling, the aim be-
ing to “extend current etiological models of psychopathy variants by
incorporating mechanisms of gene-environment interplay.”25
Yet another research team heralded their 2005 study by suggesting

that very little was known about the “genetic and environmental struc-
ture” or “underpinnings” of psychopathy,”26 a gap they aimed to fill by
employing structural equation modelling to a sample of 626 seventeen-
year-old twin pairs in order to estimate various “genetic associations,”
and “genetic and environmental contributions to psychopathy person-
ality traits.”27
Only a thing that exists can have a genetic basis. All of these referenc-

es to genetic effects, genetic influences, and genetic correlations might
well give the impression that a great deal is known about the genetic
basis of psychopathy, hence, by implication, that psychopathy does in
fact exist. So, is it true that researchers have made impressive advances
in understanding the genetic basis of psychopathy?
First, these references rest not on research into the operation of genes,

but rather, on heritability coefficients calculated on the basis of data from
twin studies. As we will explain, heritability and genetic determination
are not at all the same thing. Second, the calculated heritability coef-
ficients have no bearing on a thing called psychopathy, but rather on
various composites of the items of psychological inventories such as
the PCL-R. Let us consider these points in turn.
1. Heritability is not the same thing as genetic determination. The psy-

chopathy researcher’s allusions to the genetic basis of psychopathy rest
on calculations of heritability coefficients (and related correlations). But

if, by genetic basis, one means genetic determination, or something of
that sort, then heritability is not at all the same thing as genetic basis.
Here, in technical terms, is why:
Let there be a quantitative trait, T, or in other words a trait on which

each individual i in a particular population P receives a score. Examples
include IQ, VO2max, height, and weight. Individual i’s value on T, say, Ti,
is jointly determined by the individual’s genotype,28 Gi, and a vast ar-
ray of environment factors,29 Ei, in accordance with a (virtually always
unknown) function F(Gi, Ei). If it is a disease trait B that is in question
(i.e., a binary [Y,N] trait for which a Y is indicative of an individual
having the disease, and an N, not having it), then B can be treated as a
threshold process wherein, if a corresponding quantitative trait T ex-
ceeds a threshold value, τT, B is equal to Y; else B is equal to N.
By genetic basis (genetic determination) of Ti (Bi, if we are dealing with a

disease trait), we mean nothing more or less than the particular, specific
role that Gi played in determining, or bringing about, Ti. Analogously,
by environmental determination, it is meant the specific role Ei played
in bringing about the value Ti. Clearly, then, genetic and environmental
determination has to do with the causal forces responsible for an indi-
vidual’s phenotypic expression of a trait.
Now, consider the distribution of T in population P. Let σT2 be the vari-

ance of this distribution, define σE2 to be E(V(T|G)), and σG2 to be σT2 – σE2
= V(E(T|G)). The parameter σT2 quantifies the dispersion or variability
in the set of scores Ti over the population P. What, then, are the mean-
ings of σE2 and σT2 ?
Let us begin with σE2 . For each subpopulation, G = G*, of individuals

possessing of highly similar genotypes, there will be a (conditional) distri-
bution of scores on T, and, for each of these distributions, there will be
a conditional mean, E(T|G*), and a conditional variance, V(T|G*)
The conditional mean, E(T|G*), is simply the mean, or average, val-

ue of T for all of those individuals belonging to G*. That is, it is the
average phenotypic expression, apropos trait T, of these genetically simi-
lar individuals. The conditional variance V(T|G*), on the other hand,
quantifies the degree to which these genetically similar individuals vary
with respect to their values on T (i.e., in respect to their phenotypic
expressions).
If, for a particular subpopulation G*, V(T|G*) happens to be equal

to zero, the individuals who belong to G* have identical phenotypic
expressions with regards to T (i.e., they do not vary with respect to their
values Ti). On the other hand, because, within each subpopulation, G*,

individuals are genetically similar, a positive value of V(T|G*) can only
be the result of the impacts upon these individuals of environmental
factors E.
Because the parameter σE2 is simply the average, over all subpopula-

tions G*, of the conditional variances V(T|G*), it is called the variance in
T due to environment. The parameter σG2 = σT2 – σE2 , on the other hand, is
the complement of σE2 , and quantifies the degree to which the average
phenotypic expressions E(T|G*) vary over all distinct subpopulations
G*. It is, therefore, called the variance in T due to genotype.
In contrast to the notion of genetic determination (that is, the role

that an individual’s genotype plays in determining his or her value on
T), heretability is a population level, or aggregate, quantity defined to
be the proportion of the variance of T that comes from variability (over
the individuals that comprise P) in genotypes. Heritability is, in other
words, defined as σG2 /σT2 .
Although, within the population of humans, the trait number of legs

is almost entirely genetically determined (for, indeed, each individual’s
full genotype contains genes that determine the number of legs that he
will have to be two), the heritability of this trait is pretty much equal to
zero.30 It is informative to consider why this is the case. Essentially, (a)
σT2 is, in this case, a small, nonzero, number (humans do exist whose leg
counts are less than two); (b) σT2 = σG2 + σE2 , hence, σT2 is determined by
σG2 and σE2 , two non-negative numbers; (c) σE2 is positive, due to the fact
that there is variability, within genetically similar subpopulations G*,
a consequence of environmental factors such as amputation because of
accident or for medical reasons; and (d) σG2 is essentially zero, because
E(T|G*) varies only very little over distinct subpopulations G*.
Let us pretend, for a moment, that there was a quantitative trait Tp,

the scores on which quantified the amount of psychopathy possessed
by each individual i in a particular population P.31 Then psychopathy

research which calculated heritability coefficients with respect to Tp
would have nothing at all to say about the genetic determinants, or
basis, of the scores individuals receive on Tp. To know the genetic basis
of scores individuals receive on Tp would require undertaking a pro-
gram of genetic research, that is, an investigation whose aim is to reveal
the loci harbouring the genetic variants that determine an individu-
al’s standing with regards to Tp. A heritability coefficient in the .4 to .5
range, as mentioned before, would for example in no way mean that
40 per cent to 50 per cent of an individual’s standing on Tp was deter-
mined by his genetic makeup.

The calculation of heritability coefficients (and related correlations)

of this sort would, at best, make a contribution to the estimation of
the population-level quantity σG2 p/σT2 p known as the heritability of the
trait Tp. We say “at best” because, as we will now argue, there are very
sound reasons for believing that such heritability coefficients (and cor-
relations) are virtually meaningless.
2. The calculated heritability coefficients are virtually meaningless. Let us

pretend, once again, that there is a quantitative trait Tp, the scores on
which quantify the amount of psychopathy possessed by each individ-
ual i in a particular population P. Although heritability is not the same
thing as genetic determination, it might yet be a useful thing to estimate
the heritability of Tp. For one thing, it is, as a geneticist would point out,
“the relevant quantity for clinical risk assessment, because it measures
our ultimate ability to predict phenotyope from genotype.”32
Now, geneticists possess methods for estimating heritability via a di-

rect estimation of σG2 that rests on what they know about the genetic
architectures that underlie certain, particular quantitative traits. Psy-
chopathy researchers, on the other hand, are not in possession of any
such knowledge. As we explained before, they have not found a gene
or genes for psychopathy, and so they are not in possession of knowl-
edge of the genetic architecture that underlies any such a putative trait
Tp. Instead, they calculate heritability coefficients (and related correla-
tions) derived on the basis of what is known as the standard biometric
model, a model which goes all the way back to the early-twentieth cen-
tury work of the British statistician R.A. Fisher (with contributions by,
among others, Holzinger, Falconer, Jinks and Fulker, and Mather and
Jinks).33
The standard biometric model portrays a quantitative trait T as a lin-

ear combination, or sum, of four (latent or unmeasured) variables,
T=D+A+C+ , (2)
U

in accordance with the following clarifications and side conditions:
a) D stands for dominance genetic component, A, for additive genetic com-

ponent, C, for common or shared environmental component, and , for
U
unique environmental component,34
b) E(D) = E(A) = E(C) = E( ) = 0;

U

2
 σD 0 0 0 
 
 0 σ2A 0 0 
c) C(D, A, C, )=   .
 0 0 σC2 0 

U
 0 0 0 2 
σU
 
What side-condition (b) asserts is that the mean of each of the four la-
tent variables is equal to zero. In (c) it is asserted that the latent vari-
ables are uncorrelated, and that each has a variance, as symbolized; i.e.,
2
σD is the variance of the dominance genetic component, σA2 , the additive
genetic component, σC2 , the shared environmental component; and σ2 ,
U
the unique environmental component.
2
On the basis of the variance parameters [σD , σA2 , σC2 , σ2 ] defined un-

U
der the standard biometric model, two distinct senses of heritability
have traditionally been defined. The first is called broad heritability, is
2
defined to be σD + σA2 /σT2 , and is analogous to σG2 /σT2 .35 The second is
called narrow heritability, is defined to be σA2 /σT2 , and is said to be scien-
tifically important as a consequence of its role in the prediction of the
response of an organism to selection.36
Imagine, now, that a researcher were in possession of the entire set

of scores Ti, one for each individual belonging to population P. In this
case, she would be able to calculate the population mean, µT, and vari-
ance, σT2 , of trait T. What would be needed, in order to calculate either
2
broad or narrow heritability, is an estimate of each of σD and σA2 [broad
2
heritability] or σA [narrow heritability]. The biometric model implies
that σT2 = σD 2
+ σA2 + σC2 + σ2 , and it follows that there is no way to re-
U
cover the four variance parameters to the right of the equals sign on
the basis of the single known parameter, σT2 , to the left.
This, then, is the point at which twin data makes its entry onto the

scene. Imagine that the researcher considers, instead, a population P of
twins, either (a) monozygotic and reared together (MZT); (b) monozy-
gotic and reared apart (MZA); (c) dizygotic and reared together (DZT);
or (d) dizygotic and reared apart (DZA). Then the biometric model
becomes
T1 = D1 + A1 + C1 + 1
(3)
U

T2 = D2 + A2 + C2 + 2,
U
in which the subscripts identify the members of each twin pair, and in

respect to which the following additional side conditions are asserted:
d) σA2 1 = σA2 2 = σA2 , σD

2
1
2
= σD 2
2
= σD , σC2 1 = σC2 2 = σC2 , σ2 1 = σ2 2 = σ2 ;

U
U
U
e) The, now eight latent variables are uncorrelated except as follows;

C(D1, D2) = 1 (if MZ) = .25 (if DZ)

C(A1, A2) = 1 (if MZ) = .5 (if DZ)

C(C1, C2) = 1 (if T) = 0 (if A)

The biometric model – that is, the two linear equations (3) paired

with side conditions (b) to (e) – implies certain, very particular things
about the form of the two by two covariance (correlation) matrix of T1
and T2, under each of the four scenarios MZT, MZA, DZT, and DZA.
It is these implications that lead to the various heritability coefficients
that have been derived, and that are calculated and published by em-
pirical scientists as estimates of broad or narrow heritability.
In the first place, there are in circulation various traditional, heu-

ristic coefficients, each of which is a function of the four correlations
ρT1T2|MZT, ρT1T2|MZA, ρT1T2|DZT, and ρT1T2|DZA, (i.e., the correlations between
T1 and T2 under each of the four scenarios). Thus an estimator of nar-
row heritability sometimes credited to Nichols,37 and derived under
2
the assumption that σD = 0, is
2(ρT1T2|MZT – ρT1T2|DZT). (4)

Another, derived under the assumption that σC2 = 0, is
4ρT1T2|DZT – ρT1T2|MZT. (5)

A commonly employed estimate of broad heritability is simply ρT1T2|MZA.
Recently, these traditional, heuristic estimators have given way to es-

timation schemes that rest on the employment of structural equation
modelling, and, as we saw, the heritability coefficients (and related cor-
relations) calculated in the studies summarized earlier in this chapter
were calculated as the outcomes of such modelling exercises. There is
not, in any case, a need to become involved in the details of these vari-
ous estimation strategies. The relevant point is that the heritability co-
efficients that have appeared in psychopathy research have been based
on the standard biometric model.

It follows, then, that the heritability coefficients one encounters in the

empirical work of psychopathy researchers are meaningful, and can be
taken seriously as estimates of heritability, only to the extent that the
standard biometric model is a reasonable approximation to nature, that
is, to the function F(Gi, Ei). But it is clear that the standard biometric
model is, in fact, wildly incorrect. Evidence of the model’s infelicity was
originally piecemeal and anecdotal. In particular, (a) it was noted that
the various heuristic coefficients that should have, under the model,
yielded similar values of heritability, did not do so,38 and (b) heritabili-
ties calculated for poorly understood psychological inventories were
often suspiciously large and, even more suspiciously, larger than those
of well-understood biological variables such as pig body weight, chick-
en egg production, and cow milk production.39
More recently, experts in quantitative genetics have spelled out in de-

tail the ways in which the model misrepresents nature (by implication,
the reasons why heritability coefficients derived from it cannot be taken
seriously). We note several of these: (a) though the model is linear, F(Gi,
Ei) is typically nonlinear. That is to say, as one team of researchers put it,
“biology is filled with nonlinearity,”40 (b) side condition (d) is a math-
ematical expedient with no basis in reality, and (c) the model omits
many factors now known to be important to the phenotypic expression
of traits, including, but by no means restricted to, gene–environment
correlations, gene–environment interactions, maternal effects, and epi-
static (cross-loci gene) interactions.
The psychopathy researcher’s employment of structural equation

models to estimate heritability coefficients and related correlations is,
in fact, a step more dubious, since in order to identify (render estimable)
these models, she must drop one or more terms (typically, either D, C,
or both) from the already inadequate standard biometric model.
3. Psychopathy ≠ psychological inventory. Up to now we have spoken

about pretending that there was a quantitative trait Tp, the scores on
which quantify the amount of psychopathy possessed by each individ-
ual i in a particular population P. We spoke in this way because there
is in fact no such trait. What do exist are different psychological inven-
tories that are purported, by the inventories’ developers and publish-
ers, to scale individuals in respect to psychopathy. That is, if an entity
called psychopathy existed, it would be possible to test people on the
possession of that entity, in the same way it is possible to measure, say,
the size of a tumour. In this case, there would be criteria against which

one’s measures could be tested – the tumour actually is of specific size,
and it is possible to measure that size wrongly and be corrected by bet-
ter evidence. In contrast, there is no benchmark against which to test
one’s level of psychopathy (or any other personality trait for that mat-
ter); a person’s PCL-R score simply reflects multiple layers of conven-
tion: this is what psychopathy is, according to this measure, and these
scores indicate this, etc., but of course there could be other definitions
and other measures with different cut-off scores, and so on. As for the
published literature on the genetic basis of psychopathy, one would do
well to remember that, so long as the data has been collected on twins,
a heritability coefficient can be calculated for any scored variable what-
soever, including those of absolutely no scientific merit, such as “length
of left shoelace” or “number of times per month the word apoplexia is
uttered.” To calculate a heritability coefficient for, say, the PCL-R is an
unexceptional accomplishment, and the meaning of the coefficient it-
self is completely uncertain.

necessary relationship between appearance and evil, there really is no
puzzle to solve either. Psychopaths blend in not because they have a
superior ability to fake normal, but because they look and sound nor-
mal by definition (that is why only trained personnel can make psy-
chopathy diagnoses). The appearance–reality puzzle, in other words,
is a pseudo-problem. In rhetoric, it is called a red herring. The herring,
in Hare’s words, sounds like this: “Everything about them seemed to
be paradoxical. They could do things that a lot of other people could
not do, but they looked perfectly normal, and when you talked to them
they seemed okay. It was a puzzle. I thought I’d try and unravel it.”49
That is, Hare produced a paradox by looking for obvious signs of evil
– as Lombroso had done – but not finding them. Although there is no
evidence that evil people look anything but normal, the paradox idea is
rhetorically powerful. It reproduces and updates the mythological as-
sumption about signs of evil by framing the signs as real yet subtle, and
detectable only through modern scientific instruments. It also frames
the old and intractable problem of the causes of evil as an intellectually
satisfying, and much smaller and hence solvable, puzzle about appear-
ances and realities.
The paradox-as-red-herring argument is evident in all levels of psy-
chopathy discourse, but it is most subtly expressed in causal theorizing.
Consider the emotional deficit theory of psychopathy.50 This theory
posits that psychopathy is caused by deficiencies in the experience of
emotions, whether it be emotions in general or only certain emotions.
One group of researchers put it like this in 2002:
For the past 50 years, the study of psychopathy has been dominated by
the perspective that psychopaths engage in impulsive antisocial behavior
and have unstable relationships with others because of a blunted capac-
ity for experiencing and understanding emotion. According to this view,
psychopaths are basically rational and cognitively intact but are unable
to appreciate the emotional significance of human behavior ... As a result,
psychopaths have difficulty anticipating the emotional consequences of
their actions, do not learn from punishment, and behave in ways that hurt
themselves and others. There is considerable evidence consistent with the
proposal that psychopaths have difficulty appreciating emotional stimuli,
particularly in the verbal domain.51
Two Vanderbilt University researchers gave a now-famous short-

hand for this idea in 1962. According to them, psychopaths “know the
Notes
Introduction
1 McCord & McCord (1964), p. 3.

2 Hare (1993), p. 1.

3 The highest population estimate is based on Martha Stout’s 2005 estimate

that 4 per cent of the population was psychopathic. Paul Babiak and
Robert Hare (2006) write that “They [psychopaths] are responsible for at
least half of the persistent serious and violent crimes committed in North
America” (p. 18). The economic cost of psychopaths is estimated by Kiehl
& Buckholtz (2010).
4 Ronson (2011), p. 118.

5 Raine, quoted in Fischman (2011).

6 Robert Hare, quoted in Hercz (2001).

7 Stout (2005), p. 2.

8 Raine (1993), p. 292.

9 Quoted in Hergenhahn & Henley (2014), p. 305.

10 Kahn (2012), pp. 57, 35.

11 A 10 June 2014 PsycINFO gave 12,265 references to antisocial personality

disorder, and only 5,099 to psychopathy.
12 Hare (1996b), p. 40.

13 Hare (1996b), p. 39.

14 A 10 June 2014 PsycINFO and Medline search with the search terms “psy

chopathy and neuro*” and “antisocial personality disorder and neuro*”.

15 A 10 June 2014 PsycINFO search with the search terms “psychopathy and

law” resulted in 657 citations, 13 per cent of all psychopathy citations. Six
hundred and twenty eight citations referenced APD and law, making up 5
per cent of overall APD citations. (A Medline search resulted in 4 per cent
210 Notes to pages 15–21

law references for psychopathy, and 2per cent for APD. Medline gave far
fewer law references for both psychopathy and APD).
16 See, for example, Pemment (2013).

17 Contemporary measures of psychopathy include the Hare Psychopathy

Checklist Revised (PCL R), Self Report Psychopathy Scale (SRP III), the
-
-
-
-
MMPI Psychopathic Deviate (Pd) scale, the Psychopathic Personality In
ventory (PPI R), the Levenson Primary and Secondary Psychopathy Scales
-
(LPSP), and different derivatives of the PCL R.
-
18 Edens, Skeem, Cruise, & Cauffman (2001), p. 54; Fulero (1995), p. 454;

Cooke & Michie (2001), p. 171; Meloy (2000b), p. 43.
1 Based on 4 July 2014 PsycINFO searches for “psychopathy” and “psycho

pathy or antisocial personality disorder.”
2 Figures based on search of NIH Research Portfolio Online Reporting Tools

with term search “psychopathy” on 13 January 2013. Note that psycho
pathy may not be the primary focus of research in each study.
3 Figures based on SSHRC site search with “psychopathy” as project

keyword.
4 The researcher is Kent Kiehl. Kiehl’s mobile MRI unit was described in

Hagerty (2010). Kiehl, a University of New Mexico researcher, also holds
nearly $6.8 million in grants from the U.S. National Institutes of Health
alone for psychopathy research. These figures are based on an NIH Re
search Portfolio Online Reporting Tools search with search term “psycho
pathy” and principal investigator “Kiehl, Kent” for fiscal years 2005–10.
5 Hare (2003).

6 Forth, Kosson, & Hare (2003).

7 Hart, Cox, & Hare (1995).

8 Hare & Hervé (1999).

9 http://www.hare.org/training/workshops.html

10 Lilienfeld & Widows (2005).

11 Andershed, Kerr, Stattin, & Levander (2002).

12 Frick & Hare (2001).

13 Lynam (1997).

14 Levenson, Kiehl, & Fitzpatrick (1995).

15 Paulhus, Hemphill, & Hare (2009).

16 Kreis, Cooke, Michie, Hoff, & Logan (2012).

17 Hare (1998b), p. 189.

18 Blair, Mitchell, & Blair (2005), p. 12.

Notes to pages 21–33 211

19 Lykken (1995), p. 113; McCord (1982), p. 4; Skilling, Quinsey, & Craig

(2001), p. 450; Harris, Rice, & Quinsey (1994), p. 387; Richards (1998),
p. 69.
20 Gagono (2000), p. xviii.

21 Standard narratives of psychopathy can be found in for example Arrigo

& Shipley (2001); Maughs (1941); McCord & McCord (1964, 1982); Millon,
Simonsen, & Birket Smith (1998); and Werlinder, 1978.
-
22 Cleckley (1976).

23 Hare (2003).

24 The diagnostic features are under copyright and cannot be described

here. However, the items can be freely accessed in, for example, Hare et
al. (1990); Hare (1998c); and Kiehl (2014). See our discussion on copyright
issues in chapter 7.
25 Hare & Neumann (2008).

26 Quoted in Mukherjee (2010), p. 40.

27 Cleckley (1982), p. 264.

28 Rush (1839), p. 1.

29 Quoted in Spiegel & Suskind (1995), p. 587.

30 Rush (1839), p. 1.

31 Carlson, Wollock, & Noel (1981), p. 461.

32 Rush (1839), p. 27.

33 Rush (1839), p. 475.

34 Quoted in Ewen & Ewen (2006), p. 51.



37 Quoted in Belkin (1996), p. 607.

38 McCord & McCord (1964), p. 3.

39 The mind (2002).

40 Stockley (2011).

41 Stout (2005), p. 12.

42 Stone (1993), p. 451; Rieber & Vetter (1994), p. 13; Pethman & Erlandsson

(2002), p. 35; Hare (1993), p. 9; Meloy & Gacono (1998), p. 95; Simon (1996),
p. 46.
43 Cleckley (1955), p. 414.

44 Cleckley (1955), p. 23.

2 The First Golden Age: Degeneration
1 Quoted in Maughs (1941), p. 339.

2 Quoted in Pick (1989), p. 12.


3 Quoted in Burrow (2000), p. 99.

4 Quoted in Poole (2011), p. 97.

5 Leps (1992).

6 Asma (2009).

7 Hirsch (1896); Gelb (1995); Nye (1984).

8 From Criminal Man According to the Classification of Cesare Lombroso

(1911/1972), pp. 135–6, a summary translation of Lombroso’s work by his
daughter Gina Lombroso Ferrero.
-
9 Quoted in Hirsch (1896), pp. 118–19.

10 Lombroso Ferrero (1911/1972), pp. xxiv–xxv.

-
11 Darwin (1871), pp. 326–7.

12 Starr (2010).

13 Lombroso (1884/2006); Horn (2006).

14 Burrow (2000).

15 Quoted in Horn (2006).

16 Quoted in Hacking (2001), p. 148.

17 Lombroso (1884/2006), p. 221.

18 Quoted in Pick (1989), p. 28.

19 Quoted in Maughs (1941), p. 466.

20 Hirsch (1896), p. 130.

21 Quoted in Millon et al. (1998), p. 9.

22 Lombroso (1884/2006), p. 218.

23 Robins, Tipp, & Pryzbeck (1991); Smith, Golding, Kashner, & Rost

(1991); Swanson, Bland, & Newman (1994); Dahl (1998); Knop, Jensen,
& Mortensen (1998); Vaglum (1998); Dorr (1998); Williamson, Cooper,
Howell, Yuille, & Paulhus (2009); Spidel et al. (2006); Patrick (2007).
24 Ragatz, Fremouw, Thomas, & McCoy (2009).

25 Dahl (1998), p. 292.

26 Vaglum (1998), p. 338.

27 Lindner (1944), p. 10.

28 McCord & McCord (1964), p. 14.

29 Hare (1970), p. 32.

30 Grisolía (2001), p. 79.

31 Meloy (2002), pp. 68–9.

32 Robinson (2010).

33 Rieber & Vetter (1994), p. 1; Rieber & Vetter (1994), p. 7; Hare (2001), p. 21;

McCord & McCord (1964).
34 Hare (1993), p. 113.

35 These suggested diagnoses have been made by Paul Babiak & Robert Hare


(2006), Hervey Cleckley (1976), David Lykken (2007), McCord & McCord
(1964), David Henderson (in McCord & McCord, 1964), and W. Lange
-
Eichbaum (in McCord & McCord, 1964).
36 Hacking (2001), p. 145.

3 The Second Golden Age: Psychopathy
1 McArthur & Freeze (2010).

2 Austen & Carey (2010).

3 Faubert (2010).

4 Rankin & Contenta (2010).

5 Simpson (2011).

6 Babiak, quoted in Votruba & Dejcmar (2011).

7 Adapted from Gibb (2011), p. 180

8 McIlroy & Anderssen (2010), p. F1.

9 What makes a psychopath? (2010).

10 Patriquin et al. (2010).

11 Faubert (2010).

12 Booth (2010).

13 Schug (2011).

14 The Simon Fraser University psychologist Stephen Hart in an interview

with CTV on 19 October 2010.
15 Klismet, quoted in Gibb (2011), p. 519. Klismet did go on to say “and, in

reality, he didn’t want [emphasis original] to do anything about it.” This,
however, is so logically baffling that it merits no further analysis here.
16 Hazelwood, quoted in Gibb (2011), p. 482.

17 Klismet, quoted in Gibb (2011), p. 499.

18 Quoted in Robinson (1986), p. 372.

19 Robinson (1986), pp. 372–3.


21 Meffert, Gazzola, den Boer, Bartels, & Keysers (2013).

22 A 6 June 2014 Medline search with search terms “psychopathy” and “neu

ro*”. A PsychINFO search shows 55 per cent of the publications occurring
since 2000. We have chosen to report Medline results, since Medline gives
significantly more total hits (1,202) than PsycINFO (473).
23 A 5 December 2012 NIH Research Portfolio Online Reporting Tools search

of active funded projects, project term: psychopathy. In 2011–12, NIH
funded thirty such projects. Not all were relevant to either neurobiological
or environmental/social correlates, and were excluded from our analysis.

Research on 6 June 2014 research found twenty NIH funded research stud
-
ies for 2013–14. Not all of these studies were relevant to either environ
ment or neurobiology.
24 Evenson (2003), Henderson (2009), Brain imbalance (2010).

25 Blair, quoted in Purdie (2002).

26 Lehrer (2010).

27 Singer, quoted in Hingston (2012); Taylor (2011).

28 Ray (1838/1962).




32 DeMatteo & Edens (2006); DeMatteo et al. (2013).

33 Otto & Heilbrun (2002).

34 DeMatteo & Edens (2006); DeMatteo et al.(2013).

35 Viljoen, MacDougall, Gagnon, & Douglas (2010).

36 Aspinwall, Brown, & Tabery (2012).

37 Aspinwall et al. (2012), p. 847.

38 Glenn, Raine, & Laufer, (2011), p. 303.


40 Hagerty (2010).

41 Raine (2008).

42 Murphy (1972), p. 293.

43 Fine & Kennett (2004), p. 440.

44 Levy (2010), p. 224.

45 Duff (2010), p. 209.

46 Gillett (2010), pp. 295, 296.

47 The most commonly cited experimental evidence includes psychopaths’

performance in the moral/conventional distinction task, fear conditioning,
and facial affect recognition tasks. Contrary to what a number of philoso
phers have claimed, the data from these experiments is inconclusive, and
do not support the theory that psychopaths suffer from cognitive, rational,
or emotional impairments. For a review of the data and their relevance to
the responsibility discourse, see Jalava & Griffiths (in press).
48 To be fair, some philosophers came to the opposite conclusion, usually

because psychopaths (or people with antisocial personality disorder) show
intact reasoning. See, for example, Campbell (1992); McSherry (1999); and
Schopp & Slain (2000).
49 Hare (1996a), p. 49.

50 Hare (1993), p. 22.

51 Hare (1998b), p. 205.


The second step in the sequence removes the language reference as
the cause, proposing that the inability of psychopaths to process emo-
tional language is only “a symptom,” “a reflection,” or a “test” of a
general emotional deficiency. Rhetorically, then, language processing
functions as a red herring.
To clarify, consider a group of individuals, let us call them Marvins,
who know the basic rules and terms of basketball, but who do not actu-
ally play the game very well. You can prove the latter with a measure
called the “Basketball Inventory,” an index that is composed of a num-
ber of diagnostic criteria for basketball skills, and includes tasks like
three-point shooting, jump shooting, dribbling, rebounding, passing,
lateral mobility, and one-on-one defence. The Marvins perform very
poorly on this test. Metaphorically, we can define a Marvin as someone
who knows the words (i.e., the rules and terms), but not the music (i.e.,
the actual skill) of basketball. Now you want to know why the Marvins
are not good basketball players. Researcher A is intrigued by the dis-
crepancy between the Marvins’s basketball knowledge and their skill,
and proposes that the Marvins may be poor basketball players because
they suffer from semantic dementia, defined in this case as an inability
to process the full significance of basketball language (i.e.,“knowing the
words but not the music”). Researcher A proceeds to present basketball
words to a sample of Marvins and a sample of NBA players. Research-
er A then examines whether these groups differ on various reaction
measures to the words, and discovers significant differences between
the groups on a number of indices. Subsequent studies confirm these
findings.
A new generation of researchers now proposes an extension to the
theory. They propose that the “defects” shown by the Marvins in the
language processing tests can be generalized from “semantic dementia
concerning basketball language” to a general deficit in basketball skills.
Having travelled a full circle, the theory now enjoys wide popularity,
and serious theoretical and policy debates erupt over a suggestion that
Marvins be excused from all basketball-related activities at school on
the basis of their disorder.
The red herring here is basketball knowledge. The herring’s function
is to create the appearance of a paradox: how can someone know about
basketball but not play it well? The analogous psychopathy paradox is:
how can someone understand the meaning of emotional words but not
feel the corresponding emotions? But of course, we do not really expect

31 Herrnstein & Murray (1994), pp. 22–3.

32 For example, Hare (1993).

33 http://www4.parinc.com/Products/Product.aspx?ProductID=PPI R

-
34 Babiak & Hare (2006), see p. 199, and pp. 192–3. According to Hare,

some critics of psychopathy believe that just by giving criminals “a hug,
a puppy dog, and a musical instrument … they’re all going to be okay”
(Hercz, 2001).
1 MSNBC (6 June 2006).

2 Babiak, Neumann, & Hare (2010). Note that this was not exactly a study of

corporate psychopathy, as the researchers omitted two PCL R items (revo
-
cation of conditional release and criminal versatility), and prorated the
remaining items.
3 Cangemi & Pfohl (2009).

4 Christopher Bayer, quoted in Decovny (2012).

5 Hare (2012).

6 British research suggests (2007).

7 Board & Fritzon (2005).

8 Wilson & McCarthy (2011).

9 MacDonald (2002); Utton (2004); Hogben (2004); and George (2006).

10 Morse (2004).

11 Stout (2005); Kantor (2006); Daynes & Fellowes (2011); Boddy (2011a); and

Schouten & Silver (2012).
12 Cleckley (1941), p. 136.

13 Hare (1993), p. 113.

14 For example, Yang, Raine, Colletti, Toga, & Narr (2010).

15 See, for example, Hervé (2007b).

16 Quoted in Votruba & Dejcmar (2011).

17 Creswell & Thomas (2009).

18 Quoted in Deutschman (2005).

19 For example, Hall & Benning (2007); Skeem, quoted in Rico (2012); and

LeMon (2012).
20 Babiak & Hare (2006).

21 Quoted in Utton (2004).

22 At the time of writing (April 2014), the B Scan Purchase website (http://

-
www.b scan.com/Purchase.htm) contains the following notice: “A com
-
mercial version of the B Scan is not available for purchase at this time. If
-
you are interested in being contacted when the B Scan is available, we will
-
gladly add your email to our follow up list.”
-

23 All of this is available on Babiak’s website www.hrbackoffice.com

24 Quoted in Achbar & Abbott (2003). It should be noted that this was not the

first time someone diagnosed corporations as psychopaths. At least one
writer, the Oregon State University psychologist Michael Levenson (1992),
has made the same diagnosis.
25 Quoted in Achbar & Abbott (2003).

26 Boddy (2011b) p. 257.

27 Boddy (2011b), p. 258.

28 Carozza (2008).

29 Babiak & Hare (2006), p. 90.

30 Cangemi & Pfohl (2009); Sanford & Arrigo (2007).

31 Quoted in Beveridge (2003), p. 603.

32 Hartley (n.d.); Jonason, Webster, Schmitt, Li, & Crysel (2012).

33 Posner (2012), p. F3.

34 Lilienfeld et al. (2012).

35 Whittell (n.d.).

36 Quoted in Ronson (2011), p. 113.

37 Kouri (2009).

38 Seabrook (2008).

39 Ronson (2011).

40 Daynes (2012).

41 Woodworth et al. (2012), p. 31.

42 One study found no difference in subjects’ ability to detect lies in face to

-
-
face and computer mediated communications. See Hancock, Woodworth,
-
& Goorha (2010). For criminal profiling and social networking see, for ex
ample, Woodworth et al. (2012).
43 Florida Atlantic University (n.d.).

44 Is not joining (2012).

45 Daynes (2012).

46 Hare (1993), p. xii.

47 Stout (2005). Stout estimates are difficult to evaluate, since she uses

psychopathy synonymously with sociopathy and the more prevalent anti
social personality disorder.
48 For example, Ogloff (2006).

49 For example, Hare (1993); Dutton (2012); and Kiehl (2014).

50 Douglas & Olshaker (1998), p. 37.

51 The debate over the proper cut off score for a psychopathy diagnosis is

-
ongoing. Robert Hare discusses the inherent arbitrariness of setting a
PCL R cut off score, and suggests alternative ways of getting around the
-
-
problem, such as converting the scores into percentiles or grouping ranges
of scores into descriptive categories. This is a step in the right direction. In

general, as understanding of psychological traits and disorders increases,
their classification moves from dichotomy (you either do or do not have
the trait or disorder) to continua (you have more or less of it). For example,
the DSM 5 now includes, in section III, a hybrid dimensional categorical
-
-
classification system of personality disorders (for extended discussions
on personality disorder dimensionality, see volume 19(2) of Journal of Per-
sonality Disorders), or http://www.dsm5.org/Documents/Personality%20
Disorders%20Fact%20Sheet.pdf for a brief review. We discuss the logic of
viewing psychopathy as a categorical entity in chapter 9, and the rhetorical
meaning of variable cut off scores in chapter 7.
-
52 Wolman (1999), pp. 133, 149, 122.

53 Quoted in Dutton (2012).

54 In Snakes in Suits, Babiak and Hare (2006) attended to the other conserva

tive mainstay – justice, in the form of tougher punishments – by com
menting on three corporate psychopaths (Paul Coffin, David Radler, and
an unnamed physician) whose sentences the writers thought were too
light.
55 The idea that mental illness can be the source of both extraordinary

suffering – or in the case of psychopathy, extraordinary suffering of others
– and extraordinary achievement is not exclusive to psychopathy. The an
thropologist Emily Martin notes, for example, that attention deficit hyper
activity disorder has been cited as the source of success in the lives of such
people as Winston Churchill, Thomas Edison, Albert Einstein, and Bill
Clinton. Theodore Roosevelt, Robin Williams, Ted Turner, and Vincent van
Gogh have similarly “benefited” from manic depression (Martin, 2006).
56 Dutton (2012), p. 192.

1 We are not saying that public misperceptions about psychopathy advance

the science of psychopathy. Our argument is simply that public interest –
even if public understanding is misguided in some details – is an engine of
growth for the psychopathy idea. Interestingly, psychopathy experts very
rarely address the many public misconceptions and exaggerations about
psychopathy. In fact, as we will show here, they are often encouraged by
the experts.
2 Frank (1998), p. 10.

3 Frank (1998), p. 10.

4 Slotkin (1973).

5 Leland (2005), p. 227.


6
Mailer (1957/1969), p. 3, 2, 2–3.
7 Derber (1996), p. 24.

8 Smith (1978), p. 115.

9 Stamos (2011).

10 Levenson (1992), p. 62.

11 Gottschalk (2000), p. 36.

12 Sheridan (2011).

13 Haggerty (2009), p. 180.

14 Cohen (1996), p. 17.

15 Babiak & Hare (2006), p. 46.

16 Stout (2005), p. 2.

17 Daniels (n.d.).

18 Dutton (2012), p. xv, 30.

19 Dutton (2012), p. 4.

20 Seltzer (2007), p. 16.

21 DeFife (2010), p. 5.

22 Michael C. Hall + Kevin Dutton (2012).

23 Jonason, Li, Webster, & Scmitt (2009). A rather unsurprising finding since

promiscuous sexual behaviour is already contained in the PCL R defin
-
ition (the present study, though, used a different measure of psychopathy).
24 Wheeler, Book, & Costello (2009).

25 Dutton (2012), p. 30.

26 This is, of course, wrong in a number of ways. An actual psychopath is

probably the last person the forum wants to attract. Taxonomic accuracy,
however, is not what the forum is about. It is run by Experience Project,
and the chat groups are subscriber generated. The groups include “I Am
Not a Vampire,” “I’m a Werewolf,” and “I Love Pasta.”
27 Spending time with a psychopath (2010).

28 Thomas (2013), back cover, p. 55, p. 22.

29 Thomas (2013), p. 3.

30 To his credit, Edens conceded this very problem while wondering about

Thomas’s motives. Thomas writes, “The diagnostic tests were designed to
be administered with a healthy dose of skepticism. But what to do with an
individual who seems to have an incentive to be diagnosed a sociopath?
Several times he [Edens] noted how I could possibly be tricking him by
lying to him to make myself seem more sociopathic than I was, but he had
to admit that lying for the purpose of self aggrandizement was also con
-
sistent with sociopathy” (Thomas, 2013, p. 56).
31 The psychopath test (2011).

32 Dutton (n.d.).


7 The Language of Persuasion
1 Kantor (2006), p. 1.

2 Porter, ten Brinke, & Wilson (2009), pp. 109–10. References given in this

passage are omitted.
3 We say “almost by definition” because many of the studies compare

psychopathic offenders with non psychopathic offenders. It is possible
-
to be a violent recidivist without being a psychopath, and it is possible
– though difficult – to score above thirty on the PCL R without an exten
-
sive criminal record. Here is, though, an interesting rhetorical technique
used by Robert Hare: when it comes to proving the clinical importance of
psychopathy, he typically references the criminal proficiency of psycho
paths. However, when he is challenged on the circularity problem, he em
phasizes that psychopathy is essentially about personality style and about
antisociality in general, with crime merely a byproduct of the two (see
Hare & Neumann, 2010).
4 Levenson et al. (1995).

5 In Forth & Burke (1998), p. 213.

6 Recently, however, neuroscientists have begun to criticize their colleagues

for exaggerating the significance of their studies. This movement, some
times termed “neuro skepticism,” has also spilled onto popular media.
-
See, for example, Gopnik (2013).
7 Hare in Millon, Simonsen, Birket Smith, & Davis (1998), pp. 188–9.

-
8 Martens (2000), p. 406.

9 Kishiyama, Boyce, Jimenez, Perry, & Knight (2009).

10 Inzlicht, McGregor, Hirsh, & Nash (2009).

11 Zamboni, Gozzi, Krueger, Duhamel, Sirigu, & Grafman (2009).

12 It can be argued that medical terminology is justified, because psycho

pathy is a mental disorder, fulfilling the following mental disorder criteria:
statistical infrequency; violations of moral and ideal standards; increased
risk of disability, dysfunction, or loss of freedom (by way of incarcera
tion and criminal involvement); and observer discomfort. This argument,
however, has two major problems: (1) the above criteria are not strictly
about things “mental,” but simply reflect immoral behaviour, its statistical
frequency, and society’s responses to it and (2) the fact that psychopathy
meets these criteria is simply a definitional matter. The term “psycho
pathy” merely describes people. In contrast, medical disorders go beyond
description, and provide explanations for observed events. For a fuller
treatment of this point, see Jalava (2007).
13 Hare (1998a).


14 Edens (2006).

15 Edens (2006), pp. 1088–9. For similar cases and analyses see, for example,

DeMatteo & Edens (2006).
16 Hare (1998a), p. 106.

17 http://www.hare.org/scales/pclr.html

18 The PCL R publisher, Multi Health Systems Inc., lists the following re

-
-
quirement for the test’s purchase on its website: “Purchasers of (b) level
tests must have completed graduate level courses in tests/measurement
or have received equivalent documented training. Purchasers of (c) level
tests [the PCL R is a C level test] must meet (b) qualifications, and must
-
-
have training and/or experience in the use of tests, and have completed
an advanced degree in an appropriate profession (e.g., psychology, psych
iatry). Additionally, depending on State requirements, membership in a
relevant professional organization (e.g., APA), or a state license/certificate
in psychology or psychiatry may be necessary. The Purchaser Qualifica
tion Form should be completed by the person who will be using the test
materials. Graduate students must have this form endorsed by a qualified
supervising faculty member, who must also complete a separate Qualifica
tion Form (c level tests cannot be purchased by graduate students).”
19 Inmate Welfare Committee, William Head Institute v. Canada (Attorney Gen-

eral), 2003, FC 870.
20 Hare (1998a), p. 112.

21 That psychopathy predicts such things as violence and criminal recidivism

does not offer proof for the proposition that psychopathy is a biologically
based disorder. Poverty, say, is a relatively robust predictor of violence, but
such prediction does not say anything about the causes of poverty (see, for
example, Loeber et al. [2005], for prediction of violence in young males).
Measures of psychopathy, of course, differ significantly from other means
of predicting crime. While there is nothing unique about a psychological
test that predicts – imperfectly – criminal and violent behaviour (one test
publisher, Multi Health Systems, alone lists fifteen scales that in one way
-
or another predict offending), the other predictive tools do not come with
psychopathy’s rhetoric of dangerous knowledge. The difference between
these tools and psychopathy is that only the latter presents the level of risk
by way of a diagnosis. That is, only psychopathy couches the risk assess
ment in terms of the client’s central identity; the others typically state only
the relative risk of reoffending, sometimes adding recommendations for
offender management. Accordingly, these tests are not subject to the same
levels of mystique and ontological speculation as psychopathy, nor do they
command the same level of research funding and popular interest.
8 Neurobiology and Psychopathy
Patient Zero
On 13 September 1848, twenty-five-year-old Phineas Gage was laying

explosives to clear a railbed in Cavendish, Vermont, when a blast went
off, sending an iron bar through his left cheek and out the top of his
skull. The rod kept flying, eventually landing about 100 feet away with
parts of Gage’s brain still attached. Gage fell on his back, but never lost
consciousness. “Doctor, here is business enough for you,” he told the
first physician who treated him that day. Within two months, Gage was
healed. But the accident had an unpredictable side effect: a previously
likeable and morally upstanding man, Gage now became impatient,
forgetful, profane, and unreliable. His personality change lost him his
job building railbeds. John Harlow, the physician who treated Gage in
the weeks after the accident, explained the reasoning behind the com-
pany’s decision:
The equilibrium or balance, so to speak, between his intellectual faculties

and his animal propensities, seems to have been destroyed. He is fitful,
irreverent, indulging at times in the grossest profanity (which was not
previously his custom), manifesting but little deference for his fellows,
impatient of restraint or advice when it conflicts with his desires, at times
pertinaciously obstinate, yet capricious and vacillating, devising many
plans of future operation, which are no sooner arranged than they are
abandoned for others appearing more feasible ... Previous to his injury,
although untrained in the schools, he possessed a well-balanced mind,
and was looked upon by those who knew him as a shrewd, smart busi-
ness man, very energetic and persistent in executing all his plans of opera-

52 Johns & Quay (1962), p. 217.

53 This circularity, however, does not apply to emotions not included in the

diagnostic features. These proposed emotions include fear and sadness.
For a review of research on the emotional deficit theories, see Brook, Brie
man, & Kosson (2013).
54 See Brook, Brieman & Kosson (2013) for a review of the data.

55 Kiehl, Smith, Mendrek, Forster, Hare, & Liddle (2004), pp. 306–7.

56 Quoted in Steele (2011).

57 The full title is “Hungry like the wolf: A word pattern analysis of language

-
of psychopaths” (Hancock, Woodworth, & Porter, 2011).
8 Neurobiology and Psychopathy
1 Quoted in MacMillan (2000), pp. 92–3.

2 Damasio, Grabowski, Frank, Galaburda & Damasio (1994), p. 1104.

3 Quoted in Hervé (2007a), p. 32.

4 Kiehl (2006), p. 110.

5 Gao, Glenn, Schug, Yang, & Raine (2009), p. 813.

6 Fumagalli & Priori (2012), p. 2008

7 Kiehl & Buckholtz (2010), p. 26.

8 See, for example, Kiehl (2006).

9 See, for example, Hare (1970).

10 Lykken (1957). The study divided subjects into “primary sociopaths”

(psychopaths with “neither neurotic motivations, hereditary taint, nor dis
social nurture,” and matched Cleckley’s criteria for psychopathy), “neur
otic sociopaths,” and “normal” (university and high school students). In
our discussion we refer to the first group as psychopaths.
11 Bartol & Bartol (2011), p. 197.

12 Bartol & Bartol (2011), p. 9.

13 Hare (1966), p. 27. After discussing this inability of psychopaths to experi

ence the negative emotions related to the anticipation of punishment,
Hare offered a different explanation for his findings. Noting that almost
half of the psychopaths (five out of twelve) chose a mixture of 50 per cent
immediate and 50 per cent delayed punishment, he suggested that their
responses could have reflected their attempts “to manipulate” or “con”
the experimenters. In other words, the psychopath may be able to control
the amount of overt and autonomic emotionality displayed in a variety of
social situations” (p. 28). So, either psychopaths lack normal fear responses
or they have exceptional control over them. This foreshadows the capacity
of the psychopathy concept to explain apparently contradictory findings –

either deficient or excessive neurobiological activity could be the cause of
psychopathy.
14 Hare (1966).

15 Retrieved from http://www.npr.org/2011/05/26/136619689/can a test

-
-
-
really tell whos a psychopath
-
-
-
-
16 Hare’s assumption of an untreatable biological trait unique to psycho

pathy is also inconsistent with how the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual
(American Psychiatric Association, 2013) describes criminality. While
psychopathy is not included in the manual, Antisocial Personality Dis
order (APD) reflects many of the same characteristics. APD is diagnosed
using behavioural criteria, which suggests that it (and other personality
disorders) can respond to treatment. In fact, the fifth edition of the DSM,
published in 2013, acknowledged that it may be very difficult to distin
guish between personality disorders and other mental health conditions
such as major depression.
17 Hare (1968), p. 14; Hare (1968) also reviews the mixed findings of previous

studies.
18 Mawson & Mawson (1977).

19 Aniskiewicz (1979), p. 60.

20 Cleckley (1941). Cleckley connected primary psychopathy with emotional

vacancy (which he called “semantic dementia”). Robert Hare himself drew
upon the subtyping tradition, making a distinction between two factors
or aspects of psychopathy – callous lack of emotion and poor behavioural
controls – when he published the Psychopathy Checklist (PCL) in 1980.
Hare and others (e.g., Harpur, Hakstian, & Hare, 1988) imply that biologic
ally based, callous lack of emotion is the purest form of psychopathy, and
hence it is what we should focus on. Secondary or environmental causes of
poorly controlled behaviour are far less important.
21 It should be noted that other psychophysiological measures, such as rest

ing EEG abnormalities (see Hare, 1970) have likewise defied coherent
explanation (Salley, Khanna, Byrum, & Hutt, 1980). Studies of psycho
physiological responses find abnormalities that are neither consistent nor
coherently explicable.
22 Hare, Hart, & Harpur (1991).

23 Shumskaya (1984).

24 Williamson, Harpur, & Hare (1991), p. 271.

25 See Sah, Marek, Strobel, & Bredy (2013) for a recent review.

26 Pujara & Koenigs (2014); Seara Cardoso & Viding (2014).

-
27 Kiehl (2014), p. 262.

28 For a review see Weber, Habel, Amunts, & Schneider (2008).

29 For a further review, see Gao et al. (2009).


30
Reniers Corcoran, Völlm, Mashru, Howard, & Liddle (2012).
31 Blair (2007); Blair (2008).

32 Marsh et al. (2011).

33 Raine et al. (2003).

34 Raine et al. (2003), p. 1140. He was less cautious in subsequent articles,

where he and his co authors stated that “increased prefrontal white mat
-
ter may lead to faster sharing of information, which facilitates lying and
malingering” (Gao et al., 2009), p. 815. This interpretation echoes Hare’s
theory that psychopaths either lack normal emotional experience or exer
cise exceptional control over their emotions for nefarious purposes.
35 Kiehl (2006).

36 Deeley et al. (2006).

37 Retrieved from http://www.kcl.ac.uk/iop/news/records/2012/May/

The antisocial brain.aspx
-
-
38 Gao et al. (2009), p. 815.

39 Grahn & Rowe (2009).

40 Maguire, Woollet, & Spiers (2006).

41 Mackey, Whitaker, & Bunge (2012).

42 Soares & Mann (1997), p. 86.

43 Brunoni, Lopes, & Fregni (2008), p. 1177.

44 See Morgan & Lilienfeld (2000) for a meta analytic review.

-
45 Blair, Peschardt, Budhani, Mitchell, & Pine (2006).

46 See Morgan & Lilienfeld (2000), who conducted a meta analysis of clinical

-
tests of executive abilities in psychopaths and found heterogeneous ef
fect sizes. Extensively cited studies such as Newman, Patterson & Kosson
(1987) have reported striking “response perseveration” (p. 145) in psycho
paths (i.e., psychopaths persist with an ineffective strategy despite clear
evidence of failure). However, their experimental task, tapping the “ability
to modulate … response set in accord with changing environmental condi
tions” (p. 145), was not a standardized clinical test of executive dysfunc
tion. Hence, it does not provide clinical (i.e., behavioural) evidence of
prefrontal dysfunction.

47 We set aside the fact here that hypoactivity is not universally reported in

the literature. This question will be answered in the same way whether
neurological abnormalities are perfectly consistent or not.
48 Müller et al. (2003); Pujara & Koenigs (2014); Seara Cardose & Viding

-
(2014).
49 See, for instance, Blair, Peschardt, Budhani, Mitchell, & Pine (2006).

50 See Miller & Cummings (2007) for a review of frontal lobe function and

dysfunction.
51 Feinstein, Rudrauf, Khalsa, Cassell, Bruss, Grabowski, & Tranel. (2010).


52 Steiner, Silverman, Karnik, Huemer, Plattner, Clark, & Blair (2011), p. 21.

53 Brower & Price (2001), p. 720.

54 See, for example, Mitchell, Avny, & Blair (2006) and Barrash, Tranel, & An

derson (2000).
55 Gao et al. (2009); Buckholtz et al. (2010).

56 Buckholtz et al. (2010).

57 Raine, Lee, Yang & Colletti (2010), p. 186.

58 Raine et al. (2010).

59 Bodensteiner, Schaefer, & Craft (1998).

60 Swayze et al. (1997).

61 Trzesniak et al. (2011); Nopoulos, Krie, & Andreasen (2000).

62 Trzesniak et al. (2011).

63 Blair, Peschardt, Budhani, Mitchell, & Pine, (2006), p. 262.


65 Hunter (2010), p. 667–8.

66 Buckholtz & Meyer Lindenberg, (2008), p. 120.

-
67 Salekin & Lynam, (2010).

68 Glenn (2011).

69 Buckholtz & Meyer Lindenberg (2008).

-
70 See Gunter, Vaughn, & Philibert (2010) for a review of molecular genetic

studies in those with antisocial spectrum disorders (a broader category
including not only psychopathy but also antisocial personality disorder,
conduct disorder, substance use disorders, attention deficit hyperactivity
disorder, and assorted measures of impulsivity). In addition to MAOA,
a gene controlling a serotonin transporter protein (5HTT) has received
considerable attention in psychopathy research. Low activity short alleles
-
correspond to higher levels of serotonin in the synapse and, as with low
activity MAOA, are correlated with impulsivity.
71 Brunner, Nelen, Breakefield, Ropers, & van Oost (1993), p. 579.

72 Brunner, Nelen, Breakefield, Ropers, & van Oost (1993), p. 579.

73 Cases et al. (1995), p. 1766.

74 Newman et al. (2005).

75 Newman et al. (2005), p. 171. Hence, MAOA alleles appear to be related to

all kinds of “normal” aggression, not just the impulsive outbursts docu
mented by Brunner. In this way, MAOA becomes an “aggression gene”
that is not necessarily pathological, which parallels the contemporary
meme of psychopathy as ubiquitous and sometimes advantageous. The
critical importance of environmental context is lost because it is de empha
-
sized in the neurobiological theory of psychopathy.
76 Caspi et al. (2002); Kim Cohen, Caspi, Taylor, Williams, Newcombe, Craig,

-
& Moffitt (2006).

77 Kendler (2005).

78 Merriman & Cameron (2007).

79 Gibbons (2004), p. 818.

80 Stålenheim, von Knorring, & Oreland (1997); Stålenheim (2004).

81 See, for example, Frazzetto et al. (2007).

82 Cerda, Sagdeo, Johnson, & Galea (2010).

83 Cicchetti, Rogosch, & Sturge Apple (2007).

-
84 Gizer, Ficks, & Waldman (2009).

85 Preisig et al. (2000).

86 Klintschar & Heimbold (2012).

87 Wallmeier et al. (2013).

88 Ojeda, Nino, Lopez Leon, Camargo, Adan, & Forero (2013).

-
89 Beaver & Holtfreter (2009).

90 Kendler (2005), p. 1250.

91 Kendler (2005), p. 1243.

92 For example, see Hart & Rubia (2012).

93 Blair (2008).

94 Literature reviews – Seara Cardoso & Viding (2014) and Pujara & Koenigs

-
(2014) – fully describe the inconsistencies in psychopathy related amyg
-
dala dysfunction.
95 Gullhaugen & Nøttestad (2012).

96 Retrieved from http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/07/

120713122925.htm

98 Gullhaugen & Nøttestad (2012).

99 Weiler & Widom (1996), p. 266.

100 Kotowicz (2007), p. 124; pp. 123–4.

101 Kotowicz (2007), p. 125.

9 Conclusion: The Parlour Game
1 Quoted in Poythress & Petrila (2010), p. 4.

2 The paper appeared in Psychological Assessment (Skeem & Cooke, 2010).

3 Carey (2010).

4 Poythress & Petrila (2010).

5 Franklin (2010).

6 Hiller (2009).

7 Cited in Starr (2010), p. 129.


9 Neumann, Kosson, & Salekin (2007). For non PCL R item analyses see,

-
-
for example, Lilienfeld & Andrews (1996) and Miller, Lynam, Widiger, &

Leukenfeld (2001). Hare and others’ insistence on a “superordinate factor”

of psychopathy, as we saw in appendix B, is statistical fiction.
10 See, for example, Hare, Harpur, Hakstian, Forth, Hart, & Newman (1990);

Cooke & Michie (2001); and Hare & Neumann (2008). For other psycho
metric problems with these items, see Cooke & Michie (1997).
11 See, for example, Lunbeck (2003).

12 Harris, Rice, Hilton, Lalumière, & Quinsey (2007). For a cogent critique of

the study, read Marcus, Sanford, Edens, Knight, & Walters (2011).
13 Hare (1980), p. 114.

14 Unpublished master’s thesis available on Carleton University’s website at

https://curve.carleton.ca/system/files/theses/28331.pdf (p. 153).
15 Aftermath: surviving psychopathy foundation (n.d.).

16 http://www.lovefraud.com/beware the sociopath/whats a sociopath/

-
-
-
-
17 See youtube video embedded in lovefraud.com, titled “love fraud and

how to avoid it program.”
18 http://www.hare.org/studyresults.pdf

19 Beaudette, Forth, & Power (2012), p. 13.

20 http://www.hare.org/studyresults.pdf

21 To be fair, the thesis – which is available on Carleton University’s website

at https://curve.carleton.ca/system/files/theses/28331.pdf – mentions
“the possibility of sampling bias” (p. 112).
22 Raine (2008).

23 Seabrook (2008).

24 Lombroso & Ferrero (2004), p. 4.

25 Note, though, that we do not propose a causal theory of our own here. We

do not believe that nurture is more important than nature in determining
psychopathy. We simply do not know what, if anything, causes psycho
pathic behaviour, since psychopathy itself is so poorly defined.
26 Kishiyama et al. (2009).

27 Inzlicht et al. (2009).

28 Zamboni et al. (2009).

29 Park & Huang (2010).

30 Maguire, Gadian, Johnsrude, Good, Ashburner, & Frackowiak (2000).

31 Freyer et al. (2011).

32 Draganski, Gaser, Busch, Schuierer, Bogdahn, & May (2004).

33 Lederbogen et al. (2011).

34 Halsband, Mueller, Hinterberger, & Strickner (2009); Lazar et al. (2005).

35 Mueller et al. (2010).

36 Lahav, Saltzman, & Schlaug (2007).

37 Quoted in Hughes (2010), p. 340.


38
Simonsen & Birket Smith (1998), p. vii.
-
39 Weisman (2008).

40 As demonstrated, most importantly, by the Capital Jury Project’s research.

41 People v. Farnam, 2002. Quoted in Weisman (2008), p. 206.

42 Meffert et al. (2013).

43 Babiak & Hare (2006), p. 83.

44 Thomas (2013), pp. 216–17.

45 Barnhill (2014).

46 Babiak & Hare (2006), p. xv.

47 Another recent phenomenon is diagnosing psychopathy or something

like it in oneself or one’s friends and family. M.E. Thomas’s Confessions
of a Sociopath and James Fallows’s discovery of his own “psychopathic
brain” (see later in this chapter) fall into the first category. Kevin Dutton
identified his father and his oldest friend as psychopaths in The Wisdom
of Psychopaths. Barbara Oakley discussed her sister at length in her 2008
book, Evil Genes: Why Rome Fell, Hitler Rose, Enron Failed, and My Sister Stole
My Mother’s Boyfriend.
48 Hare (1993), p. ix.

49 See, for example, Malcolm (1990) and Morris (2012).

50 Blair et al. (2005), p. 1.

51 Stone (2009), pp. 34, 29. To his credit, Stone does also describe a few actual

conversations he has had with murderers.
52 Hare (1998b), p. 196; Meloy (2002), p. 69; Hare (1993), p. 2; Oakley (2008),

p. 51; Hare (1993), p. 44; Patrick (2007), p. xiii; Babiak & Hare (2006),
cover; Murphy (1972), p. 293; Babiak, quoted in Votruba & Dejcmar (2011);
Grisolía (2001), p. 85.
53 Stout (2005), p. 88.

54 Verstappen (2011), p. 6.

55 Babiak & Hare (2006); emphasis in original title.

56 Faubert (2010).

57 Ressler (1992), p. 16.

58 Meloy (2002), p. 71.

59 Hare (1993), p. 210.

60 Daynes (2012).

61 In Votruba & Dejcmar (2011).

62 Meloy & Meloy (2003), p. 21.

63 Hare (1993), pp. 112–13.

64 James (2011), p. 347.

65 Editorial (1996), p. 1.

66 Quoted in Hagerty (2010).


predicted pain and would become anxious upon hearing the buzzer.
Consistent with Lykken’s prediction, psychopaths showed poorer con-
ditioning and were less physiologically aroused by the buzzer than
non-psychopaths. To test (b) – whether these findings had implications
for actual behaviour – Lykken had the subjects learn a maze in which
some wrong choices were followed by an electrical shock. Psychopaths’
lack of anxiety, Lykken hypothesized, would make them less capable
of learning to avoid the shock, and thus less capable of learning the
maze itself. This is exactly what happened. One modern criminology
textbook asked rhetorically, “Does this provide at least a partial expla-
nation for why psychopaths continue to get into trouble with the law,
despite the threat of imprisonment?”11
Though Lykken was reluctant to draw firm conclusions about the ex-
planatory value of his findings, his results influenced the work of many
other researchers, including Robert Hare, who in 1966 conducted a
study employing a very similar methodology. Hare asked psychopaths
and non-psychopaths to define the intensity of electrical shock they
were willing to tolerate for six trials, and then to select whether they
would be shocked immediately or after a ten-second delay. Non-psy-
chopaths chose immediate shock most of the time, while many psycho-
paths chose to delay some or all of the shocks. Lykken had stated that a
psychopath appeared “defective in his ability to condition the anxiety
response.”12 Hare concluded, in the same vein, “The emotional effects
and the aversive properties of future pain or punishment are relatively
small for the psychopath. Whereas the normal person finds it distress-
ing to wait for some unpleasant event, the psychopath apparently does
not.”13 While their findings were consistent, their interpretations were
somewhat different. Lykken cautiously suggested “classification [of
psychopaths] according to the presence or absence of defective emo-
tional reactivity ... shows the promise of relationship to [its] as yet un-
known origins.”14 He believed that the absence of punishment-related
anxiety distinguished psychopaths from non-psychopaths, but he was
agnostic about the ultimate cause of these deficits.
In a 2011 interview with Alix Spiegel of National Public Radio’s All
Things Considered, Hare explained that even at the time of his early ex-
periments he was convinced that criminal behaviour was caused by
inborn, biological personality factors. Hare said, “We have individual
differences in intelligence. Well, we should have individual differences
in the personality traits that are responsible [for] or related to crime.”15
In other words, “criminal” is not a description of your behaviour, it is

10
Cooke & Michie (2001).
11 Hare & Neumann (2008).

12 Neumann, Kosson, & Salekin (2007).

13 For example, Cooke, Michie, & Skeem (2007), p. 49.

14 And it has been done so in a fashion that makes us question whether

psychopathy researchers understand the psychometrics of hierarchical
factor structures. Cooke & Michie (2001, p. 171), for example, claim in
correctly that “Mathematically, two correlated factor are equivalent to
two factors and a superordinate factor. The same is true for three correl
ated factors.” Three correlated factors have a superordinate factor only if
their correlation matrix can be expressed as: R = LL’ + Q, in which Q is
diagonal, positive definite. Because the squared factor loadings must lie
in the [0,1] interval, it follows that if any of the three triads ρ 12ρ13/ρ23,
ρ12ρ23/ρ13, and ρ13ρ23/ρ12, lie outside of this interval, then the three fac
tors do not have a superordinate factor. Although the correctness of the
claim that the PCL R has a hierarchical structure (or any other claim
-
about the linear factor structure of the PCL R, for that matter) is of no
-
consequence to our case – it resting on our pointing out infelicities in the
interpretation given by psychopathy researchers to factor analytic output,
as a whole – such convenient sloppiness does seem to be rife within the
psychopathy literature.
15 See Maraun (2003) for a more detailed discussion of this point.

16 For example, Wansbeek & Meijer (2000) and Mardia, Kent, & Bibby

(1980).
17 Analogous logic applies to the employment of any and all latent variable

modelling technologies.
18 A case made by Cooke, Michie, & Skeem (2007).

19 This story is described in detail in Maraun (2003), wherein it is called The

Central Account. Its multifarious linkages to the construct validation con
ception of science (Cronbach & Meehl, 1955) is discussed in Maraun, Gab
riel, & Slaney (2007).
20 In the words of Cooke, Michie, & Skeem (2007), p. 39, “factor analytic ap

proaches assume that latent variables produce the thoughts, feelings and
modes of behaviour that are measured or recorded by item scores plus
error.”
21 Magic that is made all the more potent to the social scientist by liberally

sprinkled technical locutions, an example of which is Cooke, Michie, &
Skeem’s (2007), p. 41, referring to their putative superordinate construct as
unidimensional (“… a superordinate construct ‘psychopathy’ that is suf
ficiently unidimensional to be regarded as a coherent psychological con

struct or syndrome”). It is not a latent variable that can be unidimensional,
but, rather, a set of variables.
22 See Maraun (2003) and Maraun & Halpin (2008) for a discussion of this

point.
23 Larsson, Tuvblad, Rijsdijk, Andersheed, Grann, & Lichtenstein (2006),

p. 16.
24 Larsson et al. (2006), p. 15.

25 Hicks, Carlson, Blonigen, Patrick, Iacono, & Mgue (2011), p. 5.

26 Blonigen, Hicks, Krueger, Patrick, & Iacono (2005), pp. 637–8.

27 Blonigen et al. (2005), p. 637.

28 The term “genotype” denotes an individual’s “chromosomal complement

of alleles” (Neale & Maes, 2004). However, “in respect to T” could, reason
ably be attached as a rider, for only those loci whose alleles play a role in
determining T are truly at issue.
29 Factors which, according to the received account, can be classified, albeit

in an exceedingly vague fashion, as either shared (with members of i’s
family) or unique to i.
30 Hirsch (1981); Schonemann (1997).

31 Once again, if psychopathy is a disease trait, then it can be treated as a

threshold process wherein, if an individual’s value on Tp exceeds a thresh
old value, τTP, he or she has the disease; otherwise, he or she does not.
32 Zuk, Hechter, Sunyaev, & Lander (2012).

33 Fisher (1918); Holzinger (1929); Falconer (1960); Jinks & Fulker (1970);

Mather & Jinks (1971).
34 It is essential to distinguish between these latent variables and the cor

responding, and like named, effects defined and quantified by geneticists.
-
In particular, the additive genetic effect spoken of in quantitative genetics
has, roughly speaking, to do with the difference between the phenotypic
expressions of the two homozygotic opposites, say, for example, in the
case of two alleles, AA and aa. The dominance genetic effect, on the other
hand, has to do with the degree to which the phenotypic expression of Aa
does not lie at the midpoint between the expressions of AA and aa (hence,
is a within loci interaction effect). In a nutshell, the labels that have been
assigned to these latent variables do not establish their identities.
2
35 Analogous to, because, once again, σD and σA2 are the variances of latent

variables, rather than the variances that the geneticist would deduce in a
calculation of σG2 .
36 Zuk et al. (2012).

37 Nichols (1965); see also Zuk et al. (2012).

38 Shalizi (2007).

Notes to page 206 233

39 Falconer (1960).

40 Zuk et al. (2012), p. 6. Also, present simulation studies that leave no doubt

as to just how wildly off the mark heritability coefficients calculated under
the standard biometric model can be.
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Index
ABC News, 128 anomia and micronomia, 24–5, 31

Achbar, Mark: The Corporation (film), anthropology, 38–9
84 antisocial behavior, 75
Adelphia Communications Corpora- antisocial personality disorder (APD,
tion, 83 ASPD): in blogosphere, 109; de-
adjustable psychopathy portfolio, generation and, 43; diagnostic ter-
82–4, 86, 87–90; the Internet and, minology, 13, 224n16; distinctions
90–2 from psychopathy, 21; in popular
affinity groups, 87–8 culture, 14; study of psychopathy
Aftermath: Surviving Psychopathy compared to, 14–15, 209nn14–15
Foundation, 168–9 Appleby, Timothy: A New Kind of
aggression: instrumental and reac- Monster, 50
tive, 154–5; in legal definitions of Archer, Lord, 88
psychopathy, 173–4; MAOA as an art: degenerate art, 10, 39, 104; mod-
“aggression gene,” 158–60, 226n75; ern/ist art, 39, 104
psychopathy as biological and, 151 The Art of Urban Survival: A Family
aimlessness: PCL-R item, 189 Safety and Self Defense Manual, 178
All Things Considered (NPR), 142 Asma, Stephen T., 35
altruism of psychopaths, 95 Association of Medical Superinten-
American mythology, 99–100 dents of American Institutions for
American Psychiatric Association. the Insane, 58
See Diagnostic and Statistical Manu- atheists, 103–4
al of Mental Disorders (DSM-5) authenticity, 185–6
American Psycho (Ellis), 6, 67
Andersen, Donna, 168 Babiak, Paul: 80, 87, 132; B-Scan,
animals, psychopaths represented as, 84; Snakes in Suits, 79, 87, 90, 105,
178–81 175–6, 177, 179, 218n54
266 Index

Backstabbing Bosses and Callous Co- born criminal, theory of: cultural and
workers (MA thesis), 167–9 scientific phenomenon, 6–9, 33;
Bakan, Joel: The Corporation (film), 84 degeneration theory, 37–8 (see also
Barnum, P.T., 35 degeneration theory); DSM and,
Barnum effect, 155, 184, 230n71 224n16; fear and, 10–11; law courts
BBC: Are You Good or Evil? 28 and, 57; physical features/devi-
bebop, 99 ance and, 37–8, 40–1, 42–3 (see also
Behavioral Sciences and the Law, 80 animals, psychopaths represented
Behavioral Sciences Unit (FBI), 67, as). See also heritability
69–71 Boston Medical and Surgical Journal:
behaviouralism, 54, 143 Spurzheim’s death, 27
behaviour as confirmation of psy- brain injury, 140–1, 153–5, 162–3.
chopathy, 51–2, 188 See also neurobiology and psy-
The Bell Curve (Herrnstein and Mur- chopathy
ray), 75–8 Brando, Marlon: The Wild One, 99
Berlusconi, Silvio, 88 Breivik, Anders Behring, 91
Bigelow, Henry, 163 Brok, Paul, 88
biological determinism, 161–2 Brunner, Han, 158, 162
biological theories of crime: biology B-Scan (Business-Scan), 84
of fear, 143–4; degeneration, 36–7, Buckholtz, Joshua, 141, 157
41; in late twentieth century, 71–2; Bundy, Ted, 28, 68, 70, 106, 180–1
in nineteenth century, 33–5. See also Burgess, Ann, 70
degeneration theory Burke, Heather, 116
biological theories of psychopathy. Bush, George W., 103
See under psychopathy, biological
theories of Canadian Psychological Association,
black culture, 99 168
Blackwood, Nigel, 148 Canadian Social Sciences and Hu-
Blair, James, 56, 146–7, 156; The Psy- manities Research Council, 19–20
chopath, 29–30, 178 capitalism: postmodern psychopath,
Blair, Karina: The Psychopath, 29–30, 102. See also corporate mismanage-
178 ment
Blair, Tony, 88 capital punishment. See death pen-
Blumenbach, Johann Friedrich, 39 alty
Boddy, Clive: “The Corporate Psy- Carl, Linnaeus: Systema Naturae,
chopaths Theory of the Global 25–6
Financial Crisis,” 85–6 Cases, Olivier, 158
bohemians (1950s), 99–100 Caspi, Avshalom, 159
books and reading, 94 cause of psychopathy. See under psy-
Borden, Lizzy, 183 chopathy, cause of
Index 267

cavum septum pellucidum (CSP), 156 chopath, 98–101. See also popular
Central Park jogger case, 66, 101 culture
character, 53–4, 55. See also identity; consumerism, 101–2, 103
personality; trait(s) Cooke, David, 164–5, 166, 194,
Chase, Richard, 179–80 231nn20–1
cheater-strategy argument, 73 copyright law: PCL-R and, 122–3,
child abuse, 161–2, 183 185, 221n18
Chomsky, Noam, 85, 117 corporate mismanagement: bosses
Christianity: biblical diagnostic ra- and co-workers as psychopaths,
tionalizations, 21, 25, 26–8, 95–6, 167–9; corporate psychopaths,
125–6, 185, 186–90; in marketing 79–88, 127–8, 222n43; corporations
psychopathy books, 29–30. See also as psychopathic, 84–8, 217n24; de-
morality (Judeo-Christian) generation theory and, 6, 10, 46
Cicero, 25 The Corporation (film), 84
Clarke, John: Working with Monsters, correlation-cause conflation, 13
128 cost of psychopathy, 4
class: fear of the “crowds” or “mass- courts’ use of psychopathy: critique
es,” 34 of PCL-R article, 164–5; description
Classical School criminological and cause conflation, 173–4; harm
theory, 37 done by, 171–5; history of, 57–64;
Cleckley, Hervey, 81, 122–3, 123–4, misuse of PCL-R, 121–2; remorse
128, 130; The Mask of Sanity, 22, 30, and, 174–5; in sentencing, 10, 58–9.
49–50, 132; semantic dementia, See also crime and criminality
134, 140, 224n20; subtypes of psy- crime and criminality: criminal
chopathy, 143–4 profiling, 68, 91; definitions of
Cline, Austin, 103 psychopathy, 122–3, 173–4, 220n3,
clinical cases: case vignettes com- 221n21; degeneration theory and,
pared to, 176–7 37 (see also degeneration theory);
clinical tradition in psychopathy con- diagnosis as substitute for mo-
cept, 167 tive, 52, 55; journalism and, 34–5;
cognitive psychologists, 54 misuse of PCL-R, 121–2; neurosci-
Cohen, Jeffrey Jerome, 105, 106 ence in criminal justice, 169–70,
Colajanni, Napoleone, 165–6 171–5; prevalence of psychopathy,
common sense, 9, 37, 38–9 93; psychopathy and language
community safety, 75, 77 of, 115–18; psychopathy as ex-
comorbidity with psychopathy, 41–2, planation for, 59; in psychopathy
43 diagnosis, 115–16, 164–5, 224n16;
Confessions of a Sociopath (Thomas, psychopathy diagnosis in, 50–1
pseudonym), 110–11, 176, 219n26 (see also courts’ use of psychopa-
conformity and the hipster psy- thy); psychopathy responsible for,
268 Index

4, 209n3; rise in rates of, 75; suc- also adjustable psychopathy port-
cessful/unsuccessful psychopaths, folio); famous degenerates (list of),
81–2; trait-based explanation, 143; 10, 39; genocide justification, 40;
youth violent-crime prediction, 66, origin and explanation of, 36–41;
215n2 overview of, 5, 6–8, 9; psychopathy
Criminal Justice and Behavior: “Psy- and, 41–5. See also deviance
chopathy: A Clinical Construct Demme, Jonathan: The Silence of the
Whose Time Has Come,” 19 Lambs, 6, 67
Crown, Sidney, 88 democracy: psychopathy’s threat to,
Cullen, William, 26 94
culture: black culture, 99; cultural de- Derber, Charles: The Wilding of Amer-
cline narrative, 94–5; explanations ica, 101
of psychopathy and, 181–4; sexual descriptive model of psychopathy,
immorality in PCL-R, 166–7; from 119–20; psychopathy as descrip-
theory to common sense, 182; in tion of character, 51, 152, 173, 175.
understanding human beings, 53. See also medical terminology/tax-
See also environment in diagnosis onomy; trait(s)
of psychopathy; fear, culture of; deviance, 27, 33, 37–8, 127, 132–3. See
popular culture also degeneration theory
cyberpath, 90 Dexter (series), 106, 107
Diagnostic and Statistical Manual
Damasio, Hanna, 140, 145 of Mental Disorders (DSM-5), 13,
Darwin, Charles, 53; The Descent of 224n16; Clinical Cases, 177; psy-
Man, 38; The Origin of Species, 34, chopathy not recognized, 20, 63,
35 164
data: of Lombroso, 38. See also neuro- diagnostic terms: early variations
biology and psychopathy (list of), 32; “psychopath” termi-
Dateline NBC: Russell Williams’ case nology introduced, 32; psychopa-
coverage, 48 thy as focus of study, 13–14. See
Daynes, Kerry, 92, 180–1; “Is There a also anomia and micronomia; anti-
Psychopath in Your Inbox?” 90 social personality disorder (APD,
Dean, James: Rebel Without a Cause, ASPD); dissocial personality disor-
99 der; sociopathy
death penalty, 60, 75, 121, 174–5. See diagnostic tests for psychopathy.
also courts’ use of psychopathy See under psychopathy, diagnostic
defamation threats against research- tests for
ers, 165–6 Dictionary of Canadian Law, 173
deficient anxiety conditioning, 142–3 Dilthey, Wilhelm, 53
degeneration theory: adjustable de- Dilulio, John, 66
generacy theory, 46, 82, 93–4 (see dissocial personality disorder, 20
Index 269

double life: as rational choice, 55 Fastow, Andrew, 83
Douglas, John, 67–8, 70, 93 FBI (Federal Bureau of Investigation,
Duff, Antony, 61 U.S.), 20, 70–1; serial killer cultural
Dugan, Brian, 60, 172 phenomenon and, 66–9, 68–9,
Dutton, Kevin, 94, 106–7, 108, 127; 166
“The Psychopath Challenge,” 112; fear, culture of, 5–6, 10–11, 46, 74–8
The Wisdom of Psychopaths, 95 female psychopathy, 167
Ferrero, Guglielmo, 171
Edens, John, 110, 121, 219n30 fiction, crime, 68, 106–7. See also
The Ed Sullivan Show, 99 popular culture
egocentrism and grandiosity Fincher, David: Se7en, 67
(PCL-R), 186 Fine, Cordelia, 61
Egomania (film), 110 Fisher, R.A., 203
electroencephalography (EEG), 144 Forbes Magazine: Klychopath, 91
electrophysiological studies, 141 Forsythe case (1994), 173
Ellis, Bret Easton: American Psycho, Forth, Adelle, 116
6, 67 Fox, James: Mass Murder, 69
emotional deficit theory of psychop- Frank, Hans, 40
athy, 133–6, 139–40, 142, 145–6, Frank, Thomas: The Conquest of Cool,
225n34; shallow emotions item in 98–9
PCL-R, 186–7; terminology, 222n50 Franklin, Karen, 165
empathetic responses, 55, 188 Fraud Magazine, 87
empirical case for psychopathy. See Freedman, Estelle B., 68–9
research into psychopathy freedom. See individualism
Enron, 83 free will, 51, 52–3, 55, 62–3
environment in diagnosis of psy- funding for psychopathy research,
chopathy: early history of, 26; 19–20, 72, 98, 124, 170, 171, 210n4
genetic studies and, 13, 26, 161–2, Furnham, Adrian, 88
183, 226n75; loss of interest in, 72,
171, 224n20 Gacy, John Wayne, 70, 106
epilepsy, 141 Gage, Phineas, 139–40, 145, 158,
equality: culture of fear and, 75, 77 162–3
evil, 11, 28–30, 50–1, 85, 103–4, 178– Gall, Franz Joseph, 26–7, 166
81, 181–3. See also morality (Judeo- gaslighting, 104
Christian) genetic determinism, 157–62; and
evolutionary theory of crime and heritability, 200–1
psychopathy, 7, 73–4 Gibb, David: Camouflaged Killer, 50
Gibson, Mary, 171
Facebook, 91 Gillett, Grant, 61–2
Fallon, James, 182–3 Ginsberg, Allen: Howl, 99
270 Index

glibness and superficial charm estimate, 92–3; science rhetoric of,
(PCL-R), 185 117–18, 220n3; on trait distribution,
global recession (2008), 46, 86, 87 129–30; ubiquitous psychopathic
Globe and Mail: “Anatomy of Evil: behaviour, 89; on Sam Vaknin,
How a Psychopath Is Made” (Rus- 110; violent crime and psycho-
sell Williams’ case), 49–50; “How a paths, 209n3. See also Psychopathy
Psychopath Is Made,” 54, 56; “The Checklist-Revised (PCL-R)
Psychology of a Psychopath,” 50 – publications, interviews, etc.: All

Goring, Charles: The English Convict, Things Considered (NPR), 142–3;
40 Backstabbing Bosses and Callous Co-
Gottschalk, Simon, 103 workers (MA thesis), 167–9; I Am
Gould, Stephen Jay, 31; Mismeasure of Finished (film), 90; “Psychopathy:
Man, 75 A Clinical Construct Whose Time
grants for psychopathy research. See Has Come,” 19; Snakes in Suits, 79,
funding for psychopathy research 87, 90, 105, 175–6, 177, 179, 218n54;
Gray, John, 58 This American Life, 112; Without
Gullhaugen, Aina, 161–2 Conscience, 66, 75–6, 81, 83, 125,
“gut feeling” to detect psychopaths, 178, 185
180–1 Harlow, John, 139–40, 162–3
Harper, Stephen, 103
Hacking, Ian: adjustable degeneracy Harpur, Timothy, 144
portfolio, 46, 77, 82, 86 Harris, Thomas: Red Dragon, 68; The
Haggerty, Kevin, 104–5 Silence of the Lambs, 68
Hall, Michael C., 107 Hart, Stephen, 58
Hare, Robert: affinity groups, 87–8; Harvard Business Review, 80
on behavioural genetics, 156; B- Hazelwood, Roy, 51
Scan, 84; checklist developed, Hercz, Robert, 124
22–3, 28; construction of psychopa- heritability, 43, 157, 199–207; coef-
thy concept, 167; corporate/corpo- ficients of psychopathy, 10, 43,
ration psychopaths, 45, 80, 82–3, 203–6, 207, 232n40; genetic deter-
84–5; EEG study, 144–5; on effect mination and, 200–3
of environment, 161–2; electric Herrnstein, R.: The Bell Curve, 75–8
shock study, 142, 223n13; in ethi- Hickey, Eric, 50, 67
cal appeal example, 124; “eyes of hidden psychopathy, 81
a goat,” 180; FBI adviser, 71; free hipster psychopath, 98–101
will of psychopaths, 62; honours historical psychopath, 124–7
and achievements, 20; increase in Hollander, Eric, 79
psychopathy, 94; on long-distance Holmes, James, 91
diagnosis, 125; PCL-R and, 121–2, homosexuality, 166–7
164–5, 185–90, 194; prevalence Hoover, J. Edgar, 69
Index 271

Howerton, Glen: It’s Always Sunny in path” (online chat), 108–9;
Philadelphia (sitcom), 106 Psychforums.com, 109. See also
humanists: science rhetoric of social media
scientists and, 117 It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia (sit-
“Hungry Like the Wolf” (Hancock et com), 106
al.), 138
Hussein, Saddam, 125 Jack the Ripper, 35
James, Bill, 181
I, Psychopath (film), 110, 111 James, William, 53
“I Am a Psychopath” (online chat), jazz musicians, 99
108–9, 219n26 Jewish Philosopher (blog), 103–4
I Am Finished (film), 90 Jobs, Steve, 95
iconography. See popular culture journalists. See media
identity: culture and biology, 53–5; Journal of Business Ethics, 86
the Internet and, 91; online theft Journal of the American Medical Asso-
of, 92; psychopathy as, 7, 14, 54, ciation, Psychiatry, 147
104–12; psychopathy in criminals, Judeo-Christian moral order. See mo-
51. See also personality; trait(s) rality (Judeo-Christian)
ideology: enemy as psychopath, 103– justice systems: misuse of PCL-R,
4 (see also politics of crime science/ 121–2. See also courts’ use of psy-
psychopathy) chopathy
impulsivity: PCL-R item, 189
individualism, 97, 98–101, 101–3, Kantor, Martin: The Psychopathy of
104–6 Everyday Life, 115
inequality: culture of fear and, 75, Kendler, Kenneth, 159, 160–1
77 Kennett, Jeanette, 61
intelligence measurements, 75–7 Kerouac, Jack: On the Road, 99
interactionist theories (environment Kidman, Nicole: Malice, 68
and biology), 13, 26. See also under Kiehl, Kent, 60, 127, 141, 146, 170,
psychopathy, biological theories 172, 174, 210n4; “paralimbic sys-
of; environment in diagnosis of tem dysfunction hypothesis,”
International Classification of Diseases 147–8, 154
(WHO): psychopathy not recog- Kjeldsen case (1981), 63
nized, 20, 164 Klychopath, 91
International Congress of Criminal Koch, Julius Ludwig August, 32
Anthropology (1885), 38 Kofoed, Lial, 72–3
International Journal of Forensic Mental Kotowicz, Zbigniew, 163
Health, 165 Kraepelin, Emil: Psychiatry: A Text-
Internet, the, 90–2, 94; blogosphere, book, 41
103–4, 109, 111; “I Am a Psycho- kunlangeta and arankan, 127
272 Index

Lakatos, Imre, 46 Maclean’s: Russell Williams’ case cov-
Lancet, 181–2 erage, 50
language: medical terminology, MacMillan, James, 72–3
118–21; metaphors, use of, 179; Madoff, Bernie, 82–3
red herring of language process- Magid, Ken: High Risk, 66
ing, 136–7; rhetoric defined, 118; of Mailer, Norman, 7; “The White Ne-
science rhetoric, 116; tautologies, gro,” 100–1
52, 116, 123, 134; of violence and Mail Online, 91
crime, 115–18 MAOA. See monoamine oxidase A
latent variable modelling, 192–9, (MAOA) alleles
231n14, 231nn20–1, 232nn34–5 marriage, short term and many:
Lavater, Johann Caspar, 26 PCL-R item, 190
law courts. See courts’ use of psy- master narrative of psychopathy,
chopathy 65
Law Enforcement Bulletin (FBI), 71, Maxwell, Robert, 83
90–1 Mayberg, Helen, 172
Lay, Kenneth, 83 McCord, William and Joan, 3, 28
le Bon, Gustave: The Crowd, 34 McCrary, Gregg O., 83
Lehrer, Jonah, 56–7 McGinniss, Joe: Fatal Vision, 178
Leland, John: Hip: the History, 100 McKelvey: High Risk, 66
Levenson, Michael, 103, 217n24 Mealey, Linda: “The Sociobiology of
Levenson Self-Report Psychopathy Sociopathy,” 73
Scale, 116 media: articles on corporate psy-
Levin, Jack: Mass Murder, 69 chopaths (list of), 80–1; biological
Levy, Ken, 62–3 theories as dominant, 56–7; cor-
Levy, Neil, 61 porate psychopaths, 79–81; Enron
Leyton, Elliott, 50 and WorldCom cases, 83; fear, use
limbic-prefrontal deficits in psychop- of, 93; journalistic realism, 34–5;
athy, 141–2, 145–6 Bernie Madoff case, 82–3; moral
linear factor modelling, 193–9, panics over sexual crimes, 68–9;
231n14 PCL-R and, 122–3, 165–6; psy-
Logan, Matthew, 180 chopathy as comedy, 111–12; pub-
Lombroso, Cesare, 5, 7, 36, 94, 132, lic emergency of psychopathy, 128;
165–6, 171; L’Uomo Delinquente science rhetoric of social scientists
(The criminal man), 37–8, 41; The and, 117; vampires, witches and
Man of Genius, 39 werewolves in, 106; Russell Wil-
Lovecraft, H.P., 34 liams’ case coverage, 48–50, 51–2,
Lovefraud.com, 168–9 54–5, 163, 179. See also Internet,
Lykken, David, 141–2, 223n10 the; popular culture
Lynch, David: Twin Peaks, 68 medical terminology/taxonomy, 21,
Index 273

23–4, 118–21, 220n12. See also sci- Morel, Benedict, 5, 36–7, 43
ence and scientists mortgage crisis (2008), 6, 10, 46. See
Meloy, J. Reid, 69, 180–1 also corporate mismanagement
memory impairment, 154 motivation: psychopathy and, 55
Men’s Health, 106 MSNBC, 79
Mental Health Act (U.K.), 63, 173–4 Murphy, Jeffrie, 60–1
metaphors: of animals, 179; puzzle, Murray, C.: The Bell Curve., 75–8
evil as, 181–3 myth of psychopathy: American my-
Meyer-Lindenberg, A., 157 thology, 99–100; correcting of, 16;
Michie, Christine, 194, 231nn20–1 master narrative of, 65; origins of,
military and psychopaths, 95–6 3–5. See also psychopathy
Mitchell, Derek: The Psychopath,
29–30, 178 narcissistic personality disorder
molecular genetics, 157 (NPD), 109–10
monoamine oxidase A (MAOA) National Association of Chiefs of
alleles, 157–60, 182–3, 226n70, Police (U.S.), 88
226n75 National Institute of Mental Health
monstrosities and monstrology, 6–7, (U.S.), 93, 117–18, 146
35, 39, 104–6, 106–7, 108,178–9 National Institutes of Health (U.S.),
morality (Judeo-Christian), 4; born 19–20, 56, 210n4
criminal type and, 37–8; in crime National Public Radio: All Things
explanations, 50–1, 57–8; immo- Considered, 142; This American Life,
rality as not human, 178–9; indi- 111–12
vidual freedom of psychopaths Natural Born Killers (Stone), 67
and, 107–8 (see also individualism); nature of good and evil, 85. See also
“insanity of the moral type,” 41; evil
the Internet and, 91; legal respon- Neanderthal psychopaths, 127
sibility as distinct from, 62–3; in Neumann, Craig, 80; PCL-R as four
marketing psychopathy books, dimensional, 194
29–30; “moral derangement” di- neurobiology and psychopathy: ad-
agnosis, 24–5; “moral insanity” justable psychopathy portfolio, 89;
diagnosis, 27, 31, 58; normalcy of brain injury, 140–1, 153–5, 162–3;
psychopaths and, 133; in PCL-R cause and effect problems, 148–50;
items, 185–90; in psychopathy clinical insensitivity of, 163; corpo-
diagnosis, 23–4, 29–31, 150; psy- ra callosa studied, 147; correlation
chopathy in secular age and, 97; masquerading as causation, 150–1;
saints as psychopaths, 95; serial criminal justice and, 169–70, 171–5;
killer’s freedom from, 105; sexual early theories, 24–5, 31, 141–4 (see
psychopaths and panic, 68–9. See also degeneration theory); genetic
also Christianity; evil research, 156–62; limbic and pre-
274 Index

frontal activation, 152–3; limita- Page, Donta, 60
tions to neurobiological theories, paradox-as-red-herring argument,
148–62; media input, 57; in place of 133–6
psychology, 55; studies of, 15, 23, patient zero, 139–41, 162–3
56; tests of executive functioning, Pauline Christianity, 25. See also
151–2, 225n46. See also under psy- Christianity
chopathy, biological theories of perceptive powers, 108
– neuroimaging data: activities personality, 21, 119, 91, 175. See also

showing changes in brain struc- character; identity; trait(s)
ture, 172; advent of, 144–8; for philosophy/philosophers, 60–4, 117,
depression, 149–50; early psy- 102, 185, 214n47–8
chopathy data, 9–10; to find evil, phrenology, 27
181–3; growth in popularity of, 72; physical characteristics: animals
interpretation of, 16, 153; limbic- and, 178–81; degeneration and,
prefrontal abnormalities, 146–7, 45; deviance and, 37–8, 40–1, 42–3;
150–1; measurement methods, physiognomy, 26
145–6; mobile MRI unit funding, Pinel, Philippe, 3–4, 21–2, 27–8, 31,
20; philosophers’ use of, 62; in 32; insanity without delirium, 3,
proof of psychopathy, 3–4, 5; on 21, 132, 140
psychopathic brain, 56–7, 171–2; politics of crime science/psychopa-
rhetoric of science, 117–18, 220n6. thy: culture of fear, 5–6, 10–11, 46,
See also psycho- and biometrics, in 74–8; incidents of psychopathy in
Appendix B, 191–2, 203–6 world (list of), 94; left and right
Newman, Joseph, 125 support for, 94–5, 218n54; left and
Newman, Timothy, 159 right use of, 77–8, 103–4, 216n34;
New Yorker, 89, 170 politicians as psychopaths, 88;
New York Times, 83; on critique of progressive appearance of, 170;
PCL-R article, 165 scientific fashions, 71–4
New York Times Magazine, 8 Poole, W. Scott: Monsters in America,
non-fiction: featuring serial killers, 35
68. See also popular culture popular culture: animal imagery/
Nordau, Max, 39, 104 metaphor, 178–81; appropria-
Nøttestad, Jim, 161–2 tion of psychopathy, 97–8, 218n1,
229n47; case vignettes in mass
Obama, Barack, 103 market books, 175–8; degeneration
Ordronaux, John, 32–3 theory in, 6–7; diagnosing fam-
O’Toole, Mary Ellen, 71 ily and friends, 229n47; hipster
outlaw culture: American outlaw psychopath, 98–101; marketing
legends (list of), 100. See also popu- psychopathy books, 29–30, 177;
lar culture postmodern psychopath, 101–3;

cold and calculating hothead seems to defy logic; empirically, it cre-
ates a sort of social-science version of the Barnum effect whereby every
possible abnormality – however inconsistent and hard to interpret – is
somehow critically important and relevant to psychopathy.
Interpreting this type of correlational neuroscience research using the
extremely flexible conceptual framework of psychopathy means that
no finding necessarily contradicts theoretical predictions. Excessive or
too little, in the predicted or an unpredicted location: any combination
of these neurological descriptors can be covered by the adjustable psy-
chopathy portfolio.
Neurodevelopmental Theories: Some psychopathy researchers acknowl-

edge that their interpretation of contradictory correlational findings is
problematic. As Raine and his collaborators point out, “It is difficult to
infer causality from cross-sectional studies.”57 To strengthen the neuro-
biological theory of psychopathy, some investigators are exploring the
possibility that psychopathy could be a neurodevelopmental disorder.
According to this theory, all the divergent neurological and behavioural
abnormalities have a common source early in development. Neurode-
velopmental models have long been used to explain well-established
neuropsychiatric conditions such as schizophrenia; it is perhaps inevi-
table that psychopathy would fit this model as well. In this approach,
genetic predispositions or risks can be triggered by environmental
events (e.g., stress, trauma, substance abuse) at multiple stages of de-
velopment.
Neurodevelopmental models have the following implications for
our understanding of disorders: (a) genetic and environmental factors
are both powerful contributors to the disorder, (b) disorders “begin” in
the earliest stages of development but may unfold somewhat heteroge-
neously, and (c) evidence of atypical central nervous system develop-
ment will often precede the clinical onset of the disorder.
Postulate (b) accommodates heterogeneous and/or contradictory
neurological abnormalities – postulate (c) – because postulate (a) pre-
vents us from overinterpreting their causal significance. Abnormalities
could indicate genetic causes, environmental causes, or both, and they
are therefore cautiously interpreted. Given the first two postulates,
proof of atypical central nervous system development – postulate (c) –
is usually considered non-specific, which means that it shows some un-
usual development at some point in time that is probably a risk for any
number of disorders involving central nervous system dysfunction.
276 Index

presence of CSP, 156; subtypes of of linear factor analysis, 193–4,
psychopathy, 143–4 231n14. See also Appendix A, 185–
– definitions of: definitions and 90; Hare, Robert

measures, 15, 22–3, 122–3, 210n17, psychopathy portfolio. See adjustable
221n21, 224n21 (see also Psychopa- psychopathy portfolio
thy Checklist-Revised [PCL-R]); psychopathy trait(s). See trait(s)
existence of, 12–13; inconsistencies public safety: case for psychopathy
in, 28–9, 127–30, 150–1, 153, 154–5, research, 123–4; corporate psycho-
156, 171, 217n51, 223n13, 228n25, paths, 127–8. See also research into
230n71; legal, 173–4 psychopathy
– diagnostic tests for: copyright and, Putin, Vladimir, 88

122–3, 185, 221n18; criminality in,
115–16; demand for diagnosis in race: in degeneracy theory, 39; nine-
crimes, 50–2; difficulty/flexibility teenth-century monster interest
in defining, 28–9, 127–30 (see also and, 35 (see also monstrosities and
above definitions of); letter versus monstrology)
spirit of, 124–7; list of, 20; long- Rafter, Nicole Hahn, 71, 171
distance diagnoses, 125; for suc- Raine, Adrian, 60, 147, 155–6, 169–70,
cessful psychopathy, 82–3. See also 174, 182, 225n34
Psychopathy Checklist-Revised Ray, Isaac: Mental Hygiene, 27; A Trea-
(PCL-R) tise on the Medical Jurisprudence of
– environment in diagnosis of: early Insanity, 57

history of, 26; genetic studies and, RCMP (Royal Canadian Mounted
13, 26, 161–2, 183, 226n75; loss of Police): Hare assisted, 20; Russell
interest in, 72, 171, 224n20 Williams’ case, 48
Psychopathy Checklist-Revised religion: in psychopathy diagnosis,
(PCL-R): availability of, 122–3, 25, 26–8. See also Christianity; mo-
185, 221n18; borrowed tenets of rality (Judeo-Christian)
degeneracy, 41; brain injury and, remorse and guilt: death penalty
154–5; child abuse effect on scores, and, 174–5; PCL-R and, 186
162; compared to IQ test, 76–7; reptiles, psychopaths represented as,
copyright law and, 122–3, 185, 178–81
221n18; criminality in, 116, 164–5, research into psychopathy: biology
166; lawsuit controversy, 16, 165; of fear, 143–4; brain injury, 140–1,
manipulation of, 93, 128–9, 217n51; 153–5, 162–3; child abuse effect
origin and development of, 22–3, studies, 161–2, 183; core assump-
28; revisions and further tests, 20; tions, 167–9; corporate psychopath
role in master narrative, 65; sexual and, 128–9; defamation threats
immorality in, 166–7; use in justice and, 164–6; as disorder of the
systems, 58, 121–2; use of, 15; use brain, 148, 150–1; early electric
Index 277

shock studies, 141–3; EEG use in, 220n12; terminology, 118. See also
144; electrophysiological stud- language
ies, 141; empirical case for psy- Richard Dawkins Foundation, 57
chopathy, 8, 107–8, 116–18, 120–1; Richard III, 127
equivocation over cause of, 130–2; Riesman, David, 99
funding for, 19–20, 72, 98, 124, Rigas, John, 83
170, 171, 210n4; genetic research, Robinson, Alisa, 45
156–62; genetics and heritability, Robinson, Daniel, 53
200–7; harm caused by, 171–5; Romney, Mitt, 103
into limbic-prefrontal abnormali- Ronson, Jon: Psychopath Test, 111–12
ties, 146–7, 150–1, 152–3; neuro- Roth, Randolph, 74
developmental theories, 155–6; Rule, Ann, 68
progressive politics of, 170, 171 Rush, Benjamin, 3–4, 21–2, 27–8, 31,
(see also politics of crime science/ 57, 61; “An Inquiry into the Influ-
psychopathy); psychometric and ence of Physical Causes upon the
biometric studies (see Appendix Moral Faculty,” 24
B, 191–2, 203–6); publications of R. v. Forsythe (1994), 173
(statistics of), 19–20; public emer- R. v. Kjeldsen (1981), 63
gency and, 123–4, 127–8; rhetoric R. v. Saddlemore (2007), 173
in, effect of, 137–8; sex offenders
study, 167; social costs of psycho- Saddlemore case (2007), 173
paths, 169; technology of, 137–8; safety and security, 123–4
tests of executive functioning, Saint Paul, 95
151–2, 225n46. See also neurobiol- Schmid, David: Natural Born Celebri-
ogy and psychopathy; science and ties, 66–7
scientists Science, 158
responsibility, lack of: PCL-R item, science and scientists: degeneracy
189–90 theory claims, 39–40; evil, solv-
Ressler, Robert, 67–8, 70; “psycho- ing puzzle of, 181–3; measuring
pathic stare,” 179–80 instruments, 38; medical rhetoric
rhetoric: court systems’ use of, 121–2; and psychopathy, 118–21, 220n3,
effect in psychopathy research, 220n12; psychology as natural or
137–8; of equivocation, 132, 220n3; social science, 52–5; religion and
ethical appeal, 124; flexibility of morality link, 6, 25, 26–31, 52; rhe-
concept of psychopathy, 129–30; of torical data gathering, 137–8. See
historical psychopath, 124–7; long- also research into psychopathy
distance diagnosis, 125–6; paradox scientism: psychopathy compared
of normalcy red herring, 133–6, to, 103
137; of public safety, 123–4; science Se7en (Fincher), 67
and medical, 116–21, 220n3, 220n6, Seltzer, Mark, 106–7
278 Index

semantic dementia, 134–5, 140, sneaker salmon, 73
224n20 social events in psychopathy diagno-
Semien, Robyn, 112 sis. See environment in diagnosis
Serial Killer Database (Radford U), of psychopathy
67 social networking sites, 91–2. See also
serial murderers/killers: cultural Internet, the
phenomenon of, 6, 66–71, 166; social scientists: crime–psychopathy
famous murderers (list of), 70; as studies, 116; degeneration theory
folkloric monster, 104–6; genera- and, 37; free will and, 52–3; as
tional fear and, 46; Internet pres- influenced by social conventions,
ence of, 91; psychopathy defence, 30–1; prestige, gained and lost, 6,
172; victims of, 105 71–2; science rhetoric and, 116–18
serotonin, 157–9, 226n70 Social Text: The Sokal Affair, 102
sexual behaviour: PCL-R item of, Society for the Scientific Study of
188–9 Psychopathy: Lifetime Achieve-
sexual homicide: serial murder and ment Award, 20
FBI, 66–9; Russell Williams’ case, SociopathWorld.com (blog), 111
47–52, 54–5. See also serial murder- sociopathy: diagnostic terminology,
ers/killers 13, 15, 223n10; modern consumer
Sexual Homicide: Patterns and Motives culture and, 101; sexual predator
(FBI study), 67 and, 69 (see also sexual psycho-
sexual online predator, 90–2 path); sociobiology rise and, 72–3.
sexual psychopath: moral panics See also psychopathy
and, 68–9; organized offender Socrates, 185
classification (FBI), 70–1; unique Sokal, Alan, 102
human type theory, 167; use of Spearman, Charles, 193
PCL-R, 121–2, 166–7 Spiegel, Alix, 142
Sheridan, Thomas: Puzzling People, Spurzheim, Johann Gaspar, 26–7,
104 166
The Silence of the Lambs (Demme), 6, Stamos, David: “The Philosophical
67, 68 Significance of Psychopaths,” 103
Singer, Peter, 57 statistics: corporate/hidden psycho-
Skeem, Jennifer, 164–6, 231nn20–1 paths, 80–1; courts’ use of PCL-R,
Skilling, Jeffrey, 83 58; crime rates, 75, 209n3; on ge-
Slotkin, Richard, 100 netic psychopathy, 157; prevalence
Smith, Robert Joseph: The Psychopath estimates, 4, 92–3, 209n3; psycho-
in Society, 101–2 metric and biometric studies (see
Smith, Sharon, 71 Appendix B, 191–2, 203–6); publi-
Snakes in Suits (Babiak and Hare), cations and grants on psychopa-
79, 87, 90, 105, 175–6, 177, 179, thy, 19–20; stranger murders, 67;
218n54 youth violent crime, 66, 215n2
Index 279

Stein, Jacob: Jewish Philosopher (blog), 129–30, 217–18n51, 230n71; useful
103–4 psychopath, 80, 95, 101, 218n15.
Stevenson, Robert Louis: The Strange See also identity
Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, 7, 39 true crime literature, 106–7, 178. See
Stone, Michael: The Anatomy of Evil, also popular culture
178, 229n51 Trump, Donald, 88
Stone, Oliver: Natural Born Killers, 67 Twilight (series), 106
Stout, Martha, 29, 93, 105, 209n3, Twin Peaks (Lynch), 68
217n47; The Sociopath Next Door, 81, Twitter, 91
88, 177
stranger murders, 67 University of British Columbia: fac-
subcriminal/successful psychopathy, tor analysis of PCL-R data (1988),
81–2 194
sub-prime mortgage crisis (2008), 6,
10, 46. See also corporate misman- Vaknin, Sam, 109–11
agement
suicide, 128 Waiton, Stuart, 75
super-predator theory, 66 Wallace, David Foster, 124
Supreme Court of Canada: R. v. Wall Street. See corporate misman-
Kjeldsen, 63 agement
warrior gene, 159, 183. See also mono-
taxonomy/nosology, 25–6. See also amine oxidase A (MAOA) alleles
medical terminology/taxonomy Weisman, Richard, 174
Telegraph: “Is There a Psychopath in Wells, H.G.: The Island of Dr. Moreau,
Your Inbox?” 90 7, 39
Terman, Lewis, 8 Whitfield, John, 73–4
This American Life (NPR), 111–12 Wiebe, Richard, 156–7
Thomas, M.E. (pseudonym): Confes- Wilde, Oscar: The Picture of Dorian
sions of a Sociopath, 110–11, 176, Gray, 39
219n26 Williams, Russell, 47–52, 54–5, 71,
tradition, 167 163, 179
trait(s): in analysis of psychopathy, Williamson, Sherrie, 144
12–13, 20, 125, 140, 157, 167; at- Wolman, Benjamin B., 93–4
tractiveness of psychopathic, 108; “words but not the music,” 133–4,
brain processes and psychopathic, 135–6
146–7; fame and psychopathic, 104; WorldCom, 83
heritability and, 73, 200–1; PCL- World Health Organization ICD, 20,
R measurement of psychopathy, 164
144; psychopathy as a single trait Wundt, Wilhelm, 53, 54
theory, 21, 52, 119–20, 143, 144, 153;
distribution in psychopathy, 14,

The Myth of The Born Criminal - Psychopathy, Neurobiology, and The Creation of The Modern Degenerate (PDFDrive)

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Psychopathy, Neurobiology, and the Creation of the

By some estimates, there are as many as twelve million psychopaths

jarkko jalava is a college professor of criminology in the Department

Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication

Jalava, Jarkko, 1970–, author

University of Toronto Press acknowledges the financial support of the Government

1 The Moral Foundations of Psychopathy 19

Psychopaths, Politics, and Power 88

7 The Language of Persuasion 115

Psychopathy, Neurobiology, and the Creation of the

At the turn of the nineteenth century, two physicians discovered an

Part two is about empirical case-making. Chapter 7 describes the

They possess special powers of perception, persuasion, illusion, and

We live in a “camouflage society,” a society in which some psychopathic

5. We do not put forth an alternative, more “correct” way of studying

In March 1996, the journal Criminal Justice and Behavior published an

tor of twenty-four.3 In 2012–13, research on or related to psychopathy

by simply posing them as secondary: what psychopathy is really about

Medical attention or any other practical step to help or ameliorate misfor-

But what if the “philosophic, metaphysical, and religious planes” are

Science, Religion, and the Enlightenment

The first formal, medical account of a psychopathy-like disorder was

Most modern accounts of psychopathy hold Rush’s religiosity out as

On the Benefits of Being Unclear

Part two is about empirical case-making. Chapter 7 describes the

The idea that moral insanity is the offspring of a kind-hearted physician

At least three things stood in the way of a popular psychopathy mas-

The Nineteenth Century

Most historians see the nineteenth century, particularly in Central Eu-

Degeneration theory made criminology into a popular and legitimate

Lombroso could identify the born criminal type by certain physical,

Despite its ubiquity, the acceptance of degeneration theory as seri-

National Socialism regards degeneracy as an immensely important source

1. Different types of disorder and deviance are interconnected.

1. Different types of disorder and deviance are interconnected. Degenera-

2. These connections are caused by a biological defect. Most contemporary

3. This biological defect is heritable. A number of recent studies have

Most genetic and developmental research seems to support a devel-

4. Individuals afflicted with degeneration are evolutionary throwbacks. Of-

In March 1996, the journal Criminal Justice and Behavior published an

5. The degenerate may be identified by physical and psychological signs, which

Psychopathy researchers also have updated Lombroso’s list of fa-

The Adjustable Degeneracy Portfolio

In the late nineteenth century, degenerates could be whoever you want-

In 2007, a thief began to raid homes in southeastern Ontario, taking

Canadian and international media reported Williams’s arrest, confes-

and his behaviour – the typical source of diagnostic information – was

For Wundt, “character” meant, in Daniel Robinson’s words, “the

about the human mind would by necessity be incomplete without help

seem to be stunted in the machinery involved in humanity’s ability to

In other words, Williams’s central identity was psychopathy, he was pre-

appeared in 1735, and medical classifications had followed closely

Psychopathy and Law

Fears about psychopathy’s implications for moral and legal responsi-

But others, like John Gray, a prominent asylum superintendent, dis-

Given increasing psychological and neuroscientific evidence that brain re-

sponsivity, and vulnerability that is part of the human life-world.” The

In most jurisdictions, psychopathy is considered to be an aggravating

But if it was true, as Hare maintained, that psychopaths suffered

Superficially, the both-impaired-and-responsible argument adheres to

The idea that moral insanity is the offspring of a kind-hearted physician

bination of public fears and political shifts, in a mutually reinforcing