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Unit 3, Week 1, Page 4

A lecture on the personal context of violence 0

Temperamental contribution to violence 0

The case for psychopathy 0

The case against psychopathy 0

What psychopathy can lead to: preventative detention and management 0

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Dealing with unusually aggressive individuals

Are all abnormally aggressive people the same? For some reason, commonsense psychology assumes that they are. This is not what forensic scientists think. They recognize abnormal violence may be due to:

brain disorders e.g.:

  • epilepsy
  • intoxication for example with alcohol or steroids
  • delirium
  • brain damage

psychological disorders such as

  • dissociation ('berserkers')
  • mania
  • depression
  • command hallucinations

and social situations, such as:

  • crowds
  • humiliation
  • fear of capture, punishment, or incarceration

as well as to a difficulty to characterize group who are variously called predators, psychopaths, evil-doers, animals, devils, or severely dangerous personality disordered people (the UK government's currently preferred term).

DSPD is the most recent example of two processes in in understanding conflict: the development of euphemisms, and the application of these euphemisms to individuals who are held accountable for the conflict. 'Challenging behaviour' is the most commonly used euphemism for aggressive in the field of learning disability, itself a euphemism for mental retardation. According to Emerson (1995), the term "challenging behaviour" has been defined as: "culturally abnormal behaviour(s) of such an intensity, frequency or duration that the physical safety of the person or others is likely to be placed in serious jeopardy, or behaviour which is likely to seriously limit use of, or result in the person being denied access to ordinary community facilities". For example, somebody with Down's Syndrome may find it difficult to communicate effectively with his or her caregivers and may become very frustrated by apparently simple misunderstandings. This could lead on to incidents of aggression and violence, to themselves or others, which may at first seem totally unreasonable. However, when the details of the situation and the person's abilities are taken into account, it often becomes very understandable why the person reacted as they did.

Psychopathy, or evil?

Personalizing conflict is arguably the most common way for people to deal with it. The recent war in Iraq was not, for example, fought against Iraq but against Saddam Hussein according to US spokespersons. Personalizing is the converse of the process that we have previously called legitimation. It claims that no-one has to change except the person causing all the trouble. A further move in personalizing is to claim that this person is only making trouble because they are defective in some way, the usual way being that they are morally defective, evil, or a psychopath.

In the remainder of this unit, we will be looking at conflict as an interaction as, indeed, it is sometimes defined. However, we will find that there is a constant temptation to fall back on individualistic explanations. One reason for this is that some actions simply seem unjustified or wanton. We have a visceral reaction to them, either rage or disgust. It seems to me that it is disgust that is more likely to provoke a judgement of psychopathy.

But the fact is that there are some actions that do provoke such a visceral reaction, and do seem to be motivated by nothing other than spite. One possible explanation is that we may be so unaware of differences in other people's values and experience that we simply cannot locate their actions within our moral universe, even though they may be solidly located in theirs. Nelson Mandela, for example, set up the military wing of the African National Congress, and was tried twice for treason and once for sabotage. His actions seemed to South Africans at the time no different from those of Osama bin Laden today. Yet now that his actions have been put into a different context, he is revered as something near a saint.

It might be objected that there is no comparison between Nelson Mandela or Osama bin Laden. Whether or not the former killed many white South Africans, or black fellow-travellers, is not widely known, but it is assumed not. It is also not know how many people Al Quaida and Osama bin Laden have killed, although it is assumed to be thousands. Killing others seems to most people to be wrong, and killing so many people seems unforgivable. But history has a way of forgetting death if, in retrospect, it seems to have been justified.

I am assuming that both Osama bin Laden and Nelson Mandela are principled men. The leaders who have incited massacres--Hitler, Stalin, Mustafa Kemal, and all the others--may be a different case, but even they are able to justify their actions according to a value system, however perverse we may find it. They have also been able to persuade others, sometimes millions of others that their actions are justified. But there are also mean acts, of meaningless violence, which cannot be explained by different values. It is these acts that are likely to be attributed to evil, to a pathological propensity to violence, or to what Pritchard in the 18th century called 'moral insanity' but which we now call 'psychopathy'.

Psychopathy has strong proponents currently in the UK. The concept has periodically led to punitive or repressive legislation in a variety of countries where psychiatrists have fallen in with folk psychology and given this supposed condition a place in their classifications of disease. Even before psychiatrists were involved in psychopathy though, the Christian church had a name for the condition: evil.

My own view is that I have never met anyone who I would unequivocally characterize as evil, but I have met many people who have been so diagnosed as one time or another. But I have met a small number of people who have got into a place in their world where they were able to do something so repugnant that even reading about it makes the gorge rise. It seems to me that this explanation of violence or conflict--that it is due to a psychopath--should be kept for those cases where every other possible explanation has been extensively investigated. It should not be our starting point.

 

Before you go to the next page...

ProblemsPushkin is arguably the greatest Russian poet of all time. Could he also have been a psychopath?

ProblemsHave you ever met someone you thought was unusually aggressive? Why was this?

 

ProblemsIs there such a thing as "evil"?

 
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