Psychopaths

J

j.

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I haven't found Ray Peat's thoughts on psychopaths, so I asked him what's his guess about what causes it and if it can be cured. His response:

Ray Peat said:
I think it's usually a combination of some neurological-endocrine damage and the effect of parental, especially maternal, neglect. I think there's an interaction of learning with brain development, and like language learning after puberty, it's probably very hard for an adult to learn to have empathy. Cultures can have attitudes that resemble psychopathy, attitudes about how people should interact, degrees of xenophobia, for example.

Then I asked him if by maternal neglect he referred to something like not touching or talking the baby and he replied:

Yes, touching, talking, looking.
Touching: The Human Significance of the Skin
 

SheilaHelm1

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Hi J., how would you define 'psychopath'? Do you mean murderers and such like? This post caught my eye, because my mother left when I was about 2 and I have often wondered if it affected me in a subconscious way.... Don't think I'm a psychopath though.. :twisted: though I often wonder if the stress contributed to my hypothyroidism in a deeper way. I was diagnosed hypo/myxedoema at the age of about 5 or 6.. hmmm :!: interesting.
 
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j.

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As Dr. Peat said, people who can't feel empathy. People who can't connect with other people. People who can like other people only as long as they serve some benefit. People who are unable to feel guilt and are desensitized to pain due to the composition of their brains. People who could burn someone alive just for fun without feeling guilt, if they could easily get away with it.

People who relate to other people the way a very young child relates to other children after he has been emotionally, physically, or sexually abused.

Also, Sheila, Dr. Peat, if I read him correctly, stated two conditions. Neglect is just one of them, but apparently you needed to also have some brain damage for psychopathy to occur.
 

chris

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I believe common things for psychopaths (serial killers) is neglect as a child, Ted Bundy noted that every serial killer hes ever met has viewed a lot of pornography without exception. Charles Manson responded with something along the lines of "Bundy's an idiot, i've looked at pornography every day of my life and its never done me any harm"
 

Combie

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The fact that psychopaths cannot feel empathy is where, i believe, this whole nonsense about reptilian races controlling humanity comes from. Much like a psycho, a reptile feels no empathy, its simply not wired to. Its not a stretch to say that the forces who control our food supply (and money, etc etc) lack empathy, and are psychopaths in the true sense of the word. I mean look at the garbage they would have us eat. Everything good for you is maligned (sugar, sat fat, salt, cholesterol, even fruit now) and the worst things are promoted heavily as healthy (PUFA, wheat, veganism etc) or at least benign (flavour enhancers, colourings, additives etc). Thats not just a misunderstanding of the truth, thats flat out wanton poisoning imo.
 

charlie

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I was chatting with a family member who actually might believe in the Ray Peat way but still chooses PUFA laden food. I was like, "Can they have got it so wrong, on so many levels, by accident?" Almost everything is backwards of what it should be. Are we being ruled by psychopaths? wow!
 

Combie

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Well they certainly dont have any empathy for the multitudes of cancer, CVD, diabetes etc etc sufferers they are killing with their crap, so i dont think psycho is too harsh a term. If it was deliberately done to harm us, because thats what psychos do, i think i would feel slightly better than if it was just for the cash. Absolutely despicable in any case. What price millions of lives? Almost makes you ashamed to be human. Almost.
 

gretchen

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Combie said:
Well they certainly dont have any empathy for the multitudes of cancer, CVD, diabetes etc etc sufferers they are killing with their crap, so i dont think psycho is too harsh a term. If it was deliberately done to harm us, because thats what psychos do, i think i would feel slightly better than if it was just for the cash. Absolutely despicable in any case. What price millions of lives? Almost makes you ashamed to be human. Almost.

There is a general lack of caringness, yes. I've witnessed it my entire life. It seems there have been a great number of other issues people find more important than health, and also most people don't understand the connection between nutrition and mental health.

I have worked in the mental health field and the general attitude is to put people in boxes according to their diagnostic label, ostensibly to keep them "safe", then put them on a drug cocktail to keep them under control in order to "facilitate" behavioral change. This works about 50% of the time, so the weight gain most experience and god forbid even cancer doesn't seem to be a problem to them. It's all so we can live in a better society where we all know (or in most cases, don't know) that we know nothing. And obviously, don't care............ :?
 

Swandattur

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This is an old thread, but I just wanted to add something. I have read that the psychopaths or sociopaths who kill are ones who had a bad upbringing or environment. Those who receive good upbringing tend to become scam artists or else politicians or influential professionals where they legitimately do harm. You read of people who are psychopaths having good parents who tried their best, though.
 
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j.

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Swandattur said:
This is an old thread, but I just wanted to add something. I have read that the psychopaths or sociopaths who kill are ones who had a bad upbringing or environment. Those who receive good upbringing tend to become scam artists or else politicians or influential professionals where they legitimately do harm. You read of people who are psychopaths having good parents who tried their best, though.

I wonder if having many kids close to each other makes it more likely to make a psychopath. After the first birth the mother is low in nutrients, gets pregnant immediately, so the second child is more likely to be born with a susceptibility to psychopathy, then a third child is born soon after, and the second child is given less attention and becomes a psychopath.
 

burtlancast

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gretchen said:
I have worked in the mental health field and the general attitude is to put people in boxes according to their diagnostic label, ostensibly to keep them "safe", then put them on a drug cocktail to keep them under control in order to "facilitate" behavioral change. This works about 50% of the time, so the weight gain most experience and god forbid even cancer doesn't seem to be a problem to them.

Abram Hoffer pointed out his experience with schizophrenics, where an abnormal low number of them get cancer: he explained the probable cause to be the adenochrome ( oxydised adrenaline, causing schizophrenia) which is a cellular division depressant. The few who come down with cancer easily survive their disease.

I think we have all experienced the fact many crazy old people seem strangely immune to some categories of degenerative diseases that other normal people are afflicted with .
It's like being mentally challenged "preserves" them.
 

Swandattur

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j., there must be studies somewhere that might show if there is a correlation. You'd think there would be more done to try to find out how to prevent psychopathy. I guess some part of the brain is damaged. It seems like they have the opposite of the desire to help others, because it's not a neutral thing. These people want to hurt others not just don't care.
 

Kasra

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j,

Did Peat mention that book or did you find it separately?
 

Jib

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Interesting article here: "Life as a Nonviolent Psychopath":

http://www.theatlantic.com/health/archi ... th/282271/

"I went into this with the bias of a scientist who believed, for many years, that genetics were very, very dominant in who people are—that your genes would tell you who you were going to be. It's not that I no longer think that biology, which includes genetics, is a major determinant; I just never knew how profoundly an early environment could affect somebody."

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*

"Touching: The Human Significance of the Skin" - I'd never heard of that book before. Maybe I'll check that out.

Touch has been point of obsession for me for years and years and years because of my own chronic lack of it. I've wondered a lot about early life vs. later life experiences. I was not deprived of touch in my infancy and early childhood, but during my mid to late childhood and early adolescence, it was all downhill.

I've only been able to find sources talking about touch during infancy. During the entirety of my teens I desperately craved touch, more than I craved anything else. Never got it. I spent so much time obsessing about it and craving it; not a day went by where I didn't think about it, and more often than not I thought about it constantly. It was torture. In a way it still is, but for better or worse I've adapted to living like this and I don't think about it nearly as much as I used to.

Still, I wonder a lot about the biological function of touch, and if it's really necessary beyond infancy. It makes me wonder how much of a role not only our environment plays, but our perception of our environment. Is it the lack of touch itself that's harmful, or is it the perception of our not being touched and that bothering us that's harmful?

Cupid's Poisoned Arrow by Marnia Robinson is an interesting book. But bonding behaviors, touch, affection, etc., are all put on a pedestal in that book, and I have to step back and wonder if it's really biologically necessary. Having potentially beneficial effects does not make something a physiological need.

Obviously for an infant it's a different story, and the harm of deprivation has been well demonstrated there. But for adolescents and adults it's hard to tell. Adolescents and adults seem to be left out in the dust as if they're nothing but products of their early life experiences. We're adaptive organisms from the moment we're born to the moment we die.

http://yourbrainonporn.com/book/export/html/56

There's a link to an interview there with a Romanian former orphan who had serious issues. I think until he was 7 he was kept in a crib at the orphanage and was virtually completely neglected. It took a lot of time and patience and effort but through attachment cues his adoptive parents were able to change his behavior.

But yeah. I can see the point about never learning empathy and it being very difficult later on. The Romanian orphan interview is very interesting though and I think it has some insights to offer in that direction, considering that he wasn't adopted unti his infancy was practically an artifact, and his early life seems like it had nothing in it at all that would've taught him empathy.

There was also that book called My Lobotomy about a guy who didn't find out his mother had him lobotimized as a child until he was well into adulthood. He felt different his whole life and never knew why and then he found out that he'd had a lobotomy as a result of his abusive mother pressuring the doctor to do it to correct his 'bad behavior.'

I never finished it but what I did read was interesting.
 

Swandattur

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Maybe most of us would be better off with more touching. Some people seem to crave it more than others. Of course it has to be loving or friendly touch, not unfriendly or unwanted touch. I don't think only infants need it. Touching can be calming and reassuring. It's probably part of feeling, but I guess verbal communication can be calming and reassuring, too.
 

Ben

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Swandattur said:
Maybe most of us would be better off with more touching. Some people seem to crave it more than others. Of course it has to be loving or friendly touch, not unfriendly or unwanted touch. I don't think only infants need it. Touching can be calming and reassuring. It's probably part of feeling, but I guess verbal communication can be calming and reassuring, too.
cute-animals-cat-kitten-sleeping-dogs-ear-happy-pics.jpg


I agree that hugs make me feel "warm", and they can't be truly replaced by anything else in the world.
 

Swandattur

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On the subject of people with brain disorders seeming to preclude bodily disorders, my husband' s father had lots of trouble with food intolerances or sensitivity. Then when he became afflicted with a kind of dementia, and eventually had to go into a nursing home, he stopped having that trouble. Then he could eat anything. I wonder if that meant his body had given up fighting to fix itself. Maybe it just ignored the food related issue, because of the much worse problem in the brain. Or maybe it doesn't work that way. It does seem like a clue to what happens in the body, though.
 

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