preview

Psychopath Research Paper

Decent Essays

Have you ever wondered what goes through the mind of a psychopath, and what some of the symptoms, treatments, and facts about the disease/disorder are? You shall find out in this paper. Psychopathy is a dangerous disorder that an increasing amount of people have, and needs to be taken seriously as it has been responsible for many deaths and negative results throughout its tenure as a mental disease. It can be defined as a mental disorder in which the individual does not know the difference between right and wrong and in some cases they do not care (Hirstein, 2013). There are several symptoms, causes, and treatments for people with this disorder and different ways to approach them. It has also had a large effect on decisions in the court room …show more content…

Examples of these symptoms are hallucinations, delusions, and disordered thoughts. In a particular study on psychopaths there were 21 trial subjects and they were split into 3 different subjects. They were personal data, forms of psychopathic behavior, and characteristics of the psychopath (Cason, 1946, p.1833). A few other symptoms are selfishness, irresponsibility, being uncaring to other’s plight, and shallow emotions. Psychopaths tend to have a weak connection with the emotional state of mind. They don’t realize or care about other people’s feelings and/or their thoughts. Psychopaths do not realize the fear in other people’s faces or minds. Psychopaths tend to blame other people for things that are actually their fault. For example if they have just stole something from someone or just murdered someone (as psychopaths tend to do), they are going to blame someone else for it. Everyone has their own problems with the truth, but psychopaths are far worse with this problem. These types of people do not have good responsibility for much of anything as they forget much of the time what they are responsible for. Persons afflicted with this disease lack ability to cope with others. It affects how they deal with those other people, whether it is at their job or just friends that they may know and see on a regular basis. A lot of psychopaths are undetected or not noticeable. The people that know them best sometimes don’t …show more content…

Most are environmental factors that influence the way that they react to different types of situations. A lot of psychopaths are not inherently that way. Some examples and common ways that people become influenced are traumatization, experiencing negative childhood, being around negative people for extended periods of time. Being traumatized (more likely during childhood) is one of the single most prevalent factors that influence a person’s thinking. Whether they were abused as a child or experienced a whole lot of violence during said childhood also influences a person’s mind. A person can become a psychopath by heredity. They are influenced by someone else, most likely their parents, from a very early age. Another factor that comes into play that can and has caused a person to have this disorder is abuse of drugs and/or alcohol. The influence of drugs and alcohol can very easily escalate the symptoms of a person that already has the mental disorder. A person with alcohol in their system is vulnerable to misconduct and a psychopath is already amoral and cannot think clearly or rationally, so drugs and alcohol just makes things worse (Gorenstein, 1979, p. 207). In several different studies it has been shown that the heredity of personality type disorders has also been affiliated with Attention Deficit Disorder (ADD). In the study researchers found that psychopathic traits were more

Get Access