Have you ever read James Fallon's book The Psychopath Inside: A Neuroscientists's Journey Into The Dark Side Of The Brain? It's an autobiography of a neuroscientist that found out he was a psychopath while doing brain scans and how his life had changed since, including a reflection on his behavior. It's a very interesting read with a lot of valid points/depictions of a prosocial psychopath, I would really suggest it.
This will be a very long post about a very important topic, so take a deep breath and read it aloud, listen to music or take your time to get through it.
First of all there is no such thing as a “pro-social psychopath”. This is a term developed by people who would like to claim the integrity of being “less influenced by empathy” and therefore more “rational” and/or more “confident” and therefore more “capable”, but who dislike the feeling of being treated like a criminal.
1 in 100 people can be diagnosed with some form or degree of aspd/npd, generally placing them very low on the “psychopathy scale”.Now even if you only look at psychopaths that are below a certain “line” and could be considered “real psychopaths” you would have to realize that most of them are non-violent, not diagnosed. This is what many professionals call a “non-violent psychopath”. However, there is very little difference to a “violent psychopath” and there is no use or reason to invent the word “pro-social psychopaths” other than that it sounds more positive. As I already stated “pro-social psychopaths” do not exist.
If you google pictures of the small intestine you will find it drawn a million different ways, not only because few people put up with the effort of drawing it “correctly”, but because the small intestine looks very different depending on the individual.The average human body of an adult has about 206 bones. Even when it comes to something that should be as simple as bones we have to use the word “average” as many people have more or less than 206 bones. Human babies are born with 300 to 350 bones. However, the brain has a total number of approximately 171 billion brain cells and if you are reasonable, you have to ask yourself, how anyone can be sure that some brain cells are supposed or not supposed to be there and that this indicates some exact thing. The answer to that question is simply: No one can be sure and everyone who thinks otherwise should return to medical school and/or learn to use their brain cells.
The human body is a very complicated, individual object, that makes an “universal treatment” or an “universal diagnosis” as James Fallon suggested impossible.
Especially if you look at the way he did his research. There are not many “psychopaths” available and those who are, are in prison.Now, you have to know that James Fallon says psychopathy can be diagnosed by looking at an underdeveloped prefrontal cortex. However, an underdeveloped prefrontal cortex is also found in correlation to “violent behaviour” the abuse of alcohol, cannabis (in some cases) and a combination of too much nicotine and caffein.
You might think now that there is a difference visible that you can not see, but a neuroscientist can. Remember what I said about the amount of brain cells etc.. No underdeveloped prefrontal cortex looks entirely like another and if you think about the fact that James Fallon has been focusing on a small unrepresentative group of diagnosed criminals, you might want to ask yourself what you think is more common in prisons: Psychopathy or any past/current usage of alcohol/cannabis/nicotine/caffein and/or violence.
Now if you look at all neuroscientists or psychiatrists that have researched personality disorders and especially those who have researched “psychopathy” for a longer time, you will see that they either look down on those affected or end up diagnosed themselves. This is not because they are drawn to this topic, because of their pd or because their research has turned them into “psychopaths”, but because of confirmation bias.If you spend some time thinking about something that is different than what you have seen yourself as you will automatically assume that it is either better or worse and not equal.If you conclude that it is “better” or useful in some aspects you will try to acquire those aspects both consciously and unconsciously, leading to you wishing to see yourself as a person with those attributes.
Another problem is that most people who work in a medical field and especially scientist are affected by is that they begin to see whatever they have been looking for and thinking about. If you teach a group of medicine students about loss of the sense of smell and tell them to research it, they will come back to you thinking they are loosing theirs. The same goes for any other disease and can affect even the most experienced scientists or doctors.
Additionally James Fallon’s job depends on how often he publishes and on how many people are interested in his research. It is a lot more compelling to talk about “curing cancer with sugar” or “brain scanning for psychopaths” or “Neuroscientist is a pro-social psychopath” than to talk about “sugar having no effect on cancer” or “a possibility of a correlation between psychopathy and an underdeveloped prefrontal cortex”.
There is a lot of bullsh** published each year because of this and I am not even saying that James Fallon did this on purpose. But he had reason to do so and if someone who wanted to sell you cigarettes would argue they are good for you, as a reasonable person, would doubt their words for the same reason.Even if James Fallon was one of these people who are very low on the scale, I mentioned at the beginning, he would still be an a**hole who talks about psychopathy as the “Dark Side Of The Brain” to sell books to the unsuspecting, uninformed public and harms the reputation of all psychopaths and the scientific community and if he truly believes in his “diagnosis”, he is a horrible neuroscientist.
Personally, I would advise you to not believe anything or at least not most of the things man like James Fallon or Robert Hare say, especially as their research appears to be misinterpreted and their results unrepresentative and peer proofing their studies is often impossible. Their books were written to attract the masses and not to make valid scientific points.
Post scriptum: Brains change over time. My brain has been scanned more than once and I have seen many brain scans that were connected to various disorders. There are cases where people who have lost parts of their visual cortex had no impaired vision and there have been cases were people lost parts of their hypothalamus found other ways to cooperate their endocrine system with nearly the same efficiency. Now, a brain can change a lot over the years but according to James Fallon and every other scientist who works in this field you are either never or always a psychopath. However a prefrontal cortex can change immensely even that of an adult.
Post post scriptum: This last point also means that you can still actively train and develop your brain as an adult. So the saying, “You can’t teach an old dog new tricks!” is obviously a lie as well.
