Year: 2010
Type: article
Abstract: Psychopaths appear to be 'creatures apart'grandiose, shameless, callous and versatile in their violence.I discuss biological underpinnings to their pale aff ect, their selective inability to discern fear and sadness in others and a predatory orienting towards images that make most startle and look away.However, just because something is biologically underpinned does not mean that it is innate.I show that while there may be some genetic determination of fearlessness and callousunemotionality, these and other features of the personality may arise from developmental failures in the interpersonal reception of their emotions, needs and their sense of self.One is unlikely to be able to own inner experiences if shamed for having them, or if, having them, one does not know how to regulate and soothe.So psychopaths may learn to attend away and suppress them.Rather than a fully inherited diffi culty, they may have become unable to refl ect on inner states, so meta-emotions and self-refl ective emotions like guilt and shame do not fully arise.ey retain enough sensitivity to know their diff erence, and hide.I suggest that psychopaths are characterised by a nested sense of self, arising from the surprising eff ect of shame on these seemingly shameless characters.ey do not have an integrated sense of self across context or across time or in relation to a generalised social other.With a nested sense of self, diminished intensity and scope of aff ective experience (in both directly experienced and vicarious forms) they lack textured access to a personal, owned and integrated past.us they lack the kind of access to the past required for a motivationally compelling planning of the future.ey lack the emotional investment in the future that enables us to overcome the motivation to act opportunistically and myopically.ese individuals live strangely in time.ey have a fugitive sense of self and live nimbly among many pasts.ey present an elegant and coherent mask to the person they are addressing in the moment and generate possible futures without conviction.
Author: Doris McIlwain
Language: English
Subfield: Clinical Psychology
Field: Psychology
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W1605818104