The Raising-a-Psychopath Blog

A reader asked me to comment on the blog “Raising a Psychopath” ( http://raising-a-psychopath.blogspot.com/). For those who haven’t seen it, this blog appears to be by the adoptive father of a child who was adopted at age 6 after many experiences of neglect, abuse, and change of caregiver, and who at age 11 is regarded with fear and anger by the parents and has been in residential treatment for periods of time. The blogger, whom I’ll call FRP (for Father Raising a Psychopath), as his blog title suggests, considers the child to be psychopathic as well as to have Reactive Attachment Disorder. Many of the posts present arguments that FRP has put forward to support his view of the child, “Lucas”.

I have some general comments about the material contained in this blog, but I need to emphasize that I have no reliable information about “Lucas’ or his parents. I have no way of knowing whether the statements on “Raising a Psychopath” are true, or whether there is omitted material that would put a different spin on the statements that are made. Even if I were sure about the veracity and completeness of the blog, I would not want either to praise or to criticize the actions of the parents, therapists, teachers, social workers, etc. It’s too easy to talk a game that you don’t have to walk, as we can see from many of the comments, both positive and negative, on FRP’s statements.

That said, here are some thoughts I had while reading “Raising a Psychopath”.

1. The psychopath thing:
It appears that from the beginning of the blog, FRP identified “Lucas”, who was then about 9, as a psychopath-- he chose this title for the blog, and in one of his posts predicted a timeline of more and more serious misbehavior. Whether or not this was a self-fulfilling prophesy is difficult to say with the information we have. We can ask, however, why FRP was so quick and so sure about this diagnosis. What are the advantages of labeling a boy “psychopath” rather than staying with more ordinary childhood problems like Conduct Disorder or Oppositional and Defiant Disorder? The advantages would seem to be the possibility of declaring the child beyond help and incapable of living in the family home, removing any responsibility the adoptive parents might have, as well as the possibility of focusing all blame or negative evaluation on the child himself.

Many of FRP’s posts describe his thoughts about the evaluation of “Lucas” with Robert Hare’s PCL-YV (Psychopathy Check List-- Youth Version). FRP discusses each of the check list items in detail, and, not surprisingly, concludes that he has a genuine psychopath on his hands. But although he mentions the limitations of the PCL-YV briefly, he evidently has not taken them seriously.

The first limitation is that the check list is not intended for the use of parents. It is to be given by an experienced clinician who can compare an adolescent to many other adolescents seen previously, and who will ideally use an objective approach in which both positive and negative evidence is carefully assembled and combined before a decision is made. No parent can be genuinely objective about their own child-- indeed, if they were, it would be a cause for concern. In addition, FRP already decided that “Lucas” was a psychopath some time ago, so it would be surprising if he did not seek evidence to confirm this belief.

The second limitation of the PCL-YV is that it has been standardized on and is intended to be used with adolescents from 12 to 18 years old. “Lucas” was 11 or less at the time of FRP’s assessment efforts. Yes, of course, 11 is almost 12, but it is not 12-- and at a period when the rapid changes of puberty begin, a few months may make enormous differences in an individual’s abilities and motivations. FRP judges “Lucas” to have unstable personal relationships based on the adoptive mother’s report that “girlfriends” “break up” with him quickly-- at 11 years of age, a period when the more advanced reproductive maturity of girls makes relations between boys and girls labile to say the least.

On this “psychopath” thing, by the way, there are several general points to be made. One is that there are not very many psychopaths, so the validation of a brief check list is a difficult matter. Individual differences in a small group make it hard to establish a general set of criteria. In addition, there seems to be a common confusion between individuals who are sadists and take pleasure, often sexual, in the pain of others, and the psychopath or sociopath who does not care about causing pain, but does so only when it’s convenient--- for example, if a bystander to a robbery might identify the perpetrator and therefore “must” be killed. Finally, the frequent identification of violent offenders with individuals who are sensation-seekers is paradoxical; a reader’s comment on “Raising a Psychopath” says that a psychopath lacks empathy, but enjoys the sensation when another person is hurt, which for me raises the question, if he has no empathy, how does he enjoy the other person’s distress?

Reactive Attachment Disorder
Early in the blog’s appearance, a reader advised FRP that “Lucas” must have Reactive Attachment Disorder because his behavior was problematic and he had a history of separation, neglect, and abuse. FRP immediately fell for the view of Walter Buenning and others, that this disorder can be diagnosed easily by use of a check list (conveniently on line), and that its symptoms include failure to make eye contact, “crazy lying”, preoccupation with blood and gore, etc., etc., all of which, untreated, will culminate in serial killing by boys and prostitution by girls (but apparently not the other way around).

This check list is neither standardized for age differences nor validated against any other method of diagnosing Reactive Attachment Disorder. Examination of the criteria for Reactive Attachment Disorder in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of the American Psychiatric Association shows no overlap between the established criteria and the check list used by Buenning and others.

FRP’s discussion of “Lucas’s” history suggests that while “Lucas” may be quite insecure after his confused and painful beginnings, he is not without attachment or the capacity for attachment. For example, when FRP and his wife had their first meeting with “Lucas”, while he was in a foster home, they noticed that he was not eager to socialize with them. When they took him back to the foster home, they felt he was much happier to be with the foster parents than with them (FRP and wife), and commented that the foster parents were more like grandparents-- while FRP did not explain this statement, I would guess that it meant affectionate and easy-going. “Lucas” showed a preference for those foster parents and appeared more comfortable with them than when away from them; in other words, he exhibited emotional attachment which he had developed over some months in a nurturing foster home. Whatever his difficulties, they are not due to an inability to develop a positive relationship with a caregiver.

Plain old ignorance
FRP’s description of their decision to adopt “Lucas”, and of their feelings as the adoption date approached, suggests to me that these parents share with many others a serious lack of understanding of early development and of the role of relationships in children’s lives. Like many participants in the Zero-to-Three/Civitas Benchmark Study, FRP and Mrs.FRP seem to have been especially ignorant about emotional development. I say this because, like all too many adoptive parents, they felt they could save themselves a lot of trouble--- diapers, night feedings, and all that-- by staying out of the picture until a child was 5 or 6 years old. Then, they thought, they would walk in and adopt, and that adopted child would be EXACTLY like their friends’ children who had been loved and cared for from birth to age 6. FRP and Mrs. FRP could do everything they liked to do, just as they did before, but there would be living in their house an attractive, sociable, charming, and self-reliant child who would play with them when they felt like it.

I’m sorry, but this was idiotic. It was not even realistic from the viewpoint of thinking what their friends’ children are actually like.

FRP’s comments on the blog also suggest that he and his wife did not think it was a problem to bring into their home a child whom they did not actively want or feel sure about. They seem to have been naïve about their own emotions, not to speak about the impact on the child of having his lot cast with caregivers who were unclear about what they were doing. And with respect to this, I must also point out the ignorance or indifference shown by caseworkers who did not pursue this couple’s hesitation and make sure all was clear before proceeding. Was it not understood that the couple did not know important things about early development? Or, is it possible that the caseworkers didn’t know those things either?

Well. That’s about enough for now. Just let me repeat (to myself as well as to readers) that for all I know, nothing on “Raising a Psychopath” is true, or just as likely, it’s true but so are a lot of other things.