Still, I don’t know what it says about the media that the source providing the most frequent and insightful coverage about psychopathy and sociopathy may be a satirical newspaper, The Onion.

Recently, I’ve seen several examples of The Onion’s use of humor to shine a light on this still too-often-overlooked topic.

Back in October, during the United States’ presidential debate season, The Onion featured a story entitled “Nation Tunes In To See Which Sociopath More Likable This Time.” It based its satire on the premise that voters take it as a given that both of the major party presidential candidates – and, indeed, all successful politicians – are sociopaths and simply use the debates to try to decide which candidate is better at pretending to have a conscience. I shared this story and put it into the context of ponerology in a piece of my own called “Ponerology Hits the Onion.”

Then, I came across another Onion piece – this one actually published in 2009 – called “New Study Reveals Most Children Unrepentant Sociopaths.” The story surveys many actually normal characteristics and behaviors of children and, by comparing them to those on the Hare Psychopathy Checklist, manages to portray healthy kids as antisocial monsters. I found the article brilliant on several levels.

Almost all children who exhibit the traits and actions mentioned are simply reflecting appropriate developmental milestones. But, there are those in our culture who really do think of children, either consciously or unconsciously, for various reasons, the way the article portrays them. Such a view of children may both stem from and underlie some of the unhealthy parenting styles that, in our society, are accepted as worthwhile or even necessary to bring children into line. The article uses satire to bring this perspective to light more effectively than a child psychologist giving a lecture could probably ever do.

The article also, by focusing humorously on children rather than seriously on adults, lowers people’s defenses enough to make them aware that sociopathy and the Hare Psychopathy Checklist really do exist.

At the same time, there may be a small percentage of children who are psychopaths or sociopaths. This is a very controversial and deeply important topic and debate rages over whether such children really do exist and whether we should be screening children for such conditions. This is discussed at some length in this post from a couple months ago and in books like Savage Spawn: Reflections on Violent Children. The Onion article may provoke people to think about child psychopathy and its implications.

The relevance of this particular Onion article was brought home to me recently when I came across a piece by blogger Lyz Lenz entitled “Toddlers Are the Real Psychos,” in which she wonders whether her two-year-old daughter might be a psychopath. She even answered the questions on the Levenson Self-Report Psychopathy Scale, Hare Psychopathy Checklist and Lynam’s Childhood Psychopathy Scale using her daughter’s traits and behaviors as a guide, almost exactly as was facetiously done in the Onion article with the PCL. I later showed Lenz the Onion article, which she had not seen before.

Well, yesterday, The Onion did it yet again. And, this time, they’ve returned to the political aspect of ponerology. Picking up where they left off when considering sociopathy in the presidential debates, they now consider its presence in the legislative branch.

The video is called “Authorities On Alert As Hundreds Of Crazed Sociopaths Enter Congressional Chambers.” As you might guess, the “crazed sociopaths” in question are the Members of Congress themselves, who are also described as “manipulative,” “extremely dangerous,” and “lunatics, many of whom are believed to suffer from severe personality disorders.”

I hope the folks at The Onion have indeed come to such an understanding. I eagerly want to see more public education about these topics occur. And the ingenious people at that satirical newspaper are great ones to have contributing to that cause.

Apparently someone agrees.

Months ago, I was reading an article on CNN.com called “Grants Help Abused Women Start Over” by Danielle Berger. The article tells the story of Johanna Crawford, who runs a nonprofit called Web of Benefit that provides “Self-Sufficiency Grants” averaging $500 to female domestic violence survivors in Boston and Chicago to help them with the bare necessities of re-starting their lives. The “web” in the name emerges from a novel part of the program whereby, as part of the terms of their grant, recipients must “pay it forward” by performing three good works to help other survivors like themselves.

What caught my attention was a discussion that broke out in the comments section. It centered around whether the signs of abusive relationships should be taught in schools. And in the midst of this, one comment in particular jumped out at me so strongly that I immediately took a screenshot:

It says:

All high-schoolers should complete a course in Cluster B personality disorders and how to recognize common traits of “would be” abusers.

Everyone can sit here and make snide remarks.  The REALITY is that abusers come from ALL income and education levels, as do the VICTIMS.

Although, as pointed out in a previous post, ponerology must account for a range of conditions in addition to the Cluster B personality disorders – including psychopathy and various psychotic conditions, as well as for the hijacking of normal people by the pathological – I found the comment insightful.

Should kids be taught about these issues in school? Some will say no because they oppose the school system entirely, but that is a separate debate. As long as kids are in school, I think that they should learn about these subjects. Kids take health classes in school and learn about everything from nutrition to safe sex, as their ages merit. Understanding the signs of pathological conditions associated with manipulation, violence or abuse is clearly important in maintaining one’s health, certainly mentally and emotionally and, at times, physically, as well. And, unfortunately, kids in our culture are guaranteed to run across people with these conditions and institutions influenced by them regularly (or more likely already have.)

Of course, teaching kids about topics like mental illness, manipulation, violence and abuse will be quite a bit more controversial than teaching them about nutrition. There are people, sometimes very close at hand at school or at home, who might feel threatened by such revelations. But that should not stop us from making the effort to provide kids with the information they need to optimally protect themselves.

The whole discussion also brought to mind a program I heard about a while back that sounded fantastic. It’s called radKIDS and provides “Personal Empowerment Safety Education,” teaching children about realistic, practical ways to stay safe, resist abduction and abuse and even recognize tricks that strangers may use to try to manipulate them. This program might be as close as I’ve seen to a pragmatic, age-appropriate course preparing children for encounters with at least some manifestations of “evil.”

So should kids be taught about ponerology in their educational curricula? What do you think? Let us know in the comments section below.

It reads “Kids Can Be Psychopathic, Too.”

The article focuses heavily on – and introduced me to – the work of Adrian Raine, a professor of criminology, psychiatry and psychology on the faculty of the University of Pennsylvania’s Jerry Lee Center of Criminology.

Raine is the author of the textbook The Psychopathology of Crime: Criminal Behavior as a Clinical Disorder. And, as described in the article, he holds two highly controversial and enormously challenging beliefs:

• He believes that we will soon be able to use medical tests to determine whether a child is predisposed to grow up to be a psychopath.
• And he also believes that, once we are able to do that, we should screen children for traits linked to psychopathy.

The Philly Mag article itself is well worth the read, as it offers a fascinating look at:

• A brief historical overview of criminology and the nature vs. nature debate
• Structural and functional differences in the brains of psychopaths as opposed to those of non-psychopaths
• How psychopaths are responsible for crime at levels vastly disproportionate to their numbers
• What separates successful from unsuccessful psychopaths
• Genes influencing brain structure that are associated with antisocial and aggressive behavior
• Raine’s research showing certain differences among young children, which he believes are innate and biologically-based, that help predict which ones will exhibit future aggression and criminality
• Why, when it comes to the “chicken or egg” question regarding biological differences and psychopathy, Raine falls on the “biology as cause” side of the debate
• Why many resist biological explanations of “bad” behavior
• Interventions that might help children predisposed to criminal behavior
• Responses from others to Raine’s suggestion that we screen children for psychopathy-linked traits

I highly recommend taking the time to check it out.

But I bring up that article here in order to preface a new and exciting development regarding Adrian Raine that has come to my attention.

One other phenomenon that Hingston’s piece touches on is the recent explosion of media – including films (such as We Need to Talk About Kevin) and television shows (such as Dexter) – dealing with the subject of psychopathy. The article credits Raine’s investigations into the brains of criminals – neurocriminology research – for providing the platform for this explosion. If attributing this credit to Raine is appropriate then it is only fitting that his work will now serve as the basis for a television show in an even more direct manner.

Raine has a new book schedule for release on April 30, 2013 entitled The Anatomy of Violence: The Biological Roots of Crime.

According to TV Guide, the highly successful producers of the show Homeland, Howard Gordon and Alex Gansa, sold a show based on that book to CBS and will write and executive produce a pilot episode.

Deadline.com reports that a third Homeland producer, Alex Cary, has also joined the team.

Another Deadline.com article reports that the pilot will be directed by Mark Pellington (perhaps best known for his work on the powerful video for the Pearl Jam song “Jeremy”) and that David Harewood, who appears in the cast of Homeland (and whose brief but theatrical appearance as the Prince of Morocco in Michael Radford’s film version of The Merchant of Venice I found memorably amusing), is the first actor cast for it. It describes the show as featuring “Raines, a criminal psychologist with an expertise in sociopaths”

It should be very interesting to see how the pilot is received and if the show can go on to further promote Adrian Raine’s deeply important work and provide even more public awareness and education regarding research into the biological roots of aggression and harm and other ponerologic themes.