# What to do with psychopaths?
**URL:** https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-to-do-with-psychopaths/358373
**Category:** Great Debates
**Created:** [May 26, 2006, 9:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-to-do-with-psychopaths/358373 "2006-05-26T21:17:28Z")
**Posts on this page:** 20
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@MGorgon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MGorgon)
#### Post date: [May 26, 2006, 9:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-to-do-with-psychopaths/358373/1 "2006-05-26T21:17:28Z")
A psychopath is a person literally without empathy, guilt, and no comprehension of consequence. They’re usually smart, but it isn’t in all of them.
Now since there is no cure for this horrible condition, and is not learned, but retained since birth, what would you do with one? Like if you had a child who wet the bed far too long, was a pyromaniac, and who tortured animals for fun. If there were a way to 100% prove without a shred of doubt that a person was a psychopath, what would we do with these people as a society?
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### Author:  [@Marley23](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Marley23)
#### Post date: [May 26, 2006, 9:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-to-do-with-psychopaths/358373/2 "2006-05-26T21:23:52Z")
As far as diagnosis goes, I think the most right and realistic thing to do is allow people to get treatment when they’re diagnosed, or perhaps force them to get treatment after they have proved that they are dangerous. But I’m not totally sure what you’re asking. Are you saying that, if we could pinpoint every person with those illnessess, that we should consider jailing or institutionalizing them before they are able to cause any problems?
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### Author:  [@Happy\_Clam](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Happy_Clam)
#### Post date: [May 26, 2006, 9:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-to-do-with-psychopaths/358373/3 "2006-05-26T21:27:38Z")
Slippery slope, there- after all, something like 98% of violent crimes (and way more than 50% of all crimes) are committed by males aged 18-30. Should we introduce compulsory national service during that period and for that sex, to astronomically cut the crime rate?
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### Author:  [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)
#### Post date: [May 26, 2006, 9:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-to-do-with-psychopaths/358373/4 "2006-05-26T21:31:49Z")
. . . ear-lye in the moooorrrrrninnng!
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### Author:  [@Happy\_Clam](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Happy_Clam)
#### Post date: [May 26, 2006, 9:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-to-do-with-psychopaths/358373/5 "2006-05-26T21:42:19Z")
> [@](#):
>
> . . . ear-lye in the moooorrrrrninnng!
Er…what?
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### Author:  [@Dunderman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dunderman)
#### Post date: [May 26, 2006, 9:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-to-do-with-psychopaths/358373/6 "2006-05-26T21:44:12Z")
> [@MGorgon](#):
>
> A psychopath is a person literally without empathy, guilt, and no comprehension of consequence. They’re usually smart, but it isn’t in all of them.
Cite that psychopaths are smarter than the general population? I’ve never heard that they don’t have a normal spread of intelligence.
> [@](#):
>
> Now since there is no cure for this horrible condition, and is not learned, but retained since birth, what would you do with one?
Put in a mental hospital for study, to help us catch others.
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### Author:  [@I\_Love\_Me\_Vol.I](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/I_Love_Me_Vol.I)
#### Post date: [May 26, 2006, 10:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-to-do-with-psychopaths/358373/7 "2006-05-26T22:01:26Z")
I believe it’s important to view mental illness not in stark black or white terms, but rather as various degrees of symptons that lie along a continuum. Hence, it is usually not (never?) possible to determine that a person fits all of the absolutes mentioned in the OP.
A big part of the problem of “what to do with” psychopaths is that they are all different. One does not have “psychopathic disease” in the same way one has cancer-- (“Yup… what you got there is the ol’ Psychopathia. See right there on the x-ray?”) Psychopathy, as far as I know, is a judgement call–a title. It is a term agreed upon by\* most \* qualified professionals to describe a usually complex collection of symptoms. It is not (so far as we know) a virus or a tumor that can be definitively said to be present or absent in a person.
When you say a psychopath is “literally without empathy, guilt, and no comprehension of consequence” you are stating an absolute. I would submit that _no one_ is so far to one extreme of the psychopathy spectrum that s/he could be said to have _no_ empathy, guilt, or comprehension of consequence. Therefore the problem posed by the OP, like most real-world problems, requires a wide range of nuanced, and perhaps not always altogether satisfactory, solutions.
I would disagree with the notion that psychopathy is entirely “nature over nurture”; it is more complicated then that. I believe that all facets of a human personality have at least some amount of both natural _and_ nurtural factors accounting for them.
(This is all IMHHHHHHO)
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### Author:  [@even\_sven](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/even_sven)
#### Post date: [May 26, 2006, 10:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-to-do-with-psychopaths/358373/8 "2006-05-26T22:06:03Z")
> [@Priceguy](#):
>
> Cite that psychopaths are smarter than the general population? I’ve never heard that they don’t have a normal spread of intelligence.
>
> Put in a mental hospital for study, to help us catch others.
So we should jail a whole class of people, based on their intrinsic qualities?
Many, perhaps most, psychopaths recognize the wreaking havoc will make their lives miserable in the end. There are many psychopaths who have leadership jobs in business, law, the media, etc. Their very qualities sometimes make them well suited for highly competitive fields and I bet some of them have advanced the state of humanity, even if they wouldn’t go out of their way to do it.
It’s really a tough question- what do you do with humans that lack the qualtiies we consider “human”
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### Author:  [@Magmachill](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Magmachill)
#### Post date: [May 26, 2006, 10:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-to-do-with-psychopaths/358373/9 "2006-05-26T22:35:55Z")
Simple: make their parents eat them. Or maybe society can hold an annual Psychophage Dinner in which all of them are rounded up, cooked, and served to the pricks who think it’s their job to “sanitize” humanity.
Or maybe gas chambers disguised as showers…
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### Author:  [@Marley23](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Marley23)
#### Post date: [May 26, 2006, 10:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-to-do-with-psychopaths/358373/10 "2006-05-26T22:46:58Z")
> [@even sven](#):
>
> So we should jail a whole class of people, based on their intrinsic qualities?
Maybe I just look too hard for this stuff, but I thought it was a _Silence of the Lambs_ joke. Or perhaps that’s just what I’m hoping.
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### Author:  [@SkeptiJess](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SkeptiJess)
#### Post date: [May 26, 2006, 11:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-to-do-with-psychopaths/358373/11 "2006-05-26T23:01:16Z")
> [@Happy Clam](#):
>
> Er…what?
It was a joke from the old song, “What do you do with a drunken sailor?”
Has it been proven that no treatment works for psychopaths? At any rate, there’s nothing to ‘do’ with them – unless they actually commit a crime.
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### Author:  [@Dunderman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dunderman)
#### Post date: [May 26, 2006, 11:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-to-do-with-psychopaths/358373/12 "2006-05-26T23:24:24Z")
> [@even sven](#):
>
> So we should jail a whole class of people, based on their intrinsic qualities?
When their intrinsic qualities include “torturing animals for fun” and a total lack of guilt, empathy and comprehension of consequence, yeah.
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### Author:  [@Happy\_Clam](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Happy_Clam)
#### Post date: [May 26, 2006, 11:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-to-do-with-psychopaths/358373/13 "2006-05-26T23:30:41Z")
> [@](#):
>
> When their intrinsic qualities include “torturing animals for fun” and a total lack of guilt, empathy and comprehension of consequence, yeah
Uh, I think he meant intrinsic qualities, as in those that the person does not exercise by will but is granted without his consent (e.g. a lack of guilt or empathy, a prediliction for torturing animals for fun). As an individual I’m fine with someone possessing those inclinations (especially if they are possessed from birth or early development) as long as they don’t act on them. If we are willing to imprison someone for their intrinsic mental attitudes, we really are a short step from sending people to concentration camps based on the shape of their skulls (especially when dealing with such an uncertain science as pyschology, and such a tricky term as “pyschopathy”).
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### Author:  [@Dunderman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dunderman)
#### Post date: [May 26, 2006, 11:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-to-do-with-psychopaths/358373/14 "2006-05-26T23:37:15Z")
> [@Happy Clam](#):
>
> Uh, I think he meant intrinsic qualities, as in those that the person does not exercise by will but is granted without his consent (e.g. a lack of guilt or empathy, a prediliction for torturing animals for fun). As an individual I’m fine with someone possessing those inclinations (especially if they are possessed from birth or early development) as long as they don’t act on them. If we are willing to imprison someone for their intrinsic mental attitudes, we really are a short step from sending people to concentration camps based on the shape of their skulls (especially when dealing with such an uncertain science as pyschology, and such a tricky term as “pyschopathy”).
**MGorgon** postulated a 100% certain method that proved without a shred of a doubt that a person was a psychopath, and defined a psychopath as a person without empathy, guilt or comprehension of consequence. The person in question also tortured animals for fun, so the point of not acting on the inclinations is already passed. In that case I say yes, into a mental hospital for study.
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### Author:  [@even\_sven](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/even_sven)
#### Post date: [May 27, 2006, 12:05am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-to-do-with-psychopaths/358373/15 "2006-05-27T00:05:45Z")
> [@Priceguy](#):
>
> **MGorgon** postulated a 100% certain method that proved without a shred of a doubt that a person was a psychopath, and defined a psychopath as a person without empathy, guilt or comprehension of consequence. The person in question also tortured animals for fun, so the point of not acting on the inclinations is already passed. In that case I say yes, into a mental hospital for study.
Well, plenty of people shoot animals for fun.
I don’t like psychopaths as much as the next guy. I’m pretty sure I had a close friendship with one once, and that really caused a lot of problems in my life and probably put me in danger. But I still can’t see jailing someone for how they were born- for the composition of their braIn. It just doesn’t seem right to me- especially when, as mentioned, we really just don’t know a heck of a lot about any of this stuff.
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### Author:  [@Dunderman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dunderman)
#### Post date: [May 27, 2006, 12:22am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-to-do-with-psychopaths/358373/16 "2006-05-27T00:22:32Z")
> [@even sven](#):
>
> But I still can’t see jailing someone for how they were born- for the composition of their braIn. It just doesn’t seem right to me- especially when, as mentioned, we really just don’t know a heck of a lot about any of this stuff.
You’re talking about reality, while this thread is about what happens under the circumstances outlined by **MGorgon**.
When the composition of someone’s brain leads them to become a danger to others, something needs to be done. Simple as that. The best thing I can think of is psychiatric care and study.
We jail people for the composition of their brain, as expressed by their actions, all the time.
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### Author:  [@Guinastasia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Guinastasia)
#### Post date: [May 27, 2006, 12:23am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-to-do-with-psychopaths/358373/17 "2006-05-27T00:23:51Z")
> [@Priceguy](#):
>
> We jail people for the composition of their brain, as expressed by their actions, all the time.
But considering that torturing animals and/or people is already against the law, we’d be locking them up even if they weren’t psychopaths.
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### Author:  [@Ike\_Witt](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ike_Witt)
#### Post date: [May 27, 2006, 12:26am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-to-do-with-psychopaths/358373/18 "2006-05-27T00:26:09Z")
What is worse, a psychopath or a sociopath?
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### Author:  [@Dunderman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dunderman)
#### Post date: [May 27, 2006, 12:27am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-to-do-with-psychopaths/358373/19 "2006-05-27T00:27:03Z")
> [@Guinastasia](#):
>
> But considering that torturing animals and/or people is already against the law, we’d be locking them up even if they weren’t psychopaths.
Not if they’re children, as in this case.
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### Author:  [@Guinastasia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Guinastasia)
#### Post date: [May 27, 2006, 12:27am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-to-do-with-psychopaths/358373/20 "2006-05-27T00:27:54Z")
> [@adam yax](#):
>
> What is worse, a psychopath or a sociopath?
I THINK the terms are interchangeable, but I could be wrong.
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