What Makes A Psychopath?

In his book, The Psychopath Inside: A Neuroscientist’s Personal Journey Into the Dark Side of the Brain, James Fallon writes about how his search in learning about the minds of a psychopath led him to discover that he himself fits the profile of one. In his memoir, Fallon makes a connection that the patterns from his brain scan are similar to those patterns in the brain of serial killers. In one of the chapters of the book, Fallon talks about his childhood up to his days in graduate school. As a kid, Fallon describe himself as a person who was “…cheerful, insightful, likeable, friendly, prankster…”(37). During college, people close to him began to notice that his personality began to change, even a priest began referring to him as evil (64). What I thought was interesting after reading about Fallon’s upbringing in this chapter was how normal he would have appeared to other people who weren’t close to him. Fallon appeared to live a normal life; he engaged in sports, had a girlfriend, and did not distance himself from society.

            Fallon talks about his encounters with violence during his childhood. He remembers when he used to work in his father and uncle’s pharmacy and he started building a love for explosive chemicals. He started to make “…fireworks and then graduated, with the help of a particularly daring friend to making larger and larger pipe bombs…”(41). Fallon mentioned how he would hang out with friends who were destructive and ill-behaved. One of the activities they enjoyed was shooting animals which Fallon never took part in.

            What I am getting to is the debate of the influence of nature and nurture in one’s upbringing and how this particularly part of the chapter reminded me of it. James Fallon, throughout his time being raised, was put into situations or surrounded by people who were violent. Although I do believe nature, as in our genes, play a role in developing psychological problems, I also believe that the environment we are raised in and the people we meet are just as important. However, to what extent these external stimuli affect the person depends on the person themselves and how they process it.

            The ongoing debate between nature versus nurture was brought up again with the case of Sandy Hook shooter, Adam Lanza. The article talks about how Lanza played multiple shooting games, one even called School Shooting. The article also mentioned how Lanza’s mother took him to the shooting range to learn how to use guns. Both Lanza and his mother took gun safety courses as well. We don’t know for sure if these factors played a role in Lanza performing such a heartless act or if it was just a coincidence. But it is something we should take into account and definitely should not ignore. Despite brain scans showing he shared similarities with brains of serial killers, Fallon turned out to live a normal life, having a family and keeping a stable job. The environment a person is raised in can influential to his/her psychological development or it can have little to no effect. It varies on the stability of the person and how the person processes these situations.

References:

Pilkington, Ed. "Sandy Hook Report – Shooter Adam Lanza Was Obsessed with Mass Murder." Theguardian. 25 Nov. 2013. Web. 27 Feb. 2015. <http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/nov/25/sandy-hook-shooter-adam-lanza-report>.

Fallon, James H. "Ch.2 Evil Brewing." The Psychopath Inside: A Neuroscientist's Personal Journey into the Dark Side of the Brain. New York: Current, 2013. Print.