Rob Kall: What are
some of the early examples? What do
young people, teens or children, do that is predictive or them turning into
sociopaths?
Donald Black: Well,
getting into trouble with their parents and teachers, lying frequently,
fighting in the schoolyard, vandalizing a local cemetery, hurting animals or
small children, engaging in early sex acts that others aren't. All of these
things, the behaviors escalating over time to fit their age and
opportunity. So it's people that /
Rob Kall:
(interjecting) Would cruelty or bullying be an indication?
Donald Black: Oh
absolutely. Yeah. Bullying others, that's an anti-social
act. A lot of these bullies we read
about in the papers, they're probably, if they're old enough, we'd probably
call them an anti-social personality, or sociopath. If they're younger, we'd probably use the
term "Conduct Disorder."
Rob Kall: OK.
What about this fascination in America with guns? We've got three or four million members of
the NRA. That's not even half of the
number of the sociopaths in the country.
I'm fine with somebody who want to go out and hunt and bag a deer or a
squirrel or something like that, but is there a level, an extremity, a degree
where gun ownership becomes an obsession that could verge on sociopathic ?
Donald Black: I'm not
sure I even want to go there, because there's no association between gun
ownership and sociopathy as far as I know.
Guns, unfortunately, are considered as American as apple pie anymore,
and if the NRA has it's way even more guns would be out there. What we do know is, if homes where guns are
kept, you're more likely to see accidental shootings, murders, and suicides in
those homes than if the guns were not present.
And that's the elephant in the room that people aren't willing to talk
about: that if guns are present, you're more likely to have these bad events
occur than if the guns are not present.
And whether you lock them up or not almost doesn't seem to make any
difference; if they're in the home, they can be used for these bad things.
Rob Kall: Final
question: How do we deal with people who are anti-social personalities or
sociopaths if we encounter them, if we work with them?
Donald Black: Well, if
you know that they're anti-social -- (laughs) one of the things that I say
almost in jest in the book but actually has some practical application is: keep
a distance from these people, because they can only cause you grief. Now as a doctor, I interact regularly with
people who are anti-social. Much of my
work is on an inpatient unit. I see
these people with some regularity. I
tell our residents in training that we don't have much to offer them on an
inpatient basis, and we shouldn't keep them around very long. The longer you keep them on an inpatient
unit, the more disruptive they can become in terms of requesting special
privileges or requesting new medications, and they can become very
disruptive. But in your personal life,
if you know a relative has one of thees disorders, or maybe your husband, or a
son -
Rob Kall: Co-worker?
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