For the majority of you who have not read my "About me" page, I am a Psychiatric Social Worker, though I am now disabled by a serious progressive illness, which is why I have time to hang out on forums. There is certainly some debate about the part of this post that is just my opiniojn, and it's healthy, but I just wanted readers to know that I am not just pulling a rabbit out of a hat here. I have some background. In fact, I was planning to do my PhD thesis on this exact subject, but never got enough money saved to go that far in school.
The killing of animals in childhood is usually accompanied by at least one of the following: setting fires, and/or bed wetting. This is known as the homicidal trio, and is the mark of a budding psychopath. It almost always is well underway by age 15. There is no known effective treatment and no known prevention.
IMO, once this trio is noticed, the person should be removed from society. Harsh, but I don't believe in waiting until animals no longer provide enough stimulation, and the person, almost always male, graduates to humans. I also love animals and feel that killing them is more than enough grounds for taking action.
Very well done studies with twins and their families show a very strong genetic tendency in psychopathy, which is not the same as psychosis at all. It can skip generations, so parents should not automatically be blamed for bad parenting, which seems to be the current assumption most often made.
Brain studies show extremely high levels of the neurotransmitter serotonin in psychopaths. Without going into a long, boring explanation of how the parasympathetic nervous system works, this means they will require a great deal more stimulation to feel anything at all, compared to normals. (Kind of the opposite of the INFJ, who feels intense emotion with less stimuli than average). I don't think they can help this part of their problem. The brain's hardwiring is not their fault.
We can correct some software problems in the brain with therapy or drugs, and there is some preliminary evidence that sustained thought practices, like meditation, may be able to change neurotransmitter levels over time, but so far the research that I am aware of is just showing momentary change with each thought a person has.
BTW, similar hardwiring of the brain to be attracted to kids has been found and proven in pedophiles, so while they should be kept out of society permanently, IMO, since they are not curable, we need to stop blaming, as disgusting as their actions may be to us.
Then there is the anti-social personality disorder part of the equation of the type of murderer who starts out with animals. These types have no empathy and no conscience. They do have a moral code. It is very simple. What they want is good and what gets in the way of it is bad. You are not a being. You are a thing to them.
There is also no sense of proportion. If they have to break down a door to get to the safe to steal your money or they have to kill you to get through the door to steal your money, there is no difference at all between the two to a psychopath. An obstacle is an obstacle. It is all equal, and they will consider it to be your fault, if you were blocking the doorway.
So, in this particular type of murder only, I do not think they can help it, but that does not absolve them of responsibility. They should be removed from society permanently and as repayment of their debt to society, their next of kin should not be allowed to refuse scientists the right to study their brains after death, as Jeffrey Dahmer's father did, which I thought was incredibly selfish.
The state should have the right to study them. We need to study them, so we can learn how to help them, which should be possible as we learn more about manipulation of neurohormones. We also need to study them to help ourselves, because we are making more of them all the time, especially west of the coastal mountains along the pacific coast, where the rate of people qualifying for a diagnosis of anti-social personality disorder is 4 times higher than anywhere else in the U.S. While not all anti-socials will become psychopaths, a total lack of conscience is not something we want in a civilized society. Since our trends seem to come from the west coast now, that is very scary, at least to me.
Just my two cents. FWIW.
Pax,
klutzo
