>On Mon, 28 Jan 2008 00:01:36 -0800, "Stupidman Hughes the Troll"
><BillHughes@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote:
Beyond therapy: Some evil can't be cured
Norman Doidge
National Post
What, other than our wish that it be otherwise, makes us think that
every human vice is treatable by some form of psychotherapy?
That this wish is not just naive, but, at times, harmful is
illustrated by a recent Canadian study on group treatment for 238 ***
offenders (rapists, ***** offenders) from Warkworth penitentiary in
Ontario. These prisoners included some well-do***ented psychopaths.
All were taught to "empathize" with victims, and understand their
"offence cycle" as part of treatment. After their release, it was
found that those who had scored highest in terms of "good treatment
behaviour" and who had the highest "empathy" scores were the more
likely to reoffend on release into the community. Hannibal Lecter
Charm School teaches good manners, but not morals.
The im****tant study by Seto and Barbaree replicated -- unintentionally
-- a 1992 Canadian study that found treated psychopaths reoffend more
than psychopaths who are not treated. A larger study, just completed
in Britain, shows the same. It may be that all psychopaths learn, in
our new ersatz empathy institutes, is how to manipulate better by
appearing more caring. But should we be surprised at the duplicity,
since such treatments are generally mandated? And are such mandated
treatments really psychotherapy?
Just because a self-described "patient" is in a room with a
self-described "therapist" doesn't mean psychotherapy is going on.
Freud argued psychopaths are untreatable in psychotherapy precisely
because having a conscience is a prerequisite for being able to use
psychotherapy. It is the conscience, and the related capacity for
concern for others, that drives the serious scrutiny of one's motives,
which underlie one's behaviour. Yet psychopaths lack conscience and
concern by definition.
But these new psychopath-friendly treatments focus only superficially
on motives or matters of good faith by tracking attendance and overt
co-operativeness. Mostly they focus on impulse control and teaching
new behaviours and mindsets. Past naive, they hope that because a
psychopath can appear remorseful, or change his behaviour at any given
moment, his overall mindset or deeper intentions will follow suit.
Three cheers for us: We have invented treatments based on theories
that are less complex than the impoverished minds of psychopaths.
Psychotherapy doesn't just require a good theory and an astute
clinician. It also requires a patient. The word patient comes from
Latin, and means "to suffer." A patient, by definition, is bothered by
something. Yet most treatments of prisoners originate not from the
prisoner's suffering, but are mandated by the justice system.
Corrections Canada knows many psychopaths will be released into the
community eventually, so it attempts to change them, even though any
psychotherapy for adults that has to be mandated is suspect.
The "treatment" re****ted on in the Canadian study lasted 300 sessions.
To their credit, the treaters didn't believe they could work their
miracles overnight. Yet, more and more, mandated treatments are
short-term: eight to 10 sessions. Most people can't quit smoking in
eight to 10 sessions, never mind do a Karla Homolka make over.
I refer here to the same Karla Homolka who expressed concern for her
boyfriend's happiness by helping him kill her sister and a number of
other young girls, and who is re****ted recently to have benefited from
a self-esteem course in prison. Such courses, which presume
self-esteem can be taught, generally involve telling a person she can
raise her esteem in her own eyes by interrupting their self-reproaches
or "negative tapes" in her head.
Applying these self-esteem techniques to psychopaths requires an
ability to get everything about the psychotherapeutic enterprise
backwards. Psychopaths don't need lessons in clearing their
consciences; if anything, it is they who ought to be teaching the rest
of mankind how to be remorseless.
But mushy-gushy therapy is not just confined to therapists. It is part
of a dangerous denial of the nature of psychopathy and evil that is
sweeping through our correctional services. A recent federal task
force on security, released on Nov. 2, advised getting rid of guards
with guns, unseemly razor-wire fences and intimidating towers around
prisons (National Post, Dec. 15). It even advised that inmates should
carry the keys to their own cells so they could make "responsible
choices." "Restorative justice" based on "a culture of respect" would
be practised.
So here is a respectful way of framing things. Psychopaths constitute
1% of the population, but are so talented they conduct 50% of all
crimes. Since it might be hurtful to say they are incurable, let's
just say they are beyond therapy.
That much said, surprising as it sounds, not all *** offenders are
psychopaths; some, who have been involved in *****, apparently have
low rates of reoffending. Some may benefit, at times, from long-term
intensive interventions and monitoring. But there is no empirical
evidence that *** offenders who are psychopaths benefit from
treatment.
The federal re****t is a miscarriage of justice, and a miscarriage of
mercy. It is based on a distortion of religious notions of
forgiveness, political notions of equality, a scientific zeal and an
unwillingness to make basic distinctions.
In ancient times, Aristotle made those distinctions, and developed a
hierarchy of virtue and vice. At the top of the ladder is the virtuous
person, who only aims toward good things; he is not "conflicted," as
we would say, because there is no war between virtue and vice in his
soul. Next, comes the continent person, who behaves well, but is
always a bit tense because he is struggling, albeit successfully, to
control his vices. Then comes the incontinent person, who knows what
is right, but who frequently slips up, failing in his struggle. At the
bottom of the hierarchy is the brute -- our psychopath. Like the
virtuous person, he, too, is not at war with himself, is not
"conflicted." Unlike the virtuous person, it is vice, and not virtue,
that rules. Aristotle thought there was something different in the
physical makeup of such people. Indeed, recent brain scan evidence
shows some psychopaths do have altered brain structure and
functioning. Our mistake (based on mindless extrapolations of our
notion of political equality) is to collapse all these distinctions
into the continent or incontinent categories. Indeed, we are as irked
by notions of the virtuous as we are of the vicious.
--
“A winner makes commitment. A loser makes promises.”
“The path of least resistance is the path of the loser.”
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