Now for something completely… different

7 thoughts on “Now for something completely… different”

1. That was disturbing. The little red-haired girl looks positively evil.

2. It is disturbing. I found it on Dis Magazine, then tracked it down on YouTube.

   As I look out over a sea of young faces, I wonder, how many of these dear little tykes will grow up to be psychopaths, how many sociopaths, how many junkies, whores, tramps and thieves?

   Sometimes I’m not very pleased with God, but he never tells me what he thinks. He’s always so busy.

3. Did you read the NYT magazine story this past Sunday on psychopathic children? That’s what this reminds me of. That and the movie Bad Seed.

4. No, CJ, I didn’t read that. I didn’t know about it until just now. I’m curious now as to at what age anyone can determine that a child is a psychopath. I worked on a murder case about ten years ago wherein one of the killers was an 18-year-old heroin addict who had stabbed his kindergarten teacher with a pencil when he was five. Was he a psychopath at age five? His uncle was getting him high on marijuana when he was five. Was uncle a psychopath, too? Did uncle manufacture a psychopath? The 18-YO was a contract killer. My firm’s client was the guy who had allegedly ordered the hit. Was he a psychopath, or just a sociopath? It didn’t make any difference. The dead stayed dead.

5. The article is worth reading for all the reasons you allude to. It is called, “When is a Problem child truly dangerous?” written by Jennifer Kahn. Clinical analysis calls them callous/unemotional. The attempt to diagnose and treat them a new branch of psychiatry.

6. I haven’t read the article yet, but I did see an interesting documentary on some of the physiological abnormalities present in sociopaths, all of which can be seen from a young age. I remember there was something about the way a sociopath’s heart rate stays very low and doesn’t respond normally to stimulation, and perhaps because of this they begin to seek stimuli almost as a fundamental need. They don’t feel fear, which humans apparently crave. Some people with sociopathic traits become thrill-seekers, some become murderers. That part is probably due to environment.

   This stuff fascinates me.

7. When I worked as a criminal defense paralegal, Averil, I got to meet a fair number of sociopaths and even a few psychopaths (though there was usually a strong steel barricade between me and the psychopaths). I always wondered what made them the way they were, and what hope there might be for them.

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