WITHOUT CONSCIENCE OR WITHOUT ACTIVE CONSCIENCE - THE ETIOLOGY OF PSYCHOPATHY REVISITED

Despite an impressive body of research spanning seven decades, the cau ses of psychopathy and psychopathic violence remain enigmatic for ment al health professionals and society as a whole. A keystone of the diso rder is the absence of normal human emotional experience. In recent ye ars, a predominant view has been that a genetic predisposition is esse ntial to its formation while environmental factors determine the cours e of the disorder The present paper proposes an alternate, less common pathway to psychopathy in which environmental factors are critical (' 'secondary psychopathy''). Clinical and empirical evidence is reviewed supporting the hypothesis that negative childhood experiences can pro foundly affect emotional functioning in adulthood Specifically, certai n individuals who are severely traumatized or disillusioned by loved o nes might over time learn to ''turn off'' their emotions as an effecti ve coping mechanism, later emerging as psychopathic personality disord er It is argued that, with continued validation of the hypothesis, sec ondary psychopathy should be considered a distinctive dissociative dis order based on this detachment of emotion and cognition/behavior.