PSYCHOPATHIC BEHAVIOR AS PERPETUAL GAMING - A SYNTHESIS OF FORENSIC ACCOUNTS

Many street crimes suggest only vague economic motives and are perform ed so haphazardly as to invite detection and/or retribution. The psych opathic construct has been applied to forsenic subjects who have commi tted apparently self-defeating acts; resulting clinical descriptions a re highly consistent. Ethnographic prison accounts are thematically si milar as well. From these observations it appears that the following t hree statements can be made. First, antisocial acts, whether criminal or not, can be considered as moves in a series of games of varying len gths. While these games are played too idiosyncratically to be interpr eted by formal game theory, the moves have been considered earlier and probably reflect opportunism, not mere impulsivity. Second, having ex perienced condemnations for the antisocial portions of their lives, fo rensic subjects appear to have responded by constructing grandiose sel ves whose maintenance requires profound public respect. Otherwise, the re is the zero state, a Yochelson and Samenow construct for an accurat e self-appraisal that is quite discomforting for the actor. Third, ant isocial careers need not necesarily be attributed to socioeconomic or familial victimization. Amoral childhood gaming is a commonplace and i s likely to persist if it is not systematically counteracted.