Essay On Psychopaths

As stated before, there are counter arguments towards the effectiveness of treatment for psychopaths. One belief as to why treatment does not work for psychopaths is stated by the authors of this study, Harris and Rice (Harris & Rice, 2006). “They believe that the reason for their findings is that psychopaths are fundamentally different from other offenders and that there is nothing ‘wrong’ with them in the manner of a deficit or impairment that therapy can ‘fix’. Instead, they exhibit an evolutionary viable life strategy that involves lying, cheating, and manipulating others.” (Harris & Rice, 2006) Also, many agree that no clinical intervention will ever be effective because psychopaths are qualitatively different from other offenders but do not have deficits or impairment in any standard clinical sense (Harris & Rice, 2006). They point out that psychopaths tend to show less clinical improvement, they are less motivated in trying to change their behaviors and they have a higher attrition rate (Greenwood, Ogloff, & Wong, 1990). Another argument is that there is some evidence that traditional group therapy makes psychopaths worse. Group therapy is extremely common in many prisons. However it is extremely important and possible for prison officials to know how to distinguish non-psychopaths from psychopaths so they can assess …show more content…
Therefore, many psychopaths cannot even begin to be treated because the system is preventing them to try so one cannot say treatment does not work if it is not even attempted. They do not have the evidence to conclude that high-scoring psychopaths have a negative response to treatment (D’Silva, Duggan, & McCarthy,