Essay On Psychopathy

Although some people are certain that psychopathy is a disorder that can be treated with drugs that alter brain functioning, it seems very unlikely that treatment will work. Psychopathy involves a wide variety of symptoms with seemingly little in common other than their moral and social unreliability. Some would argue that psychopathy is untreatable because it is not a disorder, rather it is an evolved strategy. This means that psychopathy might have been adaptive in an ancestral environment or is currently adaptive in an evolutionary sense (Maibom, 2014). If it is in fact an adaptive strategy, psychopathy becomes that much more difficult to treat, as it cannot be understood as a disorder that is a deviation from the norm (Boorse, 1977). On the other hand, if psychopathy is viewed as a personality disorder, it is still considered resistant to treatment. Cluster B personality disorders for example, require moral commitment for treatment to work, which is something that psychopaths lack (Malbom, 2014). Maibom (2014) argues that it is possible to change one’s moral outlook – if we can change a psychopath’s moral outlook then perhaps pharmacological treatments will help treat psychopathy. The problem with this theory is that lack of morals is a key characteristic of the disorder, making the theory far fetched.
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These individuals have no regard for others’ feelings or what people think of them, which makes it easy to believe that they do no care for getting treatment in the first place. Additionally, psychopaths do not respond to punishment the way that normal people do, so treatment is a challenge. Perhaps with more research in the area of psychopathy, something can be done in the form of treatment. As of now, however, treatment does not seem to be successful due to the manipulative and unemotional nature of the