The Anatomy of Psychopaths Mind

Are They Made or Born

“I choked her to death then cut

her in small pieces so I could take
the meat to my room, cook and
eat it. How sweet and tender her
little body roasted in the oven. It
took me 9 days to eat her entire
body”-Albert Fish
 Definition

Psychopath : a person having an egocentric and antisocial personality marked

by a lack of remorse for one's actions, an absence of empathy for others,

and often criminal tendencies –Webster dictionary

Diagnostic Criteria for Antisocial Personality Disorder-DSM5

1-Failure to Obey Law and Norms

2-Lying,Deception,Manipulation

3-Impulsive Behavior

4-Irritatibility and Aggression

5-Disregard for safety of others

6-Pattern of irresponsibility

7-Lack of remorse of actions (A.P.A-2013)

• Note : Clinically speaking, psychopathy is not listed in either the DSM-5 or the ICD-10

Instead, Antisocial Personality Disorder (APD), which is often used synonymously with psychopathy
 Predictors of Psychopathy

1-Genetic
2-Brain Structure 3-Environment
 Commonality Between The Psychopaths

Ed -Gein Jerry Brudos Richard Ramirez Henry Lee Lucas

David Berkowitz Wan ye Gacy Albert Fish Bobby Joe Long

 The Broken Brain of Phineas Gage-

1. Prefrontal Cortex

Function: Memory, thinking, learning, reasoning, problem-solving, emotions

consciousness and functions related to your senses, which include ethics and morality.

• Dr Harlow(1848)-No Longer Gage but a Pseudo Psychopath

• (Harvard School of Medicine)
 What does a Guilty Brain Look Like
Case1-Mr. Herbert Weinstein

• Limited capacity of Self Control

 Thurston High School Shootout
Case 2- of Kip Kinkel

• Killed his parents

• Went shooting in a school-2 Dead and 25 wounded

• Hole in pre-frontal Cortex

“Please someone help me, It is so clear no one will help

me, I am so close to killing people, My guns are the
the only thing that didn’t stab me, My eyes hurt too
bad like they will crawl out of my head, why am I not
normal, I will kill everyone.”-Kim
 Case 3-Richard Ramirez-Night Stalker

• Killed 13 people in 13 months

• Experienced multiple Brain Injuries since

childhood

• Temporal Lobe Dysfunction

• Aggressiveness , Sexuality , Emotion

(Allely et. al. 2014).

 Comparing Brain and Aggressive Behavior

• Adrian Raine, P.E.T Scan –California

• 41 murderers who had pleaded(NGRI)

• 23 Had Head injuries

 Prefrontal Deficits Cause Antisocial Personality

1-Lower Activity in Cortical region of Brain -

• Self restrain and deliberate foresight Don’t think ahead of time

• Low Level of Autonomic Arousal –External Stimulation seeking ” (Hickey, 2016, p. 95)

2-Amagdala Activity Reduction-

• Reduced by 18 percent

• Fearlessness ,Emotion, Empathy

Fearless without Amygdala -Kluver-Bucy syndrome

Experiment: 1930s, when Heinrich Kluver and Paul Bucy

 Charles Whitman
The Amygdala & Mass Murder

• Austin Shootout –University of Texas96 minutes

• Killing 16 and wounding 31 people,

• Joined the Marine Corps

• IQ-138

• Uncontrollable violent impulses.

• Tumor in Amygdala

• Whitman went on to request an autopsy be performed

 3- Corpus Collosum Abnormality -

Dysfunction:

• Problem reading facing expression

• Accessing risk

• Difficulty understanding emotion

• 22.6% increase in estimated white matter volume

Study : Adrian Raine

Psychopaths I.Q

Radford University-3000Killers
 Empathy and Psychopathy

Theory of Mind- (Blair 2005)

1. Cognitive Empathy (know)–High on Cognitive Empathy

2. Emotional Empathy(feel)-Low on Emotional Empathy

3. Motor Empathy(Mirror)-Low on Motor Empathy

 Mirror Neuron System

(Empathy, Language , Self-awareness)

Is Brain Anatomy Everything ?
Thank-you
 References

Fleischman, J. (2002). Phineas gage: A gruesome but true story

about brain science. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt.
Glenn, A. L., & Raine, A. (2014). Psychopathy: An introduction to
biological findings and their implications. NYU Press.
Patrick, C. J. (2019). Handbook of psychopathy (2nd ed.).
Guilford Publications.
Pillery, G. (1966). The Klüver-Bucy syndrome in man: A clinico-
anatomical contribution to the function of the medical
temporal lobe structures.
Sarteschi, C. M. (2016). Mass and serial murder in America.
Springer.
Sperry, L. (2016). Handbook of diagnosis and treatment of DSM-
5 personality disorders: Assessment, case conceptualization,
and treatment (3rd ed.). Routledge.