Essay Example: Society and Psychopaths

A psychopath is a person who suffers from a personality disorder which is featured with persistent antisocial characters, remorse and impaired empathy, and bold egotistical qualities. Psychopaths are a product of genetic variations which results in a severe mental disorder. In most cases, psychopaths are described as uncaring where their brains have been found to have weak connections between the sections of the emotional system of the brain. Also, psychopaths have been connected to shallow emotions where they seem to lack social emotions like guilt and shame beside the fact that they portray irresponsible behaviors. Also, psychopaths have been characterized by insincere speech, narrowed attention, overconfidence, selfishness, inability to make plans, and violent (Skeem, Monahan, & Mulvey, 2002). In this light, it is important to note that psychopaths are persons within our midst who are biologically affected by brain disorder which specifically affects the emotional circuitry that deals with interpersonal relations. It is thus not their fault to behave the way they do, and the society must conduct itself in a way to help them cope in a changing societal setting.

The society should adopt the decompression approach which involves seeking to reform the types of psychosocial attachments that the psychopath never achieved during his childhood time. The decompression method has been tested and is viable in the long run where the society is supposed to take psychopathy together with the available brain pathology with a lot of care (Hubner, & White, 2016). For instance, the society can apply the decompression model of positive reinforcement where the psychopaths can be monitored closely for any element of positive behavior. In this case, any sign of positive behavior is rewarded heavily where on the top of the reward the psychopaths are promised of scaling up of the rewards when their good behaviors persist. The decompression method assists in alleviating the bad behaviors of psychopaths by offering reinforcement in terms of a gift; therefore, making it a super way of changing the behaviors for the benefit of the society.

It is evident that psychopaths are less emotional when it comes to harming others and to them. In this case, the psychopaths can be classified as good risk takers and can garner material wealth by been pioneers of innovations to a group in society. This is because they can bear hardships of stressful negotiations as well as have minimal emotional trauma in case they do not succeed in their future endeavors. In this regard, the society can take them and mold them to undertake risky ventures which upon succeeding can help raise the economic status of the society. As such, the psychopaths can be provided with the necessary material requirements such as funds to aid them in the innovations and the risky ventures in the society with the aim of raising the social, economic status. Also, because psychopaths are not affected by emotional trauma, a community can incorporate them and train them as medics as they can easily handle adverse clinical conditions like patients recovering from terrible accidents or victims of war (Hirstein, & Sifferd, 2014). By doing this, the society will have adequately tapped the best professionals in the medical field as the psychopaths are less likely to be affected by post-traumatic stress disorder.

The society can engage itself in the rehabilitation process for the badly behaving psychopaths. It is important to change ones behavior regardless of the persons state of mind as what matters is the action the person takes and not how one thinks (Arrigo, & Shipley, 2001). In this case, the society can take the responsibility of modeling the psychopaths by explaining to them the importance of the accepted code of conduct in the maintenance of a good relationship in the society. The explanation and the change of behaviors by the psychopaths may involve ensuring that they get the sense of empathy to themselves which they can later extend to others. By doing this, the society will have saved the wasted persons who end up imprisoned for their inhumane actions as it is evident that imprisonment does not add any good to the psychopaths (Godman, & Jefferson, 2017). As such, rehabilitation should be taken as an option rather than waiting for the psychopaths to commit a crime which might lead to an imprisonment.

In a nutshell, it is evident that psychopathy is a mental disorder that is as a result of genetic disorders and, thus, the society should not discriminate psychopaths but rather should work towards changing them into meaningful society members. The society can incorporate the psychopaths by treating them using the decompression method to make psychopaths useful persons in the society. Also, the society can mold them to be business managers and innovators since they make best business risk takers besides teaching them to be medics to offer medical assistance to victims of severe accidents and war aftermath. Also, the society can rehabilitate the psychopaths by correcting their weird behaviors to the ones that fit in a moral society.

References

Arrigo, B. A., & Shipley, S. (2001). The confusion over psychopathy (I): Historical considerations. International Journal of Offender Therapy and Comparative Criminology, 45(3), 325-344.

Godman, M., & Jefferson, A. (2017). On blaming and punishing psychopaths. Criminal Law and Philosophy, 11(1), 127-142.

Hirstein, W., & Sifferd, K. (2014). Ethics and the Brains of Psychopaths: The Significance of Psychopathy for Our Ethical and Legal Theories. In Brain Theory (pp. 149-170). Palgrave Macmillan UK.

Hubner, D., & White, L. (2016). Neurosurgery for psychopaths? An ethical analysis. AJOB Neuroscience, 7(3), 140-149.

Skeem, J. L., Monahan, J., & Mulvey, E. P. (2002). Psychopathy, treatment involvement, and subsequent violence among civil psychiatric patients. Law and human behavior, 26(6), 577.