Don't they say sociopaths are one of the hardest illnesses to treat bc they don't respond to therapy? (I think I remember something from my abnormal psych class...:rolleyes: maybe.) I thought they said they only respond to a monetary reward system bc there always has to be something in it for them. Am I remembering that right?

I think the public will treat her kind of like they did O.J. I heard his friends say some people were very, very rude to him, some restaurants would not seat him, some businesses would not allow him in or do business with him and many people smiled briefly, turned away or totally ignored him, while others asked for autographs and still others wanted to get close to him, such as date or hang with him, etc. But apparently the public at large was not overly forgiving of O.J. I'm just guessing that they will probably treat Casey Anthony like that.

I'll bet now that she is able to see TV, read magazines and surf the net she is very surprised to see the lingering frustration and anger directed toward her. I think she probably had the impression in the prison that she was a true celebrity in every way. Probably a bit of a shock to find out you are a total pariah to most people!

Yes, and there's some evidence to suggest that their brains are difference. I can't remember all the details but there is a little something next to the pineal gland in the brain that they think has to do with the conscience. They've studied normal brains and people like Ted Bundy who would be considered a psychopath or sociopath. Not all psychopaths are kind enough to donate their brains to science, so there is not a lot of data, but there was a statistically significant difference in the psychopath’s brain and the normal brain. I don’t really know how you could teach a child not to ever feel guilt, even with lousy parenting. An extremely abused child may not have any feelings toward others, but most of the time psychopath’s childhoods aren’t really different than the norm. So I’m leaning towards “born that way”, but I still think they should be punished and controlled when caught. They can learn to behave, not because it’s better, but because they have more freedom. The sad thing about this is it's very hard to diagnose, and you can't do it before a child is 18 because so much of the psychopaths behavior is within the normal range of a teenager.

She does scare me silly! If I ever came face-to-face with her, would probably run for my life.

I carry mace with me wherever I go...so I'll probably mace her and then run. :cool:

The pineal gland - very interesting, didn't know that. It would be very interesting if they could make it mandatory to scan the brains of criminals who exhibit obvious sociopathic behavior. Maybe offer them a month of cigarettes in prison if they submit to the brain scan if they couldn't make it mandatory.

I don't know if it shows up in a brain scan? I just realized this was 30 years ago I was reading about this. The studies I read about were done by autopsy, and sadly, few psychopaths are interested in helping advance our knowledge in science.

I heard a lot of the talking people on TV say that sociopaths are often people that are raised in terrible conditions such as constant physical and/or mental abuse, deprivation of any love, severe and constant stress such as years of war, etc., so that they just withdraw from acknowledging their own feelings and that develops into an apathy toward other people and usually animals, too. They cannot feel empathy because they have "turned off" their natural caring responses and after a time, are almost unable to ever regain them, even with therapy. None of that seems to fit Casey Anthony so it seems it must be the brain problem Nancy speaks of.

On autopsy? I assumed it had been on PET scan, my mistake. Maybe that was a "raging syndrome" study I was thinking of where they PET scanned the brains, and ppl w severe anger management problems actually had different brain chemistries.

Things have come so far in the past 30 years, I learned about this in the 80's, I can't find much information on the web about this. I did read that sociologists tend to call it sociopaths and think it's more from the environment, while psychologists and psychiatrists call it psychopathy and see the causes as due to a combination of psychological, genetic, and environmental factors. Last I heard they were trying to rename the whole thing antisocial personality disorder.

This is interesting: Taken from Psychopathy - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Nancy - very interesting. I didn't realize the difference in calling it psychopathy or sociopathy was psychiatrist versus sociologists. I have heard of the diagnosis you mentioned "antisocial personality disorder."

I heard one of the psychiatrists on TV say he called a psychopath someone who had developed severe mental problems with perhaps brain chemistry changes on top of his sociopathy - lack of empathy. But each specialist tends to have his/her own definition of terms. Whatever this Anthony person is, she is weird. I heard that bounty hunter's lady assistant (or the man assistant - or both?) say she was one of the nicest people she had met as far as being personable/friendly and yet totally divorced from the reality and horror that her child was missing for months. Do you remember her saying that she, Casey, thought the assistant lady wanting to bring up Caylee was "negative" and she would just shake it off and change the subject when she mentioned Caylee? If I am remembering her talk with Dr. Drew right, she said that Casey was very childlike in her ability to perceive the danger she - Casey - was in because of the circumstances of her own daughter's disappearance and that she just didn't really get it. She just assumed she would be alright - kind of like a child does. That lady seemed pretty perceptive but I wonder if she was seeing the real Casey or the character Casey wanted her to see?

Nether did I. "Psychopathy is a term which, until the 1980s, formally referred to a personality disorder characterized by the inability to form human attachment and an abnormal lack of empathy, masked by an ability to appear outwardly normal." The psychiatric "Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders" has the final word, and comes out with a new edition every decade or so. Wikeipedia says that they are coming out with the DSM-V and they are "recommending a revision of antisocial personality disorder to include "Antisocial/Psychopathic Type", with the diagnostic criteria having a greater emphasis on character than on behavior.[5] The ICD-10 diagnostic criteria of the World Health Organization also lacks psychopathy as a personality disorder. The 1992 manual included dissocial (antisocial) personality disorder, which encompasses amoral, antisocial, asocial, psychopathic, and sociopathic personalities.[6] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychopathy

Yeah, it's so hard to get these people to tell the truth, it's not easy to study the differences between them. I agree, Casey did seem child-like in that way, she really didn't seem all that worried did she?

Not from what those people said that were around her. Soooo creepy to think of a mother acting that way as her child's body lies only yards away......gives me the shivers to think how "dead" inside some people are. They are literally capable of anything.