The objective of my paper is to present a psychopathological conception of psychopathy and compare it with the mainstream nosographic diagnosis. This theoretical essay is informed by clinical situations involving psychopaths who were interviewed in prison or in forensic centres. The method applied a phenomenological psychopathology analysis to the clinical material. I first compare Binswanger’s conception of mania with psychopathic functioning. Patients’ behaviour is similar but the difference relates to the dialectic between the ego and the alter ego. A patient (...) with mania has a fundamental crisis of the ego, which a psychopath does not have. A second finding concerns emotions and the adaptive dimension of psychopathy. An epistemological discussion of the concept of emotions reveals that psychopaths are competent at managing emotional stimuli, which confers a psychological advantage upon them. Finally, a reflection on empathy and sympathy clarifies the presentation of “psychopathic being-in-the-world”. Starting with the tension between clinical practice and critique of the dominant diagnostic scales, we can consider that the “essential characteristics” of the psychopathic disorder are reification of the alter ego without presenting an ego-related disorder, the adaptive benefits of emotional coldness, and empathic skills without sympathy. (shrink)

The question of whether psychopaths are criminally and morally responsible has generated significant controversy in the literature. In this paper, we discuss what relevance a psychopathy diagnosis has for criminal responsibility. It has been argued that figuring out whether psychopathy is a mental illness is of fundamental importance, because it is a precondition for psychopaths’ eligibility to be excused via the legal insanity defense. But even if psychopathy counts as a mental illness, this alone is not sufficient to show the (...) insanity defense is applicable; it must also be shown that, as a result of the illness, specific deficits in moral understanding or control are present. In this paper, we show that a diagnosis of psychopathy will generally not indicate that a defendant is eligible for an insanity defense. This is because the group of individuals subsumed under the diagnosis is so heterogeneous that while some psychopaths do show significant impairments in affect and control which may impact on their responsibility, many psychopaths are not incapacitated in a way relevant to responsibility. (shrink)

Psychopathy, executive functions, and neuropsychological data: a response to Sifferd and Hirstein.

Psychopathy attracts considerable interdisciplinary interest. The idea of a group of people with abnormal morality and interpersonal relations raises important philosophical, legal, and clinical issues. However, before engaging these issues, we ought to examine whether this category is scientifically grounded. We frame the issue in terms of the question whether ‘psychopathy’ designates a natural kind according to the cluster approaches. We argue that currently there is no sufficient evidence for an affirmative answer to this question. Furthermore, we examine three ways (...) of dealing with the category of psychopathy. We could eliminate the category, revise it, or subscribe to a more encompassing account of kinds, which could capture psychopathy as it is currently conceptualized. We argue that while a revision of the category of psychopathy is to be expected with empirical and theoretical advancements, we also emphasize its role in clinical and forensic research that makes it an important pragmatic kind. (shrink)

Editorial introduction to the special issue of the European Journal of Analytic Philosophy.

The objective of this study is to present a theoretical paper about a clinical issue. Our aim is to propose some clinical and semiological considerations for a psychopathological conception of psychopathy. We will discuss several major theoretical works dedicated to this nosographic entity. We will also examine a significant issue raised by Cooke et al., namely whether psychopathic functioning is consistently related to antisocial behavior. This theoretical essay is informed by clinical situations. The method applied a phenomenological psychopathology analysis to (...) the clinical material. We first compare Binswanger’s conception of mania with psychopathic functioning. Patients’ behavior is similar but there is a difference related to the dialectic between the ego and the alter ego. A patient with mania has a fundamental crisis of the ego, which a psychopath does not have. A second finding of our investigations concerns emotions and the adaptive dimension of the psychopathic disorder. An epistemological discussion of the concept of emotions reveals that psychopaths are competent in the management of emotional stimuli, which confers a psychological advantage upon them. (shrink)

Psychopathic individuals display a callous-coldhearted approach to interpersonal and affective situations and engage in impulsive and antisocial behaviors. Despite early conceptualizations suggesting that psychopathy is related to enhanced cognitive functioning, research examining executive functioning (EF) in psychopathy has yielded few such findings. It is possible that some psychopathic trait dimensions are more related to EF than others. Research using a 2-factor or 4-facet model of psychopathy highlights some dimension-specific differences in EF, but this research is limited in scope. Another complicating (...) factor in teasing apart the EF–psychopathy relationship is the tendency to use different psychopathy assessments for incarcerated versus community samples. In this study, an EF battery and multiple measures of psychopathic dimensions were administered to a sample of male prisoners (N. (shrink)