Antisocial personality disorder, psychopathy and media

Abstract

Antisocial personality disorder (APD) is characterized by a behavioral pattern of contempt and disregard for the safety and rights of other people, with no feelings of regret, guilt, remorse or compassion. Usually such characteristics emerge in early adolescence as a behavioral trend with oppositional attitudes to their elders or the existing rules. These individuals are often self-centered and incapable of experiencing grief or feeling of guilt. Given the lack of moral values that permeate their conduct, they present recurrently immoral, socially reprehensible behaviors or violating laws or current regulations 1. APD and psychopathy should not be used as synonymous, since they do not refer to the same construct. There are many individuals with APD who do not exhibit criminal behavior. The expression psychopathy is often used to classify individuals who present an important tendency towards criminal practice, characterized by a high rate of recidivism, emotional detachment, and violent and antisocial conduct. When individuals with APD develop criminal conduct, often they become counterfeiters, scammers, corrupts and corrupters, etc. (damage against property). Conversely, psychopathic individuals tend to manifest criminal behavior based on the expression of predatory violence typical of homicidal, serial killers, rapists and kidnappers (damage against the person) 2. In "Civilization and its Discontents" 3 , Freud presents the human being as a creature driven by powerful instincts of aggression and primitive passions, which lead to actions such as rape and murder, controlled, still imperfectly, by the social institutions and the feelings of guilt. Unconsciously, people exercise their drive for aggression through their fantasy, in a not acting manner. The psychopath exerts this deadly and aggressive guilt-free drive by acting and, is looked by the others with much interest and curiosity, projecting on them his unconscious living. It's like being at the same time terrified and fascinated by this dark side of the human being. From a contemporary perspective, Simon 4 claims that traits of sadism found in serial killers have their most representative correspondents in individuals who will never commit murder or sadistic sexual crime of any kind. They are respectable people, good mothers, good parents and successful professionals, getting to sublimate their selfishness and aggression, transforming them into empathy to the others. It is possible that there is a correlation between the social violence portrayed in sensationalist media and the recurrence of violent acts that occur in current society. Sensationalism stimulates

Violent behavior by involuntarily committed female offenders with mental disorders: A population‐based case series

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Violent behavior by women involuntarily committed to a forensic psychiatric hospital in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil

“…More severe paranoia is associated with greater aggressiveness, even when controlling for such factors as impulsiveness, command hallucinations, treatment with antipsychotics, substance abuse, age, and gender 41 . Many homicide cases definitely involve individuals with personality disorders rather than other forms of mental illness 42 .…”