Donald Lynam's A Psychopath?

Introduction
Not a lot of psychologists or parents want to acknowledge that children may be inherently callous - unemotional humans. Most people correspond children with innocence. A good majority of people probably know a child who is a “problem child” or “difficult” but these characteristics are often pushed off as being part of growing up and discovering right from wrong. Recently more and more interest has been sparked to research adolescents with psychopathic like tendencies and traits (Perenc & Radochonski, 2013). A lot of researchers who acknowledge that these traits exist believe that if they are able to detect these children, who have been labeled by Donald Lynam as “fledgling psychopaths”, that they can prevent them from a life of

This is hard to grasp because it is something that most people learn at a young age. People who have no guilt are called psychopaths. Psychopaths are not only associated with crazy serial killers. In fact, many psychopaths are living amongst the public in schools, workplaces, and businesses but are undetected. Most people only have that view of people with antisocial behavior as murderers though. This view adds to the elements of not wanting to label a child as a psychopath. If a child is branded with a label of sociopath or similar terms at a young age, they will have to deal with the societal costs of the diagnosis (Perenc & Radochonski, 2013). There are extreme cases of kids that do things that would be hard to deny any psychotic behaviors. One shocking example of such a child, named Jeffrey Bailey, was mentioned in The NY Times Magazine. Bailey was a nine year old who pushed a toddler into a pool and pulled up a chair to watch him drown. When he was taken by police officers he told them that he was curious to see someone drown. Jeffrey had no remorse; he was actually more excited that he was the center of attention (Kahn, 2012). It is frightening to cope with the existence of adolescents like Jeffery in the

The only thing they are responsible for is the genes that made the child born with those traits. The writer for The NY Times Magazine based most of her research on Michael and his family. Their family is a prime example that ineffective parenting is not the cause. His parents noticed that Michael had behavior problems since he was three years old and from then until present had done everything in their power to get him the help he needed. His mother actually had a degree in child psychology so she was frustrated that everything she learned and tried would not work with Michael. His parents had to deal with manipulation from their child who hadn’t even turned ten yet. At one point he was being punished for trying to hit his brother with a chair and while he was being carried away he yelled that he had a greater bond with his father than with his mother to try to tear his parents apart. They sent him to several psychologists before finding Dan Waschbusch, who had studied callous-unemotional children for 10 years, and he suggested that their son may be a psychopath (Kahn, 2012). Callous - unemotional traits are distinguishing elements of psychopathy. Michael had other brothers who turned out fine and didn’t portray any of those traits so it wasn’t his home environment that made him act the way that he did. The parents’ persistency and care for their children demonstrated that one’s upbringing