The Antisocial Personalities

by David T. Lykken

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Author: David T. Lykken

Publisher: Routledge

Paperback:
ISBN 10: 0805819746
ISBN 13: 978-0805819748

This volume presents a scholarly analysis of psychopathic and sociopathic personalities and the conditions that give rise to them. In so doing, it offers a coherent theoretical and developmental analysis of socialization and its vicissitudes, and of the role played in socialization by the crime-relevant genetic traits of the child and the skills and limitations of the primary socializing agents, the parents.

This volume also describes how American psychiatry's (DSM-IV) category of "Antisocial Personality Disorder" is heterogeneous and fails to document some of the more interesting and notorious psychopaths of our era. The author also shows why the antinomic formula "Nature vs. Nurture" should be revised to "Nature via Nurture" and reviews the evidence for the heritability of crime-relevant traits. One of these traits -- fearlessness -- seems to be one basis for the primary psychopathy and the author argues that the primary psychopath and the hero may be twigs on the same genetic branch.

But crime -- the failure of socialization -- is rare among traditional peoples still living in the extended-family environment in which our common ancestors lived and to which our species is evolutionarily adapted. The author demonstrates that the sharp rise in crime and violence in the United States since the 1960s can be attributed to the coeval increase in divorce and illegitimacy which has left millions of fatherless children to be reared by over-burdened, often immature or sociopathic single mothers. The genus sociopathic personality includes those persons whose failure of socialization can be attributed largely to incompetent or indifferent rearing.

Two generalizations supported by modern behavior genetic research are that most psychological traits have strong genetic roots and show little lasting influence of the rearing environment. This book demonstrates that the important trait of socialization is an exception. Although traits that obstruct or facilitate socialization tend to obey these rules, socialization itself is only weakly heritable; this is because modern American society displays such enormous variance in the relevant environmental factors, mainly in parental competence. Moreover, parental incompetence that produces sociopathy in one child is likely to have the same result with any siblings. This book argues that sociopathy contributes far more to crime and violence than psychopathy because sociopaths are much more numerous and because sociopathy is a familial trait for both genetic and environmental reasons. With a provocative thesis and an engaging style, this book will be of principal interest to clinical, personality, forensic, and developmental psychologists and their students, as well as to psychiatrists and criminologists.

Review

...this is a fascinating volume. It is just the kind of book that should be at the center of debates on public policy--consistently scientific and free from preconceptions or wishful thinking.
—American Renaissance

HOLD FOR PUBLICATION OF REVIEW!!!...a sophisticated, tightly integrated work with multiple overlapping themes. This is a book that brings new perspective to a well-travelled literature and which yields fresh rewards with repeated readings. It is illuminating, entertaining, and at times outrageous. In short, it has the earmarks of a classic.
—Psychological Inquiry

...original, variegated, intelligent, scholarly, and delightfully written....this book is dense and nutritious; few works are based on bodies of literature as diverse as those covered here, and there are fewer still that achieve the conceptual coherence that Lykken achieves. [He] is an expert in this long-term field, and his book is an encyclopedic compendium.
—Aggressive Behavior

After reviewing the literature on psychopathy, this book documents the claim that sociopaths, not psychopaths, are responsible for most crime.
—National Institute of Justice

Lykken's newest book on the antisocial personalities rivals and then surpasses the classic by Cleckley by combining hard-nosed science, as skillfully as Sagan, with keen observations on humans in social settings garnered over some 40 years of experience with sociopaths. His theory about the 'primary psychopath' and his (usually) origins will irritate, agitate, and partially explicate, depending on the reader's previous exposure to sociology, behavioral genetics, and welfare policy. Lykken's challenges to conventional and received wisdom are both serious and entertaining. Your attitude toward crime and violence will NOT be the same after reading this book as it was before you started.
—Irving I. Gottesman, Ph.D.
Honorary Fellow, Royal College of Psychiatrics, University of Virginia

This is the most exciting book on psychopathology I've read for years. The analysis is incisive and deep; the style is engaging; the synthesis of the author's encyclopedic knowledge in diverse areas -- clinical psychology, sociology, psychometrics, genetics, psychophysiology -- is creative and powerful. This book defines the research task for the foreseeable future.
—Paul E. Meehl, Ph.D., LP
Regents' Professor of Psychology, Emeritus, Member Emeritus, Minnesota Center fo

David Lykken, the Dean of the field of antisocial behavior, provides a badly needed, comprehensive, and insightful analysis of the complex causes of the marked and continuing increase in crime and violence. This highly readable book offers its own recommendations that are likely to stimulate a major political debate as to how to solve this critical societal problem. It is one of those rare books that presents an authoritative overview for professionals in the field, yet is written in a clear and entertaining style that makes it invaluable for the educated layperson.
—Don C. Fowles, Ph.D.
The University of Iowa

Your book on the antisocial personalities is wonderful....The topic is major, the writing is marvelously clear, and the argument is correct....your book is the high water mark in our efforts to develop a conceptual understanding of the issue.
—Robert Hogan
Hogan Assessment Systems

From the Back Cover

The antisocial personalities who are responsible for most crime, including violent crime, in the United States are not psychopaths but rather sociopaths, persons of broadly normal temperament who have failed to acquire the attributes of socialization, not because of innate peculiarities in themselves, but because of a failure of the usual socializing agents, primarily their parents.

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The Antisocial Personalities