Murderous Minds - Week of 02/16/15

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Prompt: What have you learned from what you're reading?

    This week I am reading the nonfiction book, Murderous Minds, and it is about neuroscience, and the "criminal mind." This book is really interesting but at the same time very complicated that I had to red whole pages more then three times so I could actually understand the topic. For example, in the first chapter, the author was taking about how mental illnesses play a huge role in psychotics and the reason behind the crimes they commit. He started to talk about different parts of the brain and their roles in mental illnesses. For example, he said "The loss of dopamine-producing neurons in the substantial nigra affects a neighboring part of the brain called the striatum, whose cells depend on dopamine to function properly." That was just one sentence and I had to read it a few times to understand, but the thing about this book is that everything is intertwined, so if you don't understand the previous sentence or even paragraph, most likely; you won't understand the next few paragraphs to come.

    One of the most interesting facts that I have learned form the book so far is that "an estimated 1 out of 100 adults is a psychopath" so if you think about it, you have probably encountered a psychopath and you didn't realize it! But don't get me wrong, psychopaths don't necessarily mean killers. Even though when you hear psychopaths you think of some crazy murderer who chops off people's limbs and feeds them to his pig, "for every psychotic serial killer, there are literally millions of psychopaths who don't kill." Psychotics are people who are out of touch with reality, most likely have a mental illness and most likely have violent impulses. So in reality, you could have met a psychopath but don't think of them as killers, because statistically, it is unlikely that they are killers.

    There is a test called the PCL-R test which basically test psychopathy in people. The test is taken in an interview format and the interviewer takes notes on different factors to see whether the person is a psychopath or not. It is a 20-item test and the interview rates the factors on a scale from 0 - 2; 0 meaning that there is no sign of it at all, 1 being that there are hints of it and 2 as being very present. One of the factors is manipulative behavior. So if someone was interviewing you for this and you showed no sign of manipulation then you would get a 0 for that factor, but if you showed a plethora of signs of lack of remorse or guilt, you would get a 2. In the end the score is tallied up and out of the maximum of 40 points, if you have 30, you are labeled as a psychopath in the US. The interview can take, the minimum of 2 hours, up to four hours to get all of the evidence needed to write down the points.

Comments: Leanna, Marisa, and Gustavo