The Fate of the Kunlangeta

We ask ourselves daily questions about how we might respond to certain situations and moral dilemmas- well, some of us do. Throughout history there have been infamous names popping up as individuals without such a moral basis. These people have been said to have: mania without delirium, moral derangement, moral insanity, constitutional psychopathic inferiority, and many other names but most recently psychopathology.

So what do we do with a psychopath? Most times we have thought these people to be predators devoid of any sense of right or wrong; men and women lacking that nagging voice of a cricket we like to call a conscience. But is that the case?

Psychopaths are often thought of as our most dangerous criminals. Mostly men (about 1% of the general population but about 25-30% in prisons), they are often quite charming, willing to do anything to accomplish their goals, very manipulative, intelligent, act socially responsible, and so are able to succeed in society quite well, especially in business, law, and politics where such traits can be desirable. They are not always violent, though quite often so. Many forms of financial crimes against people are also the work of a psychopath.

In the 1950's and 1960's it was very difficult for people to meet the clinical criteria for depression. No one was depressed. Then it was studied. Links found to decreased hormone levels within the brain and the pharmaceutical companies went hog wild. Knowing that they had a product to sell that may or may not be able to give some amount of relief to people with mild, moderate, and/or severe cases of depression, they lobbied for changes in the clinical criteria and now chances are that you are now, have been, or will be clinically depressed because EVERYONE is.

What does this have to do with psychopathology? Well, admittedly not much. But there are big strides being made in the research of the pathology. Using MRI technology Dr. Kent Kiehl has been doing brain scans on inmates that have shown high indicators of psychopathology based on the current standard PCL-R testing. And he is actually finding a medical basis for hypotheses regarding the condition. One: most people hearing words like 'love' or 'hate' will respond to them within the brain in both the linguistics section (knowing the meaning) and the emotional section (knowing the feeling) of the brain. Inmates appear to respond only in the linguistics section. Two: they have found that while most people understand consequences of actions, such as when you are losing badly at a high stakes card game, and will extricate themselves from the situation. Psychopaths have a tendency to only focus on the outcome of the next hand and stay on, forgetting the consequences of what is to come. Three: Like many of you, I have a fear of personal injury and a fear of punishment- psychopaths do not. This has been linked to dysfunctions of the amygdala in the brain- another emotion processing center.
It is great that advanced testing has been able to show actual results in this section of study, especially as the MRI scans are incredible expensive (about $500/hr to run and $2 million dollars for the magnet that runs the machine). The problem is now what? We have a potential cause for the problem. The predators can now be labelled the victims. And how many drugs will be formulated to "help" people with this affliction, and will they help people as well as the multitude of depression drugs now out on the market. How will the legal system have to adapt? At the current time the PCL-R test scale has been used to send criminals with high scores to death row and has been used in child custody cases to keep children from potentially dangerous parents. Will it eventually be able to be used as their defense?

For more information I recommend the Nov. 10 issue of The New Yorker, "Suffering Souls by John Seabrook and "The Mask of Sanity" by Hervey Cleckley (writer of "The Three Faces of Eve").

Now what about our kunlangeta? This is the Yupi Eskimo term for a man who repeatedly lies, cheats, steals and takes women for advantage sexually- when an Eskimo man was asked about this in 1976 by anthropologist Jane Murphy, the man replied, "Somebody would have pushed him off the ice when nobody else was looking."