Can You Call a 9-Year-Old a Psychopath?

One day last summer, Anne and her husband, Miguel, took their 9-year-old son, Michael, to a Florida elementary school for the first day of what the family chose to call “summer camp.” For years, Anne and Miguel have struggled to understand their eldest son, an elegant boy with high-planed cheeks, wide eyes and curly light brown hair, whose periodic rages alternate with moments of chilly detachment. Michael’s eight-week program was, in reality, a highly structured psychological study — less summer camp than camp of last resort.

Michael’s problems started, according to his mother, around age 3, shortly after his brother Allan was born. At the time, she said, Michael was mostly just acting “like a brat,” but his behavior soon escalated to throwing tantrums during which he would scream and shriek inconsolably. These weren’t ordinary toddler’s fits. “It wasn’t, ‘I’m tired’ or ‘I’m frustrated’ — the normal things kids do,” Anne remembered. “His behavior was really out there. And it would happen for hours and hours each day, no matter what we did.” For several years, Michael screamed every time his parents told him to put on his shoes or perform other ordinary tasks, like retrieving one of his toys from the living room. “Going somewhere, staying somewhere — anything would set him off,” Miguel said. These furies lasted well beyond toddlerhood. At 8, Michael would still fly into a rage when Anne or Miguel tried to get him ready for school, punching the wall and kicking holes in the door. Left unwatched, he would cut up his trousers with scissors or methodically pull his hair out. He would also vent his anger by slamming the toilet seat down again and again until it broke.

When Anne and Miguel first took Michael to see a therapist, he was given a diagnosis of “firstborn syndrome”: acting out because he resented his new sibling. While both parents acknowledged that Michael was deeply hostile to the new baby, sibling rivalry didn’t seem sufficient to explain his consistently extreme behavior. 

Read on...

The Final Press Conference: Portrait of a Narcissistic Psychopath

by Jesselyn RadackTue Jan 13, 2009 at 05:37:14 AM PST

Biggest mistake of his presidency, according to Bush:
the "Mission Accomplished" banner.

Biggest disappointments of Bush's presidency:
the revelation of torture at Abu Ghraib.
the failure to find WMD in Iraq.

President Bush is incapable of self-reflection, let alone guilt or regret -- a common trait of psychopaths, as is glib and superficial charm, a grandiose sense of self-worth, pathological lying, lack of remorse, shallow affect, callousness and lack of empathy, early behavioral problems, lack of realistic long-term goals, and failure to accept responsibility for one's actions. Bush identifies the failure to find WMD in Iraq as "a significant disappointment," but not his decision to invade Iraq in the first place? Seriously?

Read on...