Vol. 6, No. 3, 2000 Page 6 |
Hare: does psychotherapy do psychopaths more harm than good?
One good reason for studying biological anomalies in psychopathic offenders is that psychotherapeutic approaches rarely are successful in treating these criminals. In fact, Robert Hare, an expert on psychopathic behavior, argues that current sociological
and psychological interventions may be worse than useless.
In a recent presentation to the American Neuropsychiatric Association, Hare noted that treatment seems to increase, rather than decrease, the rate of recidivism among criminal psychopaths. Among the research he cited:
- One study of criminals released from a program for personality-disordered offenders compared 176 who received intensive group and individual therapy with 146 who were not treated. The rate of violent offending decreased in non-psychopaths receiving t
treatment, but increased among treated psychopaths when compared with psychopaths who received no treatment.
- Another study of more than 300 offenders receiving social skills training and anger management therapy found that one-year reconviction rates were significantly higher in treated than in non-treated psychopaths.
- A third study found that the sex offenders most likely to re-offend were those with strong psychopathic tendencies who were rated as "good risks" by psychological personnel because of their insight into their problems. In other words, Hare said, recid
divism occurred most often in psychopaths "who had the ability to convince the therapists they had made good progress in treatment."
Hare speculates that psychotherapy simply helps a psychopath learn more about how other people think, and thus "improves his ability to con."
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"Treatment for psychopaths is likely to make them worse," Carl Sherman, Clinical Psychiatry News, Vol. 28, No. 5, May 2000, p. 38.