Nature and Nurture

I'm not going down the path of debate of whether people are born crazy or made that way.

For one thing, we already know what causes many mental disorders, so that makes it relatively easy to point fingers (or not, depending).

For another thing, there are plenty of Freudians who will come out of the woodwork and say it's all from childhood experiences, that even people who are born crazy might learn to repress it...(?) And anti-Freudians will follow them out of the woodwork and scoff.

So this post isn't going to take a side.

But here's the situation. A few weeks back, I mentioned a young lady I'd met with the purpose of risk assessment, who I had the unsettling experience of diagnosing as anti-social. (To say the least.)

Her history, in a nutshell:
- Put in temporary foster care at age 4.
- Father committed suicide when she was 5.
- Mother's boyfriend abused her physically from age 6 to 9. Given later information, I am inclined to believe that sexual abuse was part of the deal.
- Put in foster care again at age 9.
- Bounced between foster homes and mother's house between age10 and age 15.
- Ran away at age 16, began a string of petty crimes - shoplifting, fights, vandalism, harassment, and bullying.
- By age 19, was known in three counties and had restraining orders against her by two different people whom she had stalked and had altercations with.
- At age 21, has been in fights with "friends" and "boyfriends" and caused enough physical harm that victims required medical attention. Those fights also resulted in multiple arrests. She has been on suicide watch twice while in custody. She has been diagnosed as "depressed" and given anti-depressants, which she refuses to take. When talking about activities she claims to enjoy, there is the same flat affect. The only time her eyes light up is when she talks about previous instances of causing injury to others, or when threatening it to a pet.

So, you tell me. There's a lot missing from the picture, obviously. Based on the information available, though, my gut instinct is that her childhood sucked, nobody really did much about it, and she learned to discount feelings and values as a survival skill. She's numb beyond belief from not allowing herself to feel hurt or scared, so the only way she can experience those is second-hand, when she creates those feelings in others. It's the only thing she's been able to control for years.

As a grad student, I did a diagnosis on "Patient X" for a forensic psychology course. The family history alone on my patient was heart-breaking and horrific. The neglect was shameful, but the repeated pronouncements by the parents of being unloved were beyond cruel. I scored well, but it was little consolation; this was a real person, after all. I won't give the name here. I will just say that it was a mass murderer, and after everything I learned, I believe that every crime he was charged with could have been prevented.

I don't discount the idea that some people are born evil. I believe in evil, and there are people out there that appear to confirm the idea. Not this guy. It was an eye-opening experience, and while I still feel bad for his victims, I can only imagine what it was like for this man, living in a hell of emotional and mental anguish, twinges of pain from old physical abuse, and daily despair.