When you see me perform an action—such as picking up a baseball—you automatically simulate the action in your own brain…. Circuits in your brain, which we do not yet entirely understand, inhibit you from moving while you simulate. But you understand my action because you have in your brain a template for that action based on your own movements…. And if you see me choke up, in emotional distress from striking out at home plate, mirror neurons in your brain simulate my distress. You automatically have empathy for me. You know how I feel because you literally feel what I am feeling.30
On the other hand, people with autism often display no firing in their mirror neurons in response to the activities of others. Researchers believe that the “broken” mirror neuron system of autistics lies at the heart of their difficulties with social interaction and lack of empathy, as well as their inability to imitate.
The role of mirror neurons in the development of psychopathy is as yet unclear, since psychopaths seem to have no difficulty comprehending the mental state of others. Psychopaths instead seem to have trouble empathizing with the emotional signals of others, particularly signals related to fearfulness and sadness.31 Researchers Linda Mealey and Stuart Kinner have pointed out that psychopaths may simply have trouble projecting onto others feelings they don't experience themselves. One psychopathic rapist commented on his victims: “They are frightened, right? But, you see, I don't really understand it. I've been frightened myself, and it wasn't unpleasant.”32
SUCCESSFUL PSYCHOPATHS
What is perhaps even more disquieting than ordinary criminal psychopaths are “successful” psychopaths, as portrayed in Adrian Raine's findings. By recruiting and questioning ninety-one men from a Los Angeles temporary employment pool, Raine was able to gather a small group of subjects who could be divided into two subgroups: successful psychopaths—those who admitted committing crimes but had never been caught, and “unsuccessful” psychopaths—those who had been caught. The hippocampus, which is important in memory and spatial navigation, played a key role in the study, because this walnut-sized organ is also crucial in the ability to learn both what to do and what not to do. Raine theorized that psychopaths with hippocampal impairments would have difficulty learning the obvious (at least to everyone else) cues that would keep them out of trouble.
Sure enough, imaging results revealed that unsuccessful psychopaths had abnormal hippocampi, while successful psychopaths had normal hippocampi. A later study revealed another difference: unsuccessful psychopaths, but not successful psychopaths, had only three-quarters the usual volume of prefrontal gray matter. This area involves the part of our brain that is associated with the ability to determine good from bad; it also suppresses urges that could lead to socially unacceptable or frankly illegal outcomes.33
Another of Raine's studies, one that typifies his interwoven knowledge of neurology and the social sciences, sheds light on the structural pathology associated with habitual lying. This study also drew on recruits from temporary employment pools—the recruits were interviewed to find a group of twelve with a history of conning and manipulative behavior, as well as telling lies—for example, to obtain sickness benefits. This group was contrasted with twenty-one normal individuals and a third group of sixteen with antisocial personality disorder but no history of pathological lying. The study showed that prefrontal white matter in pathological liars was a quarter larger in volume than in normal people. Raine and his group had uncovered the startling fact that white matter in the prefrontal cortex is centrally involved in the desire to lie.
How could increased white matter contribute to a deceitful personality? Raine's doctoral student, Yaling Yang, who actually conducted the study, says: “It may just be easier for them to tell lies because the excessive white matter creates an abundance of connections among otherwise contradictory compartmentalized data.”34 Interestingly, children with autism have decreased white matter accompanied by increased gray matter; autistics are also known for being less given to lying.
Robert Hare, who has studied psychopaths for more than a quarter of a century, has recently expanded his studies of criminal psychopaths to include what he calls corporate psychopaths, who are similar in concept to Raine's “successful psychopaths.” Hare and his collaborator, Paul Babiak, have developed a questionnaire to help identify these Snakes in Suits (the title of their book about their studies). Babiak points out: “The psychopath is the kind of individual that can give you the right impression, has a charming facade, can look and sound like the ideal leader, but behind this mask has a dark side. It's this dark side of the personality that lies, is deceitful, is manipulative, that bullies other people, that promotes fraud in the organization and steals the company's money.”35 Hare points out that knowing your boss is a psychopath can help you to survive: “The most important thing is to be aware,” Hare says. “Once you take that position you are in a better position to deal with them.”36
The upshot of all this, of course, is that there might be a number of unincarcerated psychopaths free among us—unfeeling monsters but with the intact intelligence to avoid detection. Might this help explain why some Machiavellian individuals, like Hitler, Father Geoghan, or Saddam Hussein, were able to pass unsuspected in human social structures?
Perhaps.
My sister Carolyn's last diary entry provides food for thought: “Back to the real world after panic attack. Must ease Jack out…. He is still a good friend to have.”
Panic attack. Good friend.
These are the heartfelt words of a deeply Machiavellian woman—private thoughts, shared with no one, reflecting her internal world. Did her use of the word “friend” carry a different meaning from ordinary usage? That didn't appear to be the case, judging from her final, nearly decade-long, on-off supportive relationship with Jack. Also, the worst psychopaths are typically coldly unemotional—so how could Carolyn be suffering from a panic attack? Maybe she was a lesser, “secondary” psychopath? But some of the details didn't quite jibe. Was McHoskey not entirely correct about Machiavellians being equivalent to psychopaths?
Carolyn was definitely Machiavellian. But if she wasn't a psychopath, well, what was she? And where does that leave the understanding of a myriad of other sinister individuals—from the lowly accountant who embezzles his firm's funds, to the nurse who fakes credentials, to those who rise far higher in the socio-politico-economic food chain? Some of the successfully sinister definitely carry the traits of psychopathy, just as Robert Hare describes with his “corporate psychopaths.” But others, like Carolyn, show a more puzzling mix of both psychopathic and empathetic characteristics—her easy ability to lie, for example, was coupled with absolute adoration for her cats.
Do neurological disorders beyond psychopathy play a role, or an additional role, in their actions?
Perhaps it's time to peer into the big box my brother sent of Carolyn's belongings. I suspect it might lay the groundwork for better insight into the mind of a deeply Machiavellian—and tortured—soul.
* * *
a.Some readers may have noticed that researcher Kent Kiehl's psychopathic subjects showed a decreased limbic metabolism while Adrian Raine's subjects showed an increased limbic metabolism. This is because Raine's subjects were murderers—not psychopaths. Additionally, Raine's study included those who may have been psychotic (as with schizophrenia), or had other disorders, while Kiehl's study participants had no history of psychosis. This means the two studies cannot be directly compared.
b.Several years before, a journal reviewer rejected one of Moll's first neuroscience papers on the topic, saying that “morality could never be a topic for neuroscience—it was for philosophy.”
“I'm really easy to get along with once you people learn to worship me.”
—Anonymous
It is a muggy midsummer; a fluke thunderstorm has just turned the roof of the house into a raucous resonator. But I'm enjoying relative peace while the kids are gone, and have commandeered the kitchen for the weekend. Moving to t
he heavy thrumming of the raindrops, I've hauled the massive cardboard box in from the garage shelf where it's grown a fine sprinkling of dust over the past months. The odds and ends in it had caught my brother's eye while he was in Sequim, trying to find an estate handler to clear out Carolyn's apartment after her untimely, mysterious death. He had mailed the carton to me several months later, mentioning offhandedly that it had some old pictures and “stuff you might be interested in.” Bless his heart.
The staccato rain overhead sharpens. I glance up at the skylight—the water sluicing thickly above me makes me feel like I'm standing in a noisy submarine.
Up periscope.
I wonder what Carolyn would think of my looking through her things.
Through the dark gray comes a trembling flash of white, followed instantly by a rifle crack of thunder. The cupboard doors bounce; the fluorescents quiver. I'm left momentarily in darkness.
Hi Carolyn.
The kitchen lights flicker again, then steady; the gray outside begins to recede. The rain scales itself back.
Carolyn's carton is heavy—about the size and weight of a midsize microwave. The dust is gritty. I cut through the duct tape over the top and pry open the flaps. The room fills with a musty, stale smell—I can't help but sneeze as I peer down curiously. Smaller boxes lie inside. Packets. Manila folders. Albums. More diaries. Everything has been neatly organized—the compartments of Carolyn's life.
But I discipline myself now and instead pick up Carolyn's last diary, which had come earlier, separately. After glancing at the final entry, I'd set the diary on the stack of books by my bedside. There it had sat, for months, always demoted to the position of next. I open a page randomly: Saturday, June 26th, 2004: “Created bitchin’ dinner—fillet mignon avec green peppercorn hollandaise, white truffle oiled potato, zabaglione with cherries.”
Carolyn did love to cook. I could never figure out if she actually ate, though. Fifty-eight when she died, she was thin as a skewer, her skin white as bleached bone. The bouffant blonde wig she wore made her look top-heavy—pencil-thin legs lagging as she arched her body forward, suspended over the crutches. It wasn't always like that. There were times, when she was in her teens and early twenties, when she even went to dances, her lopsided frug seeming almost natural.
THE EARLY YEARS
My sister was born in 1945, more than a decade before me, after my father stopped flying World War II B-17s and began using the GI Bill to slingshot himself through veterinary school in Pullman, Washington. Pullman was where Carolyn was born. And that's where, at three, she took off one lazy summer day and grubbed in the dirt at the far end of the alley with neighbor kids. My mother swore that was how Carolyn caught polio, from “dirty kids,” since polio spreads feces-to-mouth from people who generally don't even know they are infected.
But polio is both a disease of poor sanitation and good sanitation. In the dirty old days of open sewers and untreated drinking water, infants were exposed to poliovirus while they were still protected by their mother's own poliovirus antibodies. Thus, being infected with the poliovirus as an infant has a perversely protective effect. Maybe the virtual autoclave of tidy cleanliness my mother kept the house in also played a role—my then three-year-old sister had had no opportunity to catch the virus as an infant, when it would have done little harm.
Once Carolyn had unwittingly swallowed the virus, and it had established itself in her intestines, it seeped into her bloodstream. From there, it crept into her central nervous system, where it killed critical motor neurons, leaving her with flaccid limbs. Two of my maternal cousins also experienced the ravages of polio with subsequent paralysis and withered limbs, although neither shared Carolyn's strangely sinister personality. Polio, as it turns out, runs in families. Identical twins, for example, with their matched sets of genes, are much more likely to both catch polio than fraternal twins.1 As Dr. Richard Bruno, the world's foremost expert on post-polio fatigue, writes: “You can't get polio if your genes don't allow it. Polio within families, going back generations, is very common.”2
But by the time my brother and I came along, more than a decade later, Salk's polio vaccine was finally broadly available. It no longer mattered at all if we had a genetic predisposition for polio.
Saturday, April 3rd: “Got to turn this around and will. The big clock debacle. Am so lucky to have these critters in my world. Leftover sandwich.”
Each entry in this diary—her last—is short; mostly only a sentence or two. Carolyn wrote with a fine pencil—careful, sweeping strokes that caressed each word. I had admired her artistic skills as far back as when I was seven, in Lubbock, Texas. I sat beside her, watching as cartoon chipmunks flowed from her pencil and gamboled on the paper, as gleefully as if she'd released them from a cage. I would think: I can hardly wait until I grow up, so I can draw like that! No such luck.
Big clock. Debacle. Lubbock. My father's Air Force transfers are like my own big clock, making it easy for me to keep track of time. California was when I went to kindergarten. Oregon—first grade. Texas—second grade. Massachusetts—third grade. Pennsylvania—fourth grade. Tick tock. Lubbock is the only place I remember Carolyn living with our family. I remember how she'd hide when one boyfriend would come by, so she could go out with another. She liked to whisper secrets to others, ostentatiously cupping her hand so my little brother and I would notice.
Carolyn told me later that she used to babysit for us in Lubbock all the time. That she practically was our mother while she lived with us. I don't remember that at all. I do remember trying to catch horny toads. They had two big head-spines jutting from a forest of smaller spines, like horns on a little demon. Supposedly they could squirt blood at you from their eyes.
I haven't mentioned Carolyn's looks. As a young woman, she was an echo of Audrey Hepburn: pearly lips, delicate chin, aquamarine eyes, wide and trusting as a baby's. Her sense of style set off a sylphlike figure. Even as a youngster, her voice was mellifluous, throaty, sultry. She spoke in low tones with pauses that somehow commanded attention—one had to stop everything else and pay attention to hear anything at all. Boys were nuts about her. And she was crazy about them. I know, because my first diary was a hand-me-down five-year diary first written in by Carolyn.
I can hear her husky whisper as I read her first entry: Sunday, October 21st, 1962. She was seventeen. “Granny P. came to visit—has my room so I'm a bit disorganized. She gave me this diary which I wonder how faithfully will be kept.” Not very. After two weeks of sporadic penciled musings about boys, the entries stopped, as if she had simply gotten up and wandered away in the middle of a conversation.
My rough ten-year-old scrawl takes over three years later. April 7th, 1966: “MOM WENT TO THE HOSPITAL. We called the doctor and he called the ambulance. Dad was in New York and wouldn't be home till tomorrow. Suddenly she just started to fall and began to spit up.” I remember that: squatting over my mother's open, staring eyes, trying to tell her jokes, in case she was still aware, my little brother nudged into the living room to watch The Munsters. The next day: “Today we found out that a main artery broke so they have to operate in Mom's skull.” Kid-speak for aneurysm. Carolyn wasn't home when the aneurysm happened. This was because several years earlier, at age nineteen, she had disappeared.
A month after the aneurysm, Mom came home. But things changed. For one thing, Mom didn't know who we were. It must have been strange for her: she wakes up in a strange place and after a few days, the doctor introduces a nice man who claims to have been her husband for over twenty years. Then these slobbering, smelly children come up and hug her like she's their, well, Mom or something.
For us kids, having Mom back home turned out to be unexpectedly fun. Damage from the aneurysm had changed her personality markedly—she was nicer. She actually focused on us, even if only because she was lost and often, probably, desperately confused. Each night, she'd set out the best plates, saying, “Your father is bringing someone special home to dinner tonight.” My fa
ther would show up with no guest in sight, and we'd enjoy a gourmet dinner. That summer is the only time I ever remember my father laying a hand on me. Cleverly, I'd asked my newly agreeable mother if I could stay late at a friend's. When I came home that night, a trifle guiltily, my father took me out to the back and paddled me. “How could you ask your mother something like that? You know she isn't right in the head.” The words stumbled out hard—he never spoke ill of anyone.
My mother's memory loss and my father's reticence are probably why I never heard details of what Carolyn was like as a child. When I was much older and knew more of the truth about Carolyn, my father confided—while setting up Carolyn's trust fund—that he was deeply puzzled, and ashamed, that he could have fathered such alien spawn. Once, a year before he died, my father mentioned absently, while pouring coffee in his cereal, that he thought the polio had done something to Carolyn's brain. (By that time, the Alzheimer's had done a lot to my father's brain.) Of course, being me, I took a look at the research literature.
Apparently, poliovirus not only invades motor neurons of the spine, but also, as if drawn as if by a magnet, always invades another area—the midbrain, an ancient neural area that humans share with reptiles.3 The midbrain includes the reticular activating system, the oldest system, in evolutionary terms, above the spine. The reticular activating system is responsible for keeping you awake and focusing attention. Overwhelming damage to this area can result in coma or death. This system ties in with a number of neurotransmitter systems, including those using serotonin, norepinephrine, and, especially, dopamine. It is little wonder, then, that damage to this area can have a broad effect on the brain.
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