Evil Genes

by Barbara Oakley

  Fig. 3.4 Illustration by Gabrielle Stryker.

  Fig. 3.5 Illustration after image from National Institute of Mental Health, “Depression Gene May Weaken Mood-Regulating Circuit,” Bethesda, MD: National Institute of Mental Health, Clinical Brain Disorders Branch, National Institutes of Health, US Department of Health and Human Services, 2005, http://www.nimh.nih.gov/press/shortcircuit.cfm (accessed November 1, 2006). The clever additional captions are from Dr. Jim Phelp's Web site at http://www.psycheducation.org.

  Fig. 3.6 Illustrations after image from National Institute of Mental Health, “Depression Gene May Weaken Mood-Regulating Circuit,” Bethesda, MD: National Institute of Mental Health, Clinical Brain Disorders Branch, National Institutes of Health, US Department of Health and Human Services, 2005, http://www.nimh.nih.gov/press/shortcircuit.cfm (accessed November 1, 2006).

  Fig. 4.1 Reprinted with slight modifications from Kent A. Kiehl, Andra M. Smith, Robert D. Hare, Adrianna Mendrek, Bruce B. Forster, Johann Brink, and Peter F. Liddle, “Limbic Abnormalities in Affective Processing by Criminal Psychopaths As Revealed by Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging,” Biological Psychiatry 50: 677–84, Copyright 2001, with permission from the Society of Biological Psychiatry.

  Fig. 4.2 Modified from image available courtesy National Institute on Drug Abuse, National Institutes of Health.

  Fig. 4.3 Illustration by R. Oakley.

  Fig. 4.4 Illustration by R. Oakley.

  Fig. 4.5 Illustration by Gabrielle Stryker.

  Fig. 4.6 Slightly modified for viewing in black and white from Adrian Raine and Yaling Yang, “Neural Foundations to Moral Reasoning and Antisocial Behavior,” Social Cognitive Affective Neuroscience 1, no. 3 (2006): 203–13. By permission of Oxford University Press.

  Fig. 5.1 Illustration courtesy R. L. Bruno of midbrain damage after poliovirus infection in humans based on 158 autopsies performed by Dr. David Bodian.

  Fig. 5.2 Permission by author.

  Fig. 5.3 Permission by author.

  Fig. 5.4 Permission by author.

  Fig. 5.5 Permission by author.

  Fig. 5.6 Public domain.

  Fig. 6.1 Permission by author.

  Fig. 7.1 Mark H. Milstein/Northfoto.

  Fig. 7.2 AP/Wide World Photos.

  Fig. 8.1 “Diebold Variations” © 2004–06 Rand Careaga, http://homepage.mac.com/rcareaga/diebold/adworks.htm#the_weaselese.

  Fig. 8.2 Illustrations loosely adapted from those of Henry Gray, Anatomy of the Human Body (Lea & Febiger, Philadelphia, 1918).

  Fig. 8.3 Modified from image available courtesy National Institute on Drug Abuse, National Institutes of Health.

  Fig. 8.4 Illustration by Gabrielle Stryker.

  Fig. 8.5 From Robert O. Friedel, Borderline Personality Disorder Demystified, Copyright © 2004 Robert O. Friedel. Appears by permission of the publisher, Marlowe & Company, A Division of Avalon Publishing Group, Inc.

  Fig. 8.6 Reprinted from S. C. Herpertz and others, “Evidence of Abnormal Amygdala Functioning in Borderline Personality Disorder: A Functional MRI Study,” Biological Psychiatry 50: 295, Copyright (2001), with permission from the Society for Biological Psychiatry.

  Fig. 8.7 From Robert O. Friedel, Borderline Personality Disorder Demystified, Copyright © 2004 Robert O. Friedel. Appears by permission of the publisher, Marlowe & Company, A Division of Avalon Publishing Group, Inc.

  Fig. 8.8 Modified from Peter A. Johnson and others, “Understanding Emotion Regulation in Borderline Personality Disorder: Contributions of Neuroimaging,” Journal of Neuropsychiatry and Clinical Neurosciences 15, no. 4 (2003). By permission of American Psychiatric Publishing, Inc.

  Fig. 8.9 Slightly modified from F. D. Juengling, C. Schmahl, B. Heßlinger, D. Ebert, J. D. Bremner, J. Gostomzyk, M. Bohus, and K. Lieb, “Positron Emission Tomography in Female Patients with Borderline Personality Disorder,” Journal of Psychiatric Research 37: 113, Copyright (2003), with permission from Elsevier.

  Fig. 8.10 Slightly modified to clarify point of interest from F. D. Juengling, C. Schmahl, B. Heßlinger, D. Ebert, J. D. Bremner, J. Gostomzyk, M. Bohus, and K. Lieb, “Positron Emission Tomography in Female Patients with Borderline Personality Disorder,” Journal of Psychiatric Research 37: 112, Copyright (2003), with permission from Elsevier.

  Fig. 8.11 From Robert O. Friedel, Borderline Personality Disorder Demystified, Copyright © 2004 Robert O. Friedel. Appears by permission of the publisher, Marlowe & Company, a division of Avalon Publishing Group, Inc.

  Fig. 9.1 Permission by author.

  Fig. 9.2 Photograph by Harrison Forman, from the American Geographical Society Library, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee Libraries.

  Fig. 9.3 Photograph ca. 1915, provided courtesy of the Hoover Archives at Stanford (Joshua B. Powers Collection).

  Fig. 9.4 AP/World Wide Photos.

  Fig. 10.1 Public domain.

  Fig. 11.1 AP/Wide World Photos.

  Fig. 11.2 AP/Wide World Photos.

  Fig. 12.1 Permission by author.

  Fig. 12.2 Permission by author.

  Fig. 12.3 Permission by author.

  1. Paul Johnson, A History of the American People (New York: HarperPerennial, 1999), p. 445. Via Hugh Hewitt, “The War of the World,” www.hughhewitt.townhall.com, December 26, 2006 (accessed December 26, 2006).

  INTRODUCTION

  1. Sterling Seagrave and Peggy Seagrave, Dragon Lady: The Life and Legend of the Last Empress of China, 1st ed. (New York: Knopf, 1992), pp. 261–62. The book, which relies on largely English sources, lays the blame for the Empress's wicked reputation at the feet of ruthless hucksters whose largely fictional accounts of the Empress's life sold well.

  2. Robert Conquest, The Great Terror: A Reassessment (New York: Oxford University Press, 1990); John Earl Haynes and Harvey Klehr, In Denial: Historians, Communism & Espionage (San Francisco: Encounter Books, 2003), p. 23. Martin Amis, Koba the Dread: Laughter and the Twenty Million (New York: Talk Miramax Books, 2002), p. 10.

  3. Robert D. Hare, “Psychopaths: New Trends in Research,” Harvard Mental Health Letter 12 (1995): 4–5.

  4. Simon Sebag Montefiore, Stalin: The Court of the Red Tsar (New York: Knopf, 2004), pp. 422–23.

  5. Ibid., p. 48.

  6. Christopher Byron, Testosterone, Inc.: Tales of CEOs Gone Wild (Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, 2004), pp. 25–26.

  7. Ibid., pp. 18–19.

  8. Pamela Fayerman, “Hitler's Defeat after Allied Invasion Attributed to Parkinson's Disease,” Vancouver Sun, July 27, 1999; Betty Glad, “Why Tyrants Go Too Far: Malignant Narcissism and Absolute Power,” Political Psychology 23, no. 1 (2002): 1–36; Colin Martindale, Nancy Hasenfus, and Dwight Hines, “Hitler: A Neurohistorical Formulation,” Confinia Psychiatrica 19, no. 2 (1976): 106–16; Hyman Muslin, “Adolf Hitler: The Evil Self,” Psychohistory Review (Sangamon State University) 20, no. 3 (1992): 251–70; Jerrold Post, When Illness Strikes the Leader: The Dilemma of the Captive King (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1993), p. 51; Fritz Redlich, Diagnosis of a Destructive Prophet (New York: Oxford University Press, 1998), pp. 18, 231–35; David Ronfeldt, Beware the Hubris-Nemisis Complex (Santa Monica, CA: RAND, 1994); Ron Rosenbaum, Explaining Hitler: The Search for the Origins of His Evil (New York: Random House, 1999), p. 87; John C. Sonne, “On Tyrants as Abortion Survivors,” Journal of Prenatal & Perinatal Psychology & Health 19, no. 2 (2004): 149–67.

  9. As of February 21, 2007.

  10. Glad, “Why Tyrants Go Too Far.”

  11. Tony Becher and Paul Trowler, Academic Tribes and Territories, 2nd ed. (Philadelphia, PA: Open University Press, 2001); Thomas Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, 3rd ed. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996).

  12. Judith Rich Harris, The Nurture Assumption (New York: Free Press, 1998); Steven Pinker, The Blank Slate: The Modern Denial of Human Nature (New York: Viking, 2002).

  CHAPTER 1: IN SEARCH OF MACHIAVELLI

  1. Albert Szent-Gyorgyi, in L. J. Peter, Peter's Quotations: Ideas for Our Ti
me (New York: Bantam Books, 1979), p. 123.

  2. Richard Christie, “Why Machiavelli?” in Studies in Machiavellianism, ed. Richard Christie and Florence Geis (New York: Academic Press, 1970), p. 2.

  3. David M. Buss, Evolutionary Psychology (Boston: Allyn & Bacon, 1999), pp. 24–30.

  4. Annie M. Paul, “One Mean Renaissance Man,” Salon.com, September 13, 1999, http://www.salon.com/books/it/1999/09/13/machiavelli/print.html (accessed April 1, 2005).

  5. Christie and Geis, Studies in Machiavellianism.

  6. Christie, “Why Machiavelli?” p. 4.

  7. Theodor W. Adorno et al., The Authoritarian Personality (New York: Harper, 1950); Hans J. Eysenck, The Psychology of Politics (London: Routledge and K. Paul, 1954); Kung-san Yang, The Book of Lord Shang, trans. J. J. L. Duyvendak (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1928).

  8. Niccolo Machiavelli, The Prince. The Discourses (New York: Modern Library, 1940).

  9. Christie, “Why Machiavelli?” p. 8.

  10. Ibid.

  11. Paul, “One Mean Renaissance Man.”

  CHAPTER 2: PSYCHOPATHY

  1. J. W. McHoskey, W. Worzel, and C. Szyarto, “Machiavellianism and Psychopathy,” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 74, no. 1 (1998): 192–210; Paul, “One Mean Renaissance Man.”

  2. Claire Valier, Theories of Crime and Punishment, Longman Criminology Series (Longman Publishing Group, 2002), pp. 14–18, 22.

  3. S. D. Hart and R. D. Hare, “Psychopathy and Antisocial Personality Disorder,” Current Opinion in Psychiatry 9 (1996): 129–32; Jorge Moll, Ricardo de Oliveira-Sousa, and Paul J. Eslinger, “Morals and the Human Brain: A Working Model,” NeuroReport 14, no. 3 (2003): 299–305.

  4. Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, II, I. Patricia Smith Churchland, “A Case Study in Neuroethics: The Nature of Moral Judgment,” in Neuroethics, ed. Judy Illes (New York: Oxford University Press, 2006); K. Kafetsios and Eric LaRock, “Cognition and Emotion: Aristotelian Affinities with Contemporary Emotion Research,” Theory and Psychology 15 (2005): 639–57. S. Morse, “Brain Overclaim Syndrome and Criminal Responsibility: A Diagnostic Note,” Ohio State Journal of Criminal Law 3 (2006): 397–412; Adrian Raine and Yaling Yang, “Neural Foundations to Moral Reasoning and Antisocial Behavior,” Social Cognitive Affective Neuroscience 1, no. 3 (2006): 203–13.

  5. J. Reid Meloy, Violence Risk and Threat Assessment (San Diego, CA: Specialized Training Services, 2000), p. 142.

  6. Dan J. Stein, “The Neurobiology of Evil: Psychiatric Perspectives on Perpetrators,” Ethnicity & Health 5, no. 3/4 (2000): 303–15.

  7. David J. Cooke, “Psychopathy, Sadism and Serial Killing,” in Violence and Psychopathy, ed. Adrian Raine and José Sanmartín (New York: Kluwer Academic/Plenum Publishers, 2001), p. 128; Robert D. Hare, David J. Cooke, and Stephen D. Hart, “Psychopathy and Sadistic Personality Disorder,” in Oxford Textbook of Psychopathy, ed. Theodore Millon, Paul H. Blaney, and Roger D. Davis (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999), pp. 555–84.

  8. Meloy, Violence, p. 113.

  9. W. John Livesley, “Behavioral and Molecular Genetic Contributions to a Dimensional Classification of Personality Disorder,” Journal of Personality Disorders 19, no. 2 (2005): 131–55.

  10. Stein, “Neurobiology of Evil.”

  11. Hare, Cooke, and Hart, “Psychopathy.”

  12. Essi Viding et al., “Evidence for Substantial Genetic Risk for Psychopathy in 7-Year-Olds,” Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry 46, no. 6 (2005): 592–97.

  13. Judith Rich Harris, No Two Alike (New York: Norton, 2006).

  14. Essi Viding, “Annotation: Understanding the Development of Psychopathy,” Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry 45, no. 8 (2004): 1329–37.

  CHAPTER 3: EVIL GENES

  1. Robert Plomin, Nature and Nurture: An Introduction to Human Behavioral Genetics (Belmont, CA: Wadworth/Thomson Learning, 2004), p. 67. See also Lisabeth F. DiLalla and Irving I. Gottesman, Behavior Genetics Principles, 1st ed. (Washington, DC: American Psychological Association, 2004).

  2. Plomin, Nature and Nurture, p. 112. L. B. Koenig et al., “Genetic and Environmental Influences on Religiousness: Findings for Retrospective and Current Religiousness Ratings,” Journal of Personality 73, no. 2 (2005): 471–88.

  3. K. P. Harden et al., “Marital Conflict and Conduct Disorder in Children-of-Twins,” Child Development 78, no. 1 (2007): in press.

  4. Joshua Roffman et al., “Neuroimaging-Genetic Paradigms: A New Approach to Investigate the Pathophysiology and Treatment of Cognitive Deficits in Schizophrenia,” Harvard Review of Psychiatry 14, no. 2 (2006): 78–91.

  5. Richard Redon et al., “Global Variation in Copy Number in the Human Genome,” Nature 444, no. 7118 (2006): 444–54.

  6. David J. Buller, Adapting Minds: Evolutionary Psychology and the Persistent Quest for Human Nature (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2005), p. 437.

  7. E. Meshorer et al., “SC35 Promotes Sustainable Stress-Induced Alternative Splicing of Neuronal Acetylcholinesterase mRNA,” Molecular Psychiatry 10, no. 11 (2005): 985–97; E. Meshorer and H. Soreq, “Virtues and Woes of AChE Alternative Splicing in Stress-Related Neuropathologies,” Trends in Neurosciences 29, no. 4 (2006): 216–24; R. Valgardsdottir et al., “Structural and Functional Characterization of Noncoding Repetitive RNAs Transcribed in Stressed Human Cells,” Molecular Biology of the Cell 16, no. 6 (2005): 2597–2604.

  8. John Rose, Human Stress and the Environment: Health Aspects (Taylor & Francis, 1994), pp. 1, 8, 133.

  9. Sridhar Prathikanti and Daniel R. Weinberger, “Psychiatric Genetic—the New Era: Genetic Research and Some Clinical Implications,” British Medical Bulletin 73 and 74 (2005): 107–22. But see Robert Plomin, “Finding Genes in Child Psychology and Psychiatry: When Are We Going to Be There?” Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry 46, no. 10 (2005): 1030–38, for skepticism regarding this approach.

  10. Daniel Weinberger, in discussion with the author, June 1, 2006.

  11. C. H. Chen et al., “Brain Imaging Correlates of Depressive Symptom Severity and Predictors of Symptom Improvement after Antidepressant Treatment,” Biological Psychiatry [Epub ahead of print] (2007).

  12. J. L. Roffman et al., “Neuroimaging and the Functional Neuroanatomy of Psychotherapy,” Psychological Medicine 35, no. 10 (2005): 1385–98.

  13. Weinberger, in discussion with the author, June 1, 2006.

  14. D. L. Murphy et al., “Brain Serotonin Neurotransmission,” Journal of Clinical Psychiatry 59, Suppl 15 (1998): 4–12.

  15. Robert Plomin, M. J. Owen, and P. McGuffin, “The Genetic Basis of Complex Human Behaviors,” Science 264, no. 1733–39 (1994); A. Reif and K. P. Lesch, “Toward a Molecular Architecture of Personality,” Behavioural Brain Research 139, no. 1–2 (2003): 1–20.

  16. Berend Olivier, “Serotonin and Aggression,” Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences 1036 (2004): 382–92.

  17. A. S. New et al., “Impulsive Aggression Associated with HTR1B Genotype in Personality Disorder,” in Annual Meeting of the American Psychiatric Association NR 388 (1999); A. S. New et al., “Serotonin Related Genotype and Impulsive Aggression,” in Annual Meeting of the Society of Biological Psychiatry 45, Abstract #387 (1999); F. Rybakowski et al., “The 5-HT2A-1438 A/G and 5-HTTLPR Polymorphisms and Personality Dimensions in Adolescent Anorexia Nervosa: Association Study,” Neuropsychobiology 53, no. 1 (2006): 33–39.

  18. T. Iidaka et al., “A Variant C178T in the Regulatory Region of the Serotonin Receptor Gene HTR3A Modulates Neural Activation in the Human Amygdala,” Journal of Neuroscience 25, no. 27 (2005): 6460–66.

  19. X. Ni et al., “Association between Serotonin Transporter Gene and Borderline Personality Disorder,” Journal of Psychiatric Research 40, no. 5 (2006): 448–53; L. Pezawas et al., “5-HTTLPR Polymorphism Impacts Human Cingulate-Amygdala Interactions: A Genetic Susceptibility Mechanism for Depression,” Nature Neuroscience 8, no. 6 (2005): 828–34; H. Steiger et al., “The 5HTTLPR Polymorphism, Psychopathologi
c Symptoms, and Platelet [3H-] Paroxetine Binding in Bulimic Syndromes,” International Journal of Eating Disorders 37, no. 1 (2005): 57–60.

  20. Ahmad R. Hariri et al., “A Susceptibility Gene for Affective Disorders and the Response of the Human Amygdala,” Archives of General Psychiatry 62, no. 2 (2005): 146–54; Pezawas et al., “5-HTTLPR.”

  21. S. Eddahibi et al., “Serotonin Transporter Overexpression Is Responsible for Pulmonary Artery Smooth Muscle Hyperplasia in Primary Pulmonary Hypertension,” Journal of Clinical Investigation 108, no. 8 (2001): 1141–50; S. Eddahibi et al., “Hyperplasia of Pulmonary Artery Smooth Muscle Cells Is Causally Related to Overexpression of the Serotonin Transporter in Primary Pulmonary Hypertension,” Chest 121, no. 3 (2002): 97S–98S.

  22. R. Cacabelos et al., “Molecular Genetics of Alzheimer's Disease and Aging,” Methods and Findings in Experimental Clinical Pharmacology 27, no. Suppl A (2005): 1–573; D. K. Lahiri, C. Ghosh, and Y. W. Ge, “A Proximal Gene Promoter Region for the Beta-Amyloid Precursor Protein Provides a Link between Development, Apoptosis, and Alzheimer's Disease,” Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences 1010 (2003): 643–47.

  23. Reinaldo B. Oriá et al., “Role of Apolipoprotein E4 in Protecting Children against Early Childhood Diarrhea Outcomes and Implications for Later Development,” Medical Hypotheses 68, no. 5 (2007): 1099–1107.

  24. Christian R. A. Mondadori et al., “Better Memory and Neural Efficiency in Young Apolipoprotein Ee4 Carriers,” Cerebral Cortex, epub ahead of print (2006): bhl103.

  25. Nancy Touchette, “Gene Variation Affects Memory,” Genome News Network, 2003, http://www.genomenewsnetwork.org/articles/08_03/memory.shtml (accessed May 11, 2006).

  26. S. Sen et al., “A BDNF Coding Variant Is Associated with the NEO Personality Inventory Domain Neuroticism, a Risk Factor for Depression,” Neuropsychopharmacology 28, no. 2 (2003): 397–401.

  27. Jim Phelps, “Connecting Anxiety and Depression via the Serotonin Transporter Gene,” PsychEducation.org: Extensive Mental Health Information on Specific Topics, 2006, http://www.psycheducation.org/mechanism/4WhyShortsLongs.htm (accessed July 10, 2006).