To treat a psychopath.
Some people are now quite optimistic about the possibility of treating psychopathy with drugs that directly modulate brain function. I argue that this optimism is misplaced. Psychopathy is a global disorder in an individual's worldview, including his social and moral outlook. Because of the unity of this Weltanschauung, it is unlikely to be treatable in a piecemeal fashion. Recent neuroscientific methods do not give us much hope that we can replace, in a wholesale manner, problematic views of the world with more socially desirable ones. There are, therefore, principled reasons that psychopathy is so singularly treatment resistant.
Department of Philosophy, University of Cincinnati, PO Box 210374, Cincinnati, OH, 45221-0374, USA, maibomhi@ucmail.uc.edu.
Heidi L
HL
Maibom
D000339:Affect; D000374:Aggression; D000987:Antisocial Personality Disorder / Q000188:drug therapy* / Q000523:psychology*; D001290:Attitude; D004644:Emotions; D006801:Humans; D007600:Judgment; D009014:Morals; D011619:Psychotropic Drugs / Q000627:therapeutic use; D017211:Treatment Failure
D011619:Psychotropic Drugs