Children are born without a conscience. They first learn trust, because their mother meets their needs as best she can. Then they learn empathy, the ability to put themselves in another’s place. But infants whose mothers neglect them don’t learn that lesson, or those that follow, very well. While everyone has the ability to form a conscience, neglect or abuse will not allow it to develop.
Knowing why may help people figure out how to help children with these problems.
i was emotionally neglected as a child/adolescent… yet i am far from sociopathic. Even so, i do believe it is more nurture than nature…
I know a young man who was once a normal, happy child/pre-adolescent until he was taken away from his mother by the state & eventually separated from his siblings also. The mother’s only crime was that she was poor - on welfare and without a husband (she also made some poor judgments, etc., but none involving drugs & none involving abuse or neglect of her children…). Anyway, this boy was fairly well-adjusted w/ only the normal problems boys have - until this trauma occurred. Now he is sociopathic. From what i can tell, his siblings exhibit sociopathic traits as well (don’t know enough at this point to say, but stronly suspect…).
It makes me think that maybe sociopathy is a way of surviving…After all, there’s a certain logic to the question they may subconsciously have asked themselves: Why have feelings when no one cares about me? This boy was bounced around to over 10 foster placements, abused in some… At first he cried all the time… Then he got hard… His mother has always been there for him, but was eventually “phased out of his life” by the system… (long, weird story…).
I have seen this hardening take place in others who have been traumatized…
It seems to me that in any given person’s life, there comes a time when he/she begins to stop & take a look at his/her life - choices, etc… &… as the saying goes “The unexamined life is not worth living”. I pray for that to happen in this “boy’s” life. Could you also pray for him/them??
Part of the problem is age… Obvoiusly, young people think/feel/process things differently than older people do - they have different values… In the end, we all have to trust God to judge people w/ perfect justice. There’s some scripture that says something about how a person who deserves a lot of “stripes” will receive less of them than the one who does the same thing but knew better… “To whom more is given, more is required.”
For those who worry about the souls of their loved ones who are sociopathic, this should bring some comfort… Sometimes its hard to trust God (it is 4 me anyway)… but trusting - & prayer - is all we can do.
Also, its interesting to note that sociopathy occurs far less in Asian countries… where there is more of a community spirit (a sense of the “group”, the common good…) than in America, where it is virtually all about “me”…
).
