On preventing psychopathic behavior

"You start to really see personality disorders emerge around puberty, but for some children who might be primary psychopaths—that is, they have all the genes and their brain sort of set in the third trimester—this can start emerging very early, around 2 or 3-years-old. That is why we have to have more trained eyes—because that is where this becomes important for society.

A primary psychopath won't necessarily be dangerous, but if we can see that in a kid, we can tell parents to look for certain kinds of behavior. And if those behaviors emerge, we can safely discuss, protecting the privacy of that family and of the kid, how to have the child interact with a nurse practitioner or a trained professional. At that point, we can say: Make sure this kid is never bullied in school; keep them away from street violence, on and on.

A lot of kids, most kids, get bullied and they may get pissed off, but that doesn’t create a personality disorder. But there are 20 percent of kids who are really susceptible and they may ultimately be triggered for a personality disorder in puberty. If we know these children can be helped by making sure that they aren't abused or abandoned—because you've got to get there really early—well, then, that would be important to do. I don't mean to preach."

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This quote is from an Atlantic piece that interviews a neuroscientist who accidentally discovered he was a psychopath. He came across a brain scan in a group of scans of his family, including him, that was being used as a control group in the study of Alzheimer's. He thought it had been accidentally mixed in from a group of psychopath scans he had been studying as a side project.

What are the odds he had already found out he was a psychopath and concocted this story in order to boost sales of a book he planned to write, and has written, The Psychopath Inside: A Neuroscientist's Personal Journey Into the Dark Side of the Brain.