Psycho

I just finished an article in this month's "Atlantic" which profiles young psychopaths, and attempts to treat them and return them to society before they kill and maim, or at least before they kill and maim LOTS of people.

The latest research is that about 1% of children simply have brains wired differently -- parts of grey matter are missing -- and it leaves them unable to feel empathy to others, and in some cases only get pleasure from causing pain.

The article brought back chilling memories of my lone encounter with a young psychopath -- at least one that I KNEW was seriously off.  Dr. Eric was a big shot at the local JCC, and he ran the inter-session camp.  This was a program for kids during Winter Break -- they would take the kids on trips, so that working parents had something for the kids to do while school was out.  Eric invited me to be a counselor during the '82-'83 session -- I think it paid a few hundred dollars, and it was stay in Miami with Eric and his family and do this or head up to Delray Beach and spend days on the shore and nights at Boston's on AIA, meeting tourists.  Eric really needed an extra counselor, and I took the gig.

Since I was a young college guy, they gave me older kids -- I think 10-12 year olds.  I was in charge of a group of maybe 8-10, including the "most troubled" camper, Kenny.  I was warned that Kenny was always in trouble -- he and his brother had been adopted by a nice couple who couldn't have biological kids -- and while the younger brother was fine, Kenny was not.

I still remember him with great clarity -- good looking, thin, athletic, and smart.  But his dark eyes always seemed empty.  The first trip out, Kenny, in front of me, pushed a younger girl to the floor, and the girl started to wail.  I grabbed Kenny and asked why the hell he had done that.  He calmly told me "I like it when I can make the girls cry."

Of course, I heard spooky music in my head, and I kept close supervision on Kenny the rest of the camp session.  After it ended, I got my check, went on to finish my senior year, had a great post college summer working as a pharmacy tech at Boca Hospital, and that Fall started law school -- Eric as my roommie in med school, met a pretty girl upstairs who is still hanging around 34 years later...life was good.

And then one day after class there was a big news story.  A young teen in Kendall had hidden in a closet with his father's gun, shot and killed his younger brother, and then ambushed and killed his mother when she came home from work.  He spared his adoptive father.  When he was taken away, the news showed him.  He smiled at the camera and shrugged.

I followed Kenny's story for awhile.  Apparently the state agreed to ship him to an experimental mental health center in, I think, Virginia.  He graduated, and I think went to college.  I guess he'd be in his mid 40s now, if he's still alive.

According to the article, psychopaths don't respond to punishment.  But they do respond to rewards -- and they can try to train their brains to sort of fake empathy and sympathy -- but the faulty wiring remains.

The other day the news had a story about a young teen in Hialeah, who had killed his neighbor's cat -- hung the thing on a fence for the neighbors to see.  He was let out of juvenile detention, and he killed another cat.  The boy was interviewed -- his explanation was that he thought the cats were strays -- not owned by his neighbors.  His eyes reminded me of Kenny's -- nothing really there.

These are, to me, the scariest people among us.  May my encounter with Kenny be my only close one...