I have noticed that, in recent years, there have been a lot of violent, often mass, murders where the perpetrator was young, sometimes still a teenager, and the people around him/her, including family, said that they had not noticed anything concerning in his/her behavior before the murders. Such massacres have happened all over the world and the criminals used mainly firearms, but also knives, swords, axes, and other sharp objects. After each massacre, the horrified and outraged public desperately called on the authorities to take action to prevent these bloody incidents. Unfortunately, the authorities seem to be overwhelmed or at least stuck-up because of the radically different views exhibited by members of the political class with respect to the root cause of these incidents. Some politicians blame the very loose access to firearms; other politicians blame the mental health of the population. Neither ones, nor the others manage to do anything to fix this serious problem of the contemporary society.
In my opinion, the main causes are the mental health of the population and the so-called political correctness. What astounds and, in the same time, outrages me is that the current science is advanced enough to provide tools to prevent these carnages. These include the early identification of children who are naturally prone to violence as well as their personalized treatment, which involves, among other things, ensuring a warm, loving, harmonious environment, where these children can grow and develop.
That is why I decided to start publishing on my blog some articles, excerpts and/or book reviews, interviews with scientists, lectures given by prominent researchers, documentary films, in order to popularize various scientific results that could be implemented and that could lead to a reduction in mass murders, serial murders, and serial rapes, i.e. the violent crimes committed by psychopaths and sociopaths. To open this series, I invite you to watch a lecture by James Fallon, PhD, a neuroscientist who says he himself is a pro-social psychopath.
The psychopath inside
James Fallon, PhD, Professor Emeritus of Anatomy and Neurobiology at UC Irvine School of Medicine, offers an innovative answer to the question in the title, an answer that reflects not only his professional expertise, but also some very personal experiences. I invite you to watch the video below to find out his answer. On a personal note, I expect Professor Fallon’s answer to surprise you in more ways than one.
If instead of listening to Professor Fallon’s presentation, you prefer to read an edited transcript (for length and clarity), you can find it starting on the next page. The edited transcript is organized into sections. Each section is associated with a timestamp for the video and a link and a page number for the transcript. The transcript’s navigation information is centralized in Table 1 below.
| Section | Timestamp | Page |
| Introduction | 0:00 | 2 |
| The nature – nurture problem | 2:41 | 2 |
| Three major periods | 6:40 | 3 |
| My personal story | 11:32 | 4 |
| Family history | 27:27 | 5 |
| TED Talk | 32:15 | 6 |
| Oslo Talk | 35:25 | 6 |
| The third leg | 38:16 | 7 |
| How to identify psychopaths | 46:30 | 8 |
| My own experiment | 49:43 | 8 |
| Global Consortium | 54:16 | 9 |
| War-like characteristics | 57:30 | 9 |
Table 1: Transcript navigation
This is the TED Talk given by Professor Fallon in 2009, which he mentioned in the video above and where he introduced the first “warrior gene” known by the acronym MAOA: