Review of The psychopath: Theory, research and practice.

Abstract

HUGUES HERVE and JOHN C. YUILLE The Psychopath: Theory, Research and Practice New Jersey: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 2007, 592 Pages (ISBN: 0-8058-5053-8, C$135.00, Cloth) Reviewed by MARC NESCA The Psychopath: Theory, Research, ana Practice is an edited text that grew out of a 2000 Festschrift celebrating Dr. Hare's retirement from academia. The identified audience for this book includes both lay (e.g., judges) and professional (e.g., forensic practitioners) consumers, as well as students and researchers. The book begins with an historical overview of the construct of psychopathy and then works its way through a variety of important issues, including measurement, etiology, behavioural manifestations of the disorder, typologies, and practice considerations. The first section opens with a balanced and informative overview of the psychopathy literature written by Dr. Hare. This overview highlights progress made since the emergence of the Hare Psychopathy Checklist-Revised (PCL-R) as the gold standard diagnostic instrument for psychopathy, with links drawn to the diverse areas of inquiry that have been impacted by Dr. Hare's work. The main theme of this chapter is that our understanding of psychopathy has increased significantly as a result of the development of a valid and reliable diagnostic instrument. Indeed, Dr. Hare explicitly warns that loosening of the operational definition of psychopathy may ... result in a partial return to the conceptual and measurement confusion JA that held sway some 20 years ago (p. 7). Among the high points of this book are chapters examining the affective-interpersonal features of psychopathy, the link between psychopathy and crime scene analysis, psychopathy in women, psychopathy in youth, and the role of psychopathy in domestic violence. The latter includes a very interesting, albeit quite brief, discussion of treatment issues for psychopathic batterers. The chapter on psychopathy in women is also very well written and includes a clear synthesis of current knowledge about psychopathic women. Measurement issues in the study of psychopathic youths, as well as the conceptual underpinnings of the PCL-YV, also receive solid reviews. Similarly, Dr. O'Toole's chapter on crime scene analysis is quite interesting and informative. The proposed typology (based on the work of the first editor) is consistent with the four-factor model of psychopathy preferred by Dr. Hare and promises to have more clinical relevance than other existing typologies. To my mind, however, the chapter examining the affective-interpersonal features of psychopathy is the true highlight of this book. Dr. Patrick's writing style is pleasant and engaging while maintaining scientific integrity, and his review of findings from such diverse fields of inquiry as neuroscience and social psychology is outstanding. Finally, the proposed dual-process model of psychopathy is elegant, parsimonious, and both clinically and scientifically compelling. In fact, the only obvious flaw in this chapter is the poor quality of the figures. Parenthetically, with very few exceptions, this problem mars the entire book, with most figures appearing to be little more than simple photocopies of presentation overheads or slides. In fact, the quality of some figures is sufficiently poor to render them useless. The remaining chapters in this book are unfortunately of lesser quality: Some provide little beyond superficial reviews of well-known bodies of work (e.g., psychopathy and violent crime), while others stray off topic to the point that psychopathy becomes secondary to some other issue. Chapter three, for example, often strays into discussions and opinions regarding general risk assessment and, in this reviewer's opinion, includes far too much discussion of the VRAG (a risk assessment instrument developed by the authors of the chapter) for a text on psychopathy. Chapters four and five overlap considerably and focus on statistical issues to a degree that is more appropriate for a textbook on statistics than a reference book on psychopathy. …