The childhood disorders ODD and CD can evolve into adult antisocial personality disorder. Some teans with antisocial personality disorder go undiagnosed because adults may not understand that the combination of deceitfulness, poor impulse control, irritability and recklessness is very serious.

Teens and adults with antisocial personality have a severe disorder of character. At the core of antisocial personality is a deficit in all three sides of the Inner Triangle. Think about what character means. Character is our ability to love, our ability to control impulses and moral reasoning ability. A person with good character is strong in all three qualities.

Just Like His Father? teaches you how these problems develop and gives you a strategy for preventing these problems in your at risk child.

Those with antisocial personality disorder have poor ability to love, poor impulse control, and a low moral reasoning ability. These individuals do not just wake up at age 15 and come down with the disorder as if they caught a cold. The problems with ability to love, impulse control and moral reasoning ability develop from the time of conception. I believe that there is a developmental time- frame for gaining ability to love. A child should learn to love prior to puberty, or he will likely never be able to love. Impulse control and moral reasoning ability can be improved upon at any age, provided a person is motivated to try.

The base of the Inner Triangle and the core of good character is the ability to love. Ability to love is dependent on our inner emotional life and capacity for empathy (Chapter 3 of Just Like His Father?). The sides of the triangle are formed by ability to control impulses (Chapter 4) and moral reasoning ability (Chapter 5).

Impulse control is our ability to manage urges and feelings. Moral reasoning ability is our understanding of morality and the way we use this understanding. A person with ability to love and good impulse control would function well in any society, regardless of that society’s moral values. Moral values vary, depending on culture, however all human societies have a moral code members are expected to live by.

To better understand how the Inner Triangle works, let us look at what the result would be if only one of the three sides was poorly developed. A person with little ability to love would be the most impaired. However, a person with little empathy and impoverished emotional life could partially compensate with strong impulse control and strong moral reasoning ability. His moral values and self-control would tell him to behave in a good way toward others, even if he lacked feelings to guide his behavior.

I am sure you know someone who fits this description. Often these people are somewhat cold individuals who must “play everything by the book.” Because they lack strong loving feelings to guide their behavior, they realistically fear what would happen if their impulse control and/or moral reasoning ability deteriorated.

These “play it by the book” individuals are experienced by others as constricted in the area of feelings. Nevertheless, they are generally good people who do not exploit others. Thus, some interaction between genes and upbringing can allow for the development of a character where weakness in ability to love is balanced by good impulse control and good moral reasoning ability. I say, keep playing by the book. That is a very good thing.

A person with poor impulse control but with well-developed ability to love and moral reasoning ability is a guilty, remorseful, but impulsive person. These individuals do bad things on impulse even though they do not really want to. Because this type of person is disturbed by the problem, he is likely to seek help. Those with poor impulse control benefit from training and medication to strengthen their impulse control center.

When ability to love and impulse control are relatively intact and moral reasoning ability is impaired, bad actions seem justified to the individual that does them. This is why we use the saying “there is honor among thieves.” Thieves with honor have intact ability to love. Many people who end up in the criminal justice system get there because of impaired moral reasoning and impaired impulse control.

The increase in criminal behavior found in lower socioeconomic groups is not only due to an increase in true antisocial personality disorder in these groups. Instead, differences in moral reasoning ability and parental training of impulse control are to blame.

In my opinion, we should develop reliable ways to identify criminals who have intact ability to love. These individuals would not meet criterion 7 of DSM IV. The problem is that remorse is very hard to measure, and many with antisocial personality disorder pretend to be remorseful. Moral reasoning ability can be improved through education and treatment in a person who is otherwise intact.

GO TO TOP