A review of the epidemiological, interpersonal, developmental and neurobiological underpinnings of antisocial personality and its treatment.

"In this current, comprehensive, definitive resource of information on antisocial personality disorder (ASPD), two highly recognized authorities bring together contributions from an international group of experts to review the best knowledge available on this daunting area of psychopathology. Through illustrative patient vignettes, readers get a real-world view of persons with ASPD, including symptoms, course, and severity. In addition, tables, graphs, and illustrations serve to further clarify the important concepts. Contributors provide their unique perspectives on important topics such as the history and definition of ASPD; clinical concepts such as epidemiology, comorbidity, symptoms, and course; suspected causes of the disorder; the neurophysiology, neurotransmitters, and neuroimaging of the disease; the relationship of ASPD to psychopathy; and current treatment recommendations. Special topics covered include antisocial women, antisocial children, antisocial sexual offenders, forensic aspects of ASPD, and preventive strategies"--

Patients with antisocial personality disorder (APD) have traditionally been considered difficult ot treat, or even untreatable, with psychotherapy. Recent clinical and research developments, however, have begun to change this view. In this book. both experienced and novice clinicians will gain an understanding of the developments in this area of psychotherapy. Rotgers and Maniacci present experts in the field of various models of treatment, among them Adlerian, biosocial-learning, motivational interviewing, Rogerian and psychopharmacological, to identify treatment goals, select assessment tools, conceptualize progression, pinpoint pitfalls, develop techniques, and move toward a successful therapeutic completion. By providing a brief overview of APD, discussing the ongoing controversies regarding the construct of APD, and assessing the responses to the same set of questions posed to each expert, the authors offers a glimpse into the difficult world of antisocial personality disorder.

This work offers an evaluation of competing theoretical perspectives and nosological systems for personality disorders. The editors have brought together recognized authorities in the field to offer a synthesis of competing perspectives that provide readers with an assessment for each disorder. The result is a comprehensive, current, and critical summary of research and practice guidelines related to the personality disorders. Key Features focuses on controversies and alternative conceptualizations; separate chapters are dedicated to each personality disorder and considered from various points of view. It presents authoritative perspectives; leading scholars and researchers in the field provide a critical evaluation of alternative perspectives on each personality disorder. And it frames the current state of personality disorder research and practice issues; cutting edge and streamlined research is presented to be used in courses on diagnosis, assessment, psychopathology and abnormal psychology, especially those that include the DSM IV. It also offers an integrative understanding of elusive personality categorizations; wherever possible, case examples are offered as illustrations of each disorders clinical presentation. The use of technical terms are minimized; each contributor takes the approach of a user friendly summary and integration of major trends, findings, and future directions.

Psychopathy remains one of the least understood personality disorders and one of the most intransigent to therapeutic amelioration. Encompassing all the significant viewpoints regarding the nature of psychopathic personalities, this volume surveys current typologies and treatment approaches.

This volume presents a scholarly analysis of psychopathic and sociopathic personalities and the conditions that give rise to them. In so doing, it offers a coherent theoretical and developmental analysis of socialization and its vicissitudes, and of the role played in socialization by the crime-relevant genetic traits of the child and the skills and limitations of the primary socializing agents, the parents. This volume also describes how American psychiatry's (DSM-IV) category of "Antisocial Personality Disorder" is heterogeneous and fails to document some of the more interesting and notorious psychopaths of our era. The author also shows why the antinomic formula "Nature vs. Nurture" should be revised to "Nature via Nurture" and reviews the evidence for the heritability of crime-relevant traits. One of these traits -- fearlessness -- seems to be one basis for the primary psychopathy and the author argues that the primary psychopath and the hero may be twigs on the same genetic branch. But crime -- the failure of socialization -- is rare among traditional peoples still living in the extended-family environment in which our common ancestors lived and to which our species is evolutionarily adapted. The author demonstrates that the sharp rise in crime and violence in the United States since the 1960s can be attributed to the coeval increase in divorce and illegitimacy which has left millions of fatherless children to be reared by over-burdened, often immature or sociopathic single mothers. The genus sociopathic personality includes those persons whose failure of socialization can be attributed largely to incompetent or indifferent rearing. Two generalizations supported by modern behavior genetic research are that most psychological traits have strong genetic roots and show little lasting influence of the rearing environment. This book demonstrates that the important trait of socialization is an exception. Although traits that obstruct or facilitate socialization tend to obey these rules, socialization itself is only weakly heritable; this is because modern American society displays such enormous variance in the relevant environmental factors, mainly in parental competence. Moreover, parental incompetence that produces sociopathy in one child is likely to have the same result with any siblings. This book argues that sociopathy contributes far more to crime and violence than psychopathy because sociopaths are much more numerous and because sociopathy is a familial trait for both genetic and environmental reasons. With a provocative thesis and an engaging style, this book will be of principal interest to clinical, personality, forensic, and developmental psychologists and their students, as well as to psychiatrists and criminologists.