IS PSYCHOPATHY BORN OR BRED?

This is a trickier question than people might assume.

- ELLIOT OWENS, ST ALBANS

Not least because, for many years, psychopathy was thought to be very mysterious – and in a lot of ways, it still is. There are lots of mental, neurological and personality disorders that people fear. For the most part, this is due to ignorance and flawed assumptions.

While this is also true for psychopathy – a personality disorder – the negative reactions it causes are somewhat more understandable. After all, psychopathy is regularly linked with callousness and emotional detachment, as well as deviant behaviour, manipulation and criminality.

Less than one per cent of the general population show indicators of psychopathy, but this rises to 25 per cent (that's one in four) of the prison population.

So, what causes psychopathy? Are psychopaths born this way, or are they created by (presumably very negative) life experiences? As the cliché goes, is it due to nature or nurture?