Can Psychopathy Be Cured?

New treatments help to reduce callous and unemotional traits in children, guiding them toward productive lives

- MAIA SZALAVITZ

LILLYTH QUILLAN KNEW ALMOST IMMEDIATELY that something was wrong with her baby. At around eight months old with eight sharp new teeth, he began deliberately biting her breast as she fed him, then looking her in the eyes and laughing. Even though she cried out and pulled him away for significant stretches of time, whenever she returned to nursing, he'd bite again—and then snicker. Within days she had to switch to bottle feeding.

Quillan's son, Alex (his name has been changed for privacy), was almost expelled from preschool because he repeatedly hurt other children. In middle school he began stealing and selling his parents' electronics. He would pretend to hug his mom, then headbutt her instead. “I remember hitting my mom as a kid,” Alex says. “I know I shouldn't have enjoyed it, but at the time, I did.” He adds, “If you're looking for a reason, I wish I had it.” By high school he was using a gun to commit armed robberies.

Quillan, who comes from an upper-middle-class family of northern California artists, was 22 years old and essentially a single mother when she started raising Alex. By the time he was five, she'd married her now husband, who adopted Alex. The couple tried all types of discipline short of corporal punishment. They saw counselors, psychologists and psychiatrists; wasted thousands of dollars on brain scans; got diagnoses of attention deficit hyperactivity disorder and Asperger's syndrome; and tried medications, therapies and special education. Nothing worked.

Finally, when Alex was 14, Quillan told her own therapist that she thought her son was a sociopath. The therapist said such terms weren't used to describe children—but she diagnosed him with conduct disorder, which can be a precursor to psychopathy in adults.