Childhood Trauma and Psychopathic Features Among Juvenile Offenders

Research on psychopathology has been hindered by persisting difficulties and controversies regarding its assessment. The primary goals of this set of studies were to (a) develop, and initiate the construct validation of, a self-report measure that assesses the major personality traits of psychopathy in noncriminal populations and (b) clarify the nature of these traits via an exploratory approach to test construction. This measure, the Psychopathic Personality Inventory (PPI), was developed by writing items to assess a large number of personality domains relevant to psychopathy and performing successive item-level factor analyses and revisions on three undergraduate samples. The PPI total score and its eight subscales were found to possess satisfactory internal consistency and test-retest reliability. In four studies with undergraduates, the PPI and its subscales exhibited a promising pattern of convergent and discriminant validity with self-report, psychiatric interview, observer rating, and family history data. In addition, the PPI total score demonstrated incremental validity relative to several commonly used self-report psychopathy-related measures. Future construct validation studies, unresolved conceptual issues regarding the assessment of psychopathy, and potential research uses of the PPI are outlined.

In this review, we focus on two major influences on current conceptualizations of psychopathy: one clinical, with its origins largely in the early case studies of Cleckley, and the other empirical, the result of widespread use of the Hare Psychopathy Checklist-Revised (PCL-R) for assessment purposes. Some investigators assert that the PCL-R, ostensibly based on Cleckley's work, has "drifted" from the construct described in his Clinical Profile. We evaluate this profile, note its basis in an unrepresentative sample of patients, and suggest that its literal and uncritical acceptance by the research community has become problematical. We also argue that the idea of construct "drift" is irrelevant to current conceptualizations of psychopathy, which are better informed by the extensive empirical research on the integration of structural, genetic, developmental, personality, and neurobiological research findings than by rigid adherence to early clinical formulations. We offer some suggestions for future research on psychopathy.