Savage Spawn by Jonathan Kellerman Read Free Book Online

psychology—and its ancestors, philosophy and theology—since their inceptions as formal fields of study:
genetics versus environment
.
    The nature-nurture tango probably dates back to the first curious human, but like most megaquestions, it remains an unanswerable parlor game. And like most dichotomies, the controversy has endured well past the point of usefulness. Time and time again, the most reasonable result of nature/nurture research turns out to be the middle ground:
Most human behavior is the result of the interaction between inborn traits and environment.
Scientists will continue to tease out specific proportions of acquired versus inborn influences because scientists are curious people and they need to publish articles in scholarly journals in order to achieve tenure. But these calculations have very little usefulness for public policy.
    By point of illustration, let’s say, purely hypothetically, that we discover criminality to be 30 percent environmentally related and 70 percent genetic. Where does this lead us proactively? Do we forget about child rearing and schooling because most bad behavior is inherited? Or do we redouble our efforts to improve the environment because 30 percent is a large chunk? Even if we opt to design programs, there’s no reason to weigh them 30 percent toward environmental change to 70 percent toward genetic manipulation, because there’s no reason to assume that proportion of cause has anything to do with proportion of optimal solution. The same would hold true if the environment played only a 10 percent role, because a tenth of something as important as criminality bears close attention.
    Nevertheless, the nature/nurture debate rages within the pages of academic journals and on talk shows. And once again, “scientific” opinions are often influenced more by political attitudes and personal preconceptions than by facts.
    Environmental determinism—the nurture side—has tended to be favored by those scholars who see themselves as social liberals, because belief in a strong governmental role in improving the quality of life depends upon the conviction that human behavior is tractable. Similarly, those mavens adhering to either libertarian or anarchic views that denigrate the role of government, or fiscally conservative ideologues with a jaundiced view of economic and social tinkering, are comfortable attributing human behavior to DNA-mediated brain chemistry because the resultant social pessimism goes a long way in justifying refusal to fund social programs.
    Time and time again these two extreme views butt heads in the dreary corridors of government like a pair of deranged rams. When politics rears its ugly head, truth suffers.
    But the average person understands. You don’t need a Ph.D. or a think-tank job to figure it out.
    It’s both.
    Does any reasonable person deny that environment strongly affects people? Or that inborn factors are a total wash? (Actually, during tumultuous times, ideological rigidity
can
lead to some pretty strange mental pretzels. When I was in graduate school during the early 1970s, radical feminist doctrine put forth the view that sex-role behaviors and attitudes—the visible manifestations of femininity and masculinity—were 100 percent learned: Give a boy a doll and he’ll abandon cowboys and Indians, hand a girl a rifle and she’ll grow up tough and macho. A brief visit to any newborn nursery would have dispelled this nonsense—even casual observation would have revealed differing rates of activity, muscularity, vocal pitch, and so on in the blue versus the pink bassinets. Ditto for the merest exposure to preschools, baby-sitting, or child rearing. But why let reality cloud your dogma?)
    With regard to psychopathy, environmental theory has focused upon social factors such as poverty and abuse and psychological issues such as disruption of parent-child attachment, especially during the first two