The spread of ice, a powerful amphetamine that is smoked, and which can turn users into violent psychopaths, has sparked moves to ban the sale of the pipes.
For me this was the worst part of the article and the quote that made me lose all respect for it.
A respectable journalist should always aim for the highest common denominator rather than the lowest. He or she should NOT use words that have sophisticated meanings, simply for a sensationalist effect. (especially when that meaning is understood by most people to describe something rather specific).
The Cambridge Dictionary includes an informal definition of pyschopath which they describe as simply "Pyscho" - clearly this is a colloquial shortening of the word which if describing those exhibiting drug induced psychosis would have been a more appropriate term to use rather than the full and correct term "psychopath". (Only if he had been talking very coloquially and at a primitive level however!)
The definition of "Psycho" or a very informal use of the term psychopath reads:
"someone who is very mentally ill and dangerous"
The correct and proper definition of psychopath, and the ONLY instance and context in which a reputable journalist should EVER use this word is the following:
"in psychology, a person who has no feeling for other people, does not think about the future and does not feel bad about anything they have done in the past"
The
Oxford Dictionary raises the bar of sophistication even further.
Defined as someone affected by psychopathy; a mentally deranged person.
Psychopathy is defined:
Mental disease or disorder; ‘mental disorder considered apart from cerebral disease’ (Billings). In modern use, personality disorder that lacks a physiological basis, characterized by markedly impulsive, egocentric, irresponsible, and antisocial behaviour, and an inability to form normal relationships with others, sometimes accompanied by aggressiveness or charm and manifested at all levels of intelligence
IMO a person who is suffering temporary methamphetamine psychosis barely fits that low-level, simpleton definition of "psycho". But that point is moot because an article in a "reputable" newspaper, especially one that purports to discuss psychiatric problems caused by illicit drugs, should use the correct scientific terminology.
To label a drug user exhibiting temporary psychotic behaviour a psychopath is a disgrace. It is wrong and its placement in the article is for no other reason than to stir up emotions and influence people to form incorrect assumptions about such drug users.
Dahmer, Gacy and Milat are psychopaths - a methamphetamine user, even one with a serious mental disorder triggered by the use of the drug, is not. The general public understands what the term psychopath is generally reserved for, even if their knowledge is solely derived from The Silence of the Lambs. To tap into their emotions and perhaps their limited understanding of the drug and its users in this way, is grossly irresponsible.
I am disgusted that such a description, especially one that possibly creates more imagery and more connotations than any other, was utilised in this case and then allowed to go to print.
The following are from studies as far back as 1967. The world has only improved its understanding of what this word means and thus I have no doubt its use should be reserved to the types of cases indicated below and as described in the more advanced definitions:
1967 Listener 20 Apr. 529/3 The term psychopath is bandied about in such a way as to make it cover almost any mental disorder... However the psychopath has now achieved legal status in the Mental Health Act of 1959 as having ‘a persistent disorder or disability of mind..which results in abnormally aggressive or seriously irresponsible behaviour’. 1967 M. ARGYLE Psychol. of Interpersonal Behaviour i. 21 It is one of the marks of the psychopath that he will engage in social behaviour in so far as it is..profitable to do so, but he has no intrinsic attraction to other people at all. For the psychopath there is no particular difference between people and things.
They certainly do not apply to the average methamphetamine user, even one who is in a Psych ward. If you would like to use the word "psychopath" in your next article, set up an interview with the many serial killers and sociopathic rapists currently languishing in our many prisons. The Snowtown murderers as the most recent additions, and perhaps two of the most despicable and yes,
pyschopathic, may be a good start.
