Word: pattern
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...confused with occasional periods of bad behavior or crimes of passion, ASP (also referred to as sociopathy) is defined in the latest Diagnostic and Statistical Manual as a lifelong "pervasive pattern" of rule breaking and violating the rights of others that begins before age 15. ASPs are chronic troublemakers whose symptoms vary greatly in severity: they can be constant money borrowers, black sheep, pathological liars, white-collar criminals or, at the most severe end of the continuum, murderous felons. They are impulsive and grandiose, don't learn from punishment, are poor self-observers, blame others for their problems...
...says Fred Berlin, associate professor of psychiatry at Johns Hopkins medical school. "It's a label masquerading as an explanation." Others wonder whether the term is simply a catchall psychological description for people who are habitual criminals. Yet proponents argue that the disorder's core ingredients--a lifelong pattern of behavior, a willingness to break rules and hurt others, a lack of empathy or guilt--set certain criminals apart. "Empathy is what stops you and me from doing horrible things," says Black. "Every disorder has been criticized for being too broad. But the description of ASP hasn't fundamentally changed...
Touborg says PSLM's activism reflects a national pattern...
Most of us think we know the kind of kid who becomes a killer, and most of the time we're right. Boys commit about 85% of all youth homicides, and in those cases about 90% conform to a pattern in which the line from bad parenting and bad environment to murder is usually clear. Through my work, I see these boys and young men in the courtroom and in prison with depressing regularity. Their lives start with abuse, neglect and emotional deprivation at home. Add the effects of racism, poverty, the drug and gang cultures...
...This pattern of exploitation continued into the winter when J.P. officially took over the reigns of FM, along with co-editor Aaron Russell Cohen, a piano prodigy from Plandome, NY, whose physician father has touched my prostate...