Personality Disorders and Free Will

According to some recent theories in psychology, some people (“sociopaths” and “narcissists”) are evil and can only be evil, regardless of how hard they work, whatever work they do on themselves, or what good they do in the world.

This militates against basic rationality. If people are responsible for who they are, then anyone can act rightfully; and if some people cannot act rightfully then people are not responsible for who they are.

This belief is compounded by the idea that these people cannot change. This is a worthless mentality, useful only for conducting witch hunts. Anyone can change. That is a function of free will and free choice. And anyone can act rightfully, whatever their psychology happens to be.

On this matter religion is light years ahead of psychology. Christianity says from the get-go that we are all sinners, but that all of us have the capacity of choice to avoid sin and act righteously. Psychology needs to catch up to religion in this unless it wants to see people go to religion instead of psychology. If people are responsible for who they are then anyone can act righteously; and if some people cannot act righteously then people are not responsible for who they are.

As a young science, psychology is likely to make mistakes; and this is a very major mistake in psychology. There have been others, such as behaviorism and the lobotomy man. Psychology needs to realize that choice means choice, and that free will means free will. Once it does that, it will be a force for good instead of a force for witch hunts.