Cutting into someone is a strange thing to do. You have to be able to suspend the fact that they’re another human being and focus intently instead on the task in hand.
You have to be able to treat them as an object that needs to be fixed rather than another person.
And that’s a very psychopathic thing to be able to do.
In fact all doctors, to a greater or lesser extent, have to develop a carapace – or thick skin – to protect themselves from what they see and do each day in order to be able to get on with their job, which is quite a psychopathic skill.
Psychopathic traits are also something you need to get into medical school. In a hugely competitive application process, you have to be ruthless, focused, determined – and a little bit arrogant – just to get a place.
And once you’re at medical school, it’s a brutal, unforgiving environment that rewards hard work and dedication at the expense of all else.
Just the kind of characteristics we associate with psychopaths.
These are actually all attributes that can be very helpful to ensure a doctor is able to separate their work life from the rest of their life. When you’re unwell, you want your doctor to be focused and not an emotional wreck.
There’s no doubt though that this means certain types of people can be attracted to this line of work, particularly because doctors are given a status and respect that means their actions are not always questioned or challenged.
Psychopathic traits are also something you need to get into medical school. In a hugely competitive application process, you have to be ruthless, focused, determined – and a little bit arrogant, writes Dr Max Pemberton
We assume they always have our best interests at heart, and unfortunately this trust can be easily exploited by psychopaths.
Earlier this year two surgeons made the news for atrocious behaviour that could be viewed as bordering on psychopathic.
In France, former surgeon Joel Le Scouarnec was sentenced for abusing hundreds of children in his care, some while they lay anaesthetised.
In the UK, plastic surgeon Peter Brooks was sentenced to 22 years for the attempted murder of former colleague Graeme Perks – he’d broken into his home in Nottinghamshire and stabbed him.
There have been many more examples over the years where doctors have been convicted for behaviour that seems at odds with the public understanding of them being members of a caring profession.
Breast surgeon Ian Paterson was convicted in 2017 of carrying out completely unnecessary operations on both men and women after convincing them that they were at risk of cancer when in fact they were not.
His trial heard how he ‘played God’ and ‘exaggerated or invented’ risks of tumours in order to operate on people. Lawyers believe he may have carried out thousands of botched or unnecessary operations over 15 years.
And of course, there is the GP Harold Shipman, who became one of the world’s most prolific mass murderers after he killed at least 215 of his patients. The legacy of Shipman continues to this day because as a result of his actions, a series of checks for doctors were put in place such as their yearly appraisal.
But aside from the atrocious actions of a few doctors, whether we like the idea of not, doctors need to be a little bit psychopathic.
When I worked in surgery at the beginning of my career I remember being astonished by what surgeons were required to do psychologically.
While I struggled to separate the body I saw lying on an operating theatre table from the person I’d been speaking to, consoling them and reassuring just hours before, the seasoned surgeons had no difficulty at all in focusing entirely on the task in front of them and not think about the person attached to the body.
I wouldn’t say they were callous, but they were able to think about the patient’s body as a machine, part of which needed fixing.
One heart patient I got to know well after she spent several weeks on the ward – including meeting her husband and children – told me she was scared about dying and I remember the night before the operation holding her hand as she talked about her fears for how her husband would cope if she didn’t make it.
The term psychopath is greatly misunderstood – it isn’t actually a diagnosis used in psychiatry. The proper diagnosis is antisocial (or dissocial) personality disorder, says Dr Max
I couldn’t get this out of my mind when I saw her, unconscious on the table and the heart surgeon made the first incision.
What if it went wrong? What if she died or never recovered? What would happen to her children and husband? I was assisting and really struggled to focus because of the weight of responsibility on the surgical team for this woman’s life.
I knew this surgeon to be kind and compassionate, but he was able to build a wall around this when he had a scalpel in his hand.
‘It’s open-heart surgery, not open-hearted surgery’ he said to me afterwards when I asked him how he coped. I thought this summed things up well. Again, he was describing a very psychopathic trait.
If you say the word ‘psychopath’, most people think of a woman in a shower screaming as a man approaches with a large knife. Or possibly Hannibal Lecter in a mask talking about eating someone’s liver with fava beans and a nice Chianti.
We tend to assume all psychopaths are cold, brutal, callous murderers with no regard for the feelings of others. In fact, while they’re often assumed to be sadists, gaining pleasure from other people’s pain, this is relatively rare.
While certainly there are some notorious murderers who exhibit psychopathic traits, the term psychopath is greatly misunderstood.
Firstly, it isn’t actually a diagnosis used in psychiatry.
The proper diagnosis is antisocial (or dissocial) personality disorder. It is characterised by a lack of remorse, difficulties with empathy, superficial charm, unwillingness to accept responsibility, lack of behavioural control and impulsivity. As you’d imagine, all of those traits are strongly linked with criminal behaviour.
There has been much debate about what causes someone to become a psychopath.
We know that brain scans show differences in people with antisocial personality disorder, particularly parts of the brain, such as the parahippocampal gyrus and the amygdala, which are involved in empathy and emotional responses.
It’s likely that there’s a genetic element, with people being predisposed to psychopathic behaviour, but there’s a big environmental aspect too with people’s upbringing playing a big role.
Yet many psychopathic traits aren’t necessarily disadvantages.
In fact, we all have – to a greater or lesser extent – aspects of our personality that are psychopathic and psychologists argue that it can be a very useful trait to tap into at times: it helps us be focused and dedicated, to prioritise what we want and to achieve.
Sometimes we need to be a little callous and self-centred in life. Sometimes we need to be able to cut ties with someone, for example, or be blunt or upfront about things or challenge people, despite it being socially awkward to do so.
In fact people in many professions, not just doctors but also lawyers, police officers, chefs, journalists and people in business and leadership roles, score highly on psychopath tests – and that’s a good thing because it helps them do their job.
I hear heartbreaking, horrific stories every day. Of course a key aspect of my work is empathising and trying to understand the patient’s experience. But equally I have to be able to detach myself at least partly because otherwise I’d be a gibbering wreck and be no use to anyone.
I once watched a doctor in A&E tell a grandfather that both his daughter and baby grandson had been killed in a car accident. I watched as the elderly man sank to the floor sobbing and the doctor consoled him. He then moved from this scene to a child who had fallen off a climbing frame. He immediately managed to switch from the scene of unimaginable distress and being close to tears himself, to laughing and joking with the child and his parents.
He managed to block the horror he had just shared entirely and not allow it to affect his next patient.
That’s a psychopathic trait, but it’s what made him a good doctor, too.
This article was originally published by a www.dailymail.co.uk . Read the Original article here. .