MacDonald Triad: What It Is And What It Explains About Sociopathy
Trying to understand why there are people with psychopathy or who end up being serial killers is something that forensic psychology has tried to find out.
MacDonald’s triad It has been one of the models that has tried to shed light on this, not without receiving criticism or being scientifically proven.
Be that as it may, the model is interesting, and its three variables are certainly factors that seem logical to be related to aggressive adulthood. Let’s see what they are.
The MacDonald triad, also called the sociopath triad, is a model proposed by psychiatrist John Marshall MacDonald in which The idea is supported that sociopaths have three common traits This model was set out in his 1963 article ‘The Threat to Kill’, published in the American Journal of Psychiatry.
According to the model, in the majority of people who commit violent crimes in adulthood can be found a childhood marked by aggressive behavior , such as pyromania and animal cruelty, in addition to urinating on oneself. Theoretically, people like serial killers have manifested at least two of these three behaviors in their childhood, which would have a history of mistreatment and abuse behind them.
Factors in explaining antisocial behavior
There are three factors proposed to explain how the mind of the psychopathic/sociopathic person is formed. These three factors are what come next.
Pyromania is the tendency to be attracted to fire and cause fires. It has been hypothesized that this behavior, if manifested in childhood, predicts a violent and antisocial adulthood
According to the model, people who have been humiliated in their childhood feel repressed anger, which sooner or later will have to be shown.
Since children mistreated by their parents or harassed by their schoolmates cannot defend themselves, they choose to destroy objects and fire is one of the most aggressive ways to channel this frustration.
They also feel interest and pleasure in observing how the flames are fanned, being aware of how serious it is for the integrity of others if the fire spreads.
2. Cruelty to animals
According to MacDonald himself and people specialized in serial killers, such as FBI agent Alan Brantly, Some serial killers and abusers start, from a young age, torturing and killing animals
This behavior can be interpreted as a kind of training for what they will end up doing when they grow up with their human victims.
The cause of these behaviors, as with fires, is humiliation and frustration at not being able to take revenge on those who have hurt them.
Since they cannot attack their parents or peers who are stronger than them, these future sociopaths use defenseless animals who will not resist nor will they be able to complain while the child marks them, mutilates them or kills them.
Abusing animals makes them feel in control of the situation , something they don’t have when someone mistreats them. It is replicating what other people have done to them, they go from victims to executioners.
Enuresis is the academic term for the unintentional release of urine when you are over five years old and sleeping. To be diagnosed, the subject must urinate twice a week for three months.
Both in MacDonald’s model and other authors maintain that This variable is related, in one way or another, to presenting arsonist tendencies and animal cruelty
Urinating over the age of five can be experienced as something extremely humiliating by the child, especially if their parents do not know how to manage it in a healthy way and it is not perceived as something cause for punishment.
It is surprising that this factor is part of the triad, given that in itself, It is not violent behavior nor is it intentional
What must be understood is that the subject who suffers from it will have less confidence in himself, which will generate great psychological and emotional discomfort, as well as social rejection if it becomes known to other people.
Criticisms of the model
The triad proposed by MacDonald, rather than shedding light on how psychopaths are formed, has contributed to the misconception of many of them. It is not necessary to manifest this type of behavior to end up being a serial killer, nor Nor will you end up being a psychopath for having manifested any of these behaviors as a child The predictability of these three variables is rather poor.
Despite the status of MacDonald’s proposal, it should be noted that the study he carried out to reach these conclusions has certain limitations and its interpretation has been too exaggerated.
The study, explained in his article The Threat to Kill, was done with 48 psychotic patients and 52 non-psychotic patients, who presented aggressive and sadistic behaviors. They all had in common having tried to kill someone, aged between 11 and 83, half men and half women.
Macdonald used his clinical observation to do his research and it must be said that not even he himself believed that the study had predictive value. His sample was small and unrepresentative of society as a whole. The problem comes from how the results explained by MacDonald were interpreted
Other researchers considered that the proposed model made a lot of sense, which meant that it was approached with samples of different types and sizes. These studies either had very small samples or did not reach the same conclusions as MacDonald himself and his followers.
However, and despite the limitations of these studies, there are many criminologists who assume that the model is valid. In fact, there are many sources in forensic psychology that cite the model, assuming that it is true. Associating pyromania, animal cruelty and enuresis with violent behavior in adulthood is a very common practice.
