Psychopathy: critical considerations and reflections on the phenomenon

• Grant number: 17/23150-9
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships in Brazil - Scientific Initiation
• Start date: May 01, 2018
• End date: December 31, 2018
• Field of knowledge: Humanities - Psychology - Social Psychology
• Principal Investigator: Osvaldo Gradella Júnior
• Grantee: Gabriel Fernando Marques Arfeli
• Host Institution: Faculdade de Ciências (FC). Universidade Estadual Paulista (UNESP). Campus de Bauru. Bauru , SP, Brazil

Abstract

Psychopathy is a phenomenon studied by several areas of scientific knowledge, commonly associated with a psychopatology characterized by lack of empathy, manipulation, aggressiveness, impulsivity, egocentricity, cruelty and criminality. The present study aims to analyze the concept of psychopathy as a phenomenon and its relations with the capitalist mode of production. In this sense, the research will seek to identify the various concepts of psychopathy, as well as its historical process of evolution. The study consists of an exploratory and theoretical bibliographical research based on scientific works as well as in cinematographic works produced in Hollywood on the theme "Psychopathy" after the 1990s. We will turn to the categories of Labor, Consciousness and Ideology of Dialectical Historical Materialism and Historical-Cultural Psychology to base this analysis, which highlights this research as a theoretical-methodological reference still little used for an understanding of such phenomenon. This study proves to be fundamental, since it guarantees a critical scientific analysis about the conceptual development and scientific production of the respective psychopathology, which makes it possible to base certain legal and repressive procedures in the present time.