ABSTRACT
This chapter starts by presenting the conceptualization of antisocial behaviour and psychopathic traits according to a CFT framework. CFT conceptualizes antisocial behaviour patterns and psychopathic traits as evolutionary-rooted strategies to deal with harsh rearing scenarios, that is, rearing environments marked by traumatic experiences (e.g. unpredictability, threat, abuse) and/or by the absence of affiliative signals (e.g. lack of warmth and safeness experiences). If the human brain is evolutionarily designed to survive and thrive in adverse environments, when individuals are raised in harsh rearing scenarios, as are most individuals from forensic settings, their brains also become calibrated for such environments. These individuals tend therefore to be focused on short-term goals, presenting an overdeveloped and hypervigilant threat system and an underresponsive soothing system as well as central emotional dysfunctions. These emotional dysfunctions comprise, among others, high levels of shame and emotion regulation problems, that is, a tendency to bar the experience of shame and other unpleasant emotions and/or attack others in potential shameful/threatening situations.
