Lately I’ve been reading a book titled “The Science of Evil,” written by neuroscientist Simon Baron-Cohen (the cousin of Sacha Baron-Cohen, the actor who plays “Borat.”) The book is a look at what’s known about the brains of people who lack empathy – psychopaths, narcissists, autistics etc.

At one point in the book, Baron-Cohen mentions the recent development of an oxytocin nasal spray. Oxytocin, my erudite readers might recall, is a hormone produced by the human body and is associated with calm, loving feelings. We get a dose of oxytocin after sex or close contact; mothers get a dose during birth and while breast feeding their children (presumably this increases the mother/child bond.) It’s been termed “the cuddle drug” and there is now a nasal spray version. This article looks at the idea of troubled couples using it too smooth out their relationships.

Baron-Cohen discusses the possibility of the spray being used by people with low empathy – people who might commit some kind of hurtful crime. In essence, he’s proposing that low empathy individuals be encouraged to feel. I have to wonder whether we will see this scenario: a violent offender, perhaps a psychopath, is ordered by the court to use the oxytocin spray. Will civil rights groups then argue that, by forcing this person to feel, the law is mandating that the person change something essential about themselves, to become someone they are not? Do we have a right to maintain our essential character?

Of course how essential can our character be if it can be altered via the ingestion of a chemical? Must we confront a more disturbing possibility, that we have no essential character at all and our “selves” are merely the fluctuating interactions of the various hormones and neurotransmitters that travel throughout our body and brain?

Merry Christmas!