There’s definitely a connection — but it’s not what you might be thinking. You’ll have to try out the latest additions to our psychological quizzes to be sure.

For better or worse — no, actually for better and worse — psychology has developed a huge number of labels for classifying and describing human behavior. It’s up to all of us to make sure these labels are used constructively.

What happened in Tucson is no doubt a genuine tragedy. But it will be an even bigger calamity if we don’t learn from it and start attending to our systems of mental health care so that individuals with serious problems can secure help before disaster strikes.

While so many things are chillingly accurate, there is one thing that bothers me about the portrayal of psychpathy in US television drama Dexter: it’s the way the writers seem to explain how such people get to be the way they are.

Much of my practice over the years has involved treating individuals with significant disturbances of character. What they need most is to learn self-regulatory skills and self-discipline, but quick-fix medications rob them of the opportunity to make meaningful investments in personal development.

By far the most limiting aspect of traditional approaches to understanding the most character-disturbed individuals among us is that purely behavioral descriptions don’t capture the essence of what is unhealthy and problematic in them.

With the psychiatric side effects of rimonabant (sold as Acomplia in Europe and as Zimulti elsewhere) turning out to be even worse than originally thought, and the effectiveness of this new weight loss drug turning out to be pretty minimal, Sanofi-Aventis has yanked it from the market following a decision by European regulators to suspend marketing approval.