How accurate is the MacDonald triad?

Question

I'm intrested on the accuracy of the Macdonald Triad. Basically, how many people who's early childhood personalities consited of the three following traits(copied from Wikipedia):

Firestarting--invariably just for the thrill of destroying things.

Cruelty to animals--Many children can be cruel to animals, such as pulling the legs off of spiders, but future serial killers often kill larger animals, like dogs and cats, and frequently for their solitary enjoyment rather than to impress peers.

Bedwetting--beyond the age when children normally grow out of such behaviour.

Can anyone direct me to a website, possibly on psychiatric study about how many people like this actually become killers, not just serial.

Answer 1

This is an old concept which has not really held up over time. Bed wetting doesn't really seem to predict anything. There is some evidence that fire setting and cruelty to animals co-occur, but fire setting tends to co-occur with a number of anti-social behaviours. And there is a HUGE difference between two things being correlated and one predicting the other. Therefore, while a recent study showed that sex offenders who killed were more likely to have a history of both fire setting and cruelty to animals, there really has been no evidence to show that these behaviours actually predict homicidal behaviour. Here's a brief article with a few references. Honestly, outside of places like Wikipedia, you don't find anybody talking much about the MacDonald triad as having much legitimacy.

Answer 2

Some good answers already... The lack of equality among the three corners of the traditional "triad"... The addition of the agency and the state... The only thing I can think to add is that for awhile, I've been struck by how small the number three is. My three adoptive siblings have been affected by adoption (mine). My four half-brothers have been affected by adoption (mine). My nine adoptive aunts and uncles (plus their spouses). My six first aunts and uncles (plus spouses). Innumerable (by me, anyway) cousins. And I have yet to find my first father, so those numbers will climb. They don't each react the same way to my adoption, so representing each of those individuals with a single corner of a triangle seems to minimize their feelings. It may be true that adoption wouldn't happen without the traditional triad. (I will say, though, that given the adoptee has no say in what happens, and given how the adoptee is ignored when he or she grows up, I sometimes think that adoption can and does happen without the adoptee in a very important sense.) But a single adoption can (as in my case) impact hundreds of people in a very real way. "Triad" thus strikes me as an over-simplification. It may be helpful, at times, but like most helpful terminology, we must remember it is, strictly speaking, false.

Answer 3

The Macdonald Triad