Psychopaths And Sociopaths

"Imagine, if you can, not having a conscience, none at all, no feelings of guilt or remorse no matter what you do, no limiting sense of concern of the well-being of strangers, friends, or even family members. Imagine no struggles with shame, not a single one in your whole life, no matter what kind of selfish, lazy, harmful, or immoral action you had taken” (Thompson, Ramos, and Willett 486). Sociopathy is a personality disorder manifesting in antisocial behavioral tendencies and lack of conscience. Psychopaths and sociopaths alike have distinct behavior, traits, and psychological and biological roots usually leading to the disorder. As some may know, psychopaths and sociopaths often show dangerous, distinct, behavior. Among them, pathological
Within this assumption, psychopaths are absent-mindedly enabled to effortlessly deceive others without question. Lacking a conscience, psychopaths are given a false interpretation of how the world actually functions. Their way of interpreting the world is different than the average person when it regards emotion. They are often callous to emotion and have little to no intention of taking others’ feelings into consideration (Thompson et al. 486). The callous and remorseless act of using others is a major factor that is seen in psychopaths and sociopaths; this behavior is woven throughout childhood and adulthood according to the PCL-R. The PCL-R, or the Psychopathy Checklist Revised, which is the most commonly is used to measure psychopathy within adolescent children and adults as well (Burke, Loeber, and Lahey 3). The checklist acts as a minuscule survey with a score ranging from one to forty. The average person usually scores a three or a four, whereas the minimum score for a psychopath or sociopath would be at least thirty. “When used appropriately, by trained individuals, the PCL-R can consistently measure the degree of an individual’s psychopathic traits with high interrater reliability. This ability to reliably measure psychopathy in individuals has allowed research in this area of mental health to expand greatly in the past couple of decades” (Thompson et al.
Because of their callousness and lack of conscience, psychopaths and sociopaths tend to detach themselves from their family and avoid making any other type of relationships. Meloy, in his article, established nine different entities that are the foundation for explaining the reasoning behind their antisocial trait. One of nine entities listed in the article include the inability of bonding with other people. It is virtually impossible for psychopaths and sociopaths to obtain feelings and emotionally connect with others. “… reasons for this lack of bonding may be psychobiologically acquired, inherited, or both…” (“Polymorphously" 278-279). To psychopaths and sociopaths, they are mentally and emotionally incapable of connecting with others around them. They portray themselves much more differently than anyone else that it is virtually impossible for them to even begin to fathom relationships with others. The way the brain is wired is a very complex thing, one misplacement of anything can result in a major disorder affecting one’s life forever; psychopathy and sociopathy is a mental disorder and “normal” to them is far different than the average persons’ “normal”. Psychopaths and sociopaths have a different mentality than the average person and simple tasks such as conversing with others is a whole other world of difficulty for them. When people think of psychopaths