I’m related through my grandmother. She had entire conversations under her breath, using shocking curse words, but only while she was in the kitchen cooking or washing up; facing the outside wall and nobody within 8 feet. You couldn’t get close enough to understand, as soon as you closed in she stopped. She was not a very happy person, I think she did a lot out of duty.
I maintain that’s where I got my good hearing, you had to listen hard from the other room to pick up any words.
At my last job there was a woman who did this. She’d walk in the door talking, continue all during the day, except when she was actually conversing with another human, and walk out the door talking at the end of the day.
She still was capable enough to (mostly) do her job, although she had other annoying traits as well. She was a terrible gossip and incredibly nosy.
Manic talking was an experience that made me feel horrible. It was caused by a reaction to a drug. (Would you believe ambien?) It was a miserable feeling not to be able to control myself. There seemed to be a compulsion that I had no control over anymore than I have control over the need to breath. After scanning the written info on the new medications I had been taking, I spotted the source of the problem. Then I asked to be voluntarily admitted to a psychiatric hospital until the compulsion wore off. Unfortunately, they decided that I was bi-polar and kept me for three weeks! (They were mistaken in their disgnosis.) Depressive? Yes. Bipolar? No.
I could not get the nurse who was registering me to listen to what had happened and why I was there. So I quit answering her questions and just chatted with another nurse who was very pleasant and respectful. After a day or so of not having the ambien, I felt fine. But by then, TPTB decided that I needed to stay longer.
Things went downhill from there. I was so mistreated that the hospital did not charge me ANYTHING for the three weeks I spent there.
I’ve been hospitalized for depression before, but I’ve never been mistreated until a year ago. Beware of hospitals that house all of their senior patients together. The caregivers tend to project problems onto patients that they don’t have.
There can certainly be many causes of manic speaking – some painful, some not.
As for sociopathology, those having that disorder tend to be above average in intelligence. From the statistics I’ve read, about one in every one hundred people are sociopaths. They may never do anything that draws the attention of the law. Some can be very charming – for a while. The main thing they have in common is, as mentioned above, a total lack of empathy. I would think they would be exceedingly difficult to live with.
(I had surgery for cancer a few months later and there is no sign of cancer anymore. I’m short one lobe, but I tell people I’ve had a lobe-botomy.)