Sociopathy is the newer, more preferred term for what used to be called psychopathy. Its full name is “sociopathic personality disorder”. Personality disorders are not like the other two classes of mental disorders, neurosis and psychosis (neurotics are unhappy, psychotics are delusional, in a nutshell). Sociopaths can be smart, but don’t have to be; they can be impulsive, but don’t have to be. They can understand the consequences of their actions, they just don’t care; rather, their unquenchable thirst for domination causes them to be very distructive in ways the average person finds baffling, e.g. torturing animals. Ones that are smart and not impulsive can be very dangerous. They can also seem perfectly normal, even decent people because some are cunning enough to fake what they know society expects of them. Finally, they can be very good actors, largely because they have no emotions of their own “getting in the way.” For further reference, read The Sociopath Next Door, by Martha Stout.
It’s also called antisocial personality disorder (ASPD, for short).
The scary ones are the “born” sociopaths (what used to be called “solitary subtype”) as opposed to the “grown” sociopaths (“group subtype”). Those are the ones with the predatory stare - they can hide it if need be. If they don’t need to, it gives you the distinct feeling of being prey for the kill :eek:
What to do with them? Hope to get to them as early as possible. Treat kids that have attention deficit disorder (which increases the risk of conduct disorder and ASPD).
While sociopaths CAN be treated as an adult, it’s not nearly as successful. Personality disorders are “ego-syntonic” - in other words, they don’t have the problem, the rest of the world does. Makes it hard to engage them in treatment.
Sounds like a lot of people I know.
Actually we elect them.And re elect them.
We should treat them the same as any other adults. If they commit crimes, try them and sentence them. I’d prefer they be sent to a prison system a lot different then the one we have, but that’s a different debate.
Terminology differs, but my preferred definitions are as follows:
Psychopath: No empathy. Very charming, very personable when they want to be, they can fake empathy marvelously, but they don’t feel it. I suspect they’re born hard-wired with a very very strong tendency to be that way.
Sociopath: Empathizes with non-traditional groups which tend to run counter to societal norms, such as gangs, terrorist organizations, certain bowling leagues ( 
) etc. Probably more nurture than nature. These sorts of traits tend to get fixed before age 10.
Many psychopaths never run afoul of the law because their rational mind recognizes the consequences of their actions: Kill people, inconveniently get put in prison. The big problem arises when you find psychopathy co-existing with sadism, or pedophilia, where the drive to misbehave outweighs the fear of consequences. Then there’s trouble.
I’d estimate that about 20-30% of my patients (convicted felons) are psychopaths. And another 40-50% of my patients have sociopathic tendencies.
By some estimates, there are more psychopaths active in politics than are in prison.
What to do with a psychopath? There’s no real medical treatment. If they misbehave, they’re best left to the criminal justice system.
The same applies to sociopaths too, IMHO.
QtM, fresh from a lecture by a Forensic Psychiatrist who specializes in criminal violence.
Problems also arise when the pyschoath thinks ‘I’m too smart. They won’t catch me.’.
But, there is no reason to lock them all up. Some one without a conscience or feelings of friendship can be quite successful in the business world. A psychopath can legally shoot people if they find the right posting as a cop or soldier. Not all psychopaths have the urge to kill or torture. A psychopath may lead a nice, normal life, except for the frequent visits to submissive hookers.
Some psychopaths care about people in their own way. Their friends are a kind of pet. They find them amusing and enjoy the things they say and do. Their friends are under their protection. But, should a friend die, they will not grieve. ‘Aww, Bob is dead. Conversations with him were always interesting and educational. What’s on tv tonight?’
A psychopath doesn’t necessarily show an inability to comprehend consequences; sometimes it’s just a case of us missing or disregarding the signs of that comprehension because they’re so alien to what’s normal for us. A psychopath may kill a family friend of many years, and we may think “How could he? Clearly he didn’t understand that death is permanent” or some such thing, when really we’re looking at it from our own perspective, not theirs. Psychopaths can have impaired reasoning, but it’s not a certainty, and it’s definetly not a characteristic in the same way that emotionlessness and a lack of remorse are.
As to the 100% successful psycopathy-detecting test; tricky. As people have pointed out, being psycopathic doesn’t necessarily make you a murderer, in the same way that being greedy doesn’t necessarily make you a thief; it means your perspective is more conducive towards that. Psychopaths are often perfectly capable of making rational decisions which are, while not based on emotion, founded in logic and self-preservation. A psychopath is unlikely to decide not to kill a coworker because they like them, but the threat of prison time is a good deterrent, as is any situation in which the bad outweighs the good (from their perspective).
I think the OP is asking about the true “Boogeyman” types like Bundy, Gacy and such. The OP mentioned animal torture, starting fires, etc at a young age, which is the stereotypical profile of a serial killer in his/her formative years.
The question seems to be, “Can we identify a young Ted Bundy type just from the aforementioned behavior when they are young and what do we do with them.”
I don’t think we can label kids as budding serial killers based on these criteria alone, but repeated incidences of this type of behavior should prompt parents to seek professional help for the child, as this IS abnormal.
I firmly believe some people are “not treatable” (Evil Monsters) and should be locked up until they die, but I hesitate to apply this to a child.
The problem is, since this is a psychological problem, it is impossible to accurately predict a person’s actions. Therefore, locking them up on the basis of what they might do in the future is immoral.
The best solution I could think of (in the time it took for this screen to load) is to only incarcerate people with psychopathic symptoms after they’ve committed a crime. It’s risky, yes, but it’s hard for me to imagine a worse fate than being locked up on the basis of circumstantial guesswork.
Wait. You think that if someone becomes a cop or soldier in order to be able to kill legally and occasionally goes to prostitutes in order to dominate and humiliate them, that’s a good thing?
Yeah, but no ethical or responsible hunter wants to hurt the animal they’re shooting at. They just want it… not to be alive anymore, to use a Stewie Griffinism.
It’s a hard thing for non-hunters to appreciate, but killing an animal =/= torturing for fun, and anyone who enjoys hurting animals for the sheer hell of it (as opposed to ethical/humane hunting or slaughter for food) has issues and needs professional help, IMO.
Priceguy I didn’t say it’s a good thing. But, it is very far from torturing children to death in your basement.
Martini Enfield is right. As a liberal tree hugger, I was raised to think hunting is evil. But, the average hunter’s idea of a good kill is a single shot to the brain or heart which kills the animal before it can even feel pain. Think King Of The Hill. Hank Hill is dang proud of Bobby’s skill with a rifle. They’ll go hunting at least once a year. Both think that intentionally causing an animal pain is sick.
There are plenty of things that are far from torturing children to death, that we still lock people up for. I think that’s better than a cop or soldier who joined to kill.
I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to imply that hunters are at all equivelent to phsychopaths or that there is something wrong with hunting. I just wanted to point out that acceptable behavoir is culturally dictated. Madness doesn’t exist objectively- the difference between a psychological problem and normal behavoir is 100% defined by culture. So it’s hard to think of psychopaths as 100% pure evil, but rather as very poorly adapted for our culture.
Personally, I feel bad for them. They are the only ones among us who are truely alone in this world.
For a culture made up entirely of sociopaths, see the Niezcheans in Gene Rodenberry’s Andromeda.
They don’t feel alone or lonely. Whether that makes thing more or less tragic is up to you.
As far as I am aware the “deadly triad” - fire lighting, cruelty to animals, bed wetting beyond the usual age relates to serial killers and not sociopaths. As pointed out many sociopaths have achieved enormous superficial “success” due to their willingness to disregard the feelings of others. Whether they exhibited the triad hasn’t beeen researched.
Most serial killers ARE sociopaths.
Actually, quite the opposite; the classicial psychopath has a very limited capability to regulate their actions based on likely future consequences. They tend to be extremely short-term in their thinking.
I realise that. The point I was making is that the three behaviours associated with serial killers are, as far as I know, only associated with serial killers not all sociopaths. The connection may not be sociopathy but related to sexual abuse as most serial killers have been victims of abuse. At a minimum serial killers have profound sexual identity problems which may not be true of all sociopaths.