The roots of the disorder
Are the psychopath, sociopath, and someone with the Antisocial Personality Disorder one and the same? The DSM says "yes." Scientists such as Robert Hare and Theodore Millon beg to differ. The psychopath has antisocial traits for sure but they are coupled with and enhanced by callousness, ruthlessness, extreme lack of empathy, poor impulse control, fraud and sadism.
As with other personality disorders, psychopathy becomes evident in early adolescence and is considered chronic. But unlike most other personality disorders, it is often improved with age and tends to disappear in the fourth or fifth decade of life. This is because criminal behavior and drug abuse both determinants of diseases and behaviors are more typical of young adults.
Psychopathy may be hereditary. The psychopath's immediate family usually suffer from a variety of personality disorders.
Cultural and social aspects
The antisocial personality disorder is a controversial psychiatric diagnoses. The psychopath refuses to conform to the norms of society and abide by the law. He often inflicts pain and damage to his victim. But that practice makes a mental illness? The psychopath has no conscience or empathy. But that is necessarily pathological? Culture-bound diagnoses are often misused as instruments of social control. They allow the establishment, the ruling elites and groups to label their own interests and to restrain dissidents and troublemakers. Such diagnoses are often used by totalitarian states to harness or even eliminate eccentrics, criminals and deviants.
Features and properties
Like narcissists, psychopaths lack empathy and regard other people as mere instruments of gratification and utility or as objects to manipulate. Psychopaths and narcissists have no problem to capture ideas and decisions, needs, to formulate preferences, practices and priorities. But they are shocked when other people to do the same.
Most people accept that others have rights and obligations. The psychopath rejects this quid pro quo. How far it affected, is just right. The people have no rights, and he, the psychopath, has no obligations that derive from the "social contract". The psychopath holds himself above conventional morality and the law are. The psychopath can not delay gratification. He wants everything and wants it now. His whims, demands Catering, its needs and the satisfaction of his drives take precedence over the needs, preferences and emotions of even his nearest and dearest.
Consequently, psychopaths feel no remorse when they hurt or deceive others. You do not even have the basic belief. They rationalize their (often criminal) behavior and intellectualize it. Psychopaths fall prey to their own primitive defense mechanisms (such as narcissism, splitting and projection). The psychopath firmly believes that the world is a hostile, merciless place, prone to the survival of the fittest and that people are either "all good" or "all evil". The psychopath projects his own vulnerabilities, weaknesses and shortcomings of others and forcing them to the way he expects them (is this defense as "projective identification" known) to behave. Like narcissists, psychopaths are abusively exploitative and incapable of true love or intimacy.
Narcissistic psychopath are particularly ill-suited to participate in the give and take of civilized society. Many of them are outsiders or criminals. White collar psychopaths are likely to be fraudulent and in rampant identity theft, the use of aliases, constant lying, fraud and con-artistry for gain or pleasure.
Psychopaths are irresponsible and unreliable. They do not honor contracts, commitments and obligations. They are unstable and unpredictable and rarely hold a job longer pay their debts or maintain long-term intimate relationships.
Psychopaths are vindictive and unforgiving. They never regret or forget something. They are driven, and dangerous.
I wrote this in the Open Site Encyclopedia:
"Always in conflict with the authority and often on the run, psychopaths possess a limited time horizon and seldom make plans in the medium or long term. They are impulsive and reckless, aggressive, violent, irritable, and sometimes the captives of magical thinking, to believe themselves to be immune to the consequences of their actions.
Sun psychopaths often end up in jail, having repeatedly flouted social norms and codified laws. Partly to avoid this fate and to circumvent the law to extract part on material benefits from unsuspecting victims, psychopaths lie habitually steal other identities to deceive, use aliases and con for "personal profit or pleasure" as the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual, it does. "
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