This semester I taught both Forensic Psychology and Abnormal Psychology at the University of Bridgeport. The students there are an ethnically diverse group and I think are fairly representative of America’s young adult population. In both classes we discussed those individuals who have a “a pervasive pattern of disregard for and violation of the rights of others.” I wrote antisocial personality disorder, sociopathy and psychopathy on the blackboard before we began our discussion. I then asked the students if they had heard of these terms and if they could tell me the definitions.
Only a small percentage had heard the term antisocial personality disorder, nearly everyone had heard the word sociopath, about a third had heard the word psychopath.
The next question to the students was, “What do all these terms mean?” Someone asked if antisocial personality referred to a person that didn’t like to be around others. Someone else said that psychopaths are “out of touch with reality, psychotic.” Most who heard the word sociopath associated it with criminality.
The students were shocked to discover that all three terms basically refer to the same disorder.
That same week, I spoke with an internet search expert. He told me that the term antisocial personality disorder is searched through Google about 5,000 times per day. The term psychopath is searched 60,000 times per day and the term sociopath is searched 110,000 times per day. These numbers are consistent with my survey of university students. My findings indicate that the American Psychiatric Association has done the public a great disservice with their boggled naming of the disorder.
An interesting historical fact is that this disorder used to be called “moral insanity.” Insanity is a legal term that indicates that due to mental defect a person is not responsible for his/her actions. Although many people believe that the morally insane have a mental (brain)defect there is considerable resistance to saying this absolves them of responsibility for their criminal acts.
This week we discussed the case of John W. Hinckley, Jr. the man who shot President Reagan and Mr. Brady, he was found not guilty by reason of insanity and committed to a mental hospital. A psychiatrist for the prosecution, Dietz testified that Hinckley viewed his actions on March 30 as successful. “It worked,” Hinckley told Dietz in an interview. “You know, actually, I accomplished everything I was going for there. Actually, I should feel good because I accomplished everything on a grand scale….I didn’t get any big thrill out of killing–I mean shooting–him. I did it for her sake….The movie isn’t over yet.” In short, Deitz saw Hinckley as a sociopath who was grandiose and trying to impress Jody Foster with his actions, though I believe he actually diagnosed him with borderline personality.
I reflected to the class that it seems that individuals like Hinckley and Dahmer (the serial killer) should be considered special cases of sociopathy and not lumped with the rest. There are sociopaths who are so grandiose and obsessed with power that they seem to lose touch with reality. Not that they are schizophrenic and have delusions or hallucinations, but their interpretations of the world cannot be construed as “normal.”
This is actually where the term “borderline” came from, as is used today to refer to “borderline personality.” The borderline is some point between neurotic and psychotic-borderline psychotic actually. So perhaps we could consider psychopaths those sociopaths who are so afflicted that their thinking and behavior indicate they have lost their grip on reality. Some psychiatrists do think of psychopaths as the worst sociopaths.
Should those with moral insanity who commit crimes be treated differently than others? Should John Hinckley be released now that he has been judged not psychotic? These are questions for another week.
See also:
https://lovefraud.com/blog/2006/07/30/confusion-about-sociopaths-pyschopaths-and-antisocials/
If you have a personal example of a sociopath’s “loose grip on reality” please share it with us in a comment.
And a sociopath is different from a psychopath. And differences do matter for those that are treatment professionals, researchers, etc. A gang member is a good example of a sociopath. They were not meeting criteria for being a psychopath prior to their involvement, met criteria during their involvement and do not meet criteria after they are no longer involved (for those that actually go pro-social). There are many examples out there of people like that. Where as the psychopathic gang member met criteria before, during and after involvement. It is important to understand how and why this occurs. At this point a psychopath is not curable but a sociopath is and that is important.
Now for those on the receiving end of an abusive relationship it does not matter what they are, what matters is avoiding or getting away from the abuse.
As Donna herself has posted on the Main page:
Some researchers think of a sociopath as someone who is socialized in an antisocial subculture, such as a gang.
Some people see this as a nature vs. nurture issue—”psychopaths” are born, “sociopaths” develop because of parenting and environmental issues.
yes blogger t for the professionals there is a need to come to terms with the proper”labels” or diagnoses
for the rest of the world, there is a bigger need to understand their m.o. as peterd made earlier note of
the shows like 48 hrs display many of these creatures and i wish they would dedicate an extra hour after each show to explain to the general public what they are seeing
as many here point out also…it is important to stand up and take note that our pollyanna view that there is good in everybody..just aint so….
i have been accused by a patient or two of being a pollyanna and i took great offense to it, but maybe there were on to something
I think the labeling nuances become really important for parole boards and criminal hearings. For our purposes, we have all recognized enough traits to know our exes are personality disordered. According to the literature, personality disorders generally cannot improve. It is best to cut your losses.
I have always had a pollyanna philosophy, and it has made me very popular with different communities I belong to. I stand up for the underdog and show compassion for people who are acting like total jerks. However, this experience with the P was a real eye opener. It showed me that there are really bad people in the world who do not deserve kindness. I am a different person because of this. I wish I could put the rose-colored glasses back on, but it’s too late.
Stargazer: They can change … that’s not the problem. The problem is do they want to change?
Peace.
It has not been so long ago that “mental illness” was blamed on environment 100% by professionals. Now, medicine has advanced to the point that we know that MANY PROBLEMS mentally and physically are a mixture of genetics and environment (Diabetes type II for example) and under the right conditions that “disease or disorder” will not manifest itself and under the “wrong” conditions it will be come a serious problem. Mental disorders are somewhat like that as well. There are others though that seem to manifest themselves no matter what environment they are in. The studies done on identical twins separated at birth and then followed throughout their lives shows that 80% of the time if one is a P the other one will be. Of course I would assume that the one diagnosed as a P met the total criteria for PCL-R and maybe the other one only scored a 20 instead of a 30, but would still be “disordered” as far as living a “normal” and functional life compared to others.
I wonder just how many people in the world would score a 20 or more on the PCL-R.
In any case, it leads me to believe that the vast majority of Ps are BORN with that tendency and environment makes some difference, but over all it tends to be more genetic than environmental.
I do agree that you can take a child born to the kindest nicest parents in the world and abuse that child, socialize him into violence and he is more likely to turn out “anti-social” and violent than not.
What do you think all the violent video games and media–movies, music etc—are doing to our youth’s culture? Exposing it to graphic violence–and what is happening? Our culture and society as a whole is becoming more violent.
The number of children “home schooled” in the US or placed in private schools is increasing every day because caring parents don’t want their children exposed to the violence in our culture and in our schools. I have a friend who is a teacher in a public school who was beaten almost to death defending a small female teacher from two youths who were 200+ pounds each and were beating her in the hall way while other students stood around and watched. NOTHING WAS DONE TO THESE STUDENTS for punishment, but my friend’s spine was cracked and he will never recover all the function he had before he got an elbow to the base of his neck, which caused him to be paralyzed for several days.
I realize the media is only part of the problem and it isn’t that before Television that our society was all love and enlightment, our (human) society has been violent since the day “Cain slew Abel” and televison violence didn’t influence that. Jealousy and greed did.
Prior to modern psychology the Bible and other writings described these people (psychopaths) as mean, despotic, evil, demon possessed, moral insanity, etc. etc. so the psychopathic personality disorder has been with us since Cain.
It is interesting to me the “conversation” that Cain had with God when God banished him. Cain was not repentent about killing his brother, obviously, and was telling God that his punishment was “too severe” and that someone would see him and kill him for what he had done.
God was supposed to have put a “mark” on Cain so that others would see this “Mark of Cain” and not kill him. It would be nice if the “descendants” of this first psychopath in recorded history had that mark on their foreheads or some other way to identify them so we could avoid them. I’m not sayiing that I believe that all psychopaths are descended from Cain in a physical sense, but in a moral sense, they have no more remorse than he is reported to have had.
My P-son doesn’t feel any remorse for his horrible act of murdering a girl, but instead, like Cain, feels that his punishment (being in prison and all that entails) is out of proportion to what he did.
If would be nice if professionals could agree on names and definitions and communicate those agreed upon definitions to the public so that “Joe Plumber” could identify a psychopath or a sociopath or an ASPD by their actions, but I doubt that is going to happen any time in the near future.
For those of us who know FIRST HAND the damage these toxic people do, the “name” doesn’t matter, we are learning instead to get the heck away from them as fast and as completely as possible and stay away.
Oxy: Great post. The reason Cain didn’t repent was that he refused to go humble in order to truly understand all the ramifications of his action. It is only when we stay humble, the way God wants us to live is when we can see and know clearly how we are suppose to live while housed in human form. Cain’s ego, as did Satan’s ego didn’t allow them to see their actions.
Peace.
Wini, I want to correct your statement that “they can change”, because its important. The whole premise of being labeled a psychopath is that they can’t change. Even if these people wanted to be able to love, it is mentally impossible for them, and this causes many side effects like boredom and impulsiveness. They can’t change. That is why having psychologists in the prison is so important. They have to determine who can change through rehabilitation. And who can’t (aka the psycho). It’s a very important distinction in determining who they will let out on parole. The psycho cannot be rehabilitated, even if they want to. And if they let them out, they will do the same violent act again, even if they really don’t want to. Psychos can’t change, their brain is always going to have problems in their frontal lobe.
Now if they aren’t really a psycho, they just act like a psycho, then they might be able to change, it’s just that they don’t want to. But if they change their mind someday, there will be services available to help them become good people with good results. But, that is not a psycho.
bird: I think more research should be done on the reasons why they don’t want to change. What’s in it for them if they should change? Why would a selfish personality not want to be selfish anymore? There’s no incentive for being humble? They don’t care … that’s why they are not humble. Selfish and being self centered works for them.
That’s why we incorporated prison systems in the world. To house those that have no incentive to change.
Your mind is a muscle, just as the muscles you see on your body. If you don’t work the muscles in the brain for anything positive … all the negative is worked on. That most likely is what they are seeing when they view the mass areas of the brain.
Same way we grew up … we were taught right from wrong. We were praised for doing right and punished for doing wrong. Most of us figured out, it was easier in our lives as children to do right … As we continued doing what was right … different sensations happen to our minds, our bodies our souls.
Peace.
Bird that is one of the things that makes the label important. Sociopaths can change and there are many that have changed. Psychopaths do not change. ASPD can change and some do and some do not. There is no “diagnosis” of psychopathy or sociopathy in the US. The one that would fit would be ASPD for the adult with the extra that they did have or would have been diagnosed with Conduct Disorder early childhood onset (rather than the more common adolescent onset) as a minor.
And I agree completely that true psychopaths don’t change and it is not because they make a conscious decision to not do so. They think differently than most people and for some reason this is a hard concept for some folks to grasp.