The Difference Between Psychopath and Sociopath + A Sociopath claims he is "gifted"

[Kanra Jest]

Psychopaths are true born. Sociopaths are developed.

One is nature. One is nurture. Not as difficult as it's often portrayed. But now under the umbrella term of "Anti Social Personality Disorder" it seems.

When people show off "Sociopathic characters" that sometimes show human characteristics or have shut down a lot of their humanity based off trauma they're showing a developed Sociopath not a Psychopath. Hence Sherlock's important little distinction in BBC.

Yet people keep treating them as the same. The "Violent Psychopath/Sociopath" thing is also more of a nurture thing in of itself. One being psychopath/sociopath doesn't make them inherently violent.

Regardless, they don't have "No Emotion" so much as Deafened Emotion. One doesn't literally never have any emotion at all unless they're a robot.

There is also this interesting study called the Psychopathy switch.

Psychopathic criminals have empathy switch - BBC News

 

[caspar]

Bumping this thread. Personally I'm not distinguishing between those terms but there might be a difference between nature/nurture, don't know what the latest science says. What I think is equally, if not more important is the overall character of a person, which at least partly seems to be influenced by nurture, according to psychiatrist James Fallon, who was already mentioned earlier on this thread. In other words, it's nurture that decides if a psychopath/sociopath becomes a doctor who functions well even under a lot of stress, or a ruthless murderer.

 

[Peter Deadpan]

Professionals don't even agree on the difference between psychopaths and sociopaths, or if there is one to begin with. Hollywood benefits most from the distinctions and stereotypes.

 

[Smilephantomhive]

The truly smart ones would know that murdering is dumb because it's so easy to get caught no matter how careful you are.

 

[PumpkinMayCare]

Bumping this thread. Personally I'm not distinguishing between those terms but there might be a difference between nature/nurture, don't know what the latest science says. What I think is equally, if not more important is the overall character of a person, which at least partly seems to be influenced by nurture, according to psychiatrist James Fallon, who was already mentioned earlier on this thread. In other words, it's nurture that decides if a psychopath/sociopath becomes a doctor who functions well even under a lot of stress, or a ruthless murderer.

According to my psychology-books, professionals still debate whether there's a difference between psychopaths or sociopaths. Some believe there's a difference, not remembering how ages ago psychopaths and sociopaths were two names used for the same cluster B type.
How nurture and nature forms a personality isn't clear yet in general. Though there are rare stories about young kids killing other children after experiencing abuse on a very cruel scale, which can give a bit of a look into how nature and nurture influences people to become psychopaths. There's a thing called attachment disorder, which the kid often develops when they can't bond with their parents for whatever reason. It's often a dynamic process where the mother is either suffering from a severe mental disorder and therefore can not bond with their child properly or the mother suffers from post parental depression and the mother pushes the child away (or does even worse to the kid), which of course leads the child to having problems with attachment. A child with this kind of attachment disorder may act up in very cruel ways, often trying to get their parents attention by commiting harmful actions. Since they can't get attention by behaving nice and normal, they grasp for straws and go in the other direction. And sadly enough, this trick often works out for them.
We've also been taught about kids with attachment disorders who torture other children and even go so far as to kill others, and in that case it's often not to get attention. The reason they're doing this is because that's what they've experienced in their lives and since they're so young, they don't know any better and think this is normal behaviour. Plus they make other people a victim, so they don't have to be the victim all the time. They develop a "get them before they get me"-mentality.
So these examples show how nurture plays a role in peoples mental development. But we must not forget that obviously, kids respond differently to circumstances like these. Kids who are more sensitive would most likely never go so far to hurt other people, even when that's all they've been taught - a good example of this are children who grew up in satanic cults, where killing and abusing others was taught to them as an ordinary way of life. A huge lot of them know what they're family is doing is wrong from a very young age. They told "a strange feeling told them what they're family was doing couldn't be alright" but had no evidence to back up this feeling. It must be concluded, some people are just born with an internal sense of right and wrong and no matter the circumstances, they don't start hurting others, even when being taught it's normal and they're extremely traumatized by it.
So it's safe to say nurture does play a role, in that it can be a trigger for all sorts of disorders - traumas, psychopathy, borderline, etc, but you can only trigger what's already there.


I'm studying psychology. Next semester will be my last.

 

[caspar]

So it's safe to say nurture does play a role, in that it can be a trigger for all sorts of disorders - traumas, psychopathy, borderline, etc, but you can only trigger what's already there.

That sums it up nicely.

 

[draon9]

Sociopath have bsackwards way of thinking
Psychopath just dont care

 

[Scaven]

I was wondering, are there people with empathy and sympathy who, despite knowing that what they do is wrong, still proceed through? Could it be out of sadism? Is there a name for it?
Like imagine someone would feel sad after a movie but takes joy in manipulating others, maybe out of fun. is something like that realistic?

 

[Kingu Kurimuzon]

I was wondering, are there people with empathy and sympathy who, despite knowing that what they do is wrong, still proceed through? Could it be out of sadism? Is there a name for it?
Like imagine someone would feel sad after a movie but takes joy in manipulating others, maybe out of fun. is something like that realistic?

That's called ENTP.



(just kidding)