Let's talk about psychopathy. Psychopathy is kinda meaningless now. Or at least it must be because the way this word is used irritates the fuck outta me as a counselor (yeah turns out a lot of things bug me now that I'm a counselor XD). Psychopathy has become stripped of its original meaning and description by movies and armchair activists and is now ascribed to anyone who does something bad. That's not psychopathy. Simply being a bad person is not psychopathy. Sociopathy is not psychopathy, despite how much they might crossover into each other. I will not only be examining the differences between sociopaths and psychopaths, but I will also be talking about what a psychopath is and how you can spot one, because I am very sick of how overused this word has become.
To begin, psychopathy is a mental disorder. One does not simply become a psychopath; you have to be born as one. One thing that psychopaths and sociopaths share is antisocial personality disorder, though with psychopaths, the case is more complex and difficult to deal with for reasons I am about to explain. With a psychopath, their actions come from nature. What I'm about to say might be controversial, but it's important to keep in mind that psychopaths aren't malevolent, they simply...are. They don't have any specific reasons for their bad behaviour. They just do them. They tend to rationalise their actions by saying "this is just who I am and people will have to accept that". Most of what people know about psychopaths is just glamourised Hollywood tropism. Movies portray psychopathic villains as bloodthirsty tortured souls or are batshit insane, both of which are misconceptions. There are plenty of evil people out there with completely normal mental states, normal meaning fully functioning hypothalamus and amygdala, both of which are impaired in psychopaths. Plus, psychosis and psychopathy are not the same thing, even if they tend to overlap. Hollywood also tells you that psychopaths are geniuses, when the reality is that on average, psychopaths are actually pretty dumb. Keep in mind that just because they have brain disorders and typically don't know better, that doesn't justify their bad behaviour.
Another thing psychopaths are known for is lying. When a psychopath becomes aware of their affliction, they will try their damnedest to hide it from others. They will be cool and calm, tell some jokes, put on a noticeably fake smile, all of that to hide their instability. They're also pathological liars, and can form cover stories as they go along. One thing to note is that whilst psychopaths regularly lie, they're also kinda bad at it. It's easy to catch them in a standard lie, since they don't carefully plan them out if they're making it all up right then and there, and you can pick up on some discrepancies that contradict something they said. That's why sociopaths aren't psychopaths as many people would confuse. A sociopath would be upfront with what they're like, and they were socialised to be the way they are. Psychopaths are worse off than sociopaths, since their mental state is natural and can't be fixed, only treated, but sociopaths are more prone to violence than psychopaths, since their violent impulses come much more unpredictably and they have very short fuses. Psychopaths have specific triggers. Not like shell shocked people, but they have a specific type of tick that causes them to lose their shit. However, once their episode is done, they'll resume as if nothing happened. Also, contrary to popular belief, psychopaths and sociopaths are capable of empathy, but very little of it and it tends to be selective.
What about their patterns of violence? This is usually the defining difference between sociopaths and psychopaths. Sociopaths are volatile and destructive and don't care about the mess they made. Psychopaths on the other hand hate sloppiness and will make sure no one sees what they've done. Psychopaths don't bathe in their victims' blood (unless you're Richard Chase but I digress), they don't make sunglasses out of fingernails, they don't do anything of that sort. Sorry Hannibal Lecter :/. In fact, DC Comics's Joker is a prime example of the mislabeling of a psychopath. Whilst he meticulously plans out his schemes, his volatility and impulsion ultimately makes him cross over into sociopath territory. Sure he's insane, unlike most people with APD, but he's still a sociopath nonetheless. But what if you're dealing with someone who's just plain evil? Well, for starters, "evil" isn't really a medical term, and is simply an adjective. No therapist or mental hospital is gonna diagnose someone as evil. If someone is just pure evil and shows no signs of APD or psychopathy or sociopathy, then their mental state is normal. People like Hitler and Bashar Al-Assad are what we consider evil since they don't exhibit psychopathic tendencies and have/had clear reasons for what they do/did. Being a murderer or criminal doesn't automatically make you a psychopath, as I mentioned before. I could easily say that the members of ISIS and the KKK are psychopaths, but I'd be wrong.
One thing that may freak you out is that the general population exhibits plenty of psychopathic traits. We've all lied to cover our arses, we've all thought of violence or committed it, but that doesn't mean we're mentally unstable and are bound to destroy a nursing home or whatever. People aren't perfect after all.
The last thing I wanna talk about is the concept of remorse, which psychopaths apparently are incapable of. This is also a misconception. Psychopaths can feel remorse for what they do, but the level of remorse they feel is not enough to create full on guilt, especially since they never fully realise the gravity of their actions. They'll treat breaking a person's arm as if they accidentally bumped into them, for example. Either that or they'll blame you for it, even if it wasn't your fault. I'm not trying to scare people into thinking that psychopaths are all over the place, because they're not. The world population of psychopaths is around 1%, and you'll likely have run into one of these folks at least once on the street and just don't know it yet. That might sound contradictory, but the fact is that Hollywood has planted seeds in your head that warp reality about these people just to get you to buy a ticket about some guy who launches nuclear missiles at people when he hears the word "chicken".
So what false facts about psychopaths did you believe? Did this help your perception of them? Do you now feel like you can properly identify one? Psychopathy is still a mental health issue, let's not let the movies force that out of our minds. The better we understand something, the more effective we'd be at dealing with it.
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