Last time, I promised you to start where I ended. The question was, is there any difference between a psychopath and a sociopath? The answer is… nobody knows, really. But the scientists investigating the Antisocial Personality Disorder mostly agree with this simple distinction: psychopaths are born, sociopaths are made.

 

The difference between psychopaths and sociopaths

PSYCHOPATHS are born with a lack or nerve connection in the frontal lobe of their brains (the part of the brain behind your eyes and forehead), are more organized, manipulative and good at planning, therefore more dangerous. They have no empathy and conscience because their brain was not properly developed in the right parts. So yeah, it´s basically a disability. However, according to the very definition of this word, a disorder can be only taken for a disability if it arouses sympathy in other people. But psychopaths are not mentally retarded, as their intellect and cognitive functions (the way a person understands the world) are intact. In fact, psychopaths are more in touch with reality than neurotypicals, and because of that, they find it easy to understand the needs of average people. And because they have no conscience, the next logical step for them is to exploit others to get what they want.



SOCIOPATHS are mostly taken for Psychopaths Lite. They are either born nerotypical (read: normal) or “slightly cracked”, and their disorder starts developing when they are subjected to some form of violence in their childhood, or negative parental influence. While most neurotypicals react to this experience with shrinking to themselves and becoming depressed or even self-harming (while still trustin other people), sociopaths react in a completely different way. They start seeing all people, regardless their attitude, as potential enemies. As a result, they act according to the old dog-eat-dog scheme, as they believe they must be out there to get others before the others get them. But their empathy or conscience are either almost intact or only slightly skewed, not completely missing. Less organized and guarded than psychopaths, they are capable of feeling deeper emotion, and might be prone to bouts of anger and violence when their needs or expectations are not met.



And now, when we are finished with the separation of the two conditions, we can move to what psychopaths (I will cut it just to them now, it saves space and time) are and what they are not.

 

What psychopaths are?

Manipulative. They know what makes people tick, as they are keen observers of human behavior. However, they will only be interested in you in terms of what you can offer to them. You are a mean to their ends. They will be charming around you to get what they want, but once you are not useful, they will dispose of you.

Good planners. They are masters of a long-time planning, and they can wait for the right opportunity for months or even years. Revenge is a dish best served cold. Don´t try to outsmart them, though. It is likely that you might not come out of the match as a winner. Just move on as fast as possible.

Pathological liars. Not only they lie to get what they want when the game is “on”, they lie basically every day. The everyday lies might not be told with an malevolent purpose; the psychopath just might the need to appear more interesting to their audience because they feel lonely, or because they want to draw people in with their (somewhat glib) charm. They are usually great story-tellers, and so people suspect little to nothing.

Without empathy or conscience. They do know what they are doing, they just don´t care. Not in the typical neurotypical, passive-agressive “don´t care” way (which women tend to use when they are angry with their spouses, aka the good ´ol “I´m FINE!”). Psychopaths truly DON´T CARE. They don´t think about you in a bad or good way. They don´t hate you, unless they think you have spoiled their plans. They really don´t care.

 

What psychopaths aren´t?

Out of reality. In movies, you see psychopaths dancing around wildly, blowing up buildings, rolling their eyes, sticking out tongues or use some “cool” crazy catchphrases to prove how mad they are. In reality, they usually wear carefully-constructed masks. Psychopathy as a condition EXCLUDES any form of insanity, and psychopaths themselves are as in touch with reality and grounded as possible (in fact, they are extremely materialistic, mostly going after the most basic “goods” in life, e.g. sex, money or power). They need to stay “focused” because like other predators, they wait for the right time to attack, usually (like e.g. lions) going after the weakest link of the society or company. Strucking the highest-ranking member of a society is dangerous and needs to be carefully planned, and psychopaths are too lazy to go for it, unless they feel they have no other choice.

Necessarily egotistical. Yes, they tend to possess the grandiose sense of self-worth, and it indeed is higher than in most people, but most of the time, they are still not as egotistical as narcisists. While sociopaths are aware of their egoism, emotions and thoughts, narcissists usually aren´t. Both of them are sensitive to criticism, but psychopaths tend not to care that much. If you cross a psychopath, the revenge will be secret, and they will never reveal themselves as the attacker because they need to preserve their mask of goodness. Narcissists, on the other hand, tend to do their revenge out in the open, so that everybody could see it, and you would be publically humiliated.

Emotionless. Here´s the deal: psychopaths really do feel emotions that are somewhat dulled. That is true. However, it´s not true that they have NO emotions. They do. They have all the emotions that neurotypical people do, but unlike normal people, they can “separate” themselves from them when they do something bad. This is not a mere psychological concept or a wild guess; it was scientifically proven by PET scans made by neurologists.
P.S.: In my very humble opinion (it is just my opinion and I am not forcing it to anyone, as it might be completely wrong), their having no deep emotions is the real cause for their pathological sense of BOREDOM. They are bored all the time because they don´t have a rich inner life, which causes a hidden depression (they don´t know of), which in turn leads them to seek thrill in order to “feel alive”.
And now, when we are finished with the explanation of what a psychopath is and what it isn´t, I will give you a few movie characters that are clearly psychopathic, but most neurotypicals don´t see them as such, as they stand on the side of good. We will start with Samuel I-Don´t-Care Gerard from The Fugitive. See (the upcoming) Part 3.