Psychopathy

Psychopathy is a personality disorder or antisocial personality disorder. Psychopaths are unemotional. They do not show concern about the feelings or rights of others. They show almost no empathy, and do not try to follow norms. They don’t have a conscience and do not feel guilt. Another word for psychopathy is sociopathy.^[1][2][3]

Many psychopaths are charming and often manage to work with other people. They use other people. Psychopaths often have other bad personality traits, like sadism, violence and deception. They are very selfish and get rid of people for whom they have no further use. They may have many children by many partners.^[4]

The definition of psychopathy has changed. Different definitions are used. They only partly overlap and sometimes seem contradictory.^[5]

There are efforts to use behaviour therapy to treat psychopaths; often, this may be done in prisons.

Some people are mislabeled as psychopaths, but have no problems with social norms, but they are good at influencing people. There is a difference between the sexes as to how psychopathy is shown. Men show it more as an antisocial pattern of behaviour. In women it shows more as a histrionic pattern (excessive attention-seeking).

Amongst professional psychiatrists, psychopathy is known for being difficult to treat.^[6][7]