Sociopaths and Psychopaths: A Crisis of Conscience and Empathy (What Makes Them Tick Book 1)

picture someone who is socially domineering, highly emotionally resilient, and adventurous. That person will be loud, brash, dominant in every situation, willing to take lots of risks, and he won’t give a fuck. That’s a psychopath.

key difference between psychopaths and so-called normal people, or even criminals who are not psychopaths, is guilt or shame.

first wrote about and coined the term theory of mind in a 1978 article about chimpanzees. They stated, “An individual has a theory of mind if he imputes mental states to himself and others.” Impute is a fancy word for “attribute,” by the way.

They feel they are entitled to whatever they want, and they either ignore the feelings of others or are unable to comprehend them.

genetic risk factor, which “leads to the emotional dysfunction that is the core of psychopathy.”

Psychopaths aren’t afraid (remember the whole fearless dominance thing?). Sociopaths experience fear in a typical human way.

Sociopaths also experience no guilt or shame, although they are able to fake it.

the environmental risk factors associated with psychopathy more often lead to issues with depression, anxiety and PTSD than they do to psychopathy. It’s not that those risk factors never lead to psychopathy—it’s just that they tend to lead to other mental illnesses instead.

psychopaths are more problematic than sociopaths—individuals most likely diagnosed with Antisocial Personality Disorder.