preview

Antisocial Personality Disorder ( Sociopathy And Psychopathy Essay

Good Essays
Open Document

Antisocial personality disorder is a condition as to where the person that has the disorder tends to be manipulative, deceitful, reckless or malicious.

Antisocial personality disorder, a lot like other personality disorders, is often put on a spectrum. Which in turn means that the disorder can often range in severity. The variables can range from committing small or insignificant acts of bad behavior, to potentially harming others and committing large scale crimes. For reference, psychopathy is widely considered to be a very severe case of antisocial personality disorder.

Sociopathy and psychopathy are often confused to be the same disorder. Although they both fall into the same range of antisocial personality disorders, they are both radically different in symptoms to each other. For example, individuals that are considered to be sociopaths often have a "conscience" if you will. Sociopaths are also capable of developing relationships and proving loyalty to a specific group or social class, unlike their psychopathic counterparts. There is, however, no consensus definition for sociopaths, the term is more of a generalization than a solid definition.

Psychopathy, on the other hand, is composed of a large mixture of symptoms that will often overlap with other psychological disorders, such as, narcissism or histrionic personality disorder (HPD).

Some telltale signs that suggest an individual is indeed psychopathic would be:
- A high desire for control
- An arrogant sense of

Get Access