The Psychopath/Sociopath
In the media psychopaths are always serial killers or smart criminals. This picture is missing a lot. So, what exactly is a psychopath, and how are they different from sociopaths? The terms are sometimes used interchangeably, why?
In Clinical Psychology, the word “clinically” means that a diagnosis comes from observation and treatment of actual patients rather than from theoretical or laboratory studies, a psychopath or sociopath then, in clinical usage, are both diagnosed clinically as “Antisocial Personality Disorder (ASPD),” and is said to be Manipulative, Deceitful, Callous, Hostel, Irresponsible, Impulsive, but when doing research, and in conversations, most psychologists use the term psychopath or sociopath, sometimes interchangeably because they are both diagnosed as ASPD. But then if you want to understand their behavior in more detail, why they are the way they are, you find that you need to give them different names.
In this research usage, a psychopath is a person who is born without the ability to have empathy(empathy is the key), and thus has the inability to see other people as people like themselves. So other people to them are just objects to be manipulated for their own self-interest - people are just things, like cars, TV, and mobile phones.
The term sociopath, on the other hand, which can be just as destructive, is believed to have very little empathy,if any, but the lack of empathy they have is learned from the environment they were raised in; thus they are not born with ASPD, but were made that way by their upbringing or some other environmental factor like war, illness, or weath. It must be understood that for the sociopath, this may be an over simplification because in reality it may be a combination of both genes and environment that makes them sociopath.