Assess The Difference Between Sociopath And Psychopaths
776 Words4 Pages
The Differences between Psychopathy and Sociopathy When we hear of the terms psychopath and sociopath we tend to conjure the image of a remorseless killer that stalks his/her victims and brutally murders them. But in reality this is mealy just a false world set by pop culture. Psychopaths and sociopaths are ordinary people that either due to genetics or traumatic childhoods have had their brains altered to extreme extents. As John M Grohol says “And contrary to popular belief, a psychopath or sociopath is not necessarily violent. (Grohol)” This means that psychopaths and sociopaths can be trying to simply live a normal life. One of the more common fears humanity has about psychopaths and sociopaths is that they might end up living next…show more content… Psychopaths and sociopaths tend to get these examples from pop culture icons such as The Joker from the Batman series, Hannibal Lector from The Silence of the Lambs, Alex DeLarge from A Clockwork Orange. Through these icons we tend to get the example that whenever someone is medically declared a psychopath or a sociopath we view them as scum on the Earth. Although what really separates a psychopath and a sociopath are their childhoods, the psychopath receives his/her psychopathic tendencies from genetics and possibly head injuries while the sociopath receives his/her sociopathic tendencies from having traumatic…show more content… In a study done by Matt DiLisi along with others he worked with psychopathic and non-psychopathic criminals and he found that psychopaths have the same amount of intelligence as non-psychopaths (DeLisi, Vaughn and Beaver). However it is shown that psychopaths seem smarter because they know how to use their intelligence to a better degree and as such are able to increase the intensity of their crimes to a higher extent than