grew up with a brother who was a sociopath and later on in life became a psychopath. The difference is impulse control. this is just the opinion of a layman that has a few family members who are psychopaths and sociopath. A psychopath acts out and is easy for psychiatrists and law enforcement to catch. Sociopaths are a lot harder to catch because they tend to be real intelligent and blend in because they don’t act on impulse. where a sociopath will plan his crime out a psychopath will do there crime and then engage in the cover up because the crime happened because he got angry and reacted. everyone encounters these individuals and they appear charming and its only over time that you realize that these people are not living by the same rules everyone else does.
Agree. Socios seem more passive-agressive and subtle...such as gaslighting.
A friend of mine is a psychology professor who teaches one class per semester and has a full-time practice. We talked about this psychopath-sociopath thing and she said that they all tend to fool most people because they are charming and have figured out ways to push their advantage. But when it is all said and done the differences are just a matter of degree which they are still working on to establish. Both sociopaths and psychopaths operate their lives as if they had no conscience.
Think about your car speedometer is on the fritz. You realize that you can drive down the road as fast as you want with no indicator telling you that pedal to the medal just might not be a good idea. If a cop stops you, you can just blame the speedometer not working. That is what it is like for a person who ignores the internal indicator that tells them they are going too fast and they might kill someone.
These people are not really a problem to themselves. However, they are a problem to everyone they come in contact with.
No medication can help them. No counseling can help either. They are a mystery to all. Good thing we have jail cells for when they get truly out of line.
Yours is the best description on here that I’ve read so far.
A sociopath is made. A neglected infancy, early childhood trauma, some failure to bond with a trustworthy adult. Sadly, small degrees of it can come from early parental separation. I’ve seen it manifest in two different varieties: parents taking off for a long vacation at the wrong time in the toddler’s development, shattering his security, and, worse, a child born with heart problems and needing long hospitalizations and surgeries, back when they didn’t let the parent stay 24/7 beside the child.
A sociopath doesn’t, can’t really love. But they can really WANT. There can be degrees of sociopathy. Two good examples are Bill Clinton and Barack Obama. Clinton obviously received love as a young child and he does feel things and care about some others. He was abandoned by his sperm donor and step dad, and oversexualized by him mom. While he committed reprehensible crimes, he probably “hated” having to do it or felt guilty after. When he lied to us, he really worked hard to try and get us to believe his lies.
Contrast that with Barack Obama, who experienced utter rejection by both parents very young. He appears so “cool” and if he “doesn’t care” because he was forced to stop caring so very young. So he truly can commit crimes etc with no guilt or moral twinge. When he read lies to us off his beloved prompter, it was obvious to all that he didn’t care we knew they were lies.
Both have sociopathy but Obama’s is a few degrees deeper.