Transcription
Psychopath is born and a sociopath is made.
My first job in psychiatry as a psychiatric resident, I was 25. This was at a forensic psychiatric ward. So psychiatric patients who had committed crimes but were nonviolent. Well, not all of them. My boss was he took one of the his patients out for a smoke and got beaten up and we always had to come in and do a 101 when when they had been beating each other up or something had happened. So, they weren't really nonviolent, but they hadn't committed violent crimes. And this was my favorite job so far because I was drawn to these people in the same way so many are drawn to exactly this topic about psychopaths and sociopaths. And why do we find it so fascinating? I think it lies in this difference we're going to talk about today. What is the difference between a sociopath and a psychopath? And I have been giving this topic a lot of thought and related it to my own experiences. is we're going to really try to go through it systematically. And this topic came up right now because I came across my least favorite psychologist on the internet and I've talked about it before. It is this Dr. Ramani and her lack of understanding on these topics is just baffling to me.
Psychopaths are born and sociopaths are made. Wrong. We're going to start here. The research does not support this very simple way of looking at it. The terms we have to pick apart here are psychopath, sociopath and antisocial personality disorder. The diagnosis and they are all related to personality. So we have to talk about personality traits here. They're antisocial personality disorder and psychopath and and sociopath. They are personality configurations. So we have to go back to personality traits as we've talked about many times. So it's not that I only understand things in in this framework. It's just we're talking about personality disorder. So we have to talk about the big five model which is the best research we have on this when psychology actually comes up with good research. So then I think we should stick to that. Right? So when she says psychopaths are born and sociopaths are made, that's wrong because they are both extreme extreme expressions of trait configurations. Um they are equally heritable. So let's look at what's at the bottom of these terms. So psychopathy is a research term. It's a forensic psychiatric term. Sociopath is the more colloquial popular term. and antisocial personality disorder, it's the only formal diagnosis. Psychopathy, sociopathy, they're not formal diagnosis. And so the antisocial, that is something where you have to fulfill diagnostic criteria. So you're really talking about behavior. So the best way we can conceptualize this is through the traits. And the core the core of all of these three is the low agreeableness because that gives as we've talked about before low empathy, low guilt, no remorse, a willingness to exploit for your own gain. Psychopathy in itself is that causing harm without remorse. Then they split it into primary or cold psychopathy and hot or secondary psychopathy. And that is what we usually call sociopathy. So if you have a cold psychopath, you would add to the low agreeableness low neuroticism. And if you have a hot psychopath or the secondary one, also known as antisocial, you would add higher neuroticism. And that would make them reactive. that would make them angry and volatile and very grievanced driven and retaliatory. Whereas the cold psychopath would be more calm and calculating because he's not that easily aroused. If you then add the low conscientiousness, you will get to a point where the person has repeated rulebreaking and conduct problems before the age of 15. And then you start seeing that the antisocial personality disorder diagnostic criteria which I'm going to show you here starts filling out. So that's really about the behaviors. But at the bottom is this underlying extreme and dangerous trait constellation. So now we have the terms sort of laid out and we can continue listening to this travesty.
The research on psychopaths and psychopathy in general suggests that they may be wired differently. This is what gets my goat. They're wired differently. I hate this vague vague language like my brain is wired this way. What does that even mean?
That the part of them called their autonomic nervous system is not as reactive. So whereas a normal >> what is she talking about here? She's talking about low neuroticism. Any person who is low in neuroticism will not have that arousal reaction. But you know who else has that? Surgeons, pilots, firefighters, they all have that stability. They don't react the same. Are they psychopaths? No. Do they have some of the similar traits at the bottom? Maybe yes. They just had a different upbringing. It was shaped differently. But, you know, we want to know what separates someone who becomes a hero from someone who becomes a villain. That's what's so fascinating, right? That's all she talk she keeps talking about this autonomic nervous system like that's some sort of novelty that she's she's dis she's only talking about that one thing again and again in other interviews as well. They have low arousal. They don't react like we do without properly talking about what causes that cold calculating causing harm without remorse. as a normal person might get anxious for example if they heard footsteps coming behind them on a darkened street or even you know or they were about to do something wrong like transfer money embezzled money normal people their heart would be racing they'd be sweating they pupils would be large I shouldn't be doing this I shouldn't be doing this.
Again back to the surgeon a normal person would have their heart racing when they start cutting someone open they don't like the best surgeons you don't want to have them over for dinner maybe you know they're not very pleasant to be around speaking from experience, but that's one of the traits that make them good at what they do.
A psychopath would be click click done and they'd go still go out and like play with their puppy kind of thing. Like they just don't care.
And now she ties this not caring to the neuroticism. That's wrong. That's in a different trait. That's in the low agreeableness. And all of them have that. If you're talking about the psychopath or the sociopath or the antisocial person, they all share that very low agreeableness. is just not enough to explain.
Nothing gets them anxious and they're willing and able to do really bad things without feeling uncomfortable. A sociopath is made and that could be through a a variety of things. They could be made through their environments. They may have grown up in dangerous and violent environments. They may have had to learn to survive that way. They may have been raised by parents who were like basically gave them like break the rules all you want if it helps you get ahead.
Right? So she just conflates all of it. what she said at the end that's true for all of these different types. Chief speaks about them like they are different completely different types of people. That is not true. The better way to look at it is this is a spectrum and she claims that psychopaths are born and that comes from us seeing for example kids torturing animals, setting fires, these sort of extreme behaviors. We see them very early. So then we think that oh yeah that's born and then sociopathic traits or antisocial traits or the hot psychopathy. So I'm using them next to each other because that's sort of the same thing. Those behaviors show up a little later. If you look at it as a spectrum you'll see that the torturing animals and those things are so extreme that we see them earlier. But it doesn't mean that the same traits aren't there. It's just traits cause the expression of behavior and that behavior then shows up earlier but they are as born as a sociopath or an antisocial person. So the cold psychopath is very low in agreeableness, very low in neuroticism. So it doesn't have that arousal bold calculating um disinhibited. And so research used this triarchic, it's called the triarchic model uh where they say psychopathy consists of meanness, boldness and disinhibition. And we can place that on the big five as low agreeableness, low neuroticism and extraversion. A mix of those. And now we're coming to the reason why we find that so fascinating. That's because they come across as inhuman. they are so cold. Whereas the hot psychopathy, the secondary psychopathy or what we call sociopathy and antisociality, they you can say they do it out of this higher neuroticism. They do it out of hurt, out of anger. And those are human emotions that we can easily relate to. So someone's talking about a crime they committed while they're crying because they did it because they were so hurt. We're saying, "Oh, yeah, that, you know, that's a terrible thing, but yeah, we can sort of understand it. We can relate. We can put it at a level that we can understand." But if someone like what I experienced, someone talking about something awful that they did as if they were just going to the store, we can't compute. It's that missing negative emotion aspect that has us just we don't understand it. the cold calculation of the primary psychopath. That is what is so fascinating. How can they do it? Because it's not out of hurt, it's not out of anger, it's just for personal gain, that exploitation. They harm others because they need it. Or you bring in the sadism, that is another element. So now we're in the dark triad or the dark tetrd, right? That's psychopathy is one of them. Machavelianism, narcissism, and sadism. So where you can have psychopaths who harm because they simply need something or you have uh psychopaths who are also sadists who harm because they enjoy it. And you can have sadists who aren't psychopaths who cause harm and then they feel guilty about it afterwards. So that's why we can only understand this if we're talking about the traits and the constellation of these traits.
Let's do another one just for fun. A psychopath is born and a sociopath is made.
Okay, that's the key. So a psychopath in fact we know in the research on psychopathy which has also been called antisocial personality disorder in our diagnostic manual. These are people who are actually believed to have slightly different autonomic nervous systems. Our autonomic nerves again with the nervous system part that holds our sympathetic nervous system which is our fightlight system. So when our autonom >> it's like she's learned this one thing and then just keeps repeating it because the one listening is just saying oh oh that sounds technical and the autonomic nervous system nobody has that. So when our autonomic nervous system for a normal person gets charged up which it would if we broke a rule, if we did something embarrassing or rude. If we ran through a red light, our heart starts racing. We sweat. Our our pupils get wide. we look around cuz we're afraid of the consequence. A psychopath doesn't have that same kind of arousal. That's why they're able to lie on lie detector tests. That's how they get away with it. They don't have that same kind of arousal. So, where you or I may go on a roller coaster, feel that sense of excitement. We need to get that arousal in a good way, we don't like feeling it when we do something.
Forget she's only talking about the neuroticism aspect. You so many people who just they're completely cool. They're completely cool and they can pass these sort of tests. That doesn't mean that they cause harm without remorse. And she really gets my goat. She is, as we would say in Norway, completely lost in the forest while picking berries. And so the sequences for the secondary psychopath or the antisocial personality or the sociopath. So I'm using them as one so we understand the group. The sequence is wound, rage, retaliation. That's volatility in the retaliation and not feeling guilty about it, not showing remorse. And for the cold or the primary psychopath, it's your opportunity, calculation, exploitation, and no remorse. And so that's the real horror. That's the real horror of this profile. It's that the breaks are absent. And I do think that what we find so frightening is that there is no control for us. If we know that someone is causing harm without remorse, but because of some wound because they're hurt, it gives us this level of control that okay, as long as I don't poke the bear, I'll be fine. But with the cold psychopaths, we know it's whatever whenever they decide. There's no control element. So anything could happen and there's no way for us to understand because they think so differently than the average person. And so I think that was for me the thrill. It's sort of the drama of it. You just don't know what's going to happen. I took my husband to I interviewed at the high the highest security forensic ward in Norway and I got the job and I took my husband to the first interview and it was deep into the forest in Norway like snow was this high middle of winter and like big fence tall fences with uh with barb wire and like the fences went up and my husband's just like, "No, not happening." But that like that that's my dream job. I mean, it's just very exciting. I understand why he says no. I respect it.
So, what's really the difference between the antisocial personality disorder and the psychopath? If you drill down, I've want to explain it with sort of the antisocial personality disorder has gotten caught like because you have to sit the person down and see if they fulfill the criteria. There's so much overlap between these two. But the antisocial personality disorder tells you what they've done repeatedly and you have documented it. And with the psychopath, it tells you more about the personality machinery behind the profile. Which is why when you say that the ASPD, the antisocial is just it's the clinical term and the psychopathy and the sociopathy is not and so once again the sociopath it is not a separate diagnostic category. It's just a looser term for the hotter version of antisociality of psychopathy. But because the underlying trait is the same, the low very low agreeableness and then with differing versions of neuroticism and extraversion and conscientiousness, it's a much better way to think of it as hot and cold and the antisociality as the clinical diagnosis. And you find both types within because it is the spectrum of extreme traits. It is not a mysterious biological condition that is either born or made. Are you kidding me?
The other thing that really annoys me with with Dr. Romani, it is her anti-male bias. It is this she's always when she's talking about psychopaths or sociopaths or narcissists, it's always him or he. It's just so clear that she's talking about men. And when she's talking about borderliner borderline personality disorder, it's like this wounded animal that you just have to you seek to understand and it's interesting. You just have to understand the wound and the trauma. That's it. And she's talking about them as animals. She actually said in one real that the sociopath is a different animal altogether. She would never talk about a woman like that. Never. She's never talk about the borderliner as an animal. And with the examples she gives, it's always what males do. And never does she talk about the female expression of either sociopathy or psychopathy. She never gives any examples where you could even dain to think, oh, a woman could have done this. It's always sort of male sort of crimes. So that's how I would look at it. I hope that was helpful. Otherwise, let me know in the comment section if we should do this again. And uh next week we'll be talking about more examples of female narcissism. I did one video uh on that already, but we're going to elaborate on it. So also let me know if you have any suggestions or any examples that I might bring into that episode. That would be helpful. And come over to the Substack where I have twice a month live streams and we do Google meets as well. So if you have questions that you want to talk about with me personally then go and subscribe on Substack and become a psycho bababolin insider and then join me there. I always put the link to the Google meets in the in our paid subscriber chat. It would be great to see you there and if not then I'll see you next time. Have a nice day.