Psychopathy Definition

Despite the fact that there is much dispute about the definition and criteria of the term psychopathy, the common conceptual and scientific understanding is that, it is a mental disorder or illness. This illness can be caused by an individual suffering from a antiosocial personality disorder (ASPD) which stimulates lack of empathy. Although, there are no clear biological causes for this disorder, research has suggested that the part of the brain that is responsbile for responding to sad and fearful facial experessions as well as for learning one’s mistakes, tends to be smaller. Additionally, it responds less robustly to the happy, sad or fearful facicial expressions of others. This lack of response affects the lack of empathy of antisocial

Hare’s checklist’s are the tools that clincians often use to assess psychopathy and are widely recongnized as a relible method of measuring male psychopathy, for example in criminal populations. The checklist by Hare, can measure the degree of an individual’s psychopathic traits with higer interrater reliability. Whereas, Cleckley’s study is the most influential modern clincal description of psychopathy and is still used today for case studies of classic psychopathy. Psychopaths can be found among all of the classes in population. Some of the characteristics listed in Hare’s checklist are: glib and superficial charm, gradisose self-worth, need for stimulation, pathological lying, shallow affect, parastic lifestyle as well as early behavior problems. Some of the characteristics of psychopaths included in Cleckley’s list are: superficial charm, lack of remorse or shame, untruthfull and insincere, unreliable, unresponsiveness in general interpersonal relations, absence of nervousness as well as