[criley2]

ITT: Armchair psychologists confuse "psychopathy" and "sociopathy".

The tops of government and business exhibit the signs of sociopathy, not psychopathy.

Psychopaths generally exhibit many behaviors that makes them fundamentally unsuited for public life, such as poor behavior control.

Sociopaths, on the other hand, have just the right mix of anti-social tendencies to turn their empathy on for the crowd, and off while making decisions that affect millions negatively.

[mortehu]

If you're really a trained psychologist; in what diagnostic system do these categories even exist? Surely not ICD or DSM?

[Bluestrike2]

Outside the public consciousness, the term's only real professional use is limited mainly to some forensic psychologists because of the criminal justice system's rather peculiar requirements of psychology. Given the hoops it requires they bend through, I wouldn't look towards FP for diagnostic guidance. Robert Hare as well, but personally I tend to think of his work is sophomoric at the best of times and idiotic at the worst . He's also (in my opinion) a world-class prick, having used legal action to prevent the publishing of a critical paper that had already made it through peer review:

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=critique-of...

But that's neither here nor there.

Anyhow, setting aside the lack of any diagnostic definition for either term, sociopathy has never been anything more than a synonym preferred by certain individuals. But if we're looking for some point of differentiation, one of the main reasons to prefer one synonym over another was to try and emphasize causation by social factors. Certainly not some sort of empathy switch.

Generally speaking, that confusion is part of the problem with both terms. They carry a lot of baggage and pop-psych definitions, but sorting through the muck and deriving some sort of diagnostic criteria is an exercise in futility.

[GhotiFish]

every discussion I've seen about this has inevitably come to the conclusion that psychopathy and sociopathy have entered the public consciousness, and have ceased being relevant diagnostic terms.

Every description I've seen of sociopaths and psychopaths is basically parallel.

My recommendation is to jump ship and avoid talking about psychopaths and sociopaths, and just stick to new material coming out about the spectrum of anti-social personalities.

Starting at the word psychopath or sociopath will get you to the relevant material, but those terms in and of themselves are not considered relevant anymore.