Understanding Psychopathy: A Complex Mental Illness

Psychopathy is a mental illness that is categorized as a personality disorder. There have been different conceptions of the definition of psychopathy and what it represents. The conceptions tend to overlap and seem to be contradicted by each other. This mental illness is a mixture of violent behavior with no moral and antisocial personality disorder. It is said that in the general population the psychopaths are only one percent. However, if you want to look at just the adults in prisons and the youth in juvenile detention as opposed to just the general population, thirty percent of psychopaths.

One of the things that characterize a psychopath is their lack of empathy. Psychopathy has been also called sociopathy but, there is a slight difference.

One ongoing controversy is whether if psychopathy is a genetic trait or if it is caused by environmental factor either trauma or the community. Researchers have said that those who have experienced child abuse and victimization have the likelihood of being violent and express sexually offending behavior as those traumas are considered risk factors. Empathy can be a genetic attribute or can even me progressed over time. In other words, it can be a motivated process that can be voluntary, which is why some suggest therapy. They also have said that therapy can help "rewire" this trait, yet it's counterproductive for many and can increase such behavior. Psychopathy has been associated with the antisocial disorder. Nevertheless, it can also consist of narcissistic, histrionic, and borderline disorder, which makes it difficult to categorize. Another thing researchers have noticed is that some psychopathic characteristics are adaptive and can be seen as helpful in society. What is meant by this is that having too much empathy can impede politicians' and police officers' ability to carry out their duties. Many in society have shown the opinion that those with mental illnesses have a clouded judgment and can't technically know what they are doing. Knowing this, some believe that those with psychopathy should excuse criminal responsibility and of course other say there is no excuse for committing a crime.

English physician James Pritchard define moral insanity as "the moral or active principles of the mind are strongly perverted or depraved." As a result, Pritchard identified two types of insanity. One type is the that which affects the intellect and the other that affects emotions and will. This term was mostly designated for emotional-volitional disorders in general. However, in France and Germany, moral insanity had a more specific definition that referred to immoral, violent, and criminal behavior that was attributed to an isolated defect of one's moral sense. Maudsley, a British psychiatrist, expanded Pritchard's concept further by recording that some individuals seem to lack a moral sense, no empathy. Pritchard helped differentiated personality from a mental disorder "by distinguishing between more transient symptomatic states and those that are related to more enduring characteristics." This was a significant distinction as it contributed to the development of the idea of