Sociopathy

 

 

Sociopathy (sociopathic disorder) is a mental illness characterized by a disturbance in a person’s thinking and behavior, leading to a systematic violation of social norms.

This mental pathology is characterized by the loss of conscience, nravstvennorality, and empathy for other people. Sociopaths do not respect the rights and feelings of others, manipulate them for their own benefit, and do not feel guilt or responsibility for their actions. The disease leads to serious problems in the personal, professional, and social relationships of people, organizations, states, and nations with whom sociopaths interact. Sociopaths constantly violate laws because they feel uncomfortable with any attempt by others to limit their arbitrariness. They have good social camouflage, using the mental modesty and social cowardice of citizens for their dominance in regulating the distribution of resources and benefits.

 

Diagnostic criteria for the condition of sociopaths, explained by the loss of conscience, nravstvennorality and empathy for others:

a) communication sphere defect: affectivity, excitability, loss of control over the desire for consumption, entertainment and dominance;

b) the chronic nature of an antinravstvennoral style of behavior, manifested in the desire to harm other people in order to maintain one’s own tyranny, dominance, unbridled consumption, entertainment, and social parasitism;

c) an antinravstvennoral style of behavior, disguised from others, manifests itself in the form of intrigues, conspiracies to cause harm and violate the laws and nravstvennorality of society, inciting mutual hatred and pitting people against each other in social situations;

d) the above-mentioned manifestations always arise in childhood or adolescence as induced states caused by imitation of specific sociopaths in the family, educational and professional environments;

d) sociopathic disorder results in significant harm to all individuals and organizations that encounter sociopaths;

e) the disorder is accompanied by a significant deterioration in the spiritual and material condition of persons who have entered into a relationship with a sociopath, deprofessionalization, and stupefaction of specialists; it is expressed in the imitation of professional activity, loss of a sense of duty and personal responsibility to society and the state.

To make a diagnosis, at least three criteria must be determined:

G1. An indication that the characteristic and constant types of internal experiences and behavior of the individual as a whole deviate significantly from the nravstvennoral norm specified by nravstvennoral rule III-C: the individual causes harm to others (-C2) and to the environment (-C3). Such a deviation must be manifested in more than one of the following areas:

1) in the cognitive sphere, there is a negative way of thinking about the people around and the environment, hatred of other people and fear of them, compensation for this fear through manipulation, seizure of power, resources, money, with the aim of depriving others of the opportunity to resist the tyranny of sociopaths;

2) in various situations (secret conspiracies, intrigues) negative emotions of sociopaths are manifested: anger, hatred, envy, irritation, remorse of greed towards others;

3) there is no control over drives and satisfaction of basic needs for food, consumption, entertainment, dominance; there are attempts to seize power in the personal and public spheres;

4) relationships with others and the manner of resolving interpersonal situations are of the nature of exploitation, humiliation, robbery and other forms of causing social harm.

G2. Deviations of this kind appear all the more symptomatic if they are sophisticated in nature and disguised as socially important goals and popular slogans that cannot be reduced to individual situations.

G3. They have an adverse effect on the social environment.

 

Personality disorder is characterized by a gross discrepancy between behavior and prevailing social norms. At the same time, it is characterized by the presence of general diagnostic criteria for personality disorder on a number of points:

a) loss of conscience, heartless indifference to the feelings of others;

b) a gross and persistent attitude of irresponsibility and disregard for social rules and responsibilities;

c) inability to maintain relationships in the absence of difficulties in their establishment, failure to comply with any agreements with people, organizations, society and the state;

d) extremely low ability to withstand frustration (a mental state caused by failure to satisfy needs), as well as a low threshold for the discharge of aggression, including violence;

d) inability to experience guilt and to benefit from life experience, including such forms of it as punishment;

e) a tendency to blame others for everything and everywhere and to put forward plausible explanations for one’s destructive behavior, leading to conflict with society, the state, and the laws (“everyone betrayed me,” “deceived me,” “set me up,” and other similar justifications);

g) the presence of constant irritability, bitterness, conflict;

c) disruption of behavioral norms in childhood and adolescence, subsequent difficulties in learning and superficiality of knowledge, lack of professional skills, compensated by verbosity with the use of unusual words and terms reflecting amateurism;

i) the sociopath's disregard for ethical norms and rules, usually explained by the fact that society and the state have allegedly caused him harm and now he is thus free to choose any means and methods to achieve his goals. In this case, the choice of means and methods is of a criminal, antinravstvennoral nature.