@hikufalafel He's a psychopath, borderline maybe. Psychopaths lacks empathy, remorse, and guilt whereas a sociopath feels all those. In short, psychos are very detach from emotions. Sociopaths are crazy but they do not know their crazy, psychopaths do. Psychopaths are well aware of their own actions and the consequences, a sociopath doesn't.
You have that completely backwards.
Officially, both fall under the label of Anti-Social Personality Disorder, wherein Psycopathy is generally considered an extreme case of such.
While manipulative and calculating behaviors are inherently associated with Anti-Social Personality Disorder, Psychopaths may also be more prone to aggression, reckless or unrestrained behaviors, and distorted thinking. Psycopaths also feel less remorse, guilt, empathy, etc than is typical for ASPD (which is already characterized by a reduction in those elements), and are more ego-driven. Psychopathy can largely be construed as anti-social behavior manifesting with irrational, self-serving, opportunistic, and heartless behaviors.
Sociopathy is less poorly defined (and typically avoided) in clinical diagnosis (where it may simply be used as a synonym for general ASPD), but has clear social expectations of application. Sociopaths are indicated to have limited faculties for emotion and social connection, and thereby may also be self-serving, but lack the mental disorder aspects of psychopathy. Unlike autists, who are associated with an inability to recognize certain social patterns, sociopaths recognize social patterns properly but value them differently. Sociopaths can however still function normally, mimicing expected behaviors, and- as they lack the distored perceptions and destructive tendencies of a psychopath- are expected to be abel to mostly function normally and productively if they choose to do so.
As an oversimplification, Sociopathy is a disconnect from society and emotions, while psychopathy is a disconnect from judiciousness, empathy, and self-restraint. Despite the tendency for the two terms to be used interchangably, this is a long-standing distinction between the terms. In modern pop culture, you can see this distinction emphasized within BBC's Sherlock. I think this quote from that show rather appropriate for the present context:
In any case, our MC doesn't evidence either psychopathy or sociopathy, within either a clinical or a social definition. At best, he shares some traits with the social perception of sociopathy, but his behaviors [outside of killing] and his relationships clarify that even there he doesn't manage to match to this set of labels.
@CountryMage you're completely wrong about your description, and even then your thesis is backwards, sociopaths live in a society, they fake the emotions needed to fit in.
Well, so do Psychopaths. There's just a bit more.. disruptive in the way they do it.
@TUSF psychologists don't even use either of those terms
That's not
quite true, though it's certainly typical. Sociopathy, of course, isn't used in a clinical setting and, as I noted above, is at best a synonym for ASPD [though that in large part due to modern clinical associations not allowing for a diagnosis matching to the public conception of the term, as I detailed above]. However, psychopathy, antisocial personality disorder, and dissocial personality disorder are still all considered seperate diagnosises. While DPD seems to only rarely be given mention (as it's basically just an extreme form of ASPD) and may in fact no longer have any place within diagnosis, it's my understanding that Psychopathy is often still referenced by those in the field of psychology as a clarification of form to an initial diagnosis of ASPD.
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Further Reading: https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/insight-is-2020/201812/difference-between-the-psychopath-and-so-called-sociopath ;
tl;dr version: Psychopathy is ASPD with certain additional negative personality traits or disorders].