Licensed mental health practitioner here. I normally don't post, but since there's an enormous amount of mis- and disinformation on here, I thought I'd say a couple of things.
First, both psycho- and sociopathy are very broad terms that cover any number of mental health disorders. It's why the DSM-IV and the upcoming DSM-V don't use either term; they're so imprecise. In fact, DSM-IV uses several other, more specific names for characteristics that are shared in the much broader psycho/sociopath terms: Anti-Social Personality Disorder, Narcissistic Personality Disorder, Borderline PD, etc. Simply saying someone is a sociopath isn't enough to do anything but allow neighborhood children to point and stare. It's such a loaded terminology with imprecise borders that it's useless.
Second, when we're talking about mental health disorders, we're really talking about specific ways of defining behavior that causes significant impairment to functioning. Someone who hears voices but isn't bothered by them isn't 'schizophrenic' in the strictest sense, for example. So saying that 50% of corporate America or whatever scored as sociopaths on some instrument is a ludicrously silly thing to do. What's their social impairment? How are they not functioning?
More to the point, the reason these people score so high is because the nature of their work rewards that kind of behavior. I would be more worried about, say, 50% of clergy or Buddhist monks scoring high on a psychopathy "instrument," but it doesn't surprise me that giving out a psychopathy screening instrument to corporate tycoons and politicians are going to give huge results. After all, they're being rewarded for doing what we ask them to be; the list of 'criteria' for psychopathy are the things most people would look for in a politician/successful CEO. How did they get to where they are able to take time to take a psychopathology screening instrument? Not by telling the truth and having empathy. We can make a
moral judgement about these people, but that's a far different issue from being able to make a psychiatric determination.
Finally, there people in this world who are not mentally disturbed who are simply mean, evil people. There's nothing "wrong" with them in the clinical sense. They're just mean people. They're not psycho/sociopaths or anything else.
A couple of specific things to respond to:
WhiteMonst3r said:
Your opinion is not worth less or more then that of a psychologist just because they have a degree, they make just as many mistakes as any other person does.
Except we aren't talking about opinion; we're talking about specific mental disorders with specific criteria that people on this thread are not informed enough to apply with accuracy. It would analogous to me saying someone who is vomiting blood has Ebola, while a real doctor would probably look for an ulcer or something.
Fuzzy said:
Fuzzy simplifies his life by surrounding himself with compassionate, sympathetic people. Sociopaths can fake many things, but not sympathy.
This is wrong; people with personality disorders tend to fake sympathy very well. It's the ability to feel
empathy, actually being able to reflect on another human being's emotions and apply those emotions to themselves that is the big problem. A fine point, but it's a significant one. Sympathy simple means feeling sorry/bad for someone else; the other person's emotional state is bad because I feel bad. It's narcissistic on some level. Empathy is a much deeper and more significant skill set. What's the difference in these two sentences: I don't want you to feel bad because I don't want to feel bad. I don't want you to feel bad because it makes you feel bad.
helgaleena said:
I have to agree with Mr. Fuzzy. An excellent first step toward not attracting such persons to you is to require those around you to exhibit feeling and compassion, and to exhibit more charity, kindness and sympathy yourself. The type of person who thinks you are foolish for doing so and only takes without giving will eventually leave in disgust, or become irritating enough to shun.
I actually find this more disturbing than anything else. I understand the impulse, but think hard about what you're saying and the relationship between you and the people you 'collect...' Are they not individuals as well, with separate lives and separate emotions (there's that empathy vs. sympathy thing again) and separate agendas? Aren't they more than simply buffers to protect you from bad people? When you start treating people as objects for your own gain, however good or positive you perceive that gain is... Then you really need to evaluate the way you process your relationships.