What is the difference between a psychopath and a sociopath?

[electra]

Is there one?

[electra]

.

[AngryFeet]

That is so weird I was googling this 2 days ago! Mainly because I watched Face/Off and they were talking about sociopaths. Found this blogs.psychcentral.com/forensic-focus/2010/07/sociopathy-vs-psychopathy/. So I think pyschopaths are born that way - something in the brain gone wrong - but sociopaths happen due to things that have happened to them (abuse etc)

[electra]

oh I see but the behavioural symptoms are the same?

[Deesus]

I was reading the Psychopath Test by Jon Ronson (v interesting book btw) and apparently the terms are used pretty much interchangeably.

[electra]

Thanks Deesus. I'm quite interested in this notion of personality disorders and why people have them.

[Besom]

Deesus - yes it is my understanding that they are both interchangeable terms for what is more often called Anti-Social personality disorder these days. But there are a lot of different people who fall under this category so therefore a lot of different kinds of behaviour, especially when crossed with other personality traits/disorders/mental health problems/learning disabilities etc etc.