What is the difference between a psychopath and a sociopath?

[electra]

Is there one?

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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)

oh I see but the behavioural symptoms are the same?

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

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

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.