It's actually not really defined at all in terms of an actual medical illness. It's mostly an invention of the criminal justice system.
Sociopathy/Psycopathy is about as real as Drapetomania or hysteria. It's the modern day blasphemy, if you question the state or authority you are 'anti-social'
Psycopathy is a defined condition in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, which is published by the American Psychiatric Association. The criminal justice system had nothing to do with the creation of the term.
But you're right--it's not an "actual medical illness." Mental conditions are "disorders", not "medical illnesses" since they are chronic/permanent conditions.
Really? Can you point me to where in the DSM it defines 'psychopathy', if you find an edition that old you may want to look up another disorder that stems from criminology commonly referred to as 'homosexuality', ironically homosexuality used to be part of 'sociopathy' which was closely related to 'psychopathy'.
You need the DSM V, the newest edition. In prior editions, psychopathy was not distinguished from sociopathy. I imagine that you could find it by looking through the index, however I do not have a copy of the DSM V.
I'm not sure why you bring up the characterization of homosexuality in older, long-since discarded versions of the DSM. The DSM is merely a reflection of the current state of consensus regarding psychological diagnoses. It's not an authoritative guide. As consensus changes, so does the DSM.
We understand enough about psychopathy that we can now fairly easily identify it by tests and brain scans. We can also fairly easily identify it in children at a very early age. The symptoms and behaviors are not particularly difficult to pick out. It's obviously very real. Unless you're suggesting child psychopaths have learned how to alter their own brains such that their brain scans look different than normal children and they are capable at the age of six of faking psychopathic behavior every day of their lives.
I suggest you upgrade your knowledge on the topic.
We have no objective tests for psychopathy, it's such a sketchy unsupported diagnosis that even the DSM which isn't exactly a pinnacle of science, won't touch it.
We have at best a debatable set of symptoms which are entirely subjective and which are provided by criminologists let alone psychologists.
It's easy to test for and show someone has a cold in a completely objective way, either your cells are infected with a virus with a given genetic pattern or they are not. There is no disease called psychopathy and there is no objective test for it.
So since you're the expert on psychopathy and we know so much about it, what is the underlying physical process for it? Is it an infection? Are the neurons misfiring? Is a certain protein misfolded? Oh wait, you can't answer any of those because it's made up pseudo-scientific bullshit. Labeling someone a psychopath is about as real as labeling them a witch, only symptoms, no cause, no mechanism, nothing.
