As mentioned previously on this blog, two great resources in the field of study of sociopathy are both the website lovefraud.com and the nonfictional accounts detailed in The Sociopath Next Door by Martha Stout. Today's piece follows two quick trends detailing the personality disorder: it's origin and seemingly incurable nature and a more detailed, defined model for what sociopaths lack within themselves.
The debate over sociopathy/psychopathy has been waging for more than five decades. Books, peer-reviewed psychology journals, the DSM-IV and "experts" in the field have thrown the two words around and their apparent definitions. Perhaps its a questionable subject to approach based on personal beliefs, because one school of thought attributes individuals possessing sociopathy and psychopathy to have been there since birth. This would seem to entail, then, that individuals could be born "bad" or "evil," something a religious or optimist may not accept. Other schools will describe the personality disorder as stemming from a medical or physical injury. While the last will say the disorder is learned, from childhood onward, through environmental factors such as their socioeconomic status, parental rearing, peers or a significantly low or high intelligence.
