Talk:Psychopathy/Archive 4

Added material from Antisocial personality disorder

I added much of the material from the APD article that is at least as applicable to this one.--24.217.183.224 03:18, 26 December 2005 (UTC)

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[I have restored the last article that apppeared on this page (not mine), with only one small spelling correction on the grounds that follow (quoted from AntiSocial Personality Disorder http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antisocial_personality_disorder ):

Criticism of the DSM-IV criteria

The DSM-IV confound: some argue that an important distinction has been lost by including both sociopathy and psychopathy together under APD. As Hare et al write in their abstract, "The Axis II Work Group of the Task Force on DSM-IV has expressed concern that antisocial personality disorder (APD) criteria are too long and cumbersome and that they focus on antisocial behaviors rather than personality traits central to traditional conceptions", concluding, "... conceptual and empirical arguments exist for evaluating alternative approaches to the assessment of psychopathy .… our hope is that the information presented here will stimulate further research on the comparative validity of diagnostic criteria for psychopathy; although too late to influence DSM-IV". [1]

As well as my own feeling that this topic should be defined, and will be sought out, as seperate issue to AntiSocial Personality Disorder http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antisocial_personality_disorder.

It is my hope that I will not be left to define this topic alone --82.195.137.125 17:32, 19 December 2005 (UTC)]

(Speaker #2) Sociopath should not redirect to Psychopath.

[Now that's an interesting thought, not agreeing and not disagreeing. I'd need to see the differences laid out before I could decide where I came down on that. There are differences, the trouble is it depends on your source which difference goes where. For instance, broadly, in the US "Sociopath" is more commonly judicial terminology whereas in the UK "Psychopath" is more commonly the judicial term, in fact until a new Mental Health Act a couple of years ago in British Law "Psychopath" was a broad term that covered any mental illness - which I should probably cook up into something good enough to be part of the article --82.195.137.125 02:43, 23 December 2005 (UTC)]

Merge with Antisocial personality disorder

Much of this article is a cut-and-paste from APD, however the parent article is more comprehensive and mature. Any additional content in this article should be merged into APD (the proper clinical name for the condition) with Psychopathy as a redirect.

Please indicate your thoughts on this with either Support or Oppose, followed by optional comments explaining why.

• Support, as above. --Bk0 (Talk) 04:47, 26 December 2005 (UTC)
• Support: they're the same thing, and APD is the right place for the merged article. -- Karada 04:48, 26 December 2005 (UTC)
• Oppose ASPD and Psychopathy are not the same disorder. Hare himself remarked that while all psychopaths have ASPD, only a very small proportion of ASPDs are psychopaths What is more ASPD is no more the recognized diagnostic term for Psychopathy than "infectious disease" is for Malaria. The PCL-R refers only to psychopathy, NOT ASPD, (hence the acronym P-psychopathy C-check L-list http://www.hare.org/pclr/index.html ).

The psychopathy article is only thin (which it is at present) because all the good information in it was transferred to ASPD where a great deal of it is not entirely relevant. I believe that all the information specific to psychopathy (including the PCL-R) should be removed from ASPD as well as replaced here. When I restored that article I did not feel it right to replace that, or add to the article myself without further discussion so I just restored the "last known version".

Beyond that again, psychopathy, as a term, has an whole legal, medical, judicial and literary history with connotations unrelated to ASPD. Remember this is NOT supposed to be a medical encyclopaedia, but a general one, thus the legal, judicial and literary connotations of a topic should have equal weight with the medical ones. --82.195.137.125 16:13, 26 December 2005 (UTC)

Are you referring to legal definitions of psychopath, sexual psychopath, and sexual predator used in legal statutes to define certain individuals whose release from prison or other institutionalization is considered to be too dangerous for society? Example legal code: Chapter 71.06 RCW: Sexual psychopaths--24.217.183.224 21:19, 27 December 2005 (UTC)

I see nothing in your objection that can't be addressed with a section in APD, in fact you seem to be saying that the word "psychopath" should be interpreted literally: general psychological pathology. By that definition depression, OCD, borderline disorder, schizophrenia and any other DSM-IV condition qualifies a patient as a "psychopath". I seriously doubt that is a generally accepted medical or diagnostic use of the word. --Bk0 (Talk) 00:57, 27 December 2005 (UTC)

[No, that wasn't my point at all, though as a matter of fact, I think, until as late as the 40s or 50s (and in British Mental Health Law, which would not relate to DSM at all until about 2001) that IS exactly what psychopath meant: "general psychological pathology". The current meaning came later. All I am saying is that as it stands today it has a seperate and quite different meaning to ASPD, and a seperate and different set of legal, judicial and literary connotations and history, in short it is quite a different topic to ASPD, and should be treated as one. After all Ford and Chevrolet are not subsections of Automobile --82.195.137.125 05:30, 27 December 2005 (UTC)]