Sociopathy

Sociopathy is a term of Anglo-American psychiatry for a psychiatric disorder, especially of the social behavior of the diseased person.

Today's meaning of the term sociopath refers to persons who are not or only partially able to feel compassion, hard to be able to empathize with others and the consequences of their actions can not weigh.

Classification

Definitions and diagnostic criteria varied widely between different schools of psychiatry. To counteract the confusion, the name is not in the modern classification systems of Diseases (ICD -10) and mental disorders (DSM 4) was added. Most likely sociopathy is equated with the modern concept of antisocial personality disorder (also amoral, antisocial, asocial, psychopathic personality disorder).

Antisocial personality disorder

The antisocial personality disorder is characterized by marked discrepancy between behavior and social norms in force. Typical features are

• Inability to empathize with others
• Inability to take responsibility, at the same time a clear rejection and disregard of all social norms, rules and obligations
• Inability to maintain long- term relationships, but no problems with the inclusion of fresh relations
• Low frustration tolerance, tendency to aggressive and violent behavior
• Lack of guilt
• Inability to learn from experience.

Another feature may be a persistent irritability, which may develop during or after childhood.

New meaning

The term sociopath sociopathy or lived on through the rediscovery of a related phenomenon. The scientific community was first in 1848 faced with the problem ( see below). Later it fell into oblivion. By today's imaging techniques and recent findings in the field of neurology, the term sociopathy is now reused. Since then, the term applies to the neuropathology induced inability to develop social skills such as compassion, empathy and a sense of wrongdoing.

Historical development

1848 took place an event which gave the information about the cause of the phenomenon of sociopathy in the modern sense of the word:

In a burst of 25 -year-old Phineas Gage suffered a serious head injury by a metal rod. He was a foreman of a railroad company and was considered very reliable. After he had recovered, he was a different person. He was unreliable, aggressive, mitgefühllos and sought at every opportunity dispute.

The presumed reason for this change in behavior was damage to the forebrain, which is responsible for mental functions such as empathy and psychological impulses. Due to the injury they have been seriously affected. Children who are born with a dysfunctional forebrain are largely unable to learn the simplest rules dispute.

Investigations by magnetic resonance imaging have shown that the forebrain has a lower activity in people with an antisocial personality disorder than in mentally healthy controls. Moreover, the so-called the amygdala ( amygdala ) no activity.

It is thought that sociopaths are not due to the operation of their brains to be able to weigh the consequences of their actions.

In more recent studies, the brain region responsible could be localized more accurately. It is the frontal lobe, more specifically to the ventromedial prefrontal region of the cortex.