Medical, Social and Criminological Aspects of Psychopathic Personality Disorder

Abstract

Psychopathic personality is a worldwide known psychiatric trait that brought fascination and interest not only in the scientific world but also in social culture and media due to its spectacular and powerful contrast with other mental health issues and also because of the impact the psychopathic behavior echoes in the society. The medical field describes psychopathy as an antisocial personality disorder, a disorder of affectivity and moral or “moral insanity,” as Prichard (1999, 118) described it, because most of the characteristics were found in delinquents. For a long time, it was considered an entity at the border of normal and pathological. In the following article, we will present general aspects of this condition from a bio-psycho-social point of view in order to better understand its implications in medical, social, and criminological fields. KEYWORDS: psychopathy, antisocial, criminology, personality, callous unemotional