Psychopath is who? Psychopathy: symptoms, treatment, types

The most controversial issue in modern psychology is who is a psychopath. In the qualification of mental illness such a diagnosis does not exist. Often this term is understood as a sociopath. Disputes on this topic and studies are constantly, and opinions in this case are diametrically opposed. From the complete denial of such a thing as psychopathy, to advanced tomography studies with the establishment of typical brain activities in sociopaths. You can see what the brain has a psychopath. The photo below demonstrates this.

Brain of a psychopath

The brain of a psychopath has a reduced functionality in the frontal and temporal areas. These areas are responsible for control and empathy. Empathy is defined as the ability to sense the emotions of others. Psychopaths can be figuratively defined as intraspecific predators, hunting for their own kind and using their resources and energy for their own well-being.

For many people who live with psychopaths and do not know about it, one understanding of the fact that a loved one is sick brings relief. They understand that they are not to blame for anything, and emotional exhaustion and neuroses are not their personal problem. A psychopath is a person who, because of a disease, can bring the whole family to nervous breakdowns.

Who is this?

Psychopath is who? In a nutshell, it is difficult to answer. The symptoms should be acute, in the aggregate and for a long period of time. Each person has certain inclinations and weaknesses of character, neuroses and nervous breakdowns are encountered by all people, not necessarily sick, especially if there are reasons that cause emotional outbursts. It is important to realize that such dramatic changes in life that are accompanied by the death of a loved one, loss of work, change in the companion, and naturally imply a certain reaction of a person to stress, can not be mistaken for pathology. Often it is these reactions that can be mistaken for a personality disorder. But if all the features of deviation from the norm are present in the complex and systematically without apparent external causes, it is already possible to draw some conclusions.

The presence of signs of psychopathy does not give us the right to label people, especially publicly. This information should only help us personally to make decisions about the continuation of communication with a person.

How to recognize a psychopath

How do you know who a psychopath is? Symptoms and signs are below:

• Chatter and superficial charm. Often these are friendly, talkative people using gestures, artistic ones. The surrounding people consider these people to be nice and charming. If you listen to what a person says, it turns out that all the information given out is very superficial, it's a conversation for the sake of talking.
• The need for mental stimulation. These people often miss when nothing happens when everything is quiet and calm. They can not occupy themselves and entertain themselves, so they need to arrange something - a feast, a scandal, some kind of a trip, to call people home. They are adrenaline-dependent, and if everything is calm, they become disco.
• Even if they work, they are looking for a job where you can not do anything. Ideally, nothing at all does, lives at the expense of her husband, wife, children, parents, etc. psychopath.
• This disease involves weak behavioral control. They can not keep themselves in hand, easily explode, irritated.
• Random sex, but not always.

Personality of psychopaths

What type of personality does the psychopath have ? It is important to know in order to protect your emotional health.

• Emotional superficiality. They do not have deep feelings, there is no deep fear, anxiety, love, affection. All emotions are formal and superficial. They never think about anything for a long time, are indifferent to difficulties, whatever they are - financial, social, emotional, physical, etc. The feeling of love is not peculiar to them. They can experience sexual feelings, obsessive thoughts about controlling a person or manipulating his life, and this is perceived by them as love.
• Ability to manipulate. Such people will bring close ones to tears, make them do what they need. Everyone in the family will walk on the string. Manipulate psychopaths with shouts, bad mood, bad health, blackmail and threats (to deprive the inheritance).
• Falsity. Sociopaths tell a variety of stories, which were not, giving it for the truth. When they are convicted of lies, they deny that they did not say such things.
• Lack of compassion and empathy, heartlessness. Nothing is able to evoke in them any sympathetic response - neither the illness of close people, nor death, nor poverty, abandoned animals or homeless children.
• Failure to regret and repentance. Even if the guilt is obvious, these people will shift it to another. They are not ashamed, they will never say: "What a pity that I did this." They do not feel remorse. From them you will not wait for the words of apology.
• Self-centeredness.

Be careful - a psychopath!

A psychopath is a person who, because of his own inadequacy, is capable of humiliating others, exposing them to danger, causing pain and suffering, and more than once and not twice, but systematically. Sociopaths are extremely deceitful, and given their effective abilities (flat effect), their lies are very difficult to define. Even experienced verifiers and profilers often make mistakes when working with them. Defining a lie, specialists at the very beginning often ask themselves whether a person is healthy before me or not.

Who is a psychopath, you just do not understand, these people have superficial charm and excellently mask, causing Stockholm's syndrome in the surrounding people (justification of the actions of the person causing suffering).

Varieties of psychopathy

Is the interpretation of the term sociopathy? What kind of psychopath can be? Varieties are described in the book of PB Ganushkin. He offers such a classification.

• Cycloids - the life regime changes dramatically, the intervals of total inactivity - to hypereffectiveness. Characterized by cyclical ups and downs of mood for no reason.
• Asthenics are people who are characterized by anxiety, suspiciousness and the possibility of developing nervous compulsive states. The main thing is "if something happens," "I said something right or wrong", "and suddenly I'll get sick." Create predictable security spaces around yourself, avoid unpredictable situations.
• Schizoids - they leave the world, do nothing, shut up in a shell and refuse to interact with people, limiting the circle of contacts.
• Hysterical characters - do not give up contact with the world, but, on the contrary, try to demonstrate themselves, surprise everyone, roll up hysterics.
• Paranoid - super-suspicious people without reason, devoid of a sense of humor. They believe in their delusional fantasies and ideas, they do not need to persuade such a person - it will not work.
• Epileptoids (they do not suffer from epilepsy) - they structure the reality around themselves, they know that where lies, in the house there is always an ideal purity. Everything must lie strictly in its places, everything must happen at a strictly appointed time and in a certain order. They are rancorous, everyone can remember. They can be determined by handwriting or by signature. They usually have a very beautiful, complex signature, very clear and unchanging. They need a job that requires precision, stereotypedness, accuracy, they get pleasure from it.
• Unstable psychopaths - can not strain in terms of study, work or stress situations, tend to live under someone's guardianship. Do not deny yourself there is nothing, so there may be problems with alcohol, drugs, promiscuous sexual life.
• An antisocial psychopath is a complete lack of interest in others, including the family. They have no friends, they do not know how to empathize. They shamelessly lie, are inclined to fraud, act impulsively and do not plan far. They often criticize others, but not themselves.
• Constitutionally-stupid - nice, sociable people, good interlocutors. Disordered, extremely sloppy and lazy. They feel good only thanks to a strong hand and leadership.

Types of personalities

The disorders described below may also be psychopathic.

• Narcissistic personalities - they like attention, and they do anything to get it. All for me and all the attention to me. And if this does not happen, a person becomes aggressive. The usual behavior is the extraction of both material and emotional resources from the family for their own personal purposes, to maintain their external position in society. Half of the salary of such a person goes to expensive suits, ties and watches, and he does not see anything in this unusual, although the family saves on feeding the children, hoping that the husband will climb the career ladder, will bring more money. But the family will not get anything, even if the narcissus psychopath becomes rich. It's a disease, but it's not easier. Absolute self-centeredness of such psychopaths seems somewhat childish and infantile. In fact, that's right: it's a big narcissistic child who plays toys and will never stop. Making a decision to establish a relationship with such a person, one must understand that if he is not raised on a pedestal, he will behave aggressively, and in the opposite case - will draw from the close all the resources. For him there is no word "no" in sexual relations, he does not stop, but continues harassment. In the company of such a person there is a high risk of rape, he treats another as a thing to maintain his own ego.
• Emotionally unstable - jump on all the spectrum of feelings, from an extremely positive to an extremely negative mood. At work or in some public place, they can be charming, being on an emotional rise, and at home the smallest difficulty, any unpleasant information will lead them to the very bottom of the negative emotional spectrum. Home will have to pull them out from there, performing the role of rescuer. Those who closely communicate with such people lifelong pay an emotional tribute, so tired that they are completely depleted, depriving themselves of the opportunity to lead a normal life. Sometimes these psychopaths are figuratively called energy vampires. Such people can move from one person to another, and then back, waiting until the old partner is rested, will forget the emotional fatigue from their relationship and it can be used again. Such multiple connections are one of the characteristics of such psychopaths. In attempts to get emotional support, they are extremely manipulative, their typical threat is suicide. It should be treated realistically, it is best to persuade a person to visit a psychotherapist. But nevertheless it is necessary to leave, these relations are destructive by definition. Interestingly, one of the signs of this disorder is self-harm, for example, multiple healing cuts of the skin. Seeing such scars, you can prepare forces for emotional support or immediately leave.
• Paranoid. The motto of such people is: "Do not trust anyone, and you will not be offended." They view the whole world through the prism of a threat. The first sign is distrust in the relationship, constant monitoring, surveillance, checking the phone and e-mail. If there is no evidence of infidelity, the tension only grows. Paranoid psychopaths consider themselves very logical and can convince everyone of the correctness of their picture of the world. As soon as you hear the words about the plot, the world government, flying saucers or just about fellow workers who are building cunning plans for his dismissal, it's worth thinking about, even if everything looks logical and truthful. Paranoids are engrossed in irrational mistrust and fear, tend to collect threats, and if they do not see support, they write off a person as an "enemy".

Predators are people in the presence of whom many experience a literal physical ailment, the so-called social discomfort. This applies not only to ordinary people, but also to trained specialists, psychotherapists, and polygraph examiners. Often it takes several hours, or even days, to recover from contact with such a person. This is not always the case, predators often have to deceive people, they can seem pretty nice for a long time. This category includes pedophiles, rapists, cruel robbers, human traffickers. A typical situation: the mother is in love and lives with a charming male predator who systematically intimidates and rapes the adoptive daughter, and the mother closes her eyes and does not believe her daughter. Predator difficult to express emotions, he literally peers at the expression of a person's face and tries to understand how to respond and how to adjust.

Is the disease treated?

Can a psychopath be healed? Symptoms and treatment of this disease - in many ways a mystery even for doctors. Such violations are not amenable to correction. If the psychopath is aware of his own problem and wants to treat it, he has a chance to correct his behavior. Unfortunately, this awareness is available to a few, and the possibility of pushing a psychopath to treatment seems unlikely.

Before the treatment, you need to diagnose a specialist-psychotherapist. To do this, a conversation with a person is conducted, its behavior is observed, it may be necessary tomography.

Usually, drugs are not prescribed, you can only maintain a stable state with the help of antidepressants. For a start, they are prescribed in small doses, gradually increasing, but to convince a person to take something extremely difficult. Mostly they try to treat the side effects of psychopathy - drug addiction, alcoholism and other kinds of addictions.

Also with such people conduct a course of psychotherapy, conducting conversations and directing the patient's behavior in the right direction, eliminating negative morbid stereotypes of thinking.

How can diagnoses sound?

Who is a psychopath? Signs in women and men are almost identical. The diagnosis may include:

• Paranoia.
• Hysteria.
• Schizoid psychopathy.
• Psychoesthesia.
• Excitable psychopathy.
• Unstable psychopathy.
• Sociopathy.

So we found out who the psychopath is. Signs in men and women are very similar, but men are more prone to such diseases and more often show aggression. Maybe that's why alcoholism is a problem, rather, a stronger sex.

In the elderly, dementia is added to personal disorders, especially if the pensioner stops social and social activities and does not use his brain actively. A sedentary lifestyle, series from morning to night, a narrow circle of communication - all this aggravates the situation.

How common are mental illnesses

According to the National Institute of Mental Health, 26% of Americans over the age of 18 suffer from a diagnosed personality disorder. Perhaps in Russia the figures are different, but there are no prerequisites for expecting a significant reduction in this percentage.

More than 30% of the subjects felt something like a mental disorder throughout the year. About 50% suffered from this kind of dysfunction during their adult life. According to a deeper analysis of the study materials, mental disorders account for 23% of all years lost due to incapacity. Almost a quarter of people who have lost their legal capacity for a year are deprived of it due to a mental illness. These diseases easily compete with neurological diseases and injuries of the musculoskeletal system in terms of prevalence.

And maybe Victor Tsoy was right: "And I do not know what percentage of crazy people are at this hour, but if you believe your eyes and ears - more than a few times."