ᴍᴀᴛᴛɪᴀ :
can I ask you why are you talking about psychopathy as a mainly inherited condition? I'm currently just a student, but even though I've heard this narrative before, it seems strange to hear it from a professional like you. I mean, I have not found anything to confirm that psychopathy is transmitted genetically, exactly as is deduced from the studies about the development of both healthy and pathological personalities. Pathological traits of psychopathy such as lack of "conscience" (which I consider a dehumanizing term to define morality and empathy and therefore guilt and remorse) are things you are not born with, but you mainly learn in your environment. Sure, some people are born with a particularly flat affectivity and are less responsive to the emotions of others, but this doesn't condemn you to a lack of empathy, remorse, and guilt without childhood trauma. This is the same for sociopathy as for any personality disorder in general. There are always temperamental traits, inherited neurobiological structures, which interact with the environment to create the pathological trait and, as you well know, this is also true for healthy traits: no personality style is primarily genetic, it is always a mix of genes and environment. Some are born with markedly more unstable or deficient neurobiological structures, but they do not condemn you to any personality disorder with a good enough environment as you don't have to be born with these structures to develop a certain personality disorder. I find the narrative "psychopaths are born, sociopaths are made" really reductive and heavily misleading taking into account current scientific research on ASPD (which further calls into question these two labels, but that's another topic)
2026-11-05 18:53:30