Nuclear Disarmament

I. Introduction

The second module of this semester’s psychology course was on social psychology. While many interesting topics were covered, psychopathy truly grabbed my attention. Among numerous aspects concerning psychopathy, this report is devoted to a rather controversial topic: psychopaths should be segregated for the good of the entire citizens. First, the report will cover the characteristics of psychopathy, and then move on to how it is caused and treated, and will end with some real-life examples of psychopaths, stressing how dangerous it would be for them to mingle with the normal people.

II. Characteristics of psychopaths

Psychopathy is not actually a medical term defined in the DSM-IV-TR. In fact, it is simply thought of as a form of antisocial personality disorder. However, because of the numerous characteristics that psychopathy has on its own, it deserves to be treated separately. The difference in the concept may be that antisocial personality disorder is a diagnosis, while psychopathy is a syndrome or a psychological construct. Characteristics of psychopaths can be largely divided into three sub criteria.

Psychopaths have large sense of self-worth, difficulty in feeling emotion, and tendency of deceitfulness. Because psychopaths are self-centered, the only valuable entities in existence are themselves. Thus, they are less likely to care how the consequences of their actions affect others. Also, because they have difficulty feeling emotion, they also lack in remorse and conscience. This causes them to pursuit more inhuman crimes to be fulfilled. Being a well-skilled liar and consequently being good at manipulating others only strengthens their criminal ability.

These characteristics indicate that their mental state and their way of thinking differ from that of normal people. These differences also cause them to be less confined to social morality, and in some ways be more apt to commit crimes.

III. How psychopathy is caused and treated...