Narcissism, Psycopathy & Sociopathy

The dark triad refers to a personality type that combines narcissism, psychopathy and Machiavellianism. This article will only discuss the first two of these components. However, it clarifies the difference between the psychopathy and sociopathy and is therefore a prelude for the discussion on Machiavellianism.

Narcs are validation seeking, entitled, supercilious, grandiose and arrogant / condescending. Narcissism is a disorder of self esteem. When they do bad things, they are aware of their guilt and may think, "Wow, I should not have done that". However, they go out of their way to hide their wrong doing because they will feel enormous shame, a public emotion.

Conversely, unlike narcisissists who can feel guilt, psychopaths have neither guilt nor shame. While they recognize that people can get hurt, they simply do not care. Paid assassins, corporate / socio political economic hitmen, long term family wreckers and the like are psychopathic. They are likely to say and think, "I really do not give a shit who gets hurt." To be clear, they are often fully aware of how they are hurting others. They might be described as having 'dark empathy' in that they can skillfully read the vulnerabilities of others for the sake of exploiting them. For instance, they are often unscrupulous advertisers and salemen who are well aware that they are forcing others to overextend themselves. Ultimately, psychopaths view the world as instruments to be used for the fulfilment of their personal desires. They are more likely to engage in criminality than narcissists because they are less worried about the consequences of criminal activity. Psychopaths do not suffer the same self esteem deficit that requires constant validation. 

The difference between the psychopath and sociopath is that while the psychopath is born, the sociopath is made.

Psychopaths are said to have a non-normal autonomic / sympathetic system. That system is responsible for fight or flight responses at the knowledge of one's having broken rules, done something embarrassing and so on. For normal people, the fear response (to the consequences) manifests itself with a racing heart beat, sweating and so on. A psychopath however does not have a reaction. In fact, this is the reason psychopaths are able to pass lie detection tests. She or he can handle situations that will commonly stress normal individuals, like being confronted by authority figures and so on.

Psychopathy is also called 'antisocial personality disorder'. In order to get such a diagnosis, there must be a discernible pattern of behaviors of complete disregard for rules and lack of care before the age of 15. For instance, children demonstrating this tendency will have engaged in activities without feeling remorse like harming other children for no reason other than pleasure, stealing, arson and so on.

Sociopaths learn to become like a psychopath for survival. They often came from a very rough background, neighborhood, parents who taught them to break rules, persons trained in unscrupulous businesses, persons trained in the military, etc. They usually have trouble with the behavior at first. However, overtime, their nervous system becomes trained to become de-sensitized and less triggered by ordinarily stressful events. Such individuals may be described as having been really normal earlier in life but having changed at some point after certain type of exposure to 'deviant friends' etc.

CONTENT RELATED TO NARCISSISM, PSYCHOPATHY & SOCIOPATHY

• Flying Monkeys 101
• Character assassination
• How to escape toxic relationships
• Cord cutting
• Grooming 101
• Coercive Control
• Being stalked by narcissists 
  
  

All psychopaths are narcissists but NOT all narcisissts are psychopaths.