User blog:DB511611/The Definition Of Psychopathy

Psychopathic characters are a common RP trope, this is not unknown to anyone

But the actual real personality disorder is almost always misinterpeted and the characters potray characterestics more align with sadism than psychopathy. You just pretty much make your character an insane killer and just label them a psychopath, giving them some cliché simple backstory

So leme edjumacate you.

First off, Insanity is an unscientific term

Nobody in psychology or medicine uses that term anymore and instead just uses specific terms for specifc illnesses instead of using "insanity" as a word for anyone who is abnormal mentally

If someone has hallucinations or the like, its referred to as "psychosis"

Insanity or Madness was just an informal word to refer to anyone who was abnormal from healthy standards, and its not used anymore because mental illnesses are all different and unique, we aren't primitive people, we have names for these illnesses now, characterestics to define them by

But insanity is used in some cases, such as courts, pleading as insanity

But legally speaking, antisocial personality disorders do not count as insanity, and psychopathy is an antisocial personality disorder.

And now we transition into psychopathy itself

Psychopathy has many characterestics

First we have Boldness

Psychopaths have low fear including stress tolerance

They can tolerate unfamilarity and danger and overall have very little fear of anything, they have alot of self confidence and social assertiveness, they believe that nothing is wrong with them and that everyone else has a problem

I see almost none of these characterstics protrayed, alot of psychopath rp characters almost always end up having an arc where they don't have confidence in themselves and act scared and rejected because of their insanity, and then other characters end up trying to help them

You've seen it before, the whole "stay back i-i don't wanna hurt u im goin insSAANE HBTLTLTLBTLT" stuff

As if its something they suddenly switch to like Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde

Thats Dissociative identity disorder you're thinking of, which I didn't do any research on because its hard to define and only 3% of people even have it

But its more likely in females, fun fact

Anyways, the next defintion of Psychopathy is disinhibition.

Basically a disregard for restraint, lack of planning and urge control, just doing whatever without caring

Psychopaths literally cannot feel empathy or guilt for someone and don't respect authority at all, they tend to only care about themselves and take advantage of people for their own needs.

Sadism is the tendency to take pleasure in other peoples pain.

These are all very different and unqiue disorders, and to call all of these by "insanity" because all of them are abnormal from healthy mental states would be degrading them as unqiue

This is why insanity isn't used in science anymore

But, if you wanted to just make an "insane" character thats just abnormal from a regular mental state, sure, you could do that, but like I said, people don't really use that anymore and mental illnesses are just called by their specific mental illnesses now

And if you are one of those people who assign a specific illness to your character to have depth, look smart, look unique, or just couldn't be fucked and just wanted to say psychopath because it sounds cool,

Im sure theres some characteristic of psychopathy that you messed up, so do me a favor and point out your mistakes for me, thanks

Maybe your character felt guilt or empathy, maybe they acted sad or not confident, acted afraid, blah blah

Just understand that its an anti-social personality disorder, not some random urge to just kill people, theres more depth to it

Now read my bullshit and realize how wrong you are, and then fix your characters personality or suffer the consequence of my silent judgement of your oc

Because I'm always right and me saying smart things means I get to change the way you rp and make it more accurate to appeal to my tastes