board 8 sociopaths

I never really understood the finer distinction between all these clinical-sounding terms for "this person is a total asshole"

Feels like they're all pretty much synonyms, or at least get used like they are

turns out the layperson is not great at using specialist terms with the correct nuance

I've been called this so many times by people who literally live on disability

I don't think psychopathy has an agreed to clinical definition by any major organization.

The way I always used/understood it was sociopaths were those who basically lacked the ability to feel empathy. Usually you'd see it manifest as a lack of conscience and they could identify societal rules and use their corresponding lack of shame/remorse to take advantage of that in ways most people would be unable to emotionally but hypothetically you could still be a "good" person it's just not how it tends to be portrayed.

Whereas I thought of psychopathy as what most people tend to think of when they think of the extremely negative stereotypes of mentally ill people - basically a person whose condition(s) causes them to react unpredictably and often violent.

but then i am one of those laypeople so i could just be dumb