What is deference between sociopath and psychopath

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I am interested in a bit of psychology, and I wonder which disorder is worse,

Psychopath - psycho pathology is anything wrong with the psyche and the brain.

Sociopath is a person that uses manipulation of people to attain his own needs with no regard to other people. The definition however is not clear cut and the whole meaning of this definition is depending on what the current consensus of experts think it is.

Autistic psychopathy is basically the original term for aspergers and autists. But the word psychopath was droped due to the negative connotations it attained in the last decades in popular culture.

Psychopathy is more or less just a umbrella term and has no meaning in psychiatry or psychology and is more or less used only in lawyer terminology, but as far as I know is also a speculative term.

So psychopaths is far more danger than sociopaths?

Pawelk, I think you misread Cacao's post. By my reading of his post; he is saying that psychopath is an inexact term and it's not much used in psychology, whereas sociopath is more exactly defined and it is used in psychology. He seems to not be comparing the terms as to degree of danger.

It seems like the term "psychopath" is often just used for a sociopath that commits extremely violent crimes.

Psychopathy is a personality disorder that has been variously characterized by shallow emotions (including reduced fear, a lack of empathy, and stress tolerance), coldheartedness, egocentricity, superficial charm, manipulativeness, irresponsibility, impulsivity, criminality, antisocial behavior, a lack of remorse, and a parasitic lifestyle. (Wikipedia, yeah... but it's accurate)

Sociopathy is largely synonymous with psychopahy, but it's usually used more specifically to describe psychopathy (lack of feeling, compassion, etc) in social interactions.

Also, no psychological or psychiatric organization uses these terms alone to describe a disorder. They are usually used to describe conditions accompanying a disorder, such as antisocial personality disorder.

As far as I know they're synonyms. "Psychopath" isn't used much because "psychopathy" can refer to any mental illness.

No, actually, psychopath is used more than sociopath. It used to be applicable to any psychological condition (hence the usage of 'autistic psychopathy') but now it is used specifically for the category of people who are unable to feel emotional empathy.

Sociopath vs psychopath differs depending on who you ask:

Some use the two synonymously.

Some use sociopath to refer to an acquired, environmentally caused condition that mimics psychopathy (which is biologically based).

Some use sociopath as a 'sociable psychopath' (which would mean most of them) and reserve psychopath for loner psychopaths.

Some use sociopath to refer to someone who has no trouble with empathy, but who engages in violent and/or criminal behavior for another reason (ie, sociopath = DSM-IV antisocial personality disorder), while a psychopath has problems with empathy.

It's sort of an analogous situation to AS vs HFA - many people claim there's a difference, but they all seem to draw it along different lines.

Modern psychology doesn't use the terms sociopath or psychopath: Anti-Social Personality Disorder covers what used to be called sociopathy and psychopathy isn't a diagnosis of anything. It's mostly just a term used on TV. ASPD is seperated into five types - my explanation of them will mostly just be a reworded copy of Wikipedia's article, which I would recommend reading: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antisocial ... y_disorder:
covetous antisocial – includes entitlement to better in life, usually without any effort.
reputation-defending antisocial – including narcissistic features and speaks for itself.
risk-taking antisocial – including histrionic features meaning that they will be attention seeking and generally extremely outgoing.
nomadic antisocial – including schizoid, avoidant features. Speaks for itself.
malevolent antisocial – including sadistic, paranoid features. This is what would usually be referred to as psychopathy, especially if the violence is more spontaneous than planned.

The main criteria for all ASPD diagnosis is a lack of emotional empathy: of genuinely caring for other people. They tend to be easily irritable and even if they are capable of superficial charm, lack the ability to hold onto close relationships due to the lack of emotional empathy. They are incapable of guilt and will most likely blame all of their faults and failures on other people.

If the subject of empathy disorders interests you, The Science of Evil by Simon Baron-Cohen may be useful http://www.amazon.com/dp/0465031420

Definitions: (From Webster's Dictionary)
Antisocial: not sociable, harmful to the welfare of people
Asocial: avoiding contact with others, selfish
Psychopathic personality: a person characterized by emotional instability, lack of social judgment, perverse and impulsive (often criminal) behavior, inability to learn from experience; amoral and asocial feelings; and other personality defects.
Sociopath: A psychopathic personality whose behavior is aggressively anti-social.

What a load of BS.

Do not take offense at the definitions that we fit within. These are as accurate and narrow as can be without becoming a condition of one person. We would all have conditions named after ourselves, and no one would ever have it again after we die.

I would define a sociopath as someone who either does not consider, or can choose to ignore, or cannot define by observation, other people's opinions, interests, motivations, etc. Compare with Egotism, though not outwardly expressing.

I consider myself a sociopath. When people balk at that, I say BENEVOLENT Sociopath. I may not feel anything for other people's troubles, but I understand that their troubles will affect me, at least in some remotely esoteric fashion. Mostly, I just like having people available for problem solving, furniture moving, transportation, etc. I use people, but I do try to avoid being indebited to anyone. The truth is that for all the facade I display, when it comes to other people, I simply don't care. But it's valuable to be available with regard to the needs of others. Social capitalism, perhaps.

Ichinin, a sociopath who is selfish may be by nature, not by choice. Many are, not all are. There is nothing immoral in being yourself, regardless of who you really are. The trick is to avoid letting your nature harm others. Also note that simply not sharing your toys or letting someone else read the part of the newspaper you're not currently reading qualifies as acting asocially.

^^^
welcome to the club

Antisocial Personality Disorder would be the professional word for sociopaths (and, arbitrarily, even psychopaths).

That kind of talk sounds like a way to undermine the damage that sociopaths can cause others. People can be hurt emotionally, not just physically.