Psychopathy and psychopathologies: Can psychopathy be conceptualized as a mental disorder?

Abstract

Psychopathy is a clinical-forensic, reliable, and valid construct that has been most studied empirically in clinical, legal-forensic, and subclinical contexts. This article examines the current profile of psychopathy and its remarkable distinctions with psychopathologies or mental disorders. Knowledge about historical conceptions and categorical versus dimensional perspectives of psychopathy, emphasizes that this construct has come to be associated with antisocial behavior, crime, and mental disorders. The links between psychopathy and these concepts have been the subject of fervent theoretical debates, which have been cleared up by several empirical studies. This article highlights the main nuances, and some suggestions are given in order for clinicians, forensics, and researchers to converge as to controversial issues which are already resolved in relation to psychopathy, in a singular mode, and to the various psychopathologies, in a plural mode.