Talk:Sociopath

Editprotected
The word sociopath correlates with the term psychopath; the two terms are used to describe the same psychological construct. Not so with antisocial personality disorder and dissocial personality disorder; the criteria for labeling a person as a psychopath with the Hare Psychopathy Checklist (widely considered the "gold standard" for assessment) are much more restrictive than that of ASPD or DPD. Sociopath means psychopath, not "person with ASPD" or "person with DPD". Therefore, please redirect Sociopath to Psychopathy, as Sociopathy is redirected to Psychopathy. Thank you. Alamanth (talk) 14:36, 5 November 2009 (UTC)
 * No problem. Skomorokh,  barbarian  15:06, 5 November 2009 (UTC)
 * Thank you. Alamanth (talk) 17:22, 5 November 2009 (UTC)
 * Why on earth has this not been corrected? 69.136.223.161 (talk) 06:27, 20 November 2010 (UTC)
 * This is incorrect. Sociopathy and psychopathy are both subsets of ASPD that are not necessarily related to each other. The article on psychopathy explains some differences between the two. Thus, sociopath/sociopathy should not redirect to psychopath/psychopathy, and since there is currently no article on sociopathy or the sociopath, each should redirect to ASPD for the time being. --82.31.164.172 (talk) 22:43, 14 December 2010 (UTC)
 * I came here hoping to fix this redirect from Antisocial personality disorder to Antisocial personality disorder, but it's edit protected (unnecessarily?) so I can't. 70.247.172.237 (talk) 04:08, 3 January 2011 (UTC)
 * See the edit request below. --Xagg (talk) 21:44, 19 August 2012 (UTC)

Edit request on 19 August 2012
The term 'sociopath' should redirect to the article Sociopathy, not Antisocial personality disorder. The reasoning is as follows. 'Sociopathy' is a loosely-defined term that may be used to refer to Antisocial personality disorder, Psychopathy, or Dissocial personality disorder, depending on the context, but is not strictly synonymous with any of these, and as such has its own article at Sociopathy. Since a sociopath is simply someone who exhibits sociopathy, the latter of which has its own article as linked to previously, 'sociopath' should redirect to Sociopathy. --Xagg (talk) 21:40, 19 August 2012 (UTC)

Xagg (talk) 21:40, 19 August 2012 (UTC)
 * Why not just disambiguate it? (Turn it into a dab page) — Crisco 1492 (talk) 09:59, 21 August 2012 (UTC)
 * I've marked the edit request as answered. There seems to be some debate about this at Talk:Sociopathy, and it looks like a change would be controversial. Xagg, please get a consensus for your edit before adding the edit protected template. Maybe you could start an RfC at Talk:Antisocial personality disorder and notify people at WikiProject Psychology. Best regards — Mr. Stradivarius  (have a chat) 13:02, 22 August 2012 (UTC)

Edit request on 19 September 2012

 * I have declined the edit request, because it looks like there is already a discussion on this here and there is a similar discussion above. Corporate 00:21, 28 September 2012 (UTC)

Disclaimer: I do not speak nor understand wikipedian double-speak. I'm also "Dead" according to the wikipedia page about me, and I seem to have a valid understanding of what "alive" means to understand that wikipedia sometimes prevents even itself from making the correct distinction. So speaking personally as a wikimedia outsider i make the following PLEA for an edit, not a request, a DESPERATE, HORRIFYINGLY SIMPLE PLEA:

do not re-direct a sociological concept to a psychological term.

In the English language "SOCIO-" refers to Soci-ETY, whereas "PSYCHO-" refers to the "psyche."

Sociopathy is a "SOCIO-LOGICAL" disorder. Psychopathy refers to a "PSYCHO-LOGICAL" disorder.

"Society's Logic" for example, cannot be decided by a "Single" "man's" "psyche" as society has no single brain, so it is important to make the distinction between terms in a sociological context, versus a psychological context. allow me to make a joke using the "sociological imagination" to illustrate the differences between the two contexts, and to also prove that i am simply a human being who does not understand a wikipedian society's red tape, and not a spam bot:

"Sigmund Freud and Karl Marx are trolling for ankle on night in ancient germany. They're both strung out on Cocaine. A girl nods in their direction and Freud says,

'Man, wouldn't you just want to *EFF* THAT WOMAN TO DEATH?'

To which Karl replied...

"Jesus... Ziggy... You can't just say WHATEVER THOUGHT just POPS out of your mouth as soon as you think it! There are PEOPLE around you! They can HEAR the words you SAY with your MOUTH."

Freud goes completely INSANE on this coke bender, he flips out at Karl Marx for absolutely no reason whatsoever! Screaming, cursing, getting red in the face, and finally storming off like a coked up madman into the streets of Germany... telling his buddy Marx in the rudest possible way to, "Go *EFF* his mother!" he RUNS HOME, CRYING. He doesn't understand WHY! There's no such thing as PSYCHIATRY yet, and his best friend Marx just insulted him with some bullshit about "SOCIETY." Freud completely loses his SHIT. He doesn't understand the effects of cocaine on the human brain's nervous system and he writes in his dream diary, *EFF KARL MARX & HIS MOTHER TOO!*

Finally, after a week long bender just mainlining blow nonstop, Ziggy finally comes back down to earth again and runs into his buddy Karl who says, "Hey buddy, how you been? I was really worried about you! I care, you know!"

Freud is still strung out on blow, drinking tons of coffee, and maybe he even had Tour-ettes (they thought that shit was caused by fairies back then, give them a break, there's no actual decent historical print record of the people's encyclopedia back then) lets out what is now IRONICALLY referred to as a "Freudian Slip." He says:

"Fuck you! Fuck you and your stupid commie worrying about me, you believe in stupid fucking bullshit! I DON'T BELIEVE IN SOCIALISM! and FUCK YOUR MOTHER TOO!"

His buddy Karl is aghast! Something is VERY wrong with his dear friend, but his friend isn't even AWARE of it! He backs away slowly in pure abject horror... Freud has closed his eyes like a 5 year old boy and is having a temper tantrum in public as though his mother never raised him right... and by the time he was done, Karl Marx disappeared, as though he came from another place or dimension, or time, or something, and in a moment of sheer genius Freud asks himself, "Wait... maybe... there actually IS something wrong with my brain..." and he goes home, picks up his dream diary, blows a line straight to the jugular, and reads in his own handwriting... "EFF KARL MARX & his MOTHER TOO." and he thinks, "Wait... did I write EFF? I thought I wrote "Fuck." He reads all of his dreams backwards and they slowly get less and less raunchy before this whole "Fuck Your mother" incident (that surely only this "imaginary" Karl Marx character would've publicly been aware of), even ever happened! And he thinks to himself in a voice that only he can hear:

"Hm... they all have a similar theme... he's in the desert... Was it Ancient Egypt? I dunno, it's hard to tell, it was only a dream... only I can actually interpret this... this was my dream... as only I saw it... A sphinx is asking me questions... Oedepus... I heard that name... Wait... Wait... I remember that story from when I was a little boy... and OH. My. GOD... I was Wrong... I should NOT have told Karl Marx to Fuck his mother... but it made... sense... at the time... HMMMM... Very interesting... "

100 years later. A working class stiff is lying with his hands crossed behind his head on a psychiatrist's couch in NYC and he says to his Board Certified PSYCHOLOGIST.

(This guy is so "stupid"... he doesn't even know the difference between PSYCHOLOGIST, LAY ANALYST, PROCTOLOGIST and PSYCHIATRIST. HA! Anyway, just a little sociological humor for you from the anonymous contributor of this argument to the wiki-babel-fest. Call it "Dramatic Irony" from an "unreliable narrator.")

So the doctor, an older American gentleman who got his degree back in the years when a degree meant "educated," listens to this possibly latino migrant laborer of unkown ethnic origin, (because when spoken out loud it was hard to tell what his "different" accent was), for the better part of an hour, and he's just WHINING:

"My wife doesn't love me. She's screaming at me all the time about how I should've gone to college so that I can get a REAL job instead of working on being a professional BUM! Those were HER WORDS, 'Doc! She called me a bum! I work my fucking ass off EVERY DAY to make sure she and my kids can eat, and sometimes, I get really mad, and I try to contain it... and it's like she's just TRYING to get me to slap some sense into her, but I KNOW that's wrong, and this internal dispute makes me wanna kill myself so that I don't hurt the ones I love in case I lose contr..."

And the doctor, who has been zoning out the entire time, because he's heard all of this before, and he's still thinking about that golf game he lost over the weekend and how much of a piece of shit that cardiologist roy was for throwing an extra ball on the field when he wasn't looking, and when the fuck is this guy gonna shut up finally interrupts him and says...

"You want to fuck your mother."

And his client goes, "What... did you just say...?"

And the all knowing, all powerful doctor goes, "Trust me, I'm a PSYCHOlogist. You want to fuck your mother. Take some anti-psychotic medication that your insurance doesn't cover. Pay my secretary. I'll see you next week."

And HeyZeus Conrad, who was a born and bred "American Citizen", with an actual birth certificate, whose parents never understood the importance of a persons name and how they're judged socially as a result of it, and spoke English, "Perfectly Well," heard this, he snapped. He was about to strangle this guy he just paid $300 for nothing for, but he took a deep breath, relaxed and calmly said:

"No offense, Doc... but you REALLY shouldn't be doing this."

He walked out, refused to pay his bill because the good doctor did not do his job in good faith, and then a week later, HeyZeus Conrad, random guy, just died. Randomly. For no reason. And TWO weeks later... his doctor hired an attorney to do his collections on this dead man's bill, in a certifiably legally sane way.

If you understood the significance of this story, you now understand the difference between a Psychopath and a Sociopath. Don't ever be afraid of words. The scariest word to either a psychiatrist or lawyer is wrong. And Wikipedian language is simply another language called, "Babel." in the universe outside of the "Wiki" verse, babel prevents social understanding of even the simplest word. Zero. One. One. Zero. both of those seem to be equally important, yet somehow, different words. Thank you. The eternally Irrelevant yet still living Allen Roizman (of say no to architecture infamy. citation: http://thefmly.com/2011/02/18/extra-lives/) — Preceding unsigned comment added by 173.2.233.150 (talk) 12:47, 19 September 2012

Edit request on 22 October 2012
Per the discussion referenced above at Talk:Sociopathy, I'd like to change this to a redirect to Antisocial personality disorder. Thank you. SchreiberBike (talk) 03:03, 22 October 2012 (UTC)

SchreiberBike (talk) 03:03, 22 October 2012 (UTC)
 * Yes check.svg Done, see . -- Red rose64 (talk) 14:16, 22 October 2012 (UTC)
 * Thank you. SchreiberBike (talk) 16:43, 23 October 2012 (UTC)

Edit request on 19 December 2012
I would like to request that Sociopath redirect to Sociopathy. "Sociopath" simply means "person with sociopathy" and Sociopathy is the namespace in question.

Looking back at Talk:Sociopathy, there have been many discussions over the years about whether Sociopathy should be a disambiguation page, or whether it should redirect to another article; usually the disagreement is over whether Sociopathy should redirect to Antisocial personality disorder or to Psychopathy.

The reason for the above request is that what happens at the Sociopathy namespace is the point of discussion. There should not be a separate discussion for the fate of Sociopath; Sociopath should simply redirect to Sociopathy. The reason this keeps coming up is that whenever Sociopathy gets redirected to one article namespace or another, Sociopath is converted from a double-redirect to whichever namespace was chosen at the time.

Sociopathy was stable as a disambiguation page from late 2011 until late 2012, and due to the lack of consensus for a definition of the term, I believe it is best left in that state. My comments on 13 December in this section go into detail, but the summary is simple: there is no clear consensus on the definition of the term sociopathy. Therefore, Sociopathy is best left as a disambiguation page at this time, one to which Sociopath should redirect. C-PTSD (talk) 16:47, 19 December 2012 (UTC)
 * Red information icon with gradient background.svg Not done: Your request sounds reasonable, but admins are only authorised to make changes that already have consensus. Please try and build a consensus for this change and then come back and activate the editprotected template if there is sufficient support for it. Perhaps you could start an RfC at Talk:Sociopathy and then post notices at the relevant articles and WikiProjects? (Bear in mind the caveats at WP:CANVASS, however.) Feel free to ask me at my talk page if you have any questions about this. Best — Mr. Stradivarius  (have a chat) 17:04, 19 December 2012 (UTC)


 * Okay, I have commented at the Talk pages of editors who made comments within the past several months at Talk:Sociopathy with a request for discussion. I'm not sure if anything will come of it since it has been almost a week since I last commented there and no one has responded. But we'll see if anyone responds to personal requests for input. C-PTSD (talk) 17:46, 19 December 2012 (UTC)

Edit request on 29 December 2012
Requesting that Sociopath be redirected to Sociopathy. This edit was suggested in a prior request on 19 December. In the absence of a recent, specific discussion at the Talk page about such a change, the responding administrator suggested making an effort to create a consensus for this proposed change.

I contacted all of the editors who contributed to the earlier Talk page discussion, with a request for comment. Those who responded readily reached consensus to maintain Sociopathy as a disambiguation page (as it had been stable in that form, for over a year).

Per this consensus, please redirect Sociopath to Sociopathy, as has been done with all similarly-titled namespaces. C-PTSD (talk) 21:58, 29 December 2012 (UTC)


 * Ok, Yes check.svg Done. Also, you might want to look into the possibility of making sociopathy a broad-concept article per WP:CONCEPTDAB. I don't think such a page need necessarily be incompatible with WP:DICDEF, but again, that is a matter for editors to arrive at by consensus. Best — Mr. Stradivarius  (have a chat) 23:04, 29 December 2012 (UTC)

Edit request on 14 January 2014
The page now redirects to Sociopathy which in turn redirects to Psychopathy, so there's a double redirect. This should be fixed. —Matěj Grabovský (talk) 19:03, 14 January 2014 (UTC)

Protected edit request on 11 February 2015
Target Moved! Ok, what I want is for the page to be redirected to Sociopathy like it originally was and the reason given for changing it was a double redirect.!

70.45.187.0 (talk) 03:12, 12 February 2015 (UTC)
 * How does redirecting the term to the disambiguation page help our readers, as opposed to having the term redirected to Psychopathy? Flyer22 (talk) 03:25, 12 February 2015 (UTC)
 * Editors, also see the note at the top of the talk page about where discussions for this term are best handled. Flyer22 (talk) 03:28, 12 February 2015 (UTC)
 * R'n'B and Redrose64, where did the WP:Consensus for this and this change come from? Like I asked the IP: "How does redirecting the term to the disambiguation page help our readers, as opposed to having the term redirected to Psychopathy?" Flyer22 (talk) 21:14, 12 February 2015 (UTC)
 * My edit was because is only for use where the redirect includes a link to a section. It was no longer a link to a section, so  was no longer applicable. -- Red rose64 (talk) 21:18, 12 February 2015 (UTC)


 * Yes, but I am more so speaking of R'n'B's edit that made the change. Your edit was a followup to that. So I wonder why R'n'B's change was made and why it was not contested. The top of this talk page currently states: "This is the talk page of an article that has been redirected to: Psychopathy. Because this page is not frequently watched, present and future discussions should take place at: Talk:Psychopathy." It should be a WP:Consensus matter that should not be discussed here. Flyer22 (talk) 21:59, 12 February 2015 (UTC)
 * Sociopath should redirect to Sociopathy if it is not a redirect; if the latter is a redirect, then both titles should redirect to the same target. That was my reasoning. I have not participated in any discussion about what should be done with Sociopathy. --R'n'B (call me Russ) 23:13, 12 February 2015 (UTC)


 * R'n'B, in my opinion, both pages should redirect to Psychopathy#Sociopathy, I don't see how the two-term disambiguation page is more of a help than redirecting the pages to Psychopathy#Sociopathy. Flyer22 (talk) 00:28, 13 February 2015 (UTC)


 * Update: Since Penbat changed the Sociopathy page back into a redirect, this redirect needs fixing. I noticed Penbat's change soon after it was made, but I held back from commenting on it to see if anyone would followup on the consistency argument. Only WP:Administrators can edit the Sociopath page; for consistency, I think the same should be the case for the Sociopathy page, so that this back and forth does not keep happening. Flyer22 (talk) 20:43, 17 February 2015 (UTC)