psychopathy

American  

[sahy-kop-uh-thee] / saɪˈkɒp ə θi /

noun

Psychiatry.

psychopathies plural

1. a mental disorder in which an individual manifests amoral and antisocial behavior, lack of ability to love or establish meaningful personal relationships, extreme egocentricity, failure to learn from experience, etc.

2. any mental disease.

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psychopathy British  

/ saɪˈkɒpəθɪ /

noun

1. another name for psychopathic personality

2. any mental disorder or disease

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Etymology

Origin of psychopathy

First recorded in 1840–50; psycho- + -pathy

Explanation

Someone who suffers from a mental illness that makes them violent without any sense of remorse or empathy has psychopathy. Although it's a common term in criminal justice, psychopathy isn't an official psychiatric diagnosis. If someone has psychopathy, they're referred to as a psychopath. As common as these terms are, a psychiatrist or psychologist won't diagnose someone with psychopathy — a patient with these symptoms will likely get a diagnosis of "antisocial personality disorder." A common test measuring psychopathy is used to study prison populations and for sentencing violent criminals. Psychopathy comes from the Greek roots psykhe, "mind," and pathos, "suffering."

Example Sentences

That pattern raises the possibility that psychopathy may be connected to differences in brain development across childhood and adolescence.

From Science Daily • May 10, 2026

The study was published in the Journal of Psychiatric Research under the title "Larger striatal volume is associated with increased adult psychopathy."

From Science Daily • May 10, 2026

“You get people who are verging on psychopathy and you get people who are just troubled.”

From Slate • Jul. 23, 2025

Like with the psychopathy scale: It's a continuous scale with no sharp cutoff point, but you can see the different life trajectories.

From Salon • Mar. 1, 2025

This identity disturbance, which is at the psychodynamic root of both pathological narcissism and rapacious psychopathy, is all-pervasive.

From Moral Deliberations in Modern Cinema by Vaknin, Samuel