psychopathy

American  

[sahy-kop-uh-thee] / saɪˈkɒp ə θi /

noun

Psychiatry.

plural

psychopathies

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.

---

psychopathy British  

/ saɪˈkɒpəθɪ /

noun

1. another name for psychopathic personality

2. any mental disorder or disease

---

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

“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

Dementia usually means memory problems, but frontotemporal dementia with a loss of ability to empathize with other people can resemble other conditions with empathy problems in psychiatry, such as psychopathy.

From Science Daily • Dec. 3, 2024

Watch episodes of the medical drama “House, M.D.,” and you will see imaging confidently used to diagnose psychopathy, to tell whether somebody is lying, even to visualize the subconscious.

From New York Times • Aug. 2, 2023

Dealing with IBSEN'S Ghosts at the Kingsway Theatre, the critic of a halfpenny morning paper refers to it as a "medley of weird psychopathy and symbolism."

From Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 152, May 9, 1917 by Various