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.

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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

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

From Slate • Jul. 23, 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

Although sociopathy may not be as stigmatized as psychopathy, people are still trained to fear sociopaths as potential life-wreckers utterly without empathy.

From Salon • May 20, 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

Whether he saw anything or not belongs among the obscurer questions of psychopathy.

From Where the Pavement Ends by Russell, John