Is the public view of these people warranted, or is it just ableism from neurotypical people? Is it bad for me to use “psychopath” and “sociopath” as pejoratives against other people?
The current DSM-5 term is “Anti-social personality disorder”.
It really is a lot more complicated than the public’s view. ASPD is a spectrum of symptoms. Some people are able to function pretty well, others have severe trouble. The study of ASPD is fraught because for the most part if it doesn’t cause problems in your life you never get diagnosed. As a result most of the people researchers have access to are convicts in prison, and they’re not necessarily representative of all people with ASPD.
Here’s a paper that sort of surveys the condition
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK546673/
It’s got a bunch of formal jargon, but it’s a pretty comprehensive look at the basics
I would say that overwhelmingly the most critical thing to know about ASPD; Being an asshole is not a mental illness. It’s easy to throw around clinical terms, but just being a jerk doesn’t mean someone is mentally ill.
The public view is essentially that any of the terms for this is basically a stamp that either says these people should be put down ASAP, or if you are liberal minded, it says that they should be locked in a secure facility until non-direct causes kills them.
I would say it’s probably not very good to spread the idea of basically ontologically harmful people roaming amongst us.
